What It Means to Pray in Jesus’ Name

Well, let me have you guys, turn in your Bibles this morning to 1 Timothy chapter 3. For our time of study and the word this morning and just for the sake of time, I'll probably say more about this tonight just regarding our time away. I'll just say that it's good to be back with you guys after being away over the last 3 Sundays and I appreciate our two Carloses and their preaching ministry over the last 3. 3 weeks and, just being here today reminds me of what I love so much about this church and about you guys and the privilege that is mine to be one of the pastors here.

but as we open up God's word today, we come to 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16, last Sunday. Carlos Slimtiaco took us to the end of verse 15, and we'll pick up in verse 16, and Lord willing, we were able to pull this off this morning. We'll, we'll try to get all the way through, verse 16. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it is what we believe and confess, what we believe and, confess.

Let me begin reading in verse 14. Paul says, I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long, but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the support of the truth. So he's saying, I want you guys to know how to conduct yourselves and behave as elders, deacons, men and women. and believers in the Church of God because the church serves as the platform, as the podium on which the truth is put on display for all the world to see.

Well, that begs the question, what is the truth that we are to be all about that we put on display in the church? And that truth is revealed for us in verse 16. Paul says, By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He, Christ, who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up into glory.

There are some writers that refer to verse 16 as the heart. Of this letter of First Timothy, it is the theological mountain peak of the letter. Everything that's been said up to this point builds up to this mountain peak, and then everything is downhill from here, not in a bad way downhill, but the point is that if there was a o gra ph y to First Timothy. This verse is the mountain peak, and everything that is said by way of how we do church and conduct ourselves is designed to reinforce this truth, this gospel presentation that we find here in First Timothy 3:16, just by way of starting off.

this morning, let me ask for a raise of hands. How many of you do, Twitter? OK, not, not very many. don't be ashamed.

Maybe I should ask. Maybe I should ask for every head to be bowed and every eye closed. How many of you would say, Pastor Milton, I Twitter, just raise your hand. OK, I appreciate your transparency there.

I don't know a lot about it because I've never, I haven't done it yet, but I, my understanding is you're limited to 140 characters roughly, and, and you can tweet. And through the medium of miracle of technology you can keep all of your followers updated on every little thing that you're you're doing, and I mention that because several months ago there was a pastor of a large emergent church that was being interviewed by Christianity Today. This is a man that once, several years ago, preached a pretty clear gospel, but he's moved away from that and has been preaching an increasingly fuzzy, gospel.

But in this interview with Christianity Today, the interviewer asked him a question that probably, it was probably the first time any interviewer has ever asked a pastor this question.

And that was he asked him, how would you tweet the gospel? How would you express the gospel on Twitter? In other words, in 140 characters or less, how would you succinctly explain the gospel? And I want to read to you this pastor's answer, and he went way over the 140 characters as pastors are prone to do.

but, but listen to what he says here. He's got an opportunity to express the gospel very succinctly and point to those elements that are most important, and this is what he says. I would say that history is headed somewhere. The thousands of little ways in which you are tempted to believe that hope might actually be a legitimate response to the insanity of the world actually can be trusted.

And the Christian story is that a tomb is empty and a movement has actually begun that has been present in a sense all along in creation, and all those times when your cynicism was at odds with an impulse within you that said that this little thing might be about something bigger, those tiny little slivers may in fact be connected to something really, really big. Amen. How fuzzy can you get? I would think that if you're going to word the gospel succinctly, you got to say something about Jesus somewhere.

And while everything that he says here is true, it's just, man, is that the best that we can offer in terms of a succinct presentation of the gospel? In response to his tweet on the gospel here, 9 marks.com. A website, an Orthodox website, they, they put out the challenge to all of those that follow that blog and said, How would you tweet the gospel in 140 characters or less? And I was combing through those this week.

There was, it seemed like literally hundreds of them that were offered, and I want to read to you just two of them. I like this one. Listen to what he says here. Always God, perfect world, world messed up.

We're still messed up. Jesus came, he's not messed up. Jesus died. Will Jesus restore you?

You decide. I like that. I like this one too. I broke law, deserved death, hell, Jesus kept the law, paid my penalty on the cross, rose again, offers eternal life to all who believe.

I think there's actually value in thinking through how would we succinctly present the gospel. What are those most important elements that we would include if we were reduced to just a few words in this way? I start with that because I think if someone asked Paul, how would you tweet the gospel. He would probably say something like what we find in verse 16.

It's over the 140 characters, but I don't think Paul would care about that. But it is a very succinct, exceptionally dense presentation of the gospel that we have here, and we'll see there's so much here it's going to be all we can do just to get through this verse today. And as we look at this verse, here's how we're going to break it down. I've got 10 points to make in the sermon today.

10 statements that comprise our message to the world and to ourselves. This truth that we put on display. That we speak to the world we can make 10 statements just from this verse alone as we make our gospel presentation to the world and as we preach the gospel to ourselves each day. All right, let's begin working through this.

Look what he says in verse 16. By common confession, in other words, every true believer agrees. On this, we can all agree to disagree on a number of things, but not on what we find in this verse. Every believer not only believes what I'm about to say, but every true believer speaks this.

He says by common confession, which means to say, to speak the same thing. All true believers speak the same thing here. If you don't speak this, you're not a Christian. If you don't believe this, you're not a Christian.

This is what all true Christians have in common. And so here's the first statement that we're going to pull from just this verse. This is what we say to the world and put on display to the world, and that is that godliness is a mystery beyond human attainment. Godliness is a mystery beyond human attainment.

Look what he says. By common confession, great is the, now look at this expression, mystery of godliness. Now, let's just focus on that for a moment. Mystery of godliness.

Paul is alerting us to the fact that godliness is a mystery. All right, there's a mystery to Godliness. What is godliness? It is godly living.

It is living a life fully devoted to God, loving Him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. It is living in obedience to God. It is being Godlike in terms of his, what's called communicable attributes of love and holiness and justice, purity and righteousness. It is godly living in all venues of life in the home, in the neighborhood, in the workplace and Amongst family and friends.

This is what God calls us to. It's basically obedience to God, obedience to the law, always saying yes to righteousness and no to sin. And Paul says that godliness is a mystery. It is a mystery, meaning that by one's own ingenuity they would never arrive at a place of godliness.

By one's own thought and one's own study, by one's own creativity, by one's own energy and effort and strategizing would never arrive at a place of obedience to the law of God, a true godliness that pleases him. It is a mystery. And I hope we never lose sight of this even as you look at your own life and Your brothers and sisters in the Lord, someone who was formerly addicted to drugs but now is walking in freedom because they love God, that's a mystery. That's a miracle, guys.

That's not just someone who woke up and said, what, I think I want to be done with this, and I think I want to just start obeying God. I want to clean up my act and start being righteous. It doesn't happen that way. It's not by human attainment or human resolve.

It is a mystery when someone was formerly walking in immorality. But now is walking in purity because they are devoted to God. That is a mystery. That is a miracle.

Godliness is a mystery beyond human attainment. And so as we speak to the world, here's what we do. We give them the standard. Here's what God calls from all of those whom He has created, and that is that they be godly, and we present that to them.

But we then inform them that godliness is a mystery. You can't do this. You can't arrive at this on your own. See, that's a news flash to many in our world today.

For many people, godliness is not a mystery. It's just, hey, tell me what the law says, and I'll do it. And they look to themselves for obedience and their own ability and creativity to obey God. There's even believers that sometimes we can lose that mystery element of godliness.

And we go even through the New Testament and it's like, just show me the imperatives, Lord. Tell me what to do, and we ignore the gospel, gospel truth that serves as the motivation and the fuel for godliness and all we want to do is look at the imperatives and the commands and then we resolve to do those things. And what we're doing is we're taking the mystery out of godliness. Godliness is a mystery beyond human attainment.

That's the first statement we make to the world. There's a second statement that we infer from verse 16 that we announce to the world, and that is that this mystery of godliness has been revealed by God. In other words, it's, it was once a mystery, but now it's been revealed. It's no longer an unknown mystery.

Whenever you see the apostle Paul using the word mystery in the New Testament. The word does not speak of something that is still a mystery. It speaks of something that was once a mystery, but now it has been revealed. It was once a secret unknown to man.

It could only be known by divine revelation, but God has now revealed it, and now the secret, the mystery has been exposed, revealed, made known. And so let's word verse 16 in this way by common confession, great. Is the revealed secret of godliness. See, some of you even who know the Lord, you may say, yeah, great is the mystery of godliness.

I've been trying to be godly for years and I can't figure it out. I fail time and time again, and it's a mystery to me how one can truly be godly. That's not Paul's point. He's not complaining here.

Paul is saying great is the revealed secret. God has revealed the secret. Of how to be godly in a way that truly pleases him. There's a 3rd statement that we make to the world as we make gospel confessions to them, and that is that this revealed mystery of godliness is great.

We don't just state truth to people about the gospel when we preach the gospel to them. We voice our opinion, our value judgment. Of the truth that we declare by common confession, every believer believes this and speaks this way, and the way they speak is this. Here's what they say Great is the mystery of godliness.

They love the revealed secret of godliness. They're excited about it. They're passionate about it. They voice not only the truth of it.

But they voice their opinion of it and the fact that they think it's great. It's magnificent. when you think about it, all of us, if you were to replay this past week, we've all made many statements, and some of those are factual statements, but we all always are making statements that express value judgments, right, and opinions about people or about things. This week I've had a couple of conversations with people where Tiger Woods came up and when Talk about Tiger Woods.

We don't just speak facts about him. We express value judgments about the golfer that he is, and that he's amazing. He's unbelievable, and we're not just stating facts, but we're stating an opinion about what we think about him. When we got back from vacation after 4 days on the road, we, my wife, began to do laundry and discovered to our dismay that our washing machine was broke, and we bought the washing machine 18 years ago.

They were 10-year-old machines when we bought them, and they, so they were 28 years old, and normally I try to repair them or call the repairman, but when I lifted it up and moved it out of the way, there was a pool of grease on the floor and black stuff everywhere. So figured it's time to replace it. And so went to a particular store, bought a washing machine and dryer after a lot of research. Long story short, over the course of this week, I've had to return 2 washing machines, 2 dryers, and just yesterday, coming back from Corona, I think I finally found a washer and dryer that's not damaged from this particular store.

Well, throughout this week I've made statements that express value judgments. Not just statements of fact, but opinions about what I think about these machines and about even the store that that I got them from, and we do this thing all the time. But here's the deal, guys, we as Christians in the church to one another and to the world, we don't just state gospel truth, we state our opinion about the gospel that we think it's great. And anyone who knows us and listens to us, they would know that, what, that person believes the gospel, and they think it's awesome.

We speak. This Everyone knows, even when we worship, people should observe our worship and know that wow, they not only believe the gospel, but they think it's pretty great. They think it's fantastic. Don't have time to belabor this, but, let me, let me quiz you.

Where is Timothy right now as Paul writes to him? What city? Ephesus, in Acts 19, you remember what happened in the city of Ephesus, where Paul was dragged into the theater and all the people of Ephesus gathered there and they started crying out, and what was their slogan, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And then something developed and the whole The crowd got worked up into a lather and just went insane.

Luke says in Acts 19, and for two hours they screamed their fool heads off, screaming, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. Imagine that for two hours they chant this opinion about their goddess. Well, Paul is writing to Timothy, who's in the city of Ephesus. Perhaps these words are still ringing in Paul's ears.

And Paul says, hey, in the church, here's what we speak. Here's what we confess. Great is the mystery of godliness. Great is the revealed secret that God has revealed, that makes godliness possible.

It's great. Why is it so great? Here's the 4th statement. That this revealed mystery of godliness.

Is Jesus It's a person. Look what it says in verse 16, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who, right? It's a person.

when we speak to the world, we say, listen, here's what God's law says, here's what you're commanded to do, and it is a mystery. You cannot do this by your own achievement, your own ingenuity, your own effort, your own understanding, or study. But God has revealed this. You must listen to God as He shows you what the secret of godliness is.

And let me tell you, you're going to love this. This is fantastic. This is amazing. And the church, we, we, we think this is really great.

And as we bring the nonbeliever to that point, he's expecting some complicated, sophisticated system, a list of 20, 100 things. But instead, we say, here's the secret of godliness. And we point to Jesus. That's it.

That's the revealed secret of godliness. That's who God has revealed. As the secret of godliness. He is.

That secret of godliness. And that's all that Paul talks about from this point of the verse on. In fact, let's begin to open this up. What is it about Jesus that makes him the revealed secret of godliness that is so great?

Well, statement number 5 that we make to the world around us as we proclaim the truth of the gospel to them is that Christ was revealed in the flesh. He was revealed in the flesh. Now look back at verse 16, and I would encourage you, if you mark your Bibles. You might want to tie the word mystery to the word revealed, because those words go together.

Something was a secret, now it's been revealed. It was hidden. Now it's made known. There was a mystery to godliness that formerly was not known.

It could only be understood through divine revelation. And that mystery is Jesus, and He was revealed, the medium through which Christ, the Son of God, the second member of the Trinity, chose to reveal Himself. is in the flesh. My prayer is that we will hear this truth like we've never heard it before.

Just, we're so accustomed to this that we, we lose the sense of how amazing this really is. If we didn't find this in the Bible, every one of us would think it's utterly blasphemous to say what Paul says here. In fact, Orthodox Jews are utterly profoundly offended by this because what we believe. Is that God the Son came into this world and became a human being.

He was not a human being before. He came into this world, took on flesh, became flesh like us, became a human being. We now have the second member of the Trinity, a human God. We call Him the God man.

He has become a human like us. And he chose to reveal Himself not from heaven, but he came into this world, took on flesh, and then chose the flesh as a human being to be the medium through which he spent his life on earth revealing Himself. He did this throughout his life and ministry, through his words and deeds. We see that he cared about the material.

About people who were hungry and thirsty and blind and lame, paralyzed, people who were deaf. He fed the multitudes with physical food. He himself experienced hunger and thirst and weariness. He revealed himself.

God became a man and revealed himself to us in the form of a human being. And he didn't just reveals himself on the day of his birth, like, look at me, I'm flesh, I'm a human being. But again, throughout his life and ministry, he was revealing himself. In fact, we find this exact same word in Hebrews 9:26.

says he has been revealed to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Even in going to the cross, Jesus was revealing Himself to us of his Righteousness of his love for us, of his love for his Father. He was revealing his absolute trust in His Heavenly Father. In fact, Jesus would say, there's no other place.

when I'm crucified, that's when I'm being lifted up and the greatest revelation of myself is. as I'm being crucified and my flesh is actually being torn so that through my torn flesh you can have access into the holy place even after His resurrection. I hope you guys understand and believe that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. It was not a spiritual resurrection.

He invited His disciples, Come and put your hand in my hands and thrust your hand in my side. And look at me and see that I'm not a spirit. A spirit does not have flesh and bone, as you see that I have in Luke's Gospel. He even asked them.

They're standing there totally amazed. He says, You guys have something to eat? So they brought him some fish. And he sat down and ate the fish in front of them and probably not because he was hungry, but just he wanted to show them I am flesh, even in my risen state.

I am human. I am flesh and bone, and he reveals himself in the flesh even after his resurrection. John uses this word reveal. This Greek word translated reveal 3 times in John 21.

After these things he revealed himself again and he revealed Himself in this way. Then he says at the end, this is now the 3rd time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples, and he very intentionally, deliberately revealed Himself. In the flesh, so God became human. Still God, God, the second member of the Trinity, became a man, became one of us, and lived among us and revealed Himself through the medium.

of his flesh. You want to know how to be godly. This is what we say to the world. God came into this world, became a man, and revealed himself.

And as he revealed himself, here's what we observe. Probably one of the most important things about Jesus, as he revealed himself as this, and that is that Christ was perfectly righteous, as attested by the Holy Spirit. Where Christ revealed himself when he was on the earth, and he did so in a perfectly righteous way. He was without spot, without blemish.

Look what it says. He was vindicated. In the spirit or vindicated by the Spirit, how like in Romans 5 it says we're justified by faith, that we're justified, that's this word here, all right, it's the same Greek word, it's the word for righteousness, but so literally Jesus was justified. by the Spirit.

Now we are justified, but our justification is different. We were unrighteous. God declared us righteous. With Jesus.

He was righteous, perfectly righteous, and the Spirit vindicated. That righteousness. He validated that righteousness. He affirmed that righteousness.

Just for example, let's say like last night I was here at the church, and I wanted to check the air conditioning and I walked through this, this room over here and there was that bucket of candy that they always have, and the thought crossed my mind, just grab a piece of candy from that bucket. but I resisted because I thought that's not what it's for. It's not for me. and so I walked on by it.

But just for the sake of a silly illustration, let's say that this morning I show up and Kayla Hernandez is looking at the bucket and she said, you took some candy from the bucket, didn't you? And she's accusing me. She's, she's accusing me of being unrighteous with regard to that and doing something that I should not have done, and I can say to her, no, I didn't. I thought about it, but I did not give in to that temptation.

Well, that's just my word against hers. But let's say one of you, let's say you stepped forward and said, Listen, I was here last night. I was in the building. Milton did not know it.

In fact, I was in this room over here. And I saw him pause and drool over the bucket, and I saw him walk on, and he never touched it. what you're doing? You're vindicating my righteousness.

I was righteous regarding that issue. You are giving testimony to that, affirming that, validating that, vindicating that righteousness of mine in that particular area. That's what we mean here when it says the Spirit justified Jesus. He vindicated the righteousness of.

Jesus. At the bottom of this is the fact that Christ revealed Himself in the flesh. And as he revealed himself, he was perfectly spotlessly righteous in every way. And if you want someone who will testify to that, check with the Holy Spirit.

He will give testimony of that. We don't have time to belabor this, but you read the gospel accounts at Jesus' baptism, the Spirit descended upon Christ intentionally to convey to John that this is the Son of God. And John viewed the descending of the Spirit upon Jesus that John the Baptist himself witnessed as validation of Jesus as the Messiah. And then even think about this, when Christ was crucified, he died as a condemned criminal, right?

The world's verdict on him is he was a bad person who did things worthy of death. That's a terrible way to die from one standpoint, but what was the Holy Spirit's opinion of him? Well, the Holy Spirit weighs in 3 days after his death. In raising Jesus from the dead.

Look at this. Romans 8:11, the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead, and the Spirit in raising Jesus was actually trying to make a statement in that he wants us to know that by raising Jesus from the dead, that means something. Romans 1:4, Jesus was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness. The Spirit would say, in raising him from the dead, what I'm saying is I'm vindicating his righteousness.

I am saying that the world is wrong to render the verdict they have on him. He is righteous, and his sacrifice is sufficient to atone for the sins of all. Even on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit comes, Peter, you should read Acts 2 and see how Peter uses the Spirit's coming as a validation of Jesus as the Messiah. He says in verse 33, therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he's poured forth this, this outpouring of the Spirit, which you both see and hear.

Therefore, because of this, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. The Spirit even coming on the day of Pentecost was a validation of the faithfulness of Jesus. It was proof. To the world that was observing that Jesus is at the right hand of God, both Lord and Christ.

So we proclaim to the world, we deal with people in the world that are all enamored with their own righteousness. What we do is we present to them a better righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus, and we bring the Holy Spirit's testimony to bear, to prove and vindicate that righteousness. There's a 7th statement that we make as we present the truth of the gospel to the world. And this 7th statement, I don't think any of us would have thought to include this.

If I asked you to state the gospel very succinctly, I'm pretty confident that not one of us would have said Christ was seen by angels. And your thought may what in the world does that even have to do with the gospel? But this is actually a beautiful thing. What Paul is doing.

He's already stated the Holy Spirit, who can testify of the righteousness of Jesus. But then he adds to that angels. He says angels saw him, and they can testify too, of the greatness and the righteousness of Jesus. What did the angels see very quickly.

We know they were involved in his conception. Gabriel announced to Mary. How the conception of Jesus would occur. Another angel announced to Joseph what was going on.

On the day of Christ's birth, there was an angel that appeared in Bethlehem to some shepherds nearby announcing the good news of Christ's birth. And then after he made that announcement, a multitude of the heavenly hosts, thousands of angels joined him in praising God and saying glory to God in the highest. So angels witnessed the birth of Christ and imagine their amazement as they witnessed God becoming Man, God, becoming a human being, this little baby that's lying in a feeding trough for animals in a stable.

No wonder they're exploding in praise to God.

What else did angels see? Well, we know that angels witnessed his temptation. Remember when Jesus was driven in the wilderness by the Spirit? He was tempted of the devil.

No doubt many temptations. We have 3 of them on record. In fact, probably the final 3 temptations are recorded for us, but there were many other temptations over the length of those days. But look what it says, Matthew 4:10.

Then the devil left him after the last temptation, and behold, angels came and began to minister to Jesus. Angels witnessed this time of temptation where Jesus, physically hungry, was just pummeled again and again with exceedingly powerful temptations, and he resisted all of them to where at the end of that he was left physically, spiritually exhausted. And God dispatched angels to go minister to him. And what did they see when they saw him?

They saw one who had endured an amazing time of testing and came through it righteous. Also later, just before Jesus was arrested, leading to his death, he said to his disciples, My soul is in distress. It's an agony to the point of death. He's like, I feel like I'm about to die right now, because of the agony of soul that I'm experiencing.

And we learn in the Gospels that Jesus went into the, the Garden of Gethsemane, he fell, he collapsed on his face, and he began to pray to the Father, saying, Father, if it be possible, remove this cup of your wrath from me. And no doubt he waited and there was no reply from heaven. And after a pause, Jesus said, not my will but yours be done. And then a few moments later he prayed the same prayer, Father, let this pass from me.

There was no reply from heaven. Jesus says, OK, let your will be done. In a few minutes go by. Jesus, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

There's no reply from heaven. Jesus says, Let your will be done. And imagine the scene as the angels of heaven bend low to watch their Creator agonizing in the garden, sweating drops of blood in great distress of soul, praying to his father, and there's no reply, no deliverance. But then, God the Father, Dispatches an angel and says, go down there and strengthen him.

It says in Luke 22:43, now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Imagine what that angel saw. Of the agony of Jesus. Alexander White, the great Scottish preacher of the 19th century, said, when I get to heaven, I want to first see Jesus, I want to talk to him.

We have much to talk over together. But after I talked to him, the second person that I want to see and speak to is this angel. Who was with Jesus in the garden. I want to know what he saw.

What he witnessed of the agony of Jesus. We do know this. that the angel witnessed The God man under excruciating temptation. And he made the right choice.

The righteous choice that angel could be brought to the witness stand to testify. He would say, I saw him tempted greatly, and he is righteous. And all the angels of heaven had to stand helplessly as they watched Jesus be arrested unjustly, slapped in the face, spat upon, punched in the face, blindfolded, mocked, and ridiculed, a crown of thorns placed upon his brow and then beaten down into his brow. They had to, they had to watch that and think about it.

When Jesus was arrested, Peter chopped off the ear of One of the guys there and Jesus said, put your sword away. Don't I can call 12 legions of angels and they could end this right now. And I'm sure the angels were like, just call us Jesus, we're ready. And no doubt they were standing on the precipice of heaven and just looking at the Heavenly Father and saying, just, just give us the sign.

Send us and we will come and deliver our Creator from this abuse, this one we have worshiped forever. is being abused. So and no doubt they would long to deliver him, but they were held back. But what we know from Scripture, they witnessed his suffering and death.

As he was whipped, tied around a great stone and whipped and then nailed to a cross, they witnessed this because in Revelation 5:11, John says, I heard the voice of many angels, including others, but angels are among that number. The number of them was myriads and myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. They saw it They watched helplessly. They also, they watched him suffer.

In obedience to his father's will, endure God's wrath, they watched him die and trust his soul to his father in his death. And then 3 days later angels got to witness his resurrection, so they were there when the Spirit vindicated Jesus and His righteousness, and we know that angels were there at His ascension. Even to this day we know from Scripture, First Peter 1:12, that angels still long to look into and see these things that we enjoy as believers. So we say to the world that God Godliness is a mystery.

This mystery has been revealed. This mystery, this revealed mystery is exceedingly great. And it is Jesus, who was revealed in the flesh. He was totally righteous.

He was vindicated by the Spirit. And if you want others who can testify of his greatness and righteousness, then there are angels who also observed him. There's another statement we make, and that is that Christ was proclaimed among the nations, who was proclaimed among the nations. You want to bring others to bear witness regarding Jesus.

How about the apostles and all the evangelists who up to this point of the writing of this letter had gone throughout all of the known world preaching Jesus. These apostles had been with Jesus for 3 years, they saw him in many situations, and they knew him to be completely righteous. And they spent their lives proclaiming him. To the nations.

Now, when we see the word nations there, that's not a big deal to us. But to Jews, that's a big deal. the ethnoi, that's all the Gentiles. So there's a lot being said here that he was proclaimed amongst all the nations, not just to the Jews, but to all the Gentiles.

So you get like Peter, James, and John, and even the apostle Paul. These guys were totally kosher Jews who cared only at first about the Jews. Everyone else was Gentile dogs, Gentile pigs, and we Want to touch them, have any commerce with them. And when we go to the market, just out of the fear that we may have touched a piece of pottery that a Gentile has touched, we will do ritual washings when we come home to wash the filth of the Gentiles off of us.

That was their attitude about the Gentiles. But what? They hung out with Jesus for 3 years. They saw who he was and after he was ascended to glory, what they did.

And we are so excited. He is so great, so righteous, so wonderful, we're going to spend our lives proclaiming Him not just to our fellow Jews, but we're going to go to Gentiles, to all the nations. of their various hues and colors, languages, cultural differences, barbarians, scythian bond and free Jew and Gentile, we will announce him to everybody. And so we know of the greatness and the righteousness of Jesus because the Holy Spirit would testify to it.

The angels witnessed it themselves and can testify to it. And the disciples, the apostle Paul, who met Jesus personally on the road to Damascus, all of them gave their lives to go on around the world and proclaiming Jesus, what drove them? It was the greatness of Jesus, the righteousness of Jesus. They joined the Holy Spirit and the angels in giving testimony.

To his glory. There's a 9th statement we can make as we speak to the world. And that is that Christ was believed on in the world. So we got the Holy Spirit, we got the angels, we got the apostles and all the other evangelists who went throughout the world proclaiming Jesus.

But Paul would also say that when we speak to the world, we could also bring to bear the testimony of everyone around the planet who has believed in Jesus, who has received this testimony. There are people of every tribe and tongue and nation ultimately who will hear the gospel and believe in Jesus. There are hundreds of thousands, millions of people in, in virtually all cultures around the world who have believed in this one, this Jew who lived 2000 years ago and publicly ministered for 3 years, that says something about his greatness and about his glory.

And then the final The statement that we make to the world is that this Christ was taken up in the glory.

He was taken up in the glory. We find that at the very end of verse 16. Now this is a passive verb. Now Jesus in a sense, went up to glory actively, but this is focusing on the fact that he was taken up into glory.

Who received Him into glory? The Father. And so now the Father is added to the list. The Father is expressing his verdict on Jesus.

He died as a condemned criminal. That's the world's verdict. The Holy Spirit raises him from the dead, thus delivering his verdict. Angels can give testimony to the greatness and righteousness of Jesus, the apostles who preached him.

Everyone who's believed in Jesus up to this point of the writing of this letter could testify to the greatness and the righteousness of Jesus. But Paul says, I got one more person I want to bring to the witness stand about Jesus, and that is our Heavenly Father. Think about what the Father's verdict was. That God not only raised Jesus from the dead, But God said to Jesus, come up here.

I want you in heaven. And I don't just want you in heaven. I have a seat here for you. It's at my right hand.

And I will hand to you all authority and power in heaven and on earth. You are the only one in all of the universe that I would ever entrust all of this power and authority to. I give you the power and authority to begin to rule as the sovereign King of all of heaven and earth. That's a verdict.

That's an amazing statement that the Father is making about Jesus. Jesus is entitled. To sit at God's right hand. And to be king Overall.

So you put all the pieces together, guys, and this is, this is essentially what we say when we preach the gospel to the lost. Let's, let's work through this verse, as we wrap this up. godliness is a mystery. You cannot obtain this or attain it by your own ingenuity or effort.

this mystery has been revealed. This revealed secret of godliness is awesome. It is great. And it is Jesus, who was in heaven, came into this world, and became a human being.

He was absolutely righteous. And the Spirit vindicated that by raising him from the dead. He was seen by angels who can testify to his greatness and righteousness, all of the apostles and disciples who knew him. And observed him and witnessed Him.

They proclaimed Him amongst all of the nations. They could bear testimony. All those who believed through their testimony could testify to the greatness and righteousness of Jesus, and God the Father Himself vindicates Jesus and proclaims His greatness and His righteousness, and giving him the seat at the right hand of God. And here's what we say to the world.

Join this beautiful cosmic chorus. Join God the Holy Spirit. Join the angels. Join the apostles and others who preached Him.

Join all believers around the world who believe in Jesus. Join God the Father in believing in and proclaiming the greatness of Jesus. The glory of Jesus. As the mystery of godliness.

We're inviting them into this amazing chorus of praise. To Jesus. Jesus is taken up into the glory. He's now at the right hand of God.

There's a human being on the throne of the universe. I, I've been thinking about that over the last month or so. There's a man on the throne of the universe, a human being. Who now is there to reign from on high and to save us, the uttermost.

Let me ask you to bow your heads this morning. This is a glorious gospel that we believe in. We conduct ourselves the way we're taught in this letter because this is the glorious message that we proclaim. that we put on display.

And may God help us to Do justice to this. If you're here today and you've never believed in Jesus, I would invite you to join God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, the angels, the apostles, join all of us here who believe in Jesus. In embracing and confessing aloud his greatness, his lordship. Believe in him.

Abandon your own righteousness and see his righteousness as superior. Throw your righteousness away. And take His righteousness. If you've never done that, I pray that you would even just do that where you're seated.

We're gonna take up an offering here in just a moment and I want you to, as the Lord leads to take the opportunity to give to the Lord. As he has prospered you. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we, we give thanks to you for The glory of the gospel.

I just, I, I feel so out of my league and speaking of these things that are They're too high for me. I feel I am but in kindergarten and understanding. These things May we as a church really lay hold of what the gospel is. It's all about Jesus, His greatness, his righteousness, his willingness to save.

Salvation is only in Him. May we speak this? May we confess it aloud, May we confess it together. May we conduct ourselves in a way that is befitting to the glory of this gospel.

May we even respond to you now, Lord, by giving to you, thank you for this privilege of giving to you who gave your Son for us to endure such great suffering that he might enter into His glory and be our glorious Savior. To you we give and to you we even pray right now that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven, and that you would enable us to preach this gospel till our dying breath. We give ourselves to You, Lord, in the name of Jesus and all God's people.