(Sermon preached April 10, 2016)

We have been watching a TV commercial recently that features a man walking across the top of a skyscraper.  While he walks, he is most appropriately describing the dangers of this life, while he is himself doing a very dangerous thing – walking toward the edge of the skyscraper roof!  Then, just as you were expecting he steps off the roof and begins falling to the street below.

Of course he has a parachute strapped to his back and lands safely.

In this text, Jesus is doing something like that TV ad man.  Not walking across the roof of a skyscraper but walking right into the Pharisee-Sadducee-High priest DEATH TRAP! – DEATH as certain as falling from a skyscraper, His crucifixion absolutely inevitable!

KEY!   Jesus wants His disciples to see Him do this! Important for them to see it happen!

• To see Him tried by the High Priests and Pilate!
• To see Him horribly abused and then Crucified!
• Finally to see Him Risen from the dead, and

then ASCENDING INTO GLORY – TO BE ENTHRONED ON THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD!!!

BY THESE EVENTS

JESUS WAS BECOMING THE LORD OF HISTORY

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ENTIRE COSMOS

ABSOLUTE LORD OF ALL IN THE FULLEST SENSE….AND 

THEIR SEEING THIS AWESOME DRAMA UNFOLD BEFORE THEIR EYES

WAS A MEANS BY WHICH

THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS MAKING THEM LORDS OF HISTORY

NOTE WELL, NOTE CERTAINLY: JESUS BECAME THE LORD OF HISTORY, and

 THE APOSTLES WERE BECOMING SUBORDINATE LORDS OF HISTORY, UNDER JESUS

                             JESUS BECAME LORD OF HISTORY WHILE

MAKING THE APOSTLES LORDS OF HISTORY – US, LORDS OF HISTORY

Jesus is saying to the Apostles, “Listen to the Holy Spirit after I ascend to the throne”

Vs 13 “He will guide you into all truth” THE TRUTH OF HIS LORDSHP!

• The Holy Spirit was doing this in Apostles whole time Jesus with them before his ascension to Glory, Slowly, Step by Step raising them into this WONDER!
• Then at Pentecost, they were BAPTIZED INTO THE HOLY SPIRIT, which means
• Among other things, that The Wonder of His Majestic LORDSHIP

      Absolutely overwhelmed them, Captivated them   – Beauty, Power, Joy,

HELD THEM SPELL-BOUND for the rest of their lives

• Filling their hearts with His lordship, shaped them into Lordship under Jesus.
• RESTORING THEM TO DOMINION ON GRAPHIC – DIAGRAM, (Thanks Brendan)

I. JESUS OVERCAME THIS WORLD BY MAKING HIMSELF LORD OF HISTORY

• Jesus was at war with Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests and Pilate.

A War that had been raging throughout O.T., still going on in N.T.

• JUDAIZERS/Pharisees/Sadduccees/Priests seemed to win this war by Crucifying Jesus!

WRONG!  They played into His hands. He was controlling them/history

• Judaism had unwittingly sided with the Roman/Greek consensus.  Thesecular

Humanistic consenus against the only true God revealed in scripture.

HEART BEAT OF SCRIPTURE: “There is a powerful philosophy pulsating through  Scripture, intent on the enthronement of the Messiah.”

            Acts 2:34-36   NOW HE IS ENTHRONED AND ACTIVELY RULING HIS OWN WAY

• An Accomplished fact at Pentecost – MAN on God’s Throne
• Then amplified through all Epistles to Revelation.
• Specific at Philippians 2:9-11 HIS OWN WAY!!!! Bob Dylan, Mike Joyce
• WAR STILL RAGES: – Modern form of war: Do you know the word “Enlightenment”   You should!  If you don’t even know the name of your enemy – can’t fight him. “Islamic Extremists”.

• Enlightenment is the name of that key group of Agnostic/Atheistic intellectuals who began to rise in the late 17^th, early 18^th century.
• DISTINGUISHED  themselves by attacking the authority of the Bible and setting themselves up as the new ruling authorities over all of life – religion included.
• MEN LIKE: Voltaire and Rousseau in France, David Hume in Scotland. Later joined by the churchman Immanuel Kantin the German church And then Friederich Hegel in the Philosophical world

MANY THOUSANDS OF LIKE-MINDED MEN AND WOMEN HAVE JOINED THER RANKS

• They are the intellectually elite of our world today   And I do mean WORLD – Every nation is suffering under theirrule

• With few exceptions, our Governments and our Universities are led by these  People who deserve the name ANTI-CHRIST – all of them!

I am going to quote just one of them who earned his place among them by his truly brilliant expressions of their VIEWS OF LIFE.  Not new name. Both I and your Pastor Curtis have quoted these very lines (sometimes abbreviations thereof).

Bertrand Russell Quote: 1872-1970

“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought  and feeling, can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

          Only within the scaffold of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”  (page 17, SET FORTH YOUR CASE, Pinnock) 

DREADFUL HORROR IN CONTRAST TO NEXT POINT

II. JESUS IS RESTORING THIS WORLD BY MAKING US LORDS OF HISTORY

• Having become LORD OF HISTORY in the fullest sense!  He is now qualified to make you and me subordinate Lords of History – Eph 2:6 (He)raised us up and seated us with Him in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus
•   This wonderful fact is then assumed throughout the rest of New TestamenT.  By his Amazing Grace we are now restored to the position we lost in the Fall.

EXAMPLES? Maybe Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

• TRUE EXAMPLE: Maggie Gobran, Doctor’s wife, successful business woman until 35  Visited garbage slum, saw something moving under garbage- baby boy, rescued him. This Coptic Christian woman captured by little boy – began giving her life to slum kids.  Visited them frequently , began washing their feet, gave them shoes, clothes,  
• Organized: STEPHEN’S CHILDREN – schools, orphanages, medical clinics – Cairo first, then other Egyptian cities, now spreading to nearby nations, 1,000’s of kids
•  Next: to the world, Read P. 234, ff.

I submit MAMA Maggie as my nominee, Mother Teresa, William Franklin Graham, Host of humble Bible believing people I have met in many nations.  

BACK TO SCRIPTURE: v. 14 “HE WILL GLORIFY ME!”

            Holy Spirit magnifies Jesus as LORD OF HISTORY!!

• Apostles and Epistles Maximizing Jesus for us: Spell-binding discovery in the upper room, ultimate confession of Thomas  “My LORD and MY GOD!”
• Historic Declaration in Phil 2:6 ff
• So did he become Lord of History in order to make us Lords of History

• Book of Revelation: Our grand discovery of His infinite glory

1. Awesome picture Rev. 1:12-16
2. Rising glory to Rev. 22

Quote from T. F. Torrance, frequently quoted by our Dr. Douglas Kelly. Prof, RTS, Charlotte NC.

 “The Church must learn to take into its mouth the Good News of the resurrection and new creation, for that must be its primary note, one of limitless joy and thanksgiving.  That’s how the Church began its mission at Pentecost where the dominant emphasis in all its preaching was the resurrection of the crucified Christ and the astounding fact that because of Christ the Spirit of God Himself was poured out upon men.  They knew that the Last Times had overtaken them and that they were caught up in the onward and outward thrust of the resurrection of Christ toward the new creation in which all nations and peoples and all times would be brought to share. (105, Space, Time and Resurrection)

4. Torrance is pointing toward the Savior’s “March to Conquest” beginning with the formation of the – Creeds: Nicene 325 – Chalcedon 451- Basic science of life

Creating the kind of Freedom that enabled the Reformation, Puritanism,

    -Missionary advancement that enabled cultural advancements in the WEST.

            -Victory NOW becoming evident in Middle East and India

                   – 1,000’s coming to Christ, enabling “scientific DOMINION”

                        Minds no longer under the bondage of witchcraft/magic, Creating  –                                     Einsteins, (referred to “The Religious spirit in Science”, said “you                                                must have faith to discover anything”.

• Present Technology an “attendant wonder” of Christ Science

Maybe a better word “DERIVATIVE” wonder of “Christ Science”           

Progressive discovery of Jesus Christ first by Apostles

            Then by Creedal scholars

                        Then Reformation Leaders

                                    Puritan Pastor-scholars

 liberated mankind to become LORDS of every field of science

            Every variety of Art

                        Every type of Music

                                    Every branch of Law and Government

CONCLUSION :

“Take heart, I have overcome the world”

 Once the blessed christ of glory was veiled off from human view

But through suffering, death and sorrow he has rent that veil in two

O behold the man of sorrows,

O behold him in plain view,

Lo, he comes, the mighty conqueror

Since he rent the veil in two.