The Same Jesus
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Jeremy Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 22 March 2026
Said yes. They started this exclamation, this minor uproar as they surrounded me, right? And I could tell they didn't view Jesus in the same way I did. The second experience that has to go with that is, number one, we were living in a kosher house. A kosher house.
Kosher house means that you have to eat in certain way, prepare your food in a certain way. So there were two sets of pots, two sinks, two sets of silverware, two of everything. And because Stacy and I were waking up at 2 in the morning, it became my duty as Stacy asked me to prepare breakfast, to try to navigate this kosher house. The first time I messed it up, the first morning is I cooked eggs in the meat pans. That's fine, that's fine.
Cooking eggs in the meat pans, but putting cheese on eggs cooked in the meat pans is not okay. And so when our host became aware of what they had, they didn't know what to do. What do we do with the pans that have now had cheese cooked in them? And finally they came to the conclusion, I think we can deal with this and sterilize them or something. The next morning I was on top of it.
Okay, eggs is fine to cook in the meat pans. It's like, no cheese, no problem. But then I made the second mistake. I put butter to cook the eggs in the meat pans. And that morning I was just like, oh, Lord, what am I going to do?
I just, I just tried to cover it over, honestly. Right then we went to Syria, and this is obviously a Muslim neighborhood. And we walked around the perimeter of this building, just everything destroyed, bullets everywhere, just covering almost every square foot of every building. And I decided, we finishing the walk, we came across one little store with a group of people, young people with their motorcycles. And I was like, I'm gonna go and talk to these people and I'm gonna drive their motorcycles, these old looking things.
And so I got a few dollars, I went into the store and I got myself like a mango drink. And so I walk out to these young people and I crack open my mango drink and begin to drink it. And all of a sudden they're like, no, no, Ramadan. Ramadan. And I had broken my second thing with the Muslims.
No eating or drinking during daylight hours for the Muslims. But they crowded around me and the same thing began to happen. They grabbed my hand and made a one out of it and raised it in the air and they said, allah. And these group of young people were pushing on me. They did not believe in the same Jesus that I did tracking these two experiences.
But what's important for us is to understand who Jesus is rather than what people think about Jesus. And so here Paul, or the writer of Hebrews to the recipients of Hebrews wants to tell them who Jesus is. That was our desire also, and not always the most received, but hopefully made some difference in someone's life. So in chapter one, verse five of Hebrews, So before I left, we had shared on verse four that he has a better name than the angels and has a better inheritance than them. But we see in verse 5, I'm going to read to verse 7.
For to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And again I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a son. But when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels he says, who makes his angels, spirits and his ministers a flame of fire. So here the important thing for the writer is for individuals to understand who Jesus is.
That still today is the most important question that needs to be asked of every individual. There are really, if you look at it, only three answers to that question. Only three possible outcomes to who Jesus is. Number one, he could be a liar, a liar. He could be an individual that knew what he was saying was false, yet chose to say it anyways.
That's one possible outcome. He says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He says, I am the Father, are one. This could be as many people think, that that was a lie, that it was not true.
He could be a liar, he could be a lunatic, right? I'm sure many people have heard this before. He could be like a crazy person that he said something that was untrue and yet in his craziness believed it was true. That's a possibility. Or the third option is he could be the Lord.
He could actually be who he says he is. Based on those different options will affect how we respond to Jesus as a person. If you think he's a crazy person, if you think he's a liar, you will maybe act like my friends did in Syria and in Israel. We want no part of the person of Jesus Christ. You could possibly view him as a lunatic and you would want no part of him or his ministry.
But if he really is Lord, then your and I's responsibility to him becomes a thing that needs to be addressed. If he is who he says he is. If in actuality he is Lord, then you and I have a responsibility to Him. It's a strange thing. In the United States of America, when a new president becomes elected, they actually become the president.
And yet, you see, all of the time people say, he's not my President.
That carries some weight. If he's not your president, you put yourself in a relationship to him that is not legal. You become an individual who is fighting against the authority of the government of the United States. You choose to place yourself in a position where you operate out from underneath the government that is established in America. This is the truth.
If a liberal president is elected and conservatives say, well, he's not my President, the truth is he is the President of the land in which you dwell. It is also true if you are a liberal and a conservative president gets elected. But if Jesus is Lord and you choose to say of that Lord, well, he may be Lord, but He is not my Lord. That places you in a unique position. If he is Lord and he is not your Lord, you are operating out from under the authority that he has and have made yourself a rebel in his kingdom.
It is important for us to understand who Jesus Christ is. So in verse 5, the author here begins to distinguish that there is a difference. What he is beginning to say is, there is no room to make Jesus a good teacher. There is no room to say he is an important person, but he doesn't have really any voice in my life. That is not an option.
You cannot say the things that Jesus did and be a good person unless they are true. He is a horrid person. He is the worst kind of person and the worst kind of teacher unless and only unless the things he said are the truth. If he is a liar in one way, he is an individual that should be avoided at all costs because he promises his people something that are based on no, something untrue.
An individual who comes to you, they may want you to, you know, invest their money with them, except they're a liar, you as a person should avoid that kind of representative on your behalf. But if they, if he is speaking the truth, if the things about him are true and he really is Lord, then it should bring us to a serious place of recognizing whether or not we serve him as Lord. This is the difference. We live in a culture even in America, where Jesus is made the same as other spiritual identities. In Mormonism and Jehovah Witness and some others, they place Jesus at the same level as other spiritual identities.
Here we're going to See starting off in verse five. For to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my Son, today I have begotten you. And again I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a son. First of all, we see that Jesus relationship with the Father is unique. He is the only entity in the universe that has the unique relationship he does with the Father.
John says that he is the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He is the only individual begotten. Every other thing is a created individual. Every angel has a limited lifespan and was created out of nothing, spoken by God's voice, out of nothing into existence. Every human Jesus has a relationship, a uniqueness about his person that no one else has.
He cannot be compared to any angel. They are different entities.
Every other spiritual being and physical being was created. But we see of the Son. It says, you are my Son, today I have begotten you. And again I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a son. We do not see creation ex nilo out of nothing.
Rather we see the Father bringing into existence the Son as an individual. Now, of course, we need to look at what that son looks like. The book of Matthew is a book, I believe, if I'm correct in this, written to the Jewish people, or more of a focus on the Jewish nature. It starts off, Abraham had a son, and Abraham's son had a son, and their son had a son. And ultimately Abraham's seed ends up being the person Jesus Christ.
But one of the main focuses in the book of Matthew is the Son of God. The Son of God. And here this is coming out of verse five. You are my Son, today I have begotten you. We see that to Joseph and Mary they were told that you shall have a child and he shall be called Son of God or Son of the highest right.
This is a title that this Messiah was to have. We see that Jesus, in his first step of ministry, went in to be baptized by John the Baptist. And coming out of the water, there was a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. There is a unique relationship between the Father and his Son. He went into the desert straight away and was tempted by the devil.
The temptation, yes, was physical, but the temptation was more. It says, if you are the Son of God. He wanted to tear down the idea. He wanted to break down Jesus understanding that he was the Son of God. He wanted to prey upon Jesus physical weaknesses to have him give up the title of being the Son of God.
And of course, two times Satan said, if you are the Son of God, similar to that temptation in the garden of Eve. Has God really said, right? But Jesus responds to these temptations, deal with them, and keeps the title through this temptation of the Son of God. Again, if you remember, he went up on a high mountain and he was transfigured. His clothes became glistening white.
And again that voice came from heaven. The second time, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. As a result of this title placed upon him, he has a duty to be listened to, to take what he has to say, to consider it, to dwell upon it, and see if it is real. This has a huge impact upon the Jewish people.
The idea comes out of Psalms chapter 2. Why is it so important that Jesus would retain the title Son of God? To us, it feels like, oh, he's not really, really God, he's just an offspring of God. But to the Jewish people, it carried a very strong connotation in this title, in chapter two of Psalms. I'm just going to read it.
This whole thing has to do with the Messiah. It says, he who sits in heaven shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my Son. Today I have begotten of you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron.
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore, be wise, O Kings. Be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling. And then it says, kiss the Son lest he be angry.
And you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled. But a little. Blessed are those who put their trust in Him. This Son of God declared to be the Son of God with power. It has an impact how you respond to him, whether you kiss him, bring your oblivions to him, worship him, or whether you reject him.
The Jewish leaders were brought to this position of having to deal with Jesus as the Son of God. And I want to bring a little bit of fullness. What does it mean for Jesus to call himself the Son of God? So In John, chapter 5, verse 16, we're going to look at this a little bit here. And so Jesus had just healed somebody on the Sabbath.
And as A result, he was persecuted for that work. Then in verse 16, things get worse. It says, for this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath. He had healed a man lame from birth, and as a result they wanted to kill Jesus. Something's a little bit wrong with that reasoning.
But Jesus answered them, my Father has been working until now and I have been working. He establishes a relationship that God is His Father. Now, you and I have grown up in an environment where it's easy to call God Father. That has not always been so. That is not something that other religions can grasp.
The only reason our culture is okay with calling God Father is because of the idea that by being adopted into God's family we can call God Father because we've been made brothers to Jesus, who is God's Son, not because we have any natural ability ourselves. Jesus called God His Father. Therefore in verse 18, 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. They recognized that that title of being called the Son of God placed him in a position of equality with God the Father.
Jesus is given an opportunity to respond to that line of reasoning. That was the reasoning going the Jewish leaders heads and now he responds to it. Then Jesus answered and said to them, most assuredly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself. But what he sees the Father do. For whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner.
If you take that at face value, people have come to the conclusion, say, see, he's denying that. He's saying that he's limited in some way. And the truth is he is limited in some way. I'll get to that. But if he is denying that he is equal with God, it should become apparent.
But if he is justifying that he is equal with God, it should become apparent also is the conclusion the Jews came to right or wrong? Jesus begins to explain in verse 19. First of all, the Son can do nothing of himself. The Son can't do anything according to a certain nature. We see that that physical nature which Jesus had was one that could not operate in the way that the carnal nature desired.
It says that he was tempted and in every way that we are yet was without sin. It said in Hebrews that he had to be made exactly like his brethren in order to be the sacrifice and the redempt, the redeeming agent for his brethren. He had to possess the exact same propensities that you And I had to descend all the grossness that you and I experience in our inner nature that drives us to sin against God. We believe that Jesus had also, but he could not operate on any carnal nature. In the same way, God the Father is above acting in sin, not because he can't sin, but because sin is against his nature.
It doesn't make him any less powerful, but rather it reveals his power that he cannot in any way belittle Himself enough to sin. Jesus has the same opposite of propensity, the same aversion to sin, the same hatred of sin, the same unwillingness to accept sin, the same righteous judgment that the Father does. He has the nature that is the same with the Father. When it comes to sin, you cannot distinguish between the two. They are the same.
Number two. It says the Son first of all. The Son can do nothing of Himself. But then. But what he sees the Father do, for whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner.
Here we see that the Father has a unique personality with unique tools that only he can handle. Those things are attributed and only available to God Almighty. They are things which no created being, no angel, no spiritual power could ever touch. They are reserved exclusively for God Almighty. And Jesus says those very things that God can do that only God can do.
Those tools I pick up and use consistently, they are natural to my nature. So we see that not denying his nature, he is rather giving further evidence that that thing which the Jews said about him is actually true. He goes further. For whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner. Verse 20.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him all things that He Himself does. Number one. That God Almighty is omnipotent and omniscient. He knows everything. There is nothing hidden from His s in any way.
He possesses all things. He can understand all things you and I, on the other hand, can't. Jesus says, all that the Father can understand, all that the Father can handle, I can handle.
In verse 20 again, he shows Himself all things that He Himself does. And he will show him greater works than these that you may marvel. Verse 21. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son.
The Son becomes the unique agent for bringing life to people, the Father's life and he is the unique person that all judgment has committed to this aspect of Jesus life. The understanding of who he as a person is a spear point at the heart of you and I What will you do with it? If he is the Son of God, declared to be the Son of God with power, if you would look accurately at the evidence, is he a liar?
Is he a lunatic, a crazy person? Or if you look at evidence with your eyes wide open, understanding, with the faculties that God has given you, is he the Lord? If he is the Lord, it puts the emphasis on the spear point that is at Urani's heart. It says after verse 22, for the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son. It says in verse 23 that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. You and I can't claim any type of relationship with the Father unless we honor the Son. This is going to bring us back to Hebrews to finish here. And I feel that I am a little bit stepping out and maybe a little bit pushing here. I hear you, but is it necessary?
You know, is it necessary if it's true? Is it necessary if it's in reality the truth? If the President had really won the election, the responsibility for every American citizen is to double down and make that president's office and their term as most effect, effective as possible. We live in America. Why are we trying to hinder the man?
Why are we putting a stone in front of his way? Why are we making rebels, making ourselves rebel? If he is the Son of God, the responsibility comes to you. And I will I reverence him as the Son of God. I'm going to read it one more time in Hebrews chapter one.
For to which of the angels did he say? To which of those people that you may hold up? To which of those figurines that you placed on your shelf? To which of those things, those angels, those principalities, which one of them did he say, you are, my son, you are the Son of God. Today I have begotten you.
To which of those things that we place some spiritual emphasis on. Our host thought we were like other Christians, right? In some ways we are. I hope that's not. But they wanted us to kind of take part in Christian religious type things.
They wanted to show us churches and things. And I'm like, yeah, those are beautiful, but dead men's bones are inside. There's a few stupid rickety benches in these huge tabernacles that Finn spent hundreds and thousands of times years building. And we seat more people here than they do. Beautiful things, but nothing good inside.
But they brought us to this bridge. The good luck Bridge in Jaffa and all these, the Chinese superstitions of your month. And they wanted us to cross this bridge with them and rub your. Whatever your thing was that your. Your sign or whichever, your month thing, just like, I don't want any part of that.
The things we place emphasis on, if Jesus is the Son of God, to which of them did he ever say, you are my Son, today I've begotten you. But if Jesus is the Son, there is a calling out for you and I to recognize him as the Son.
Look at the evidence. Open your eyes and look at the evidence. I so bad. When we were in these bomb shelters with this family, four feet by five feet, sometimes four of us on one side, three women with two children on the other side, almost knee to knee. And my heart was just like, I want to talk to you about Jesus.
I want to explain to you about the Son. Finally, Sunday morning I said, look, you know, I normally share three times on Sunday. Can I talk to you about Jesus?
Yeah, a little bit. And so we tried reading another scripture out of John and they didn't refuse to hear it. They refused to hear it. Another time, a young lady or a lady we went out to eat with and, and wanted to share with her about Jesus, would not. Did not want to hear about him at all.
No, I refused to hear about the Son.
Well, I hear them and I think it's a horrid thing that some Jewish people refuse to look at the greatest Jew who has ever lived. The Jewish person who has changed the entire world more than all of the other Jews put together. The Jewish person who loves the Jewish people, they refuse to consider him. That's bad. But friends, I would like to say that for you and I, to refuse to look at him is also bad.
Open your eyes and look at the Son of God. If you find him to be a liar, run from him. If he is just another crazy man, you go to the mission and you're amazed what kind of important people you meet at the mission. The best musicians, the best. This, the richest kinds of people.
They're all there, concentrated in the mission, on the street, right? If he's a lunatic, don't listen to him. There's nothing to offer you. But if he is the Lord, let him look you in the face with eyes like coals of fire and listen to him. And I believe that you will come to him when you see his nature and recognize that he is the Son of God.
Let's pray.