Who is Jesus? Lord

[0:00] The subject, who was Jesus? And last time we said this is such an important question, the most vital important question we could ask today.! Because, well, he's had a huge impact on history. The calendar is named after him, BC and AD. If you haven't worked out who Jesus is and come to terms with that, you haven't really come to terms with life.

[0:25] because Jesus is part of the history of this world. Who is he? What does he say? Christianity is Jesus Christ.

[0:37] It's not church as such, or if it is church, it's just because Jesus told us to be church, formed us to be church.

[0:49] Christianity is not morality independently. It's what Jesus says and invites us, commands us to follow him. And it's certainly not just a culture.

[1:01] Christianity is Jesus Christ. And God pins the state now and hereafter of every single man and woman and boy and girl on their relationship with Jesus.

[1:19] So I'm going to talk to that. I'm not talking about it impartially. I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. And I want to persuade you, as I tried last week, with reasoning on this subject.

[1:31] We said last time he was a real historical person. We said that in many ways he was an obscure and humble person. We said he was a superb teacher. People said he was a prophet. A miracle worker, as we just read, attested by God with signs and wonders.

[1:46] He was a radical interpreter of Judaism. He was not in a vacuum to make everything up himself. He came in the flow of the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, the revelation of the God of Israel.

[2:03] And he stood in that and spoke to that and put himself, in fact, as the focus of all of that. He was a man of colossal personal authority. And that's about where we left it last time.

[2:17] But we noted that in John's Gospel, Thomas says at the end of it, as the high watermark of Jesus, my Lord and my God.

[2:28] And that's the place that I would like to get us all to. So, this morning, we will ask, click, four things.

[2:39] Number one, is this a correct reading of Christianity? Is this right, that Jesus is Lord? Secondly, what does it mean, Jesus is Lord? Thirdly, why should we believe Jesus is Lord?

[2:51] And fourthly, what challenge or promise or implication does that bring? So those are the four things we'll look at this morning. Is this a correct reading of Christianity?

[3:02] Is that really what it says? What does that mean? Why should we believe it? And what challenge or promise does that bring to us today?

[3:14] Okay, number one, is this a correct reading of Christianity? Or put it this way, did the first Christians make any sort of point about Jesus being Lord?

[3:29] And perhaps more importantly, did Jesus make any point about him being Lord? So I need to just say a word or two about this word Lord.

[3:41] Now, not everybody here has English as their first language. And in your own language, you might have a word for Lord, Master.

[3:55] There's different words with different shades of meaning. The Bible, the New Testament, is written in Greek, and the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. So we're looking at translations.

[4:07] In the New Testament, the word Lord is Kyrios, from which my wife gets her family name Kyriaku, meaning sort of, presume, lordly or something to do with the Lord.

[4:23] And you get the same thing with, I think you get the Kyriaku, the lordly day, which is, there's one reference to this, presumably meaning Sunday.

[4:35] But the Lord Kyrios. Now, what does Kyrios mean? Well, like many words, it has a spectrum of meaning.

[4:47] And to be sure, at one end, it can simply be politeness. And it can simply mean, sir. So in the New Testament, the bit where the Pharisees ask Pilate for the body of Jesus, authorised version says, they come and they say, Sir, Kyrios, please secure the tomb so that nobody can steal from it.

[5:16] So, to be sure, they're not attributing to Pilate divinity, or anything, they're just simply being polite, respected sir. So it can be just a title that you would say to a respected person.

[5:30] That's one end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum, this same word is the translation of God's Hebrew name.

[5:43] In Hebrew, we have God, the Hebrew for that is El, or Elohim. But God has a specific name, the God of Israel has a specific name, which is to do with the verb to be, I am.

[6:03] And in Hebrew, that's Yahweh, and that is God's own name. And that Yahweh is translated in the New Testament, Kyrios, Lord.

[6:16] So, we have a huge spectrum of uses of this word. It could be just politeness, sir, or it could mean God. And so, we have to look carefully, which of those is it meaning?

[6:34] Okay. When the Bible says, Lord, how big is the meaning of it? And I want to try and persuade you that when this is referred to Jesus, of course people spoke to him respectfully and said, sir, but that is not the fullness of what this means when it says, Jesus is Lord.

[6:58] Okay. So that was a sort of health warning to the research. We're asking, did the Christians, first Christians, make any sort of point of this, or did Jesus?

[7:09] So what did the Christians say? So when the Apostle Paul writes to the Christian churches, he regularly puts at the front of his letters this, something like this, maybe a few little variations, but it's pretty much a fixed formula.

[7:29] grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ.

[7:41] Now it's quickly, it's easy to just quickly skim over that and get onto the rest of the letter, but first have a think about what he's saying in this greeting, which as you, if you know the Bible, you know he uses this very regularly.

[7:54] He's bringing a blessing to them, isn't he? Grace and peace. And he's saying this blessing comes from God, our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ.

[8:19] God, the thought is it's one blessing which comes, you would imagine, from one source, and yet he is, has no problem in saying the one source is two persons, God, the Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ.

[8:45] I don't think he's using Lord in a polite way. he's not just saying, like you might say, this is a Christmas card from Theresa May and her butler.

[9:02] Surely I get two different postcards from people that are so different. I wouldn't get one postcard signed by both of them, that would be ridiculous. This blessing comes from God, the Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ, with this strong implication that Christ's Lordship is as exalted as the divinity of the Father.

[9:25] So there's one thing. Here's another quote from Paul, when he explains what it is to be a Christian. He says, the word of faith that we are proclaiming, this is what we say to people, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

[9:55] And he goes on, I've missed out a couple of sentences but it's obviously connected, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

[10:06] Now there are a number of things to notice there. Look how central it is to being a Christian, to saying Jesus is Lord. This is the message we're proclaiming, he says, that if you confess with your mouth, if you are prepared to say, and presumably mean, stand to it, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, God raised him from the dead, so it's not just saying something, it's something that's internalized, you will be saved.

[10:39] And if you were to say to Paul, but if you don't believe that and you don't say that, you won't be saved, and Paul would say, well of course, this is the way of salvation, if you don't do this, you won't be saved, if you don't accept the lordship of Christ and his resurrection from the dead, you can't be saved.

[11:03] And then this very interesting bit here, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, Lord, L-O-R-D, there it is, will be saved. And that's a quotation, if I remember correctly, it's from the prophet Joel, and the lord in the quotation is the Lord God, Yahweh.

[11:32] Isn't it amazing that Paul can say almost in one breath, Jesus is Lord. That's what you have to believe. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, God himself, will be saved.

[11:49] Here's another quotation from the New Testament where Paul is sort of referencing the Old Testament mantra, there is one lord, there is one God, God, here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and that was saying there is one God and that's the God of Israel.

[12:15] There aren't different ones, there aren't, it isn't as though people are allowed to choose their own gods, there is only one God, he's our God, and in this, in 1 Corinthians 8, he says, there's lots of idols, lots of things that claim to be God, but there is, here, no Christians, our God is one God, and look the way he puts it, there is one God, the Father, from whom all things came, and from whom we live, and there is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things came, and through whom we live, and I'm almost wondering whether I've written that down properly, so let's just check whether I did that right, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, no, I wrote it down right, there is one Father, one God, the Father, from whom all things came, and for whom we live, and there is one

[13:17] Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things came, and through whom we live, and do you notice what he's doing there, he's saying there is only one God, God, and this one God is these two, God the Father, through whom all things come, and the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things come, and his idea of the Lordship of Jesus is not simply politeness, it's his exaltedness, who is God, he is the Father, he is the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the Spirit.

[14:00] So the Christians, the early Christians, whether or not you agree with them, but this is how they thought, they found it intuitively natural to refer to Jesus as Lord, and envisage his Lordship as bound up in the very name of God.

[14:22] God, they had no problem with thinking of him as high as that. So is this a correct reading of Christianity?

[14:32] It is. Not all things that call themselves Christian are Christian. In the 19th century, German scholars, German theological scholars, went through the New Testament, they said, no, Jesus isn't God, he can't be God.

[14:49] Nobody would have thought of him as God in the New Testament. This is called liberalism, Christian liberalism is the name for this way of thinking, and they went through the Bible and they sort of said, no, that can't be true, that can't be true, he can't have meant that, and they tried to squash out the thought of Jesus being Lord in this sense.

[15:13] So be warned of Christian liberalism, because it takes the Bible wrong, it puts Jesus down, and if you put Jesus down, you can't be saved.

[15:26] So watch out for the liberalism that was going around in the 19th century, because it's still alive today, different sorts of guises. The Christians naturally spoke of Jesus as Lord in this high sense, and our Saviour spoke of himself as Lord.

[15:47] He said things like this, to his disciples, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things that I say? And then he told that story, you remember, the man who built his house on the rock, and the man who built his house on the sand, the man who built his house on the sand, heard the words of Jesus, but never did them.

[16:10] The man who built his house on the rock, heard the words of Jesus, Jesus, and because he's Lord, he did what Jesus said.

[16:22] And Jesus says that's the way to build your life, taking the words of Jesus and putting them into practice. Because if you don't, no matter how polite you are, or artistic, or gifted, or enthusiastic, if you don't put the words of Jesus into practice in your life, when the storm comes, you will smash down.

[16:54] I don't think Jesus goes around making a huge point about his Lordship, it's just part and parcel of who he is. He's having a debate about the use of the Jewish Sabbath, and he throws in to the end of the argument, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

[17:12] Which is such a remarkable thing to say, because the Sabbath is something that Israel's God has built into creation, in making the world, as we're told, in the seven days.

[17:24] And the Sabbath is something that was legislated for in the law that God gave to Moses. And Jesus just sort of almost casually says, I'm Lord of that.

[17:39] That's actually a huge claim to Lordship, isn't it? And he just, he doesn't stop and sort of point his finger at them and say, you do understand this, it just goes straight on to the next thing. But understand, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

[17:52] And we have this conundrum that Jesus points out in the debate in his last days in Jerusalem before his crucifixion.

[18:06] You remember he debated with the Pharisees. And he asked them this question about prophecy. It's prophesied that the Messiah, the son of David, would be David's son?

[18:21] And they say, yes. And then he says, it's also prophesied that this Messiah will be David's Lord. So the son is going to be, in a sense, owing respect to David and being, in some sense, lesser than David, we would see.

[18:36] But if he's his Lord, he is higher than David, and David owes respect to him. How can that be? And that's the conundrum that Jesus posed to the Pharisees, and they didn't have an answer.

[18:49] The New Testament has an answer, and says, the answer lies in the humility of Jesus, that he's a human being, born of the line of David.

[19:04] And the answer lies in the exaltedness of Jesus, because he is the Lord. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, come down to earth, he can be David's son and David's Lord.

[19:18] Lord. And Jesus clearly had no problems about his own lordship, and acted as such without effort or embarrassment. He is Lord.

[19:30] So, in answer to the first question, is this a correct reading of Christianity? The answer is an emphatic yes. This is a correct understanding of Jesus, and this is a crucial understanding of Jesus.

[19:43] Unless you get this point, you've lost the whole thing. If you can't confess with your mouth, Jesus Christ is Lord, then you can't be saved.

[19:55] Okay, that was the first question. Second question, he is Lord, what does it mean? Well, there's a warning here, because the vocabulary of lordship is dangerous and subversive, particularly in the first century.

[20:11] I tried to find an example of the coin that this person referred to, but I ran out of puff last night as I was looking through Google on this.

[20:23] But the quotation says the Roman coinage, particularly of Augustus Caesar, 27 BC to 14 AD, is inscribed Caesar, Divi, and then an F, which is an abbreviation of the Latin Caesar, Divi, Filius, or son of the divine Caesar.

[20:44] Julius Caesar was divine and Augustus was his adopted son and Augustus was the son of God. In other words, the emperors at that time said, I am lord.

[20:57] Caesar is lord. And for people to say anybody else was lord was a very dangerous thing to say, and could, depending on the exact local circumstances, but could get you into a huge, huge trouble.

[21:14] Which is why the early Christians ended up being killed. Because they said Jesus is lord, and the state said no, Caesar is lord, and they wouldn't back down.

[21:27] And we shouldn't think that in today's society, Jesus' claims are any less far-reaching.

[21:41] To say Jesus is lord is to say something that challenges the whole world system, the whole life system, and our personal life system.

[21:57] Well, what sort of lordship does Jesus show? If you've read the beginning of Mark's gospel, you know that he has authority to teach people God.

[22:09] And people say, wow, a new teaching with authority. We know you'd only have to have a little read of Mark's gospel to know that Jesus has lordship and authority over sickness and disease.

[22:24] He heals sicknesses with a word, effortlessly. He lays hands on people, he puts mud on people's eyes, and the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear.

[22:37] He shows his authority over sickness and disease. In one place early on in the gospels, Jesus forgives sins, and the people watching him say, that can't be right.

[22:52] Who has authority to forgive sins but God alone? That is a thing that only the supreme authority can do. And Jesus says, oh, well, if you don't believe me to do that unseen thing, let me show you the seen side of this.

[23:09] He was talking to a paralyzed man, he says, get up, and the paralyzed man gets up, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

[23:20] He has authority over the evil one. He's the Lord who can say to the demons, get out, and they go with a shriek. We know who you are, the Holy One of God, have you come to destroy us before the appointed time?

[23:37] He has authority over creation. We might say nature, say nature, it's a funny word for it, isn't it?

[23:48] Nature, meaning the way things are, but it would be more accurate to say creation. The Lord has authority over creation, so he can say to the storm, shh, shh, and the storm goes quiet.

[24:04] He has authority over death, this powerful intruder into our lives. He can say to the little girl, little girl, I say, get up, and the dead girl gets up.

[24:25] So how much more lordship would you like than that? He is either a presumptuous rival to the real God, or else he is the exact expression of the real God.

[24:42] The real God is at work in and through Jesus. Such is his authority. That's the sort of thing it means.

[24:54] Oh, and incidentally, the one fly in the ointment is people. Because whereas creation obeys Jesus instantaneously, Satan obeys Jesus instantaneously, it's people who don't.

[25:15] Some people do. He calls them, follow me, and they just leave their nets and follow him. But you think of all the people who didn't believe him, didn't follow him, and said, crucify him.

[25:30] We're the fly in the ointment, aren't we, when it comes to his lordship? Because we think we know better than him. We give in to other forces than him. We choose to obey other dictates than him.

[25:44] We're the problem. He's the lord. No problem with that. Us being his servants, that's where the problem lies. Number three, why should we believe it?

[25:55] Why should we believe this? Is there anything that clinches this? Well, Jesus did many acts of power and authority, but there is a critical role for his resurrection from the dead.

[26:11] He spoke in his lifetime about his resurrection. He said on multiple occasions he would die and be raised, and his disciples said, didn't quite know what he was on about.

[26:29] He said he would be clean and be glorious, but he had a lot of trouble, if I can put it this way, persuading his disciples how he would get from there to there, because he got from there to there by going down there, like that, and being raised from the dead, by going into death and being raised up.

[26:50] If he had died and stayed in the grave, this idea of lordship would be dead in the water. To be dead and in the grave is to fail to have power, and still be in the realm of sin and death.

[27:11] Death would have defeated Jesus, death would be lord. To claim future glory and to remain dead would mean that he was a false prophet and a liar.

[27:26] But to claim future glory, to enter death, and for God, the one God of the universe, who alone can make alive, for him to endorse Jesus by raising him from the dead, which is what he did, is the supreme demonstration resurrection of the power and authority of Jesus.

[27:52] Everything he said is right. Everything that we thought he was, he truly is. Everything he claimed is ticked and underscored and stamped with God's seal of approval.

[28:04] Yes, he is all these things. So his resurrection is not just a conjuring trick, it's not just a random thing, but his resurrection is a statement filled with meaning and power and effect and effectiveness.

[28:24] So Jesus can say, the post resurrection Jesus, the resurrected Jesus can say, this is it, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore, and there's quite a bit of therefore that follows from it, if Jesus is Lord, there is a therefore that follows.

[28:50] Why should we believe it? Because of his resurrection. And this is stated in a number of places. So for example, beginning of his letters to the Romans, Paul will say, my gospel concerns Jesus.

[29:06] And he was through the spirit of holiness declared with power to be the son of God by his resurrection from the dead.

[29:21] The resurrection powerfully declared him to be who he said he was, the son of God. Well, think of that section in Philippians that we've, I think we've had that read twice to us now, where it says that he humbled himself as a servant and humbled himself to death and even death on the cross.

[29:48] Notice the exact wording of this. Therefore God highly exalted him. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.

[30:04] Now, that name is not J-E-S-U-S. the name that is above every name is the name of God himself. But at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and that every tongue should confess confess what?

[30:32] That Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And the resurrection propels Jesus, acclaims Jesus, vindicates Jesus, shows him to be who he always was, God himself, that people would have no excuse but every man and woman and boy and girl, every tongue should confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

[31:11] That's how stupendous and how big the implication of the resurrection is. And you might have noticed in the reading from the book of Acts, he says, talked about the resurrection and the exaltation of Jesus and Peter then concludes, therefore, let all Israel be assured of this, God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, he has made him Lord and Christ.

[31:50] see, that's where he is, that's what is shown about him, that is the place where he is now. And the resurrection brings Jesus into a new phase of his work, it's not the suffering phase, it's the reigning phase.

[32:08] And resurrection demonstrates who he is as a ringing endorsement from God. He always was Lord, he always was Christ, but he's shown this in a ringing endorsement, a little bit like Queen Elizabeth's coronation.

[32:26] Now you see, I look back at this, I think it's about the year I was born, and I can hear a number of people saying, but I wasn't even born then, and I suppose you weren't. Okay, Queen Elizabeth's coronation, 2nd of June, 1953, but she became queen when her father died, 6th of February, 1952.

[32:48] So, as soon as her father died, the king is dead, long live the queen. But she was shown to be queen, she was crowned as queen, it's getting on for a year later, isn't it?

[33:02] And Jesus always is king, he always is Lord, but God has done this special thing to show and proclaim and install him in the resurrection, now he is exalted to the highest place, that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

[33:23] So why should we believe it? Because of the resurrection and I just stopped to say a few things about the resurrection. Can we believe the resurrection? It is part of Christian faith to believe the resurrection and how so?

[33:37] Well, you could look at the accounts and see that the disciples, the rather foolish and arrogant thing is for people in the 21st century to say, oh, those people back then were so gullible and superstitious, that's why they believed in the resurrection.

[33:57] Let me tell you, that's a bit of an insult to their intelligence, isn't it? They knew as well as we do that people don't rise from the dead.

[34:08] They knew that as well as we do. that doesn't happen. They weren't gullible. They had huge problems believing the resurrection. You can read it in the New Testament. They took a lot of convincing.

[34:21] And the thing that convinced those reasonable, sensible people was the evidence. We've seen him. We've touched him.

[34:33] We met him. We've got to believe it. They only came to believe it because the evidence was overwhelming. And if you were to take the view of a historian and say, let's just trace the history we had.

[34:48] Jesus of Nazareth, who lived and worked in Israel and had a group of disciples, many of them fled and left him, and they believed he was going to be the Messiah, and then he died, and they were terribly disappointed and dispirited, and they had no idea how this, you know, they were just disappointed and disillusioned.

[35:09] And something happened, because a few weeks or months later, these disillusioned people are going left, right, and center all over the Mediterranean world, saying, Jesus is Lord, he's alive, he's the saviour of the world.

[35:29] And you think, what could, and they gave their lives for it, what could conceivably have happened to change those people, to make them like they were, and I think, on whatever basis you think about it, even if you just think about it on common sense, the resurrection is the only thing that could fill that gap.

[35:56] And all other, people have tried over the centuries to say, I know, you're overlooking the obvious, this is what happened, that's what happened, that's what happened. None of those, none of those theories ever work.

[36:09] You might think there was something called the swoon theory, which said that Jesus didn't really die, he lost a lot of blood, and sort of fainted, and the experienced soldiers who were used to killing people didn't realize that Jesus had only fainted, and by taking him down and wrapping him up, putting him in a cold tomb with nothing to eat or drink, that made him better.

[36:46] And he got out, pushed away a stone all by himself, walked around, and persuaded people that he was the risen Lord. If you believe that, I think you believe anything.

[37:01] all other explanations of the empty tomb have failed. So I think that was my last thought about believing the resurrection. So number four, what challenge and promise does this bring us?

[37:19] Well, I hope I persuaded us that saying Jesus is Lord is not simply politeness. it is ascribing to Jesus the very highest authority that there can be in this universe.

[37:37] That's the authority and position of God himself. And that nothing less than divine worship is suitable to this Lord.

[37:50] that every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord is worship. There is only one God to be worshipped. If you worship other gods, you're guilty of idolatry.

[38:02] Worshipping Jesus is not idolatry because he is God. Worshipping obedience is the only adequate response to him.

[38:14] I put in obedience because that's important, isn't it? why do you call me Lord, Lord in your songs but you never do what I say?

[38:30] Number two, the Lordship of Jesus applies to everyone. He is Lord of all, all authority in heaven and on earth.

[38:43] And you might say, well that's a little bit exclusive, isn't it? Surely the Hindus have their gods to whom there are obedience and the Buddhists have their gods and that's all fine when Christians have their god.

[38:54] And we can just coexist, can't we? Like man and fish, isn't that what George Bush said? Man and fish can coexist. I digress.

[39:07] This is not what's being claimed. It's being said, he is Lord of everybody. He's Lord of every race. He's Lord of every ethnicity.

[39:17] He's Lord of every country. He's Lord of every culture. He's Lord over every religious group because he is Lord. And he ought to be worshipped and served because he is Lord.

[39:31] And that is the challenge to every man and woman and boy and girl. It is not all right if you decide for yourself who your Lord is going to be.

[39:45] that is not okay. Jesus is Lord. He is the one to be obeyed. He is the one that you give your life to. Anything other than that is not okay.

[40:00] And I'm saying consciously Jesus is Lord, the Jesus of Scripture. He commands all men everywhere to repent.

[40:14] Everybody to turn to him. And that people don't do that should be a heartache to all of us who are Christians.

[40:27] How can it be that so many millions of people, thousands of people in our own city, millions of people across the world? Don't acknowledge Jesus as Lord. That is intolerable.

[40:42] Third thing, it is of the essence of becoming a Christian. Christian. The Jesus who has authority to forgive sins claims total authority over the lives of his followers.

[40:55] There used to be a rather daft Christian mythology which says you can have Christ as Saviour and at another time later on you take Christ as Lord and some people maybe haven't got that far.

[41:07] That is just ridiculous. There is only one Christ. He is all sorts of things. He is Saviour, he is Lord, he is the sacrifice, he is the priest.

[41:19] You can't split him up. You either have him or you don't have him. And if you have him, you have him in every office and capacity that he has. If you have him as Saviour, you have to have him as Lord.

[41:33] You can't have pick and choose. And it is of the essence of becoming a Christian that you come to the point of saying with your mouth and believing it in your heart, Jesus is my Lord.

[41:50] It's the essence of becoming a Christian, it's the essence of being a Christian. Jesus is my Lord. He's my master. So when Peter said to Jesus, no Lord, this shall never happen to you, that is an impossible thing to say.

[42:08] Isn't it? It's a contradiction. You can't say to somebody who is your master, no, because he's your master. And we're not entitled to choose which bits of our lives we allow him to be Lord of.

[42:27] He's Lord of all. So he's Lord of all in our lives. We can't pick and choose. We can't choose to agree with him on some things but have reservations on other things.

[42:39] If he says it, yes Lord, that's it. And that extends to everything. Extends to our intellectual lives, the way we like to think about things.

[42:57] It extends to our relational lives, how we choose to relate to people. It extends to our sexual lives, what we allow ourselves to do and think sexually.

[43:08] It extends the way we think about ourselves. It includes everything. It includes our time and it includes our money. Let me just say about money, if you are a Christian, I hope that has affected your bank account.

[43:29] Because our finances cannot be the one bit that God never touches. Yes, he's my Lord. I love saying that. He is Lord, he is Lord, but I'm not going to give any money.

[43:45] That won't work. And it used to be said that you could tell whether somebody had really got the hang of being a Christian when it started showing their bank account.

[44:01] So he is Lord of all. If he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. God will not take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee, take my silver and my gold, not a might would I withhold, and so on and so on.

[44:21] We sing that occasionally. I do hope, brothers and sisters, we don't only mean it occasionally, because that's what the Christian life is, isn't it?

[44:35] It is serving the Lord Jesus Christ. He isn't only Lord from time to time. Fourth thing, there's a comfort in his Lordship.

[44:46] We're vulnerable creatures. We live in a big wide world with forces that are much stronger than we are.

[45:00] Indeed, inside ourselves there are forces that are very strong and sometimes not at all helpful to us. But we can take comfort from the fact that he's Lord of all.

[45:13] He's Lord of the givens in my life. You might be sitting thinking, oh, if only I wasn't the height I am, things would be different.

[45:26] Actually, he was Lord over how tall you are. You might be thinking, oh, Lord, if only I hadn't been born in such and such a country.

[45:39] He is Lord. He was Lord over your ethnic origin. You might be thinking, oh, Lord, I would be a much better Christian if you hadn't put me in the family you've put me in.

[45:51] You didn't choose your family. God did. He put you in the family where you are. He's Lord of that. Take comfort in that. He knew what he was doing. There are some people in this world who are saying, oh, if only I didn't have the gender I had.

[46:09] If I would choose another gender. the Lordship of Christ gives you your gender. It's not up to us to choose differently.

[46:24] It is to accept what he gives us. you might say, you know, I realize I've got a problem with my DNA, my genetic makeup.

[46:37] The Lord was Lord over that. He was Lord over your genetic makeup. Take comfort from that.

[46:50] There are many situations in life that are testing and heartbreaking and poignant and difficult. Not denying that. But there's no situation in life that is not under the Lordship of Jesus.

[47:06] There is no providence that comes to us that managed to bypass the loving hands of the Lamb upon the throne. He is Lord over all the things that come into our lives.

[47:21] The successes, the failures, the encouragements, the opposition, the suffering, the loss. And the promise that attaches to that is these things come from the hand of a loving Lord.

[47:42] Nothing comes to us without the Lord and it comes to us from his love. God says, I'm going to work all things together for your good.

[47:58] It's not a simplistic thing because there's things that he weaves into this that are painful and difficult, heartbreaking,! Heart searching, but he weaves them all in and the hand that does the weaving is the Lord's hand.

[48:14] Let's take comfort from that. here is the prayer to pray. Jesus, you are Lord.

[48:26] We don't have to make him Lord, he's already Lord. But what we do pray is, Lord, make me your servant. Let's pray together.