The Voice of the Son

There’s nothing more beautiful than being in the presence of God and being able to freely so enjoy it and worship him and experience the power of the Spirit of God in our soul. I’m thankful for a lot of traditions that have been passed on to us from our forefathers, especially from Kerala, a lot of things that I don’t agree with but a lot of things that I delight in and I’m so glad that we have this tradition. One of them is this end of the year prayer meetings, Watch Night Service. If you look at churches here in America, there are very few churches that hold Watch Night Service. In fact, I don’t think the church that we are part of here in this building have a Watch Night Service. They have a small prayer I think tonight, but nothing like what we do. But I love the tradition that we have and we’ll talk more about that tonight as well. But this has been something that is a great tradition where people of God towards the end of the year come together and they look to God and they thank him for his faithfulness, but they also enter into the new year with the right frame of mind, not drunk but sober, not filled with the wine of this world but filled with the Spirit of God as we enter into a new year. And there is no better way than to enter into the new year than to be in the presence of God.

As Pastor mentioned, the last few days of meetings have been such a joy and delight in all of our lives as we listen to various speakers from God’s word, as we enjoyed worship just like this, testimonies of God’s faithfulness. A warm welcome to all the guests that are here today, we are so glad that you chose to spend your New Year’s Eve with us in worship. We’ve been going through Psalm 2 for the last couple of nights and we have gone through the first six verses in God’s word in Psalm 2. For the sake of those who are not here, let me just quickly, my time is limited, go through those verses real quick. 

And the question is asked of the psalmist even in verse one, why are the nations restless and the peoples plotting in vain? And what are they plotting? Look at verse three, they want to tear their shackles apart and throw their ropes away from us. The image here of nations of the world, as we talked about, who are controlled by Satan, these nations do not know themselves that they’re pawns in the hand of Satan, but they’re doing what Satan is wanting them to do. And what they’re doing, they’re rebelling against the Father and his anointed one, the Son. And in the midst of the rebellion, how should we live our lives in the midst of hearing all these voices of chaos? I left you with four things on Friday night that the believer should do in order to make sure that you have a right relationship with the Lord in the midst of all the chaos that is in the world. Daily sanctification by God’s word, absolute surrender and dependence upon God every moment of our lives. Thirdly, confession of sins daily and cleansing that only can come with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that was shed for us on the cross. Fourthly, and most importantly, listening, learning to listen to the voice and leading of the spirit of God in your life. There are a lot of competing voices, listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit take over your life, let that be the dominant force of your life that guides you and strengthens you in your life. Just like the pastor that Jewel read this afternoon, let the voice of the Holy Spirit be the one that tells you go to the right, go to the left, go this way, don’t go this way. Let the Holy Spirit be the counselor and the teacher in your life. After all, Jesus told us I will send you one who will be a paracletos, who will be your counselor, your teacher, to come alongside you and to lead us into all truth and righteousness. Allow him to do what he was sent to do.

And then last night we talked about the voice of the Father. The Father is in the heavens and look at the posture of the Father, he is not standing up and pacing around, he is sitting. And not only that, we talked about this in verse four, he is laughing. Why laughing? Not because he’s amused by the wickedness of man, but is because he is kind of finding it funny that the puny man would even dare revolt against an Almighty God. And he who sits in the heaven laughs, and then finally, he will speak to them in his fury and anger. Verse 5, what does he say? Verse 6, “As for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my Holy Mountain.”

This is a counsel of words to all the kings of the world. Above all the kings in the world, there is already a king that is installed. The Father has installed him, not in any place, but in one specific place that he has chosen, the Holy Mountain, the holy Zion, Jerusalem. And we talked about last night about how the whole world wants that piece of land and that’s not by accident, it’s because Satan knows, knows God’s word. By the way, do you know that Satan knows the Bible better than you? Yes, he does. He probably has memorized the whole scripture. So, he has read the book of Revelation, he has read passage Isaiah, he has read Ezekiel. He knows how all of this is going to come to an end, he just does not know when. But he sees the signs and he starts working in a very, one of the things he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know the future, but he knows what God’s word says. So what does he do? He gathers together already all the religions of the world and the people of the world to clamor for that one piece of land from which our God will one day rule.

And what did we learn last night? Here are two things that we learned last night. In the midst of the turbulence of our lives, there’s a God who is absolutely calm and in control over your lives. Remind yourself of this as you enter into 2024. Secondly, in the midst of all the chaos, remember to listen to the voice of the Father, and the Father’s message all throughout history and even today is this: “I have installed my king in Zion. He is already the king, he is today the king, he will be the king forever. Listen to my Son.” That is the best counsel the Father wants to give to you.

And then starting in verse seven today, we will hear the voice of the Aon, the voice of the world, the voice of the Father, and now you hear the voice of the anointed one, the voice of the Son. What is he saying? “I will proclaim the Lord’s decree.” The son is saying he is here to declare a decree. What does it mean by decree? Who is the Lord here? The Lord is the Father, who has already been speaking in verse four, five, and six. And he comes, and he has a decree, a decree means it cannot be changed, it is already established. It’s not like a decree of a worldly ruler, this is a decree by the unchanging God of the universe. Whatever he says will come to pass when he says it, and there’s no changing of it. And he said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father. You are my Son; today I have become your Father.”

The relationship between the three members of the Trinity is one of the most difficult things to understand for us from scripture. Because when we read passage such as this, there can come a confusion in our mind that at some point he was not the Son, and that is why a lot of false teachings come from. But you always have to interpret scripture with scripture. You don’t interpret scripture with what you think is right or what somebody else is writing in a book. You interpret scripture with scripture. The scripture makes it very clear that the Son is eternally God. I don’t have time to go into detail and all the while the Bible tells us the Son has always been there, preexistent with the Father. There was never a time, if you could call that time, when there was no Son or the Father or the Holy Spirit. But the Bible also tells us the Son came from the Father in a way in which you cannot and I cannot understand. The Son is begotten of the father, and creeds that we repeat would say words like the Son proceeds from the Father, the Son emanates from the Father. But even while confessing that, the church always, and will believe, based on the authority of God’s word, there was never a point of time when there was not the Son. The Father was always there, the Son was always there, and the Holy Spirit was always there.

Then how do we understand passages that call our Lord the Son? For example, when we use words like Son of God, or son of Samuel, or son of Matthai, we make the assumption that that person is a son, and there’s a relationship between them to. But also, there’s a hierarchy there, the father is considered to be before the son, the father gave birth to the son, by that fact, the father is considered to be above the son. But the Bible makes it very clear that the Son and the Father are not only both eternally pre-existent, they are equal to each other. So how do we understand this terminology in God’s word that says Jesus is the Son of God? Does that mean there was a time when the Father was and the Son was not? We know from scripture that is not true. How do we understand this?

The two closest examples that I give you in God’s word are terminologies that God’s word has used about people who walked on the face of the Earth. One is Judas. You might be thinking, oh, why are you talking about Judas when talking about our Lord? What is he called in God’s word? Son of perdition. He is called son of perdition. Does that mean that his father’s name was perdition? No, it does not. It just means that he was a person who was, was here, and he was someone who was a son of ruin, son of waste. Perdition means ruin, waste, that’s what it means. Another example, James and John are known as sons of thunder. Does that mean that thunder gave birth to James and John? No, it is talking about the nature of who they are. You know, um, before they think, they want to kill someone, that’s sons of thunder. Before they think, they speak, that’s sons of thunder. Given to short temper, that’s sons of thunder. James and John, in God’s word, they’re known as sons of thunder. So, what does the bible mean by that our Lord is the Son of God? Here is this: God the Father and our lord, your lord, share the same substance. He is one and the same, that’s why he is known as a Son of God.

That’s why when our Lord was before the high priest, and he was asked that question, “are you the Son of God?” he replied, and he said, “I am, and soon you will see the Son of man coming in the clouds of glory.” What did the high priest do? The high priest tore apart his robe and said, “we don’t need to hear any more testimony, this man has committed blasphemy.” Because the high priest understood that by claiming himself to be the Son of God, he was claiming equality with God, and that’s why he called it blasphemy.

To make this point very clear, Jesus would tell us, “if you’ve seen me, you have seen the Father. If you heard me, you have heard the Father.” And so, what does it mean by, “he said to me, you are my Son, today I have become your Father?” There are two ways of understanding this passage. Eternally, the Father has declared the Son to be his Son. There’s a decree, an eternal decree that went forth, but we as human beings did not know about it. You know what God did? Look at Hebrews chapter 1:5. And here it’s talking about how the Son is superior to the angels because of the decree of the Father. “For to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘you are my Son, today I have become your Father?’ Or again, ‘I will be his Father, and he will be my Son.’ The writer of the book of Hebrews, to show us the superiority of Christ, to show to us that he is above everything, tells us God never said, ‘you are my Son,’ to any of the angels. It is only to the eternal God, the Son, the Son who, the second person of Trinity, that he ever said, ‘you are my Son, today I have become your Father.’ That’s what makes him superior to the angels, because he is equal with God.

But we as human beings needed evidence that this man was God and who he claimed to be, so you know what he did? Romans 1:3-4: Concerning his Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, this is something everybody knows. He was born in the family of David, he was born to Mary, he was born in the lineage of David, he was born as a descendant in the flesh. But he was declared Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by what? By the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. If you had any doubt about his identity, all of that melts away at the empty tomb where he rises from the dead and proves to you and me that he is who he claimed to be, the Eternal Son of God. He is the only one who has ever come out of the tomb by himself, he is the only one who has ever come out of the tomb never to die again, he is the only one who ever came out of the tomb with an indestructible body. All of that is evidence to us that he is who he claimed to be.

Paul would tell you he is declared with power, so you will understand that he is the Eternal Son of God that the Father declared, “Today I have begotten you, you have become my Son.” God’s word continues, look at Acts 13:32-33, the words of the Apostle Paul: “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.'” Paul references again this passage in Psalm 2:7 to tell us that his resurrection from the dead once again proved his deity and the fact that he is the Son of God.

Finally, do you know that in our relationship with him, how he became our mediator? Look at Hebrews chapter 5:5, “In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest, but God said to him, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your father.'” It is this decree of the father that enabled him to become our high priest. So, he is our perfect high priest today, why? Because only God can be a mediator between God and man. So Jesus Christ becomes our mediator between God and man.

Yesterday morning, when Pastor TV Samuel was speaking, he was speaking about someone who was saying, “You can commit all the sins that you want, as long as you come and confess your sins to me.” He’s not, as he mentioned yesterday, he is leading you straight to hell, because there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who has been decreed eternally by the Father, “You are my Son, and you’re fit to become your high priest.” And he is our high priest as well. But not only that, after becoming the Son, the Father also gives all the nations of the world into the authority of the Son.

Verse 8, “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” You know, somebody came to him early on in his ministry, in fact, even before his ministry had started, after 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, try to give him a shortcut to get possession of all these nations. You know who is in charge of all the nations today? Satan. And he came to him and it was a good trade, seemed on the surface: no cross, no suffering, no living for three plus years among disciples and trying to teach them, and all these things, a shortcut. Look at Matthew 4:8-9, “The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this will give to you,’ now he can only say that because he already has them, that’s why he says, ‘All this I will give it to you, only thing you have to do is what? If you will bow down and worship me.'”

In our lives, Satan does this all the time, shortcuts. “Just do this, just do this, it’ll be okay, God will understand. Just bow down to me one time, you don’t have to build a temple, you don’t have to start a new religion, nothing, just bow before me one time. Remember, think about all these benefits that you get out of it. You don’t have to bear their sins anymore, you don’t have to become one with the sins of humanity, you don’t have to suffer on the cross, you don’t have to suffer the betrayal of Judas or the rejection of the disciples, all the pain of the cross will be gone away. Here is a way in which I will give you the nations of the world, all you have to do is bow down and worship me.”

And I don’t think Satan was lying, I think Satan was being truthful in what he offered to Christ. But look what our Lord did, next words, “Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'” The ends of the earth belong to him, the increase of his government, there will be no end. But our Lord rejected the offer of Satan, went to the cross, died for our sins, and the Bible says now every knee will bow before him, every tongue will confess before him, because the Father has given all the nations of the world as an inheritance to his Son.

Today, he owns everything, and one day, literally, he will come down to reign over the nations of the world. Why? The Father has said, “Ask me, and I will give you the nations as an inheritance to you.” Look at Isaiah 9:7, “Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”

What else will he do? Verse 9, “You will break them with a rod of iron; the nations you will dash them to pieces like pottery.” Revelation 19:15 tells us about the judgment that is going to come upon the nations of the world at the coming, at the second coming of our Lord. “From his mouth comes a sharp sword that with it may strike down the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.” Today, the nations do whatever they want to do within the boundaries he has established, but one day, he will come to judge the nations, and no one will be able to stand in his way, as the sword that comes from his mouth will dash like pottery all the nations of the world.

Do not be impressed by the glory of the nations, do not be impressed by how mighty America has become. All the glamor, all the pomp, all the glory that you see today, the Bible says will be dashed like pottery in the hands of the eternal judge who will come to establish his reign on the earth. He is coming, and no one can stop him. Two things that I want the church to remember very dearly and clearly as you enter into 2024 from this passage:

First, the fact that our Lord is the Son of God ensures our eternal mediation. He has become our eternal high priest because he is the Son of God. Not only that, remember what God’s word says: He was proven to be God by his resurrection from the dead. What does that mean to you and me? The coming of the Lord tarries; all of us will die, but when we are buried in the ground, and when our life on Earth comes to an end, what will ensure our resurrection from the dead? It is the fact that the God of the ages, the one who was the Son of God, his life is in your life. And because of his resurrection, you will also rise from the dead. You are not going to rise one day because of your good works; you are not going to rise one day because of your life on Earth; you are going to rise one day because the eternal life of God is now poured out into the soul of man, and that will enable you to defeat the pangs of death and rise again. Aren’t you glad that he is a Son forever?

Secondly, “Ask me, and I will give you the nations of the world.” Who are we? We are co-heirs with Christ as his children. In 2024, we at Restoration Church, by the grace of God, will ask boldly for the nations of the world to be given to us. If we ask things in accordance with God’s will, God will do it. The story comes to my mind about a dean at a seminary, in his passing instructions to his seminary students, he told them, as you go into the world and you become pastors, “Don’t ask for a big church; with a big church comes a lot of big problems.” So he said, “Ask for a small church.” But one person was listening to this and he said, “I’ll ask whatever I want.” So he goes and asks, and a year later, they had a reunion. He had kind of a sad face, and the dean asked him what happened to you. He said, “Well, as you told me, I didn’t really follow it. I asked for a big church and a pretty wife. God gave me a pretty church and a big wife.”

That’s why it’s important to ask things in accordance with God’s will. “Ask for me, and I will give you the nations.” That’s not mean that God will give you everything that your heart desires, but I know one thing: whatever we ask for the glory of his name, he will do it. And that’s why we’re asking for the nations; we’re asking for the nations because that is what God wants us to do. The nations are supposed to be our inheritance because we are co-heirs with Christ. So we will pray for Kenya and say, “God, give us Kenya, after all, Kenya belongs to you.” We will pray for South Africa and we will say, “Lord, South Africa is yours, give it to us, oh God, so we can bring people to the kingdom of God.”

200 years ago, John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace,” was known to receive great things from the Lord because he asked great prayers before the Lord. One time, he was asked a question: Why do you pray such bold prayers before the Lord? He answered by saying a story about Alexander the Great. I think this is a fictional story. A father of the bride went to Alexander; the bride was supposed to be married to Alexander and asked for a large amount of money. Alexander said, “You can go to the treasurer and ask him for the same amount of money.” The man went to Alexander the Great and asked for the same money, and the treasurer said, “What, that is too much money.” So he went to Alexander and said, “We cannot give this much money to this guy, just because he asked for it.” Supposedly Alexander replied, “Let him have it all. I like that fellow; he does me honor. He treats me like a king and proves that I have the ability to give what he asked.”

Do you know that your God that you ask to is the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords? And so, pray boldly before him. Pray bold prayers in 2024. Pray not puny prayers but pray bold prayers, prayers that shake the kingdom of God to its core because of your faith in him. Prayers that pray, “Let all these pews be filled with believers from all languages, nations, and tribes.” How many of you are willing to pray that prayer? Prayers that pray, “God, will you give us different language services within the walls of this building?” That can only happen when God’s people pray bold prayers. It is not about money, it is not about wealth, it is not about your job, it is not even about your health. It is praying prayers about the kingdom of God and the things that matter to the heart of God.

I’ll end with this, this is a true story coming from the lips of Pastor Tony Evans. While he was ministering in Colombia, South Carolina, he was preaching at a crusade being held in the South Carolina football stadium. Thousands had gathered in the evening session, but news reports indicated there was a serious thunderstorm was on the way. The storm was supposed to hit exactly at 7:00 p.m., the time when the meeting was supposed to start. As the sky grew darker and darker, the threat of cancellation was a valid possibility. A group of preachers and other church leaders decided to gather for a prayer meeting. Tony Evans noted that every preacher and person who prayed prayed for safety. Then there was a woman there, by the name of Linda. Linda asked to pray, and this was her prayer: “Lord, thousands have gathered to hear the good news about your Son. It would be a shame on your name for us to have all these unbelievers go without the gospel when you control the weather. And if you don’t stop it, Lord, these people would have to go without hearing the gospel. In the name of Jesus Christ, address the storm.” Thus ended the prayer meeting. Everyone took their places under the dark, threatening sky. The leader of the crusade told the people, “We will go as long as we can.” Umbrellas sprouted up among the crowd. A man sitting right next to Linda opened his umbrella and offered it as a shield to her. She said no. Evans says he and his wife watched as the rain clouds came up on the stadium and then split in two. The storm rained on both sides of the stadium and came back together on the other side. All of those people who gathered in the crusade in that stadium remained dry.

How did Linda get what the preachers did not? She had the boldness and the audacity to ask the God of all weather to control the weather for the glory of his name. Pray bold prayers in 2024. Why? Because he said he already owns all the nations of the world. “Ask me, and I will give it to you as a possession.” I believe that promise is true in our lives as well. Let’s stand in the presence of God. We’re going to end our worship by singing of the one who is the Ancient of Days. Blessing and honor, glory and power, be unto the Ancient of Days. From every nation, tribe, and language, he alone is to be lifted up. Blessing to the Lord and worship him.