The Exalted Christ

He is the start, the journey, and the destination. He is everything to all His followers and in Him we live and move and have our being. He is our life and our death and He dwells in heaven and simultaneously in the heart of every believer. He has no equals and no competitors. He is the first among His brethren and He is the vine while His brethren were grafted into Him. He must be the pursuit of every blood bought saint of God. He is the object of all our worship and all the angels of heaven worship Him with us. He is the Creator of time and yet eternal.

To say He is important is to capture Him in human terms which minimize Who He is. He is not just important, He is all in all. He is everything. Do we think the blood washed waves of heavenly saints would consider Him important? They are consumed with Him and being made like Him they actually reflect Him as they worship Him. His dwelling place is beyond words, how much more He Himself? And for all eternity the Seraphim surround the glory of His throne and worship Him with heavenly chants of “Holy, holy, holy…”. And they, the angels, were not redeemed. How do you think we will feel when we set our eyes upon the glorified Savior who purchased our eternity?? We were not angels, we were disgusting rebels who thought of no one but ourselves. We were not content with Eden’s perfection, we had to have the forbidden fruit, and when God the Son came to this desolate place that was permeated with Spiritual death, we murdered Him.

Do not think that any Hollywood producer can actually portray the sufferings of the Lamb, His agonies are a sacred mystery which eclipse human understanding. And when I speak of the love inherent in the crimson cross we must all bow and shake our poor heads in wonder and unworthiness. Why? Why? Me? Why? The glory of the Savior God and His death is that the love that motivated His sacrifice cannot be defined. There was absolutely nothing, I said nothing, lovable about us. So God’s love is absolutely pure of any object impurities and His love was never drawn by anything on earth but it emanated from He who is love. We can never know why until the moment we are changed in His presence and we know then even as we are known. I cannot describe it, but when we see the Risen Lamb of God we will be able to understand more deeply that it is all of Him and none of us.

Jesus is neither renaissance nor industrial nor modern nor post modern, and all attempts to present Him in those terms tarnish the revelation He has so graciously given to us. To bring Him into this world and capture Him in our man made descriptions obscure His glory and run the ever increasing risk of creating someone else than the true Risen Christ. He is the deepest of all mysteries and at the same time the divine simplicity for our sake granted by the looking glass of the Spirit. The Lord Jesus sits above all creation, that which He Himself has made, and all things continue at the behest of His power. Human words can describe Him but only the Spirit of God can unveil Who He is to any woman born sinner. He is the great I Am.

He has been relegated to the back of the modern theological bus only to be discussed usually in musings about different perspectives of Who He is in this world today and, oh yes, how He relates to us today. But Jesus relates to us today the same way He related to those on the Day of Pentecost, the same way He related to Luther, the same way He related to Whitefield, the same way He related Moody, the same way He related to Tozer. We should not be so consumed with dissecting how Christ relates to us, we should be desirous to learn how we should relate to Him. Indeed. And I challenge you this Sunday, as you arrive on the grounds of the church and exit your car, restrict your conversation to small greetings and listen to the conversations taking place before and after the service. I had done that several weeks in a row and I had not heard one, not one, conversation about Jesus. How often is He spoken of in our phone conversations, our dinner table, our car discussions, our blogs, and the preponderance of all our words never mention Him. So there He sits on His reigning throne, above all the universe, powerful and merciful, august and yet reaching into our cursed world, magnificent and glorious, and His own people barely talk of Him in their everyday lives. If God would transport you, me, and 100 other people to spend 3 hours before His magnificent throne, worshipping Him in all His glory, and granting us remembrance as we returned, would we speak of Him?

Well we will not be afforded that miracle but we have been given many other miracles that should translate into an uncontrollable urge to speak of Jesus. He has saved us from eternal judgment. Oh my, how can we ever cease to praise Him? Standing in the grocery store and the Spirit brings to mind how He has saved you from hell, do you praise Him regardless of the so called embarrassment? When listening to a worship song and the Spirit again brings to your mind that you have been eternally rescued do you suddenly worship Him with your voice even if you are alone. When do we make a phone call just to share with a brother or sister about something the Spirit showed you about our Wonderful Savior? Who gets more mouth time than Jesus in the life of an average believer? Bush, Clinton, Trump, Shaq, MacArthur, and list goes on and on. And the One Who should have the preeminence barely is the topic of discussion on Sunday mornings. Let us repent before the King of Kings and the Beautiful Lord of Lords.

Finally Jesus is the center of everything. And when we think about His resplendence and magnificence, we must ask the question “What is man that Thou art mindful of him??”. He has accomplished for us what we could never attempt to gain for ourselves, and He has secured it for eternity. Our future is no time framed vacation, no, it is captured in the eternal realm and He has included us in His plans. And think of this, would it not have been gracious for Jesus to have prepared an eternal paradise where we would go to live forever? But instead, remove your Spiritual shoes, our Lord has summed us to spend eternity in HIS VERY DWELLINGPLACE. If that ever really soaks into our Spiritual realities, we will never be restrained from speaking “those things which we have seen and heard”…about Him.

Selah.