All right, please turn with me to page 241 in your confession books, if you have them. This morning will be our seventh message under the overarching topic of God's decrees. And in question 26, we continue along in our study by considering Christ as our Redeemer again. As you may remember, it is God's decree that he would bring many sons to glory. And we also saw that it was His will that all things would be gathered together in one in Christ. This is God's purpose in every other thing that He does. His purpose is that we might be saved in Christ. And His purpose is that He would be glorified in it. How better to be glorified than to reveal Himself to His people as the perfect, holy, and righteous Savior willing to die for the sake of His elect. What better way to glorify Himself than to reveal Himself as just and merciful, meek and powerful, righteous and wrathful, all at the same time. We see all of this at the cross of Christ, where He literally purchases our redemption and reveals His own glory as he executes justice and judgment and mercy all at once. And so Christ as Redeemer is a really important aspect of God's decree. Maybe the most central of them all, actually. All of our study of creation and all of our study of providence in the Bible bring us face to face with Jesus, the Redeemer. Why did God create? To redeem in Christ. Why does he provide to redeem in Christ? Literally all things work for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose and his purpose is to redeem in Christ. There's nothing more central to the Bible and every other doctrine than God's decree to redeem his elect through Jesus Christ. And what we see in question 26 today is maybe one of my favorite subjects as we think about our salvation and the work of Christ. These next few questions are going to force us to think deeply about the work of Christ and in turn we're going to consider what the Puritans called the covenant of works. There's probably no other topic I enjoy thinking about more than Jesus fulfilling the covenant of works that Adam failed to accomplish. I think everybody here is surprised by that, right? Probably not. Jesus and Adam serve very similar roles in the Bible. Adam is called a type of him who was to come, meaning Christ. He is a type of Christ. This basically means that Adam foreshadowed Jesus in both his person and his work. And when we study Adam in Genesis, we can begin to see things that Christ also does for us. And the same goes in reverse, especially in reverse actually. The New Testament adds a lot of information about Adam in the light of Christ. And it does it to reveal Christ more fully. It causes us to look back at Adam and see Christ there. So we see Adam in the garden naming animals and guarding and keeping the garden. and talking to God, and we might not think about those things in their immediate context very much, but when we read the New Testament, we see that Adam was actually representing the entire human race, and it was these jobs he was doing that were his work. The entire human race would find themselves eternally damned or eternally blessed based on the work of this first person. So Adam was a representative of others, we might say, just like Jesus. And when we see a person in covenant with God, representing other people like Adam and Christ, we call this person a covenant head. Jesus is our head. He's also called a federal head. That's why covenant theology is sometimes called federal theology. Now the reason it's called that is because our way of interpreting the Bible isn't just through the lens of covenant in a general sense. It's interpreting the Bible through the lens of the heads of these covenants or through the representatives, which means to really understand the covenant we have to spend some time studying the covenant head. In the case of eternal life, and the covenants that promised eternal life, that narrows us down to two most central covenants in the Bible, and every other covenant points to these two. And they are the covenant of works, which has Adam as its head, and the covenant of grace, which has Jesus as its head. Every other covenant points to those two. I would argue that the Abrahamic And the old covenants both point to both of these men. In both of these, there's an element of works which must be done for life. Both Adam and Christ had works to be accomplished. And their success or their failure would determine the fates of everyone they represented. So both are covenants of works, which depended upon their covenant heads. That's Adam and Christ. Both of them were under a covenant of works on our behalf. In the Abrahamic covenant, we have a promise of a blessed seed of Abraham, a son of promise foreshadowed in Isaac. This points us to Christ and everyone who would be attached to his work would be attached to him by faith in that promised son. This is the covenant of grace that we see in Isaac. But alongside Isaac, the son of promise, is a son of the flesh foreshadowed in Ishmael. This points us to Adam. And we see that everyone who would be attached to his work would be attached by natural birth, by the flesh. Both come through Abraham's covenant. Abraham's covenant illustrated the condition of mankind in Adam and the promise of grace in Jesus Christ in one covenant. Two covenants dwell within the one. One points back to Adam, the other points forward to Jesus. Now you can study that in detail in Galatians 4 if you wanted to read it more carefully. But that's the Abrahamic covenant. In the Old Covenant, we see something similar. We see forgiveness and longsuffering in God as he calls himself husband to the people of Israel. and he promises to never give up on them. There is grace and mercy seen all throughout the temple and the priesthood. And the old covenant has what appears to be eternal promises. And yet he ultimately divorces them as breakers of his covenant, as an adulterous people. Why? Because the people of Israel were only a type of God's people. They were only foreshadowing the relationship God would have with true Israel, meaning Jesus Christ and his elect. Again, we see grace in Jesus Christ foreshadowed in these covenants and we see law and judgment based on works just like we saw in Adam. And we see a people placed under the law, utterly incapable of obedience and in desperate need of the covenant of promise. The old covenant was there to illustrate man's condition in Adam and their need for Christ. But in their hardness, most of Israel never understood that, did they? And so Old Covenant Israel becomes an illustration of unbelief in Adam, as well as an illustration of the relationship God would have with his elect in Christ at the same time. And so when these covenants point us back to Adam, the purpose is to show us our truly lost condition. That's the place where salvation begins. It has to start there. We must recognize our complete and utter sinfulness before we can ever find grace. And that's what Abraham's covenant showed us. It showed us a people under the law of circumcision. And we saw that whoever failed to comply was cut off. Whoever is circumcised must keep the whole law, Galatians says. Same with the 10 commandments in the old covenant. It says, for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, saying, the man who does those things shall live by them. That sounds okay until you think about it. What about him who does not do those things perfectly? The implication is that he dies by them. And that's what Adam did. And that's what we do in him. He died by the law and we die by the law, which is why we must find the son of promise and attach ourselves to him and his work. That's the central story of redemption, and we find it in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to earth to do a work on our behalf. The Puritans call this the covenant of redemption. This is the covenant that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit engaged in together when they determined to send the Son to redeem mankind. And it's the covenant of redemption that purchases us and brings us into the covenant of grace, the new covenant. This work is what makes grace possible. So that's the backdrop of our study this morning. We have a savior who is what's called the anti-type of Adam. An anti-type is the person that Adam foreshadowed. The type foreshadows the anti-type. That's what we're going to see in our study of our Redeemer this morning. He serves a similar role to that of Adam. He is a representative of others under a covenant of works, looking to earn eternal life for others. And that brings us to our question number 26. It says, what offices does Christ execute as our Redeemer? And the answer is, Christ as our Redeemer executes the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of king, both in his estate of humiliation and exaltation. Our summary for the message can be found in your bulletins. It says, as the anti-type of our first father Adam, Jesus comes to earth from heaven to finish the job Adam started. He will be like Adam in almost every way, a sinless son of God and a representative of others, placed under a covenant of works to earn life for those he represents. Adam was a prophet, priest, and king, and Jesus is a prophet, priest, and king. These offices are the jobs he does as our representative. And these offices remain with him even in his glorified estate. All right. Now that is our introduction. Let's pray as we begin. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you again for gathering us together. We thank you for this day that you call yours. And we thank you that you've called us out of the busyness of our lives and our routines. to join together in fellowship and communion with our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We thank you that you have a remnant and a church all over the world. And we thank you that in a real sense, we all worship together on this day and lift our praises to you as one universal church. And so we thank you for the truth that we truly worship together as a church today all around the world. We ask you, dear Lord, to bless our time. We ask that you and your Holy Spirit would be our teacher. And we ask you, Lord, that our worship would be worthy of your holiness. And we pray all these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Okay, so we begin with the work of Jesus broken down into his offices. I won't spend a lot of time here on each one of these because I want to leave the bulk of our study for the coming weeks as we study these one at a time. But let's just read through the proof text and consider the biblical support for the doctrine that Jesus actually did hold and fulfill these offices. So today is kind of like an introduction to the offices of Christ and we'll study them out a little more in the next few weeks. First is the role of prophet. Jesus was a prophet. And once again, the Bible illustrates the work of Jesus by looking back to an Old Testament type. In addition to Adam, we see Moses as the prophet that Jesus is said to be the anti-type for. Turn with me to Acts chapter three, if you would. Acts chapter three, and we'll begin in verse number 19. says, repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said to the fathers, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever he says to you, and it shall be that every soul who will not hear that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people. Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. You are sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So you can see that Jesus is the prophet that all the other prophets foreshadowed. He came to speak to the people of God. He is the antitype of Moses and Samuel and all the rest. Now think about everything Moses did in his work, and that is the work of Jesus. The Bible has just given us permission to consider every single thing Moses did in the light of Jesus. Same with Samuel, same with Jonah, and same with Adam. You can see how this creates a biblical framework for our interpretation. Another proof is Hebrews 12, starting in verse 22. It says, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. Now this is Jesus. See that you do not refuse him who speaks, For if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. And now he has promised saying, yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven." Again, notice the emphasis on his speaking. Jesus is a prophet on earth whose words come straight from heaven. That's a prophet in the truest sense. In 2 Corinthians 13 in verse 2 and 3, Paul says, Notice the emphasis on speaking in all three of these proof texts. That's what a prophet does. He brings the Word of God to the world. Jesus came to speak to the world about the kingdom of God. He came to warn them and he came to bring them good news of the gospel. He came to preach. Which is why sometimes preaching and prophesying can be used as synonyms. Usually when we think of a prophet, we think about God giving a prophet a vision of the future. But think about the purpose of those visions. They were really just messages that the prophet would then speak to the people. That's how we often think about a prophet. We think about visions and prophesying of future events, but usually the prophet just brought the word of the Lord to the people. And that's what a preacher does. Only he doesn't receive the word of God from the mouth of God. He receives it in the Bible and brings it from the Bible to the people. And Jesus, as the true prophet of God, brought the word of God to the world through preaching and parables, and he did it perfectly and completely and without error. Jesus is the word of God, and Jesus brought the word of God to earth in the very way that Adam failed to do. Adam not only failed to preach to Eve, he failed to preach to himself. And that's our job too, by the way. Not just Jesus and not just preachers, We all need to preach to ourselves and preach to others the truth of the kingdom of God and we must believe what we preach and we must do what we preach. Adam failed at that. And that means understanding the promises and the curses of God and trusting him and obeying him. That's our job and that was Adam's job and that was Christ's job. Only Jesus did it perfectly though. How about Christ's job as priests now? As a prophet, he preaches. As a priest, he intercedes. He mediates. Prophets bring the word of God to men. Priests bring the words and offerings of men to God. And notice this in terms of a mediator again. Our Redeemer stands between the holy God and the unholy man, and he communicates back and forth And he does it because there's too much conflict, like we read earlier, between our sin and his holiness. We can't fellowship with one another or even communicate because God can have no part in sin and we are sinful. Even saved people are too sinful to talk to God apart from Jesus Christ. And this should help us understand a little bit why the Bible speaks so much about coming to the Father through Christ. Everything we do, we do through Christ. We pray in and through Christ. We are saved in and through Christ. And we obey in and through Christ. This is because all of our communications with the Father must go through Christ on their way to the Father. Jesus is our mediator. He stands between us and God serving us and bringing only what is pleasing to the Father. And that's why one day when we stand face to face with the Father, we're going to be wearing Christ's priestly robes. Hebrews 5 verses 1 through 10 describes the earthly priesthood compared to Jesus' priesthood. It says, for every high priest taken from among men, is appointed for men to things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. Because of this, he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins. And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest, but it was he who said to him, you are my son, today I have begotten you. As he also says in another place, you are a priest, forever according to the order of Melchizedek, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, there's his role, with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him through death and was heard because of his godly fear, though he was a son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. And having been perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him, called by God as high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. That's an amazing passage. We could easily spend weeks there, which Brother Keith actually did a few years ago. Verse one says, every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God. So this priest is a man and that's his role. He's appointed for men and things pertaining to God. Jesus had to be man to be our mediator. In order to be our priest, he had to be taken from among men, it says. So a priest is a man who stands between other men and God. And what does he do? He offers both gifts and sacrifices for sins. Adam didn't need to do this in the garden before he sinned, did he? No, Adam talked to God face to face before he sinned. Only sinful people need a mediator. But now that we are sinful, everything we want to offer to God must be offered through a mediator, and this particular office of the mediator is called priest. So if you have a gift or an offering or a prayer that you want to give to God, you must do it through this mediator. Once again, everything we do is through Christ. We must offer our tithes and we must offer our prayers through Jesus Christ, our high priest. Even our service is done through Christ. Unlike every other high priest though, Christ didn't fall in the weaknesses of the human flesh, did he? He endured the suffering of this life without sin. That makes him a perfect priest. Every other priest needed a sacrifice for themselves first. Every other priest was accepted by God imperfectly because they were sinners standing before God as just another sinner. A sinner representing sinners, but not Jesus. He is the sinless representing sinners. And so when he brings forth gifts and offerings and prayers, they are accepted perfectly and completely and forever. That's our perfect high priest. Hebrews 7 and verse 25 says, Therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. So unlike the other high priests who offered sacrifices and offerings over and over and over, and none of them saving them, Jesus offered his sacrifice once, and it was enough to save all of mankind forever. This also speaks to the ongoing nature of Jesus' ministry, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Jesus is high priest forever, even into eternity. So Jesus is a prophet who preaches, and a priest who perfectly delivers our imperfect gifts and offerings to God on our behalf. He's also our king. Now, what does a king do? He governs, but he also protects against enemies, right? Actually, that's the role of the prophet and the priest also. All the offices do their part in guarding their own elements of the kingdom. When Adam was in the garden, he was a prophet, a priest, and a king. He was to guard and protect the truth as a prophet. He was to guard and protect proper religion toward God as a priest. And he was to guard and protect his people as king. We also see words spoken about Adam as one who would subdue the earth. and name the animals, they were under his dominion. That makes him a king. To subdue just means to make it safe for the habitation of his people. That's the role of a king. He was supposed to bring the kingdom of God throughout the whole earth. He was to dominate the world to the ends of the earth. And that means he needed to subdue the wilderness and make it safe as his kingdom expanded. It was to bring the culture of the garden throughout the world, the religion of the garden throughout the world. And that's our duty too. We're supposed to bring the gospel to the far reaches of the earth, even today. That's what missions are. That's the Great Commission. That's what we do when we share the gospel to others. We're to be moving around and talking to others. And we do it with a king-like perspective. Christians are a little Christ, right? And that's what the word means. And so we're also to be prophets, priests, and kings on this earth, protecting and proclaiming truth, protecting true religion, and conquering the wilderness of unbelief wherever we go, even in our own hearts. Christ is undoubtedly a warrior king. The last couple centuries have produced an image of flowing hair and a soft-spoken, weak Jesus. I'd rather think of him like David. And I really think the Bible allows for that image. If Saul killed his thousands, David killed his ten thousands, and Jesus would have put them both to shame. David is called ruddy. Jesus was ruddy too, I think. Not pale and weak, but full of life, full of strength and power. And Jesus is the anti-type, to use that word again, of David. He is ruddy and strong. He's a fierce fighter and a warrior king whose office and role is to slay his 10,000s. And of course, we're speaking of the enemies of the kingdom of God. If you are a saved person here today, it's because your warrior king, who was Jesus, slew the devil and crucified the old man who you once were. He killed the old you when he came to fight for you. If you are a new creation, it's because Jesus slew the old creation. And he does it in every heart he attends. He has slayed his billions, I'm sure. I think Jesus has a heart like David, and the heart of this warrior is said to be after God's own heart. Jesus is often called meek. If you look up a definition in your dictionary, you might find it defined as submissive. But Jesus was only submissive to the Father. This word needs to be put in the context of the person. He was gentle, yes, he was humble, he was submissive in a way, but he was also the son of God incarnate who would destroy the earth with the very word of his mouth in an instant. And yet he patiently suffered according to the father's will, paying a debt he never owed, like a lamb led to slaughter who didn't say a word. That's meekness. But think of the power that was so well contained. We have the heart and brute of David here submitting to suffering and death on our behalf to accomplish the will of the father. This isn't a normal king. Alongside of this outward meekness was an inward strength that is beyond our imaginations because of course he is the son of God. So there is a heart of David and a warrior king living inside the meek exterior of Jesus Christ, and this is our king. I think his meekness needs to be put into its own context. Jesus wasn't a pushover because he was weak. He was submissive to the authorities because that was the father's will for him. It was his job. If the father had told him to slay 10,000 men, Jesus could have and would have done it. He will do that in the end, just like David. But his battle was not with flesh and blood like David's was. It was with principalities and powers. It was a battle for human souls against sin and Satan and death. And it required a man, a king with the inner strength to be led to the slaughter like a lamb. And that's where the battle waged at the cross. And so Jesus in meekness walked into battle looking like a beaten slave, but he was no slave. He was the king. Psalm 2 says, why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens 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 you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. Now listen to this. 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 and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in him. This is the same meek son of God who was led to slaughter like a lamb. Is this the flowing haired weak Jesus like we see in paintings on church walls? Or is this a powerful warrior king like David? And this is a man who demonstrated for us on earth infinite power under his own infinite control. He's an example for all of us. That's how we're to be, right? Isaiah nine, starting in verse two says, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. You have multiplied the nation and increased its joy. They rejoice before you according to the joy of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For you have broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every warrior's sandal from the noisy battle and garments rolled in blood will be used for burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. And the government will be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Now listen to this. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." So he is a governor and a peacekeeper. You don't accomplish peace without a rod of iron. You don't order and establish a world of peace without purging the evil first. Just like Joshua in the conquering of Canaan. He had to destroy everything in order to introduce a holy people. Joshua failed to do that. Jesus will not fail. When Jesus returns as king, this earth will be purified with fire and what remains will be eternal peace and holiness. As a king, he will subdue just like Adam was called to do and Joshua was called to do. And as a king, he will govern forever in peace. Matthew 21 in verse five. It tells us of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem before his crucifixion. Jesus is actually quoting from Isaiah about himself, where it says, tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you lowly and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. So Jesus, again, in meekness, coming to you lowly and sitting on a donkey, says, behold your king. That's exactly what Pontius Pilate said too. He's come to conquer evil and restore justice and order to his own creation. So Jesus is a prophet, he's a priest, and he's a king, all parts of his work as Redeemer. Now let's just consider these offices in terms of his humiliation and his exaltation, as the catechism puts it. Sometimes we'll hear this worded as his sufferings and glory. Jesus is our Redeemer, in all three of these offices, both in his earthly ministry, his humiliation, as well as his heavenly, eternal ministry, which is his exaltation. Jesus still serves us today in working at these three jobs or offices. That's why the catechism says he executes these offices both in his state of humiliation and exaltation. So Jesus is doing the work of a redeemer, And that role included his time on earth and it continues after his resurrection. First, let's think about his humiliation. Jesus was a prophet in his humiliation or in his sufferings. His work as Redeemer required him to preach to the people of the world a message of warning and a message of hope and promise. We covered that a bit. And he served as the perfect prophet, declaring truth to the world, and God accepted him because of that perfect work. And yet he was rejected by the world, wasn't he? We read that in his own town, he was denied honor as a prophet. So Jesus lived a life of humiliation for us as a prophet. He also lived a life of humiliation and suffering as a priest. Part of being our priest, many had to suffer with us. He had to experience everything we experience. He needed to understand temptation and weakness and the flesh. He needed to understand the power of death and sin and Satan. But he also needed to bring a sacrifice to the Father on behalf of his people, didn't he? And he did that perfectly when he brought himself to the Father and his own blood to the altar of God. The pinnacle of Jesus' suffering and humiliation is seen at the cross. Think about the cross with me. He was accused of crimes he never committed. That's humiliation. He was stripped naked. That's certainly humiliation. He was beaten and insulted and spit upon. And he was mocked by creatures. The creator of the world was mocked by creatures. If he had an ounce of pride, imagine what Christ would have done. Jesus' sufferings and humiliation are part of his redemptive work. He was a priest in his sufferings. His sufferings brought about the blood that saved mankind, the blood of the new covenant. Same with his kingship. Jesus suffered as a king for us. He even wept in his triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Think back to Adam again. He was called to subdue the earth. He was supposed to battle Satan on behalf of God's kingdom and yet Adam led him right into the kingdom and willingly let the kingdom go, but not Christ. Christ subdued the earth by bringing the gospel to the earth and by giving the Holy Spirit to subdue men's unruly hearts. He does that as a king and a governor. And he fought Satan in the wilderness temptations as well as at the cross where he crushed the serpent's head. This was Christ as king in his sufferings. As he suffered and died on the cross, he did it as a king, and his death is what conquered the enemies of God forever. Think about that. These are how he carried out his offices in his humiliation. He was a prophet without honor, a priest who offered his own body to death, and a warrior king who battled Satan to the death in the sufferings of the wilderness and the cross. Now as we draw to a close, Let's just consider Christ in these offices in his exaltation. This is sometimes referred to as his glory. And by that we mean in his glorified state as he sits victorious alongside the Father again in heaven. Remember his glorified body after the resurrection. We see his exaltation in the resurrection and in his resurrection body. Jesus is in a glorified state today, and he has exchanged his sufferings for glory, and that's our promise too. Again, another way to say that would be he exchanged his humiliation for exaltation. Like a king with honor now, Jesus truly sits upon the throne of God. He is the risen savior of mankind, and yet he continues to serve us in the offices of prophet, priest, and king. Think about his role in heaven again. As a prophet, he supernaturally speaks to his people. If you think about Hebrews 10 in verse 17, it says, so then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The ESV actually translates this to say, hearing by the word of Christ. And that's how this is often understood. When a preacher effectively preaches the word of God, it's actually Jesus that the people hear. Jesus supernaturally speaks through the preacher's imperfect words. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 2 in verse 13. It says, and we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, this is Paul, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. So notice that when the Word of God is preached by men, it's actually accepted as the Word of God, which is at work in you believers. That's Jesus the prophet, working for us in his glorified state. He is a prophet in both the states, that of humiliation and that of glory. He's bringing the Word of God to his people still today. Same as priest. Remember Hebrews 7 and verse 25, which we read earlier, It says, therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. That's his role as high priest in his glorified or exalted state. And it says he lives forever to make intercession for his people. That's his role forever. He has no beginning and no end, just like Melchizedek. He offered himself as a sacrifice in his sufferings and he offers intercession for us in his glory. He was a priest and he is forever a priest. He is our priest bringing us and our offerings to his father forever. The same is true of his kingship. His role as a conquering king continues. He still rules over this world today, giving Satan only the least she chooses to give him. And one day Jesus will finally take the reins from Satan and subdue the earth once and for all for righteousness sake. He will destroy all the enemies of God and he will sit on his throne forever with honor. He will finish what he started on earth and once and for all he will put Satan in the lake of fire forever where he will never again tempt and torment the people of God and no one will ever rise against God's kingdom again. Once again, this is our Redeemer, a prophet, a priest, and a king in his earthly ministry, and a prophet, priest, and king in his heavenly ministry. He serves in these offices in both his humiliation and his exaltation. And as we always do, I'd like to challenge us with this. As we consider the work of Christ, how does this affect us and impact us? I'm reading John Owen's book called Understanding Our Hearts During Difficult Times. We all go through difficult times. It's a common misconception, though, that in difficult times it might be easier to be holy or obedient. The opposite is actually true. When we're going through difficult times, it's actually easy to make excuses for those sins that we've been harboring just beneath the surface of our hearts. Have you experienced that? And when we see sin flare up in difficult times, I think the most important thing we can do is to consider the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. To think upon him, to think upon his work is the only thing that can feed the dry soul. He is the bread of life. Eat of him, take him in. Think about the means of grace, prayer, the preaching of the word and the sacraments. Those are our food. That's how we strengthen ourselves against sin and the flesh. We think upon Christ. We believe upon him. We pray knowing that our prayer is accepted through him as our priest. We sit under the word of God preached, knowing that the Lord, our prophet, promises to speak to our hearts and change us through it. Faith comes by hearing and hearing of the word of Christ. And what is the word of Christ but the gospel? The story of the redemptive work of Christ. And when we partake of the sacraments, what we're doing is we're participating in the outward demonstration of his work. We see a body broken for our sins and blood spilled to seal us into the new covenant. That's the suffering work of Jesus Christ. That's our priest offering his blood and our king destroying the work of Satan. We need to live day to day with our minds set upon these things. That's the only way for us to walk through this life. Whether our times are good or difficult, when we see ourselves tempted by sin or weakened by the trials and worries of this world, the only cure is to meditate upon the work of our Savior. And there's no better way to do that than by praying. and hearing the word preached and reading our Bibles and celebrating the sacraments together with our brothers and sisters like we'll do today. And the reason is because these things bring us face to face with the work of Jesus on our behalf. Believing upon him is our only hope. Meditating on the person of the Redeemer and the work of the Redeemer and the offices of the Redeemer are truly food for the struggling soul. And as long as we walk in this life, as long as we suffer under the consequences of this fallen world, the daily food for our weary souls is to meditate upon the suffering Jesus and his blessed work, and to be reminded that our hope is in glory where he is too. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this catechism that we've been given by men who came before us. We thank you for the depth of these biblical proof texts and the doctrine that has stood the test of time as the church has embraced it completely and enjoyed the truths as they pertain so directly to our souls and to our needs. We thank you for Christ, our savior. We thank you for who he is. These aren't just doctrines. This is the lover of our souls who truly did these things. This isn't a story. This is truly a man who came to live for us, the son of God, to die for us and to spend all of eternity serving his creatures. What an amazing thought. And so we just thank you, Lord, that you've given us this praiseworthy doctrine, that you've taught us something about him, even though we probably hardly scratched the surface in what you've truly done. So we just ask you, Lord, to lay these things upon our hearts, that they might be meaningful to us in our lives. And we pray, Lord, that you'd bless us now and the rest of our day. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.