Dr. Graham Cole Beeson Podcast Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Our preacher today is Dr. Graham Cole. He is the Dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology of that great institution. He previously taught here at Beeson Divinity School. He was our Anglican Professor of Divinity, and before that, at Trinity and at Moore Theological College in Australia. He was the principal of Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia for a number of years. He is a well experienced and very deep and scintillating speaker, lecturer, theologian par excellence. Well, this is a sermon called, “Is Your Jesus Grand Enough to Worship?” Dr. Smith, introduce us to this sermon. Robert Smith: This is a profound sermon, Dean George. The title is, “Is Your Jesus Grand Enough to be Worshiped?” No specific text, it’s an expose of the Nicene Creed to answer this question. He takes and deals with portions of the Nicene Creed, that is, God from God, Light from Light, begotten, not made. This is a compendium of systematic theology 101 on display; it really is. The integrating metaphor, very interesting. The Christian bus. He's responding to the questions that are left to answer again from the Nicene Creed. He recalls an experience with the Bishop of Ridley College, who told him since he'd made the transfer from Moore College, to get people on the Christian bus and keep them there. Therefore, he asked the question, is your Jesus grand enough to be worshiped? He proceeds to answer that through giving us a soaring trip to high Christology. Jesus is grand enough to be worshiped. He goes on to deal with a defense against Arianism, 4th century AD which the Jehovah's Witness is a representative body of that teaching. Islam, which reduces Jesus even further down to a man and makes him the second greatest prophet behind Muhammad. He is being very apologetic in terms of defending the truth against heterodoxy or against error. The strength of his sermon, well, several strengths, but one of the great strengths is, Dean George, he backs up his creedal assertions with Scripture. Walking through John 3, John 5, John 20. He employs great theologians to support his creedal assertions like Bishop J.C. Ryle, John Chrysostom, Augustine, BB Warfield, et cetera. The classic definition and I like this, he says the Christian worship is the protocol that one adapts in the presence of majesty and once again, the Scripture to support that, Psalm 95:1-7. Biblical worship finally moves us to where he really wants us to get a picture of it, Revelation 4 and 5. The Lamb is worshiped. We are singing. Elders all worship. The Nicene Creed ends he says, with no surprise, with the Father being worshiped and glorified. I think listeners ought to pay attention, and even stop the recorder when it comes to this profound statement by P. T. Forsyth. He was turned, that is Forsyth, from a Christian to a believer by the revelation of God's holiness, which caused him to become a worshiper. He is challenging us to move from just being Christians to being believers. And not just passive believers, but believers who are active enough to worship God. His thesis is, Christians need to be more believers, and believers need to be more worshipers. Polemic challenges 21st century worship, that is simply singing as he calls it, the decaffeinated love songs to Jesus in our church. He doesn't want worship to be a worship hall experience or a concert hall experience, but a Revelation chapter 4 and chapter 5. His closing question is finally answered that he asked in the beginning, is your Jesus grand enough to be worshiped? By the time you listen to him, if you are really faithful in the Scriptures, you have to say, amen. Timothy George: You know, Dr. Graham Cole is not only a superb theologian and a very fine preacher as we're going to hear from this sermon, he's also a wonderful Christian friend. Robert Smith: He is. Timothy George: We love him and his wonderful wife Jules and we are going to listen now to a sermon he preached right here at Beeson Divinity School back in 2009. “Is Your Jesus Grand Enough to Worship?” Dr. Graham Cole. Graham Cole: It's a great joy to be with you today. I'm very grateful for the kind words of your dean, Dr. George, thank you. First time down in this part of the south, although as the dean indicated, I'm from the really, really deep south. Down there in Australia. Let me pray. Our great God, may your Word live in us and bear much fruit to your glory for Jesus’ sake, Amen. In the early 1990s, I got the call to move from Moore Theological College in Sydney in the state of New South Wales in Australia, to go down to Ridley College in Melbourne in the state of Victoria. To go from one very familiar scene dominated by evangelical theology and presence to one that wasn't so much. One of the bishops in the Diocese of Sydney took me out to lunch for a fatherly consultation, and in the course of it, he suggested to me that my job was to get people on the Christian bus and keep them there. Well, these days, it's interesting that there are organizations set up to get people off the Christian bus. In fact, I was amazed to learn that the secular, the National Secular Society of Britain is offering de-baptism certificates. They've sold about 100,000 so far. As the English would say, a nice little earner, and the sales pitch is like this, "Liberate your soul from the original mumbo-jumbo that liberated you from the original sin you never had." I think the target demographic, lapsed Catholics by the look of that. So here they are, offering if you'd like disembarkation certificates. But it does raise the question, so why get on that Christian bus, and why stay on the Christian bus? And I were to say because Jesus is worth it. He's the reason we get on the Christian bus. He's the reason we stay on the Christian bus. The Jesus who is worth it is the one that the ancient Nicene Creed confesses. Now, why do I say that? Well to start with, the creed claims that Jesus is as much God as the Father is God. God from God, Light for Light, begotten not made, of one being with the Father, through Him, all things were made. God the Son as much God as God the Father. Fundamental to a high Christology or doctrine of Christ is the Deity of Christ. As much God as the Father is God. As much Light as the Father is Light. As we heard in 1 John 1, God is light. Jesus stands on the Creator's side and can't be reduced simply to the creature's side of reality. But the Creed not only claims that Jesus is as much God as the Father is God without confusing the two, the Creed claims that Jesus is begotten, not made. Put in another way, the lower Christology or doctrine of Christ of the fourth century Arians, those misbelievers of so long ago, is wrong. Fundamentally wrong. That Arian view of Jesus, that lesser view of Jesus that so troubled the church in the fourth century and has its representatives in the Jehovah's Witnesses to this day. You see, the Arian Jesus may be honored, but not really worshiped in a full, New Testament sense of that word. Their Jesus is the greatest of creatures, through whom God made the world, but a creature nonetheless. Now, it's been said of Arius, that he could never understand a metaphor. Take that language of only begotten. Arius way back there in ancient Egypt concluded an analogy with human fatherhood. There was time when the Son was not. He could not understand what such a phrase was about. Now, Arius was not the first bright person, leader in the church actually, who could not understand a metaphor. Think of Nicodemus in John 3 and how he misunderstood Jesus' words, "Nicodemus, you need to be born again." That was one gynecological miracle he could not contemplate. Friends, the problem of a low Christology is still with us. For example, Islam's view of Jesus is even lower than that of the ancient Arians. Isa, or Jesus is merely a man, or be it the second greatest prophet after Muhammad, but still only a man. That came home to me rather dramatically some years ago. There was a problem with my passport. Actually, the passport made me older than I actually was. That was picked up one time coming back from Australia, into Chicago. When I landed at LA, the immigration people saw the issue, and I had to get a new passport and I had to get it corrected. So I had to go down to the INS in Chicago for the paperwork. Now, I think the INS is a very clever invention of government to teach newcomers to America the virtue of patience. I'd been forewarned that I'd be down there for hours and hours and I really was. And I was seated next to this rather verbacious Brazilian lass, and she was bored obviously because ... She asked me what I did for a living and I said I was a theologian and she said, "Wonderful, I've always wanted to know from a theologian what the difference is between Islam and Christianity." I didn't expect that question at the INS. Now, happily, I'd been teaching systematic theology for years in dialogue, in conversation with modernity, postmodernity and Islam as a world religion. For about an hour, I answered her questions as best I could. After about an hour, the chap next to me, who I think came from Pakistan, inserted himself into the conversation and said, "I am a Muslim, and what he has said to you," he said this to the Brazilian girl, "is correct." Well, what a relief that was. Then he went on to say, "You see, it's like this. It's a bit like Windows 95 and XP. The better comes later. Christianity then Islam. Jesus then Muhammad." To which I replied, "Viruses come later." Well, we all laughed fortunately, but he didn't ask any other questions after that or make comments. The Christ of the Creed is far grander than that of ancient Arians or Islam, past or present. And I wonder, do we really appreciate that difference? Really appreciate it? Appreciate it at the very core of who we are? However, a crucial question arises. Are the creed’s claims here biblically justified? I believe they are. Let me say, the Creed has rightly understood the biblical testimony. In particular, the testimony of the Gospel of John. Turning to that testimony from John, which is crucial here, I want to just remind us that Scripture is our touchstone when it comes to theological proposals. Claims about God. Ideas about religion. I like that metaphor, touchstone. It's a classic Christian one, evangelical one. One of my evangelical heroes is the great Bishop J.C. Ryle of Liverpool. He had to say this about that particular need to make sure that our theology is grounded in the Scripture. He says, "Let us receive nothing, believe nothing, follow nothing, which is not in the Bible, nor can be proved by the Bible. Let our rule of faith, our touchstone of all teaching be the written Word of God." If there's no Bible backing, then we have a text-less doctrine. However, these claims of the Creed are not text-less, are they? Think of the testimony of the prologue of John's Gospel, John 1:1-18, to which I turn. May I read you from the New International Version here? Starting at verse one, we read this testimony: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” Verse nine: “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” And then in verse 14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And then verses 17 and 18: “For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the one and only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.” An extraordinary introduction to this gospel. John Chrysostom the early church was so right to say, "Here is a gospel. It's so simply written. It's so profound and multilayered. A child can wade in its waters and an elephant can swim." We move from eternity, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God,” to time, and this Word became flesh. Tabernacle, that's the idea, the divine presence came amongst us and His glory was seen. And then we find that this Word that's become flesh from the Father is none less than the Son. And the Son has a human name, Jesus Christ. Ultimately we need our doctrine of the Trinity to make sense of a passage like this. Ultimately, we need our doctrine of the incarnation to make sense of a passage like this. As Augustine said so long ago, he read in the philosophers, the platonic philosophers, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," but nowhere did he read the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The bridge between the infinite and the finite closed in the most personal of ways. In the coming of God the Son who became truly human without leaving behind that He is truly God. Think too of the testimony of John chapter 5: the story of a healing at the pool. We read in John, chapter 5, if you care to turn to it in verse 1: “Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. There was one there by this pool who'd been there an invalid for 38 years.” Jesus heals him. We read in verse 8, he says to this invalid, "’Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked.” And later, Jesus in verse 14 finds him at the temple and says to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." The man went away and told the Jews, the authorities, that it was Jesus who had made him well. Then look what follows: So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews, the authorities persecuted Him. And Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at His work to this very day and I too am working." For this reason, the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him. Not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father making Himself equal with God. As the great B. B. Warfield put it, "This claim to Sonship they understood was a claim to be of the very nature of God Himself." God from God. Light from Light. Think too of the climax of this gospel in John, chapter 20, the story of Thomas' encounter with the risen Christ, after the Passion. After Jesus had been lifted up, had borne the sin of the world as John the Baptist predicted back in John 1:29, here the risen Christ meets Thomas and Thomas' unbelief. John 20:24, let me take up the story here: “Now Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ They've seen the risen Lord. But he said to them,” and it's quite emphatic in the original language, “‘Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand in His side, I will not, I will not believe it.’" “A week later, His disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe.’" More forcefully He's saying, stop unbelief. Believe. Thomas said to Him, "My Lord and my God." If you put a text in its context, in its literal unit, in its book, there's no way you can simply dismiss this as an involuntary cry of surprise on the part of Thomas, as I found a Jehovah's Witness try to convince me was the case at the door one day. This is not a first century version of OMG. This is climactic. "My Lord, my God." So let me claim that this Jesus of this Creed, God of God, Light of Light, begotten, not made is worthy of our worship. I mean worship in that classic sense of the word. The classic sense of the protocol one adopts in the presence of majesty. As Psalm 95 has it in verses 1-7: “Come let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the Rock of our Salvation. Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song.” Why? “For the Lord is a great God. The great king above all gods. In His Hand are the depths of the earth and the mountain peaks belong to Him. The sea is His and He made it and His hands form the dry land. Come let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.” This is the kind of worship that John saw. That we have in Revelation chapters 4 and 5. Turning now to our New Testaments. That door opened in heaven and John the seer gets to see something of the worship that is always going on. We find worship in chapter 4 of Revelation is a worship that's predicated on God our creator. Verse 9: “Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to Him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and by your will, they were created and have their being.’" Then in Revelation 5 comes the Lamb who was slain. Here we have worship predicated on redemption. In verse 6: “Then I saw a Lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne and circled by the four living creatures and the elders. Then in verse 9 they sing a new song, "You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals,” the sealed scroll of divine judgment, "Because you were slain and with your blood, you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth." "Then I looked," says John, "And heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. To receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them sing to Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever, and the four living creatures said, ‘Amen.’" Then we find the only fitting response, “And the elders fell down and worshiped.” No surprise then, that our Creed ends with the Father and the Son is to be worshiped and glorified. One of my favorite conversion stories is that of P. T. Forsyth. It's always instructive when a theologian gets converted. He wrote this in 1907. Let me use his own words, "There was a time when I was interested in the first degree with purely scientific criticism. Bred among academic scholarship of the classics and philosophy, I carried these habits to the Bible and I found the subject a new fascination in proportion as the stakes were so much higher. But, fortunately for me, I was not condemned to the mere scholar's cloistered life. I could not treat the matter as an academic quest," he writes. "I was kept close to practical conditions. I was in a relation of life, duty and responsibility to others and I was convinced that they were in no spiritual condition to have forced on them those questions on which the scholars so delighted and differed." Then he movingly adds this, "It also pleased God by the revelation of His holiness and grace, which the great theologians taught me to find in the Bible, to bring home to me my sin in a way that submerged all the school questions in weight, urgency and poignancy. I was turned from a Christian to a believer. From a lover of love to an object of grace." Turned from a Christian to a believer. That happened some years after his ordination. Friends, the only Jesus grand enough to save P. T. Forsyth is the creed Jesus. The Jesus of John 1, 5, 20. The biblical story. Only this Jesus is big enough to turn him from a Christian into a believer. I ought to ask seriously this morning if America has too many Christians. Mark Galli thinks so. I read an article of his from Christianity Today just over the weekend. He talked about how much nominal evangelicalism there is in this country these days in that Christianity Today article. But I want to go a step further. Let me say, Christians need to become believers, but believers need to become worshipers. It was A. W. Tozer whose writings I always find bracing. It's been described that if you read him, it's like putting your head in a blast furnace. He described worship as evangelicalism's missing jewel. He wrote, "We're saved to worship God." What did our Lord say in John 4 to that woman at the well? "The Father is seeking worshipers." I wonder what somebody like an A. W. Tozer would say these days to the decaffeinated love songs that we often sing to Jesus in our churches. So I might ask in the light of John's testimony, in the light of the Creed, are you a Christian? You say, "Of course I am. I'm at Beeson Chapel aren't I?" Are you a believer? "Of course," you say, "I'm doing an M.Div." But, are you a worshiper? Christ follower, yes. Worshiper—someone who has bowed the knee as it were, before the living God and his Christ. I wouldn't say that because I've been to churches both in Australia and in this country, where it's more like a concert. Brilliantly done, wonderful musicianship, but you feel like an observer rather than a participant in what's going on. I've been to churches too where you think you're in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. It's all about outreach and the great preacher, or the great preacher perhaps. In contrast to that let me say, we gather with others today to bow the knee as it were before God and His Christ. Gather to form a living temple in which the living God, the living Christ, begotten not made, is enthroned upon our praises. We gather in a way where our worship mirrors that of Revelation 4 and 5, albeit imperfectly, albeit stutteringly. So let me ask, is your Jesus grand enough to so worship? I mean your Jesus, and your Jesus, and your Jesus, and your Jesus, and my Jesus, grand enough to worship? The Jesus who is God from God, Light from Light, of one being with the Father, the Jesus who is worth getting on the Christian bus for and worth staying on the Christian bus for. Friends, that's the question I want to leave with you this morning. Is your Jesus grand enough? Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our gracious Father, thank you for the sending of the Son, God from God, Light from Light, begotten, not made, without whom we stand bereft of hope, meaning and purpose in this broken world. Without whom we remain locked in our sins, facing your righteous judgment, but with whom and in whom lies our forgiveness, hope and eternal life. Such is your love. Such is your grace. Enlarge our hearts by your Spirit to enjoy a fresh appreciation this day of the wonder, the wonder of it all. In Jesus’ name, amen. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.