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Creator, Sustainer, Head (Part One)
CGG Weekly by David C. GrabbeJesus Christ is presented as superior to Moses and all aspects of the Old Covenant, demonstrating His supreme authority and role in the divine plan. Through Him, the Father created the ages, encompassing the divisions of time, history, and culture that relate to God and man, summing up to eternity. This includes not only the physical world but also the pre-Flood age, the present age, and the ages to come. Christ upholds, maintains, guides, sustains, and propels all things by the word of His power, managing everything from galaxies and solar systems to the life and death of each sparrow. Despite the natural law of entropy, where material things break down from order to disorder, He ensures that this progression aligns with His will, preventing premature collapse and maintaining the proper orbits of planets and the balance of earth's ecosystems. As the Creator who breathed life into all things, He holds the power to perpetuate or eliminate existence, showcasing His sovereignty over all creation.
Hebrews (Part Four): Who Was Jesus?
Sermon by John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)Jesus Christ stands superior to Moses in His divine qualifications and faithful administration, as highlighted with thunderous clarity. While Moses was faithful as a servant in the house, Christ is faithful as the builder of the house, demonstrating His greater role and authority. He is the Creator of all things and the Giver of life to all living beings, ensuring His unmatched desire to care for what He Himself created, including humanity. As the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His Person, He mirrors the Father in purpose and character, showing no inferiority to Him. He upholds the universe by the Word of His power, preserving all that exists and maintaining faithful dominion over His creation. Furthermore, He Himself purged us of our sins, a glory surpassing the purification rites of the Old Covenant, which offered no true cleansing. Now re-established at the right hand of God in heaven, He surveys all creation, second only to the Father in rulership, bearing witness to His unwavering faithfulness to the Father's purpose.
Hebrews (Part Five): Who Was Jesus?
Sermon by John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)Jesus Christ stands as the centerpiece of the epistle to the Hebrews, surpassing all others in significance, including Moses, in His role and qualifications. He is presented as superior to Moses through direct comparison, where Moses was faithful as a servant in the house, but Christ is faithful as the Builder of the house. This distinction highlights His greater authority and responsibility over creation, which He Himself made with mankind in mind, demonstrating His thoughtful care and orderly intelligence. His qualifications further elevate Him above Moses. As the only begotten Son of God, He holds a unique and unparalleled position. Appointed Heir of all things, He assures continuance in office and administration, signifying His supreme rank and dominion. As the Creator of all things, He gives life to all living, except the Father, showing His power and faithful care for what He has created. He is the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His person, reflecting the Father's purpose and character in every way, ensuring that whatever excellency is in the Father is also in the Son. Moreover, He upholds all things by the word of His power, affirming His continuing preservation and faithful dominion over creation. He Himself purged us of our sins, an act of highest glory benefiting mankind, achieved through His unwavering commitment to the Father's purpose, even at the cost of His life. Now repositioned at the right hand of God in heaven, He surveys all creation, second only to the Father in rulership, witnessing His faithfulness to the Father's purpose. During the transfiguration, God Himself declared, "This is My beloved Son, hear Him," emphasizing Christ's greater glory in teaching compared to Moses and Elijah, who disappeared from view, leaving only Christ visible. This divine directive underscores that while many voices may be heard, the focus must be on hearing Christ, affirming His supreme authority and leadership over all others, including Moses.
Hebrews (Part Two): Who Was Jesus?
Sermon by John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)The comparison between Jesus Christ and Moses forms a pivotal turning point, moving from the detailed ceremonial instructions of Leviticus, dictated through Moses, to the living embodiment of God's law in the Son. Whereas Moses received and transmitted commands as an appointed human leader, God's New Covenant was not merely dictated but lived out before witnesses by His only Son, the living Word made flesh. This distinction is made explicit at the Transfiguration, where Moses and Elijah appear alongside Jesus, yet God's voice from the cloud instructs the disciples, "Hear Him," singling out Jesus as surpassing even these greatly honored figures. This divine directive establishes that no comparison, however favorable to Moses or Elijah, diminishes the unique authority of Jesus. Jesus's superiority is further demonstrated through the manner in which He began and carried out His ministry. Unlike Moses, who conveyed the Law from the mountain, Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom and simultaneously modeled its standards personally, sharing His life directly with His disciples in a union of the physical and spiritual. His teaching required not mere hearing but divine drawing, as no one comes to Him unless the Father draws him, showing that the New Covenant relationship is deeply personal and individually orchestrated by God rather than nationally imposed as under Moses's leadership. This personal drawing transforms the covenant relationship from a master-servant structure, which dominated the Mosaic arrangement, into one of family—Father, Son, and siblings bound by love rather than by ethnic identity or servitude. The superiority of Jesus over Moses is rooted ultimately in His identity, which vastly exceeds that of a prophet or lawgiver. Old Testament references to "sons of God" or "son of God," whether applied to angelic beings or faithful Israelites, never approach the unique status assigned to the Messiah in passages such as Genesis 3:15 and Isaiah 11, where the coming "Seed" and "Root of Jesse" is unmistakably the true Son of God. John's Gospel expands this by revealing Jesus as the Word who was with God and was God from the beginning, the literal Creator of all things, including mankind—an identity that no other figure, including Moses, could claim. His declarations that "I and My Father are one" and "before Abraham was, I AM" further affirm His eternal, uncreated existence, sharply distinguishing Him from every human intermediary, however honored. John's language describing Jesus as the "only begotten Son" stresses His singularity and un-generated relationship with the Father, severing Him from all other sons of God in Scripture and from ordinary human generational categories. This establishes that Jesus shares the Father's very nature and eternal existence, making Him not simply the greatest of God's servants, as Moses was, but co-equal in essence with the Father Himself. This foundation of Christ's supreme identity prepares the way for understanding Hebrews' central argument: that the One who reveals and fulfills the New Covenant is immeasurably greater than Moses, the mediator of the Old, and that hearing and following Him, rather than merely honoring the Law's giver, is now the defining call of faithful discipleship.
Jesus Is God
Sermon by John W. RitenbaughFundamental to true faith and salvation is the settled conviction that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be—the eternal, uncreated God of the Old Testament who became flesh. This conviction matters because Satan periodically revives ancient challenges to undermine believers' hope, tracing back to pre-Christian philosophic roots and surfacing directly during Christ's ministry, then reviving through Gnosticism, which held that pure spirit could never mix with defiled flesh, making it impossible for Jesus to be both God and man. If this challenge succeeds, Jesus becomes merely history's most successful charlatan, and there is no Savior. Countering this requires recognizing that faith itself is God's gift, not a product of human wisdom or nobility; God chooses the foolish and weak specifically so no flesh may glory in His presence, and understanding comes only as He opens minds, as He did for the disciples and for Paul. This humbling principle undergirds why some accept the plain scriptural testimony about Christ's origin while others, relying on carnal pride, twist it into convoluted alternatives. Scripture repeatedly identifies Jesus's origin as heaven itself: He testified in John 3:13 that He descended from heaven, a claim unique to Him alone among all humanity. In John 6, He declared that He, not Moses, gives the true bread from heaven, showing Moses to be merely a servant conveying what God gave, while Christ Himself is the divine Giver whose words carry Old Testament authority. Paul confirms this contrast in I Corinthians 15:47, calling Adam earthly and Christ "the Lord from heaven." John 1:1-3 places the Word, who is God, before Genesis 1, existing in eternity with the Father—affirmed by Isaiah 57:15, where the Son Himself declares He "inhabits eternity." Jesus's declaration "before Abraham was, I am" invoked the divine name from the burning bush, provoking accusations of blasphemy precisely because His hearers understood He was claiming timeless, eternal existence. Philippians 2 explains that Christ, being in the form of God, emptied Himself of divine privilege and immortality to become a mortal, humbled servant, obedient unto death—yet remaining God throughout. Colossians 1 and 2 affirm His preeminence as Creator, in whom all fullness of deity dwells bodily, warning believers against being misled by philosophies or angel-worship that diminish this truth. Revelation 3:14, often misused via the Greek arche to suggest Jesus was created, is properly understood—supported by translation and commentary consensus—as denoting His preeminence, rulership, and source, not His origin as a created being, since no other scripture corroborates such a reading. Ultimately, Moses and all other spiritual teachers are inferior conduits of revelation, while Christ alone possesses firsthand knowledge of heavenly realities, having come from the Father's presence to reveal Him. This settled truth, especially near Passover, calls believers to reaffirm faith in the Father and the Son, resisting doctrines that cheapen the immense price paid by an uncreated God for humanity's redemption.
'But I Say to You' (Part Four): Divorce
Sermon by Richard T. RitenbaughWhen divorce takes place, spiritual growth from the relationship stops, but when conflict escalates within a dying relationship, no growth can occur either.
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Three)
'Personal' from John W. RitenbaughHebrews was written to fulfill several needs of the first-century church. One of the most critical was to explain God's opening of eternal life to the Gentiles.
Hebrews (Part Two)
Sermon/Bible Study byHebrews is addressed to a people living at the end of an era, who were drifting away, had lost their devotion, and were no longer motivated by zeal.
Hebrews: Its Background (Part Nine)
Sermon by John W. RitenbaughThe Book of Hebrews is a must-read for all members of God's church who seek the key for spiritual growth through a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ.
Hebrews (Part Three)
Sermon/Bible Study by John W. RitenbaughJesus blazed a trail, giving a pattern for qualifying (through suffering and resisting sin) for our responsibility as priests, reconnecting man and God.
A Feast Message From Hebrews
Feast of Tabernacles Sermon by John W. RitenbaughThe Bible shows a clear pattern of how people leave the faith: looking back, drawing back, looking elsewhere, and then going backward and refusing to hear.
Hebrews: A Message for Today
Feast of Tabernacles Sermon by John W. RitenbaughThe book of Hebrews provides reasons to recapture flagging zeal, focusing on the reason for our hope and faith, establishing Christ's credentials.
Hebrews (Part Five)
Sermon/Bible Study byThe ancient Israelites resisted the gospel, refusing to mix it with actual obedience. What they heard never became a part of their lives; Egypt never left them.