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Let's pray, everyone, and approach God's Word together. We praise you, Father God, that you give to us the victory in your risen Jesus. We ask that you will help us to understand, to think deeply about what it means, fast to enjoy that victory, and to live victoriously in this hurting, hateful world for the honor of your name. Amen. Folks, I'm not going to do exactly what Ben did this morning. It's not going to be an exposition of Hebrews, but the themes that I'm going to be talking about will be based on the book of Hebrews. I've got a summary of four points here, so please, with different Bible passages, so if we can bring that up, please use that for your notes, for your listening more carefully.

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Brothers and sisters, friends, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is victorious? Do you believe that He has conquered all His enemies? Yeah, praise the God, well done, but that means that you have been paying attention to your Bibles, because you know, folks, that if we only ask that question of experience, if we relied on what we can see with our eyes and here with our ears, then we would think that Christianity is actually on the decline, that it is being defeated. You know, folks, that in Western countries, in Australia, people, the atheists, the secularists, keep boasting about how Christianity keeps declining and declining, some of you may have heard how there was even a bit of a concerted program by the atheist society to fool people into putting no religion in the recent census. You may also know that actually a lot of people who say they don't follow a religion are actually spiritualists, but it's the same thing.

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The Christian identification is declining. Now, first of all, those of you who listen carefully, you know that I did not ask is Christianity victorious. I asked is Jesus victorious, so fair enough. But also folks, we who follow Christ, we know that Jesus Himself said in the famous Great Commission, He began it by saying all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Him. Deal with it, that's just it. Whether the numbers on the census decline or decline or increase doesn't matter. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1, 19 to 21 says, God exerted His mighty strength when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him Christ at His right hand in His heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, every name that is invoked not only in the present age, but also the one to come. So that's it. God says it. Whether we believe it or not is actually irrelevant. God has established Jesus Christ, He is Lord, coming to worship Jesus, the Christian profession, Jesus Christ is Lord is actually just accepting reality with great calm and confidence.

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Now we're probably used to this, which is why you all with great confidence said yes Christ is victorious and we're also probably used to this because Christ is risen. However, the second question and don't answer this, just think about it because it will depend on your personal circumstances. What does the victorious Christian life look like? If Christ is victorious, what does it mean for me, for us in our individual circumstances, to live victorious somehow with Him? Does it mean that we're always successful, healthy, wealthy, that we never get sick, that everything we do succeeds, that we, if we're studying, always do well and get good marks that our children get into private schools.

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That they get scholarships to all the high fee, paying high prestige schools and then get into the top universities and become doctors fulfilling the migrant dream. Because after all, we're raised with Christ and seated at God's right hand. That's what the Apostle Paul actually says in Ephesians 2 verse 6. God raised us up with Christ, seated us with Him in the heavenly realms. And so we also have all authority and dominion over the supernatural powers, don't we? Well, okay, kind of, but here's the thing, let me put this to you. We are not yet raised like Christ, even if we are raised with Christ. Because last time I checked, we are still living in this ordinary palpable, this ordinary sin-stained fallen world, where Christ suffered a lot.

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But he did miracles more certainly. And because he did miracles, he was celebrated and given all the glory and honor he was due. Nope, nope, the opposite. You know, folks, that when Christ demonstrated His power, that was actually the reason that the Pharisees came against Him, came at Him. But often He said to people, don't tell anyone, just go to the priest. Instead, they went and told everyone, and that increased the persecution against Him. Thanks a lot. So what does it mean for us to live victoriously in this sin-stained world with all the problems, difficulties, persecutions, weaknesses, frailties around us?

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Where do we always, are we somehow failing? Are we being defeated? Is our faith not enough if we get sick, if we become disabled, if we don't get a career progression, if we don't get the best in our studies and so on and so on? Well, first of all, let's talk about the danger of denying the devil and denying the supernatural, which is my second title here. Contemporary Western society believes that all victory, that all success, is actually to be found in denying God and denying the supernatural. The Western secularity is blind spot, is denying not just God, atheism is in one sense, for today's conference, atheism is the least of our problems.

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I know that sounds heretical, but my point is that the way that Western society just normally thinks today, you just go down the street here and talk to people, go down to the Rudy Hill shops, chat with people. So what are the major things that are on their mind? We operate in a secularized culture, we've already talked about it on this platform and in the seminars. We tend to think about medicine, we tend to think about physical solutions, electricians, psychology, psychotherapy, and that's not wrong. I overheard the seminar here, people were saying, look, maybe there is problems with the brain, maybe people need medicine therapy and so on and so on.

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But by simply seeking the victory, by simply seeking all of the resources to succeed in life, in nature, in the physical world, in material things, all that does is actually give the victory to the devil. A couple of times we've already mentioned in seminars, the missing middle, which the Michiologist Paul Heber talked about, that is, the Bible and Christian doctrine actually has the resources to, on the one hand, be rightfully respectful of the authority and power of the supernatural realm, angels and demons, the good supernatural forces. And the evil forces that want to do us harm. On the one hand, we respect them without falling into what we call dualism, that is somehow fearing that they can overcome God. Okay, you see the difference? Book of Job. I won't go through it in detail, but Book of Job chapter 1, 6 and 7, and 2, 1 and 2, that's Job 1, verses 6 and 7, and 2, 1 and 2, they're both almost the same, basically the angels come to present themselves before the Lord.

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This is God, the one and only true creator God, presiding over the other supernatural powers. Now these supernatural powers are more powerful than us humans, because they're supernatural. We are just, you know, fleshly, we're natural. So in that sense, they're scary, they're awesome, but they are not God. There is an asymmetry. Does that make sense? Okay, they're not equal. The supernatural powers are responsible to God. He is not responsible to them. Now Satan, Satan you may know means accuser, the accuser was amongst those angels, and he has to come and answer to God. The Lord says where you're going and Satan kind of goes, oh, you know, hang it out. That's my translation, roaming around the world.

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And then, as we know, God permits Satan to test Job, and you have the rest of the book of Job. My point that I want to draw is simply that Western society's blind spot is actually really face palm-able and narrow-minded and ignorant. Because most, every civilization, except very, very recently, that degree of secularity is so recent. Every civilization throughout history has believed in the supernatural and rightly respected most of the time fear as we've discussed the whole of today. Fear, evil supernatural powers. Most of humanity across the world today is still somehow religious, and therefore respects usually fears evil supernatural powers to dismiss and simply not even consider the existence of supernatural evil is actually really ignorant. So, if we can establish out of step with history and out of step with the world, for goodness sake, even fiction believes in evil.

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Star Wars is a dark side to the force for goodness sake. So, if even fiction can believe in it, what's the matter with contemporary Western society? And because we've stopped believing in the reality of the devil, we demonize each other. Why is Western society so polarize these days? Here's the logic. If we don't believe in the existence of supernatural evil, then all evil comes from lack of education or lack of medical knowledge or lack of engineering or other technical knowledge or chemical knowledge. It's all about discovering the natural processes of this world. And so, in principle, if we humans could discover the ultimate psychological cure, we would all have perfect mental health. If we could all discover the perfect panacea, the perfect cure for all viruses, then we would have perfect physical health.

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If we could cleanse the world of all harmful bacteria, viruses and so on, our ecosystem would be completely solved. We can do it as all it takes is for us to discover the natural solution and we humans will be victorious. And that means that anyone who thinks different from you must be mad or uneducated or just downright stubborn. And so, that's why we demonize each other and just shout at each other and have this polarized world. Western ignorance of the supernatural sources of sin, our tendency towards vices, every religion, you don't even need to be Christian to believe this. What is wrong with us? And so, first of all, Christian friends, as we approach this topic and question, it's actually much bigger than the question of taking the gospel to South Asian friends.

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We can even talk with Hindus and Buddhists and so on about how we religious people can help the West, help our Australia to understand the supernatural basis of this evil. And then, having understood that, that there is actually the devil exists, it is asymmetrical. God in that sense does not have to win the victory over the devil. Does that make sense? Because you don't need to be a victor over someone whom you've already conquered. The devil has no real claim upon God, apart from things that God does himself and I'll get to that in a minute. But the first thing, what does it mean for us to live victoriously? It means to understand that we cannot win the victory ourselves, not by natural means, and that's no small thing in today's secularized culture.

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But then there is a flip side, an equal and opposite danger for more traditional cultures, for more religious cultures. Where, so traditional religions blind spot, is the danger of worshipping supernatural power to overcome our problems. This is an interesting thing. We've spoken a couple of times already today about how Western society tends to be obsessed with physical pleasure, material wealth, what we can see, eat, drink and enjoy. All right, what do traditional religious people? What do our Hindu friends and Buddhist friends, and for that matter Muslim friends probably? What do our Hindu and Buddhist friends want to pray for? What do they want to seek to discharge their duties in order to achieve? Usually health, wealth, success, a good life, usually somewhat morally upright and family focused. They want a good university degree so that they can have a good job so they can get a good house and bring the family over from India.

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That's an honorable and noble thing, but it is still focused on health, wealth, success and prosperity now. There's actually a deep similarity between secular materialism and actually spiritual materialism. But what it does is Hindu, Buddhist and perhaps even Christian, nominal, Christian or pastor, father, pray for the house, pray for me, pray for my job so that I can achieve all of these good things, accessing supernatural power to achieve my goals, our goals which end up being the good life now. Perhaps because we so understand that Jesus, our Lord Jesus, only ever exercised His power in a good way. We all believe that I'm confident. Perhaps we take it too much for granted. Ben rightly, it was only an aside, but I don't know if you folk notice this. Ben in his sermon this morning rightly drew attention to how the people in Mark chapter 5 were scared of Jesus, scared of His power.

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Mark 4, 39 to 41. Mark 4, 39 to 41. This is during the storm at sea. Jesus got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, quiet be still. Wind died down, it was completely calm. He said to disciples, why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? They were terrified. And they asked each other, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him. And we go, Jesus, son of God. Of course, He created them. What's the big deal? Guys, imagine yourselves back in the boat with them. Here are the powers of death about to be victorious, about to overwhelm their fragile little boat. These are fishermen. They know how dangerous it is. Symbolically, that is the powers of death and the destruction of the world, earthquakes, Nepal, pray for Nepal, the things like that. All of that natural disasters that threaten to kill us.

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And Jesus just gets up and says, quiet, like a dog, you know, master of the downboy, down, down. And they're like, that's scary. We've already seen Mark chapter 5, when the people who tended the pigs came and saw Jesus and saw the man healed, very interesting. Mark 5, 15, they saw the man who had been possessed by the Legion dressed and in his right mind, they were afraid. Here is someone who has greater power over the evil spirits than all those legions of spirit, you're scary. Because they don't know his character, they don't know whether he's good or not. And even the woman whom he healed, Mark 5, 33, 34, Mark 5, 33, 34. The woman knowing what had happened to her came and fell at his feet, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth, he said, daughter, your faith has healed you.

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We can be such good Christians, which is not actually wrong. We can be so confident that Jesus is good, that we forget our scary hears. How do we know that Jesus is not just the biggest bully in the universe? Because folks, that is how a lot of traditional religion, a lot of traditional spirituality, operates. There's a hierarchy of gods, we heard it in some of the stories already. A hierarchy of gods or even perhaps a contest, a conflict of gods, who sometimes are cooperating, sometimes fighting with each other. Most religion is more like a Marvel comic, more like a Marvel movie, where sometimes even the good guys have a civil war with each other.

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And so, how do we know that any God, like Jesus, any person who is possessed of supernatural power, how do we know that he is going to use that, always going to use that power, only ever to somehow achieve what is good and care for me? How do we know that when my life is somehow going bad? I get sick, I don't get successful, I don't get the university success even though I'm studying really hard. I fall into some kind of disease, perhaps a mental health challenge. People won't marry me because I'm a Christian, the non-Christian parents won't arrange a marriage for me, no one here in this country end up single and getting old feel. When you're left on the shelf, when things are going bad, how do you know that Jesus doesn't hate you? Again, if we only rely on our experiences, on what we can see, feel, and here is Jesus just the most powerful but biggest bully.

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And He strict us, that's a traditional way of thinking about spirituality. And if for you that's an alien way of thinking, talk to more Hindu converts or just talk to more Hindus, talk to more Buddhists, talk to more spiritualists. We know, I trust. We don't even think like this. We seek to find what is good when hardship is happening. We seek to work out what is God, the Holy Spirit, trying to work in me when things don't go right. How is He seeking to build Godliness in me? How is He seeking to build patience, compassion, empathy with other people who have gone through this? How is He seeking to make me trust Him more and more and not only trust on the goodies that He can give us? It's a secular materialism, spiritual materialism. Christianity says neither. The world is good, enjoy what you have, but actually glory is better. We sacrifice what we do have for the benefit of those who don't have.

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Truly we have received, so just give it. Give it all away. And we can know that Jesus is somehow achieving good because, and this is actually the key point of the whole talk. Justice is more central to the God of the Bible than power. God, that justice is more central than power. We might again just take that for granted. In fact, Ben mentioned it this morning. These talks being recorded? Yep, good. You can go back and listen. Everything that I'm saying actually Ben said this morning. I actually was a little bit like what's left for me. Thanks, bro.

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Now I'm approaching it differently, but well and good. Because God is a God who loves justice. God is a God who's character. He always does what is right. Therefore, he only ever uses his power to do what is right and good. Jesus's most mighty act was not actually, therefore, his resurrection. I know, that sounds weird. His resurrection was the demonstration of his might. That's what it says, okay, in Ephesians and so on. The whole book of Acts is actually about God has raised this Jesus to life and placed him at the right hand of God. He is Lord, you Jews and you Romans.

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You crucified him together. The whole world stood against God's Messiah. And it's all about the resurrection granted. But Jesus's God's most powerful act was actually the crucifixion. Why? Because in the crucifixion, God achieves justice through justification, through justifying, through forgiving sinners. What does it mean to be victorious and powerful? What does it mean for us to enjoy and live the victorious life in the midst of our ordinary hardship? It actually comes through redefining power. We tend to think that power is achieving things, okay, motive power, going places.

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And look, that's not wrong, okay. Someone who is very righteous, but completely powerful, someone who has noble aspirations, but can't actually do anything is kind of nice, but irrelevant. It's not wrong to want to change things, to want to make a difference. But what Jesus did, the ultimate demonstration of God's power was a judicial declaration. That is why, now because we tend to think like this, justification by faith alone and all that other kind of highfalut and stuff, we Christians who tend to think like this, that actually gives us a problem. We've in these seminars, we've been thinking about how can we approach people for whom justice is not how they think. But that's actually the problem, because Hindus, Buddhists don't think in terms of God's righteousness is at the core of His very being, therefore they don't even know how to enjoy the kind of confidence that we have.

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And so we have to, it's actually right for us to think about how can we approach it from the side, talk about fear, our God achieves the victory in the cross of Jesus. And therefore he is, you don't have to fear the supernatural powers because he has defeated them, so it's right to come in that angle. It's right to talk about honor and shame. We have dishonored God, and we think that it is so serious to dishonor our earthly family, how bad is it to dishonor Almighty God? The power of God, Christ's passion is that he, for by forgiving us, he disarms the devil. Let me take the time to read Colossians 2, 13 to 15. When you are dead in your sins and the un-circumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us.

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He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross and having disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a public spectacle of them, trying to think over them by the cross. We've made reference to this passage a couple of times, but folks, we haven't meditated deeply on the significance of it. Where is the victory? Where is the triumph over the powers and the authorities? It's in the forgiveness of us sinners, the forgiveness of the sinners by taking away God's rightful charge against us, nailing it to the cross. When was the law? God's requirements against us, nail to the cross. It wasn't actually, it was Christ nail to the cross. The way that Paul is talking here, Christ Himself is like the sinner incarnate.

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Does that make sense? That's the way Paul is thinking. Christ bore our sins upon Himself on that tree. And when He was nailed to the cross, you and I were nailed there. And in Him, our sins were punished. And that means God can say to the devil, "No, when Satan brings the accusation against us, God can say, "No, I don't know what you're talking about. This is my child. This is my daughter, the voice from heaven which spoke to Jesus Himself in His baptism. This is my son, with Him I am well pleased.

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You, Christian, faithful one who has put their trust in Jesus. That is God's verdict on you. And it doesn't matter if you are sick, if you are disabled, if you are poor, you know that many, most Christians in India and the rest of South Asia end up poor. Because they are systematically marginalized from society. It doesn't matter if you don't succeed in your own dreams. Jesus has made you a child of God and God has triumphed over Satan the accuser. You see how significant it is to understand how Satan uses God's law, God's justice against God in one sense.

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Ha, God, you call this your image bearer, look at what he thinks, look at how she, listen to her bitterness, listen to his pride. You know, his mind, look at this person's lust. That's your image bearer. And God says, I don't know what you're talking about. My son bore that person's sins on the tree. This is my child. How dare you, Satan, accuse my child. That is the victory. And therefore friends, it's not actually our victory in Christ. It is Christ's victory is ours.

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And in the name of this Christ, we can do good in a secular society which doesn't know precisely because they don't understand the supernatural nature of evil. We can seek to tell people, do you realize how foolish? Do you think that maybe there might be something spiritual going on here? Why can't you get over your anger? Why are you so bitter with your family members? Why do you struggle with things that you know are wrong? I believe, I, the Christian think there's actually something demonic even. Supernatural going on here. Do you want to read the Bible about it? Here is Jesus Christ. He laughs at the one who laughs at you.

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Christ's victory is ours. Therefore we can, on the one hand, we respect. Remember, I talked about the asymmetry. We rightly respect the supernatural powers. Don't mess with them. Don't do wiggy boards or whatever. And beware, just be careful in getting involved in expelling demons and so on and so on. It's dangerous stuff. Have support. Pray with people, okay? Make sure you get along the church and don't somehow get affected yourself because they're more powerful than us. God is most powerful, but they're still dangerous. But with confidence, Christ is Lord. You don't, you have no claim over me. You have no claim over this person.

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That's the gist of Hebrews 2, which now given the time I won't spend too much time. It's just let me read to you from Hebrews 2, 14 to 16, which we had read after Lena very kindly stood for a while at the back. Hebrews 2, let me just read 14 to 16, since the children have flesh and blood, he, Jesus, shared our humanity. He became fully human, so that by his death, not just his resurrection, I mean, yes, his resurrection, but that's not what the verse says. By his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death that is the devil. And free those who all their lives, us, were held in slavery by their fear of death. He meaning here, yes, physical death, but also the supernatural separation from Almighty God, which if not for Jesus, that is what the end of our lives would usher us into. What does it mean? So folks, I began with a couple of questions. Do we believe Jesus is victorious? Yes, we do. Okay, but we are raised with him, but we're not raised like him yet.

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And so we just live in this world, struggling and suffering. Okay, great. So does that mean we have no victory? What does it mean for us to live the victorious life here and now in amidst the circumstances that I have? Let me finish with asking you another question. Can we bring up the second slide? Here is some, it's not just the South Asians who actually understand the reality of the supernatural. The Heidelberg Catechism was written by German reformed churches, German Protestant Christians in the 1600s. And what does the very first question? What is your comfort in life and death that I'm not on my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful savior Jesus Christ? He has fully paid for my sins in his cross with his precious blood.

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And therefore, through that sacrificial death, he has set me free from all the power of the devil. This is the victorious Christian life despite the hardships, despite all of the sufferings, despite being kicked out by our family. So friends, let us stand. Come on, everyone, on your feet. Let me put the question and I invite you to say the answer together as a declaration of our victory in Christ. Friends, brothers and sisters, what is your only comfort in life and death that I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful savior Jesus Christ? He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from all the power of the devil. Amen, praise the Lord. Please take a seat.