This writer is so eager to exalt Jesus Christ to his proper place and to put us in our proper place that he wants us to realize we do not just depend on Jesus for the purification of our sins.

We depend on Jesus for our existence.

What makes Jesus Christ uniquely worthy to sit at the right hand of God?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Hebrews 1, 1 to 4,

to examine profound truths about the person and

work of Christ. This sermon was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on April 7, 1996.

Now, verse 3 is a powerful, rich, full verse worthy of about five sermons, I figure, but we're going to do it in one.

And you need to see something about verse three here, though you can't see it in any of your English versions probably.

When the writer to Hebrews wrote verse three, it was one clause.

I'm going to get grammatical on you here for a minute.

So go back to sixth grade, seventh grade.

I learned every stitch of grammar I knew in the seventh grade from Ms. Adams.

So if you didn't have a Ms. Adams, just hang on for a minute.

There's a clause here, and it's got one subject and one verb, and it asserts one thing,

and everything else in there, I could put grammatical labels on, but I won't press my luck here.

Everything else is for shedding light on the one clause.

Now, the subject in the sentence in verse 3 is, He, Christ.

And the verb is sat down.

You can't, it looks like two sentences in your version probably.

It's just one clause.

He sat down at the right hand of the majesty.

Everything else is subordinate and shedding light on that clause.

...