Hebrews Talk 3 (1:1-14)

0:00 Good morning. If I'd known that Michael Holmes is going to dress up in pajamas, you never know what I might have dressed up in, but I'm glad to save you that. We are diving into the letter of Hebrews now this morning, beginning in chapter 1. And just a big thank you to Chris for the very helpful, detailed, imaginative background picture that he's presented over the past two weeks and if you haven't had a chance to look at that or you weren't here for it please do that and big shout out to the guys who look after the recording and the video every week it's such a wonderful provision for all of us now in his background talks Chris pointed out that the people to whom this letter was addressed were a mixed group more or less forming the second generation of those Jews who professed faith in Jesus as the promised Messiah and time had gone by since the dramatic early days when many even of the priests had come to faith in Jesus and in that time the nation had not come to accept Jesus as In fact, official Judaism had hardened in its opposition to the Christian gospel, in its view to believe that a carpenter from Nazareth was God incarnate, was blasphemy and a total denial of their historic God-given faith.

1:43 So pressure was mounting, and the faith of this new generation was being tested. Cracks were appearing, loyalties tested, families divided, minds and hearts pulled apart. Some had already given up meeting with the church. Some, perhaps many, were trying perhaps to find some kind of third way compromise. Some were in danger of giving up the profession of their faith in Jesus as Messiah completely, denying that his death was the sacrifice for sin. And some, in fact, had already done so. Now, we live at a very different time, in a very different context. But I think many of us will resonate with those pressures, with the questions that were being raised.

2:34 So let's see how this letter helped them and can help us face these various challenges. We're going to read Hebrews chapter 1, all of it. I'll not be commenting on all of it in the same amount of detail. So don't be worrying if you see the clock moving on. You're going, we're going to be here till five o'clock. That won't be happening, at least not due to me. So let's read Hebrews chapter one from verse one. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times in various ways.

3:11 But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. whom he appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the universe the son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being sustaining all things by his powerful word and after he had provided purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven so he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs for to which of the angels did god ever say you are my son today i become your father or again i will be his father and he will be my son and again when god brings his firstborn into the world he says let all god's angels worship him and speaking of the angels he said he makes his angel spirits his servants flames of fire but about the sun he says your throne oh god will last forever and ever a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness therefore god your god has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy and he also says in the beginning lord you led the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands they will perish but you remain they will wear out like a garment you will rule them up like a robe like a garment they will be changed but you remain the same and your years will never end and to which of the angels did god ever say sit at my right hand until i make your enemies a footstool for your feet are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. Now it's helpful to notice from the beginning that the writer doesn't start by criticizing those who are wavering, those who have questions, or by exhorting them to deeper commitment. He is much too pastorly wise to do that.

5:33 The challenges that they were facing were real and keenly felt. And he well understood their confusion and pain. So what he does instead, he doesn't even draw attention to himself or to them. He doesn't mention his own name. What he does is to go directly to the question that lay at the heart of it all. Who is Jesus? Was he, is he really the Son of God? That's the fundamental issue, both for them and for us.

6:23 Everything else depends on how we answer this question. Important other questions like how we should live, how we can be the church in this culture, questions about social justice, how to manage cultural generational difference, all the other questions that we can talk about, they are all secondary to this. Who is Jesus? if he is who he claimed to be if he is who Peter, John, Paul and the other first Christian apostles claimed he was son of God risen from the dead then we would be foolish in the extreme not to trust him and listen to him and obey him where he leads us even to be prepared to sacrifice anything for him and work out the challenges as we go along but if he isn't if he's a fake if he's an imposter then to trust him listen to him obey him would not only be foolish but it would be a needless waste of this life and potentially disastrous for the next because we would be guilty of worshiping a man as God.

7:53 And that's why, for example, John in his first letter asked this question, who is the person who overcomes the world? Thinking of the culture around us with all the pressures and challenges and questions and different approaches and all the different values and what they the different theory who who is it that's going to overcome that and stand in all of that and he answers the question this way only the one that believes that jesus is the son of god it's that important vibrant living faith in jesus as the son of god means that his is the voice we listen to. Even when other voices, including the voices of our own instincts and desires, are pulling us in different directions. So the focus of the start of this letter is to build their faith and ours in Jesus as the Son of God. And that focus sets Christianity apart from all other religions. It sets it apart from official Judaism. Rabbi Smuley Boutich in his book Judaism for Everyone writes, For Jews, the belief that God can be human is the ultimate heresy.

9:32 God can never be visible in human form. He continues, Tell the Jew that Jesus was God and you will probably receive silence in response. The Jew is not prepared to debate this assertion. Believe what you want, you will be told. But we Jews could never deify a man. But it also sets Christianity apart from other religions. The Buddha made no great claims for himself. He saw himself as simply a teacher and a preacher.

10:01 In Islam, Muhammad is a prophet. They believe he's the final prophet, but still just a prophet. In the Baha'i religion, they add one more, teaching that all the great leaders, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, their own Baha'u'llah, are divine messengers for an evolving humanity, each building on the one before. But Hebrews is very clear. Jesus is not simply another prophet. He is God's son. and the heart the essence of the christian gospel is not the announcement of some new philosophy of life some new morality even a new religion it is the announcement of the identity of jesus of nazareth as the son of god and the life-changing implications of his death and resurrection everything centers on Jesus. So faced with the confusion, the questions, the pressure, this is where he starts.

11:17 And he begins by telling them that God has spoken. He's not a silent God. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets. Not simply through prophets, but through the prophets. That is the Jewish prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, and so on. The prophets through whom the scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, were given. Our writer is writing as a Jew who has become a Christian. He stands with his fellow nation.

11:58 Our ancestors noticed. God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets. And here Christianity and Judaism stand together. Because Christians believe that the Old Testament is the inspired word of God. Just as the Jews do. Christians believe in the same God. The God who has spoken in the past through the prophets at various times and in various ways. That is, God didn't say everything at once.

12:36 He said things in stages, each one incomplete in itself, but each one building on the ones that came before, filling out the picture of the character of God, of his plans for the world, and in particular, his promise to bring into the world his Messiah. So at various times, in a kind of piecemeal, building up the picture way. And in addition, he used a variety of methods, including, for example, dramatic interventions within the natural world, as with Noah and Moses and Elijah, or through the beautifully artistic symbolism of the tabernacle and the temple, or through specific words and messages such as the words of the law, through poetry, through detailed vision, God has spoken. Now that was in the past, he says. What about now? Well, in these last days, God has spoken again. Now, we might have expected that as a Christian, the author would have said, in the past, God spoke through the prophets, but now Jesus has spoken through the apostles. And of course, that would have been true, but he doesn't say it.

14:02 What he says is that in these last days, God has spoken. The same God, the same God who spoke through the prophets, has spoken again. Jew and Christians believe in the same Bible, the same Old Testament. They believe in the same God. But now comes the massive contrast. In the past, God spoke through the prophets in these last days. Literally, at the end of these days. A phrase that would have great resonance for the Jews because it referred to the age of Messiah.

14:45 At the end of these days, the same God has spoken, but not through prophets this time. He has spoken in some. Now, the Greek phrase is often translated as by his son or through his son. But what it actually says is this, that God has spoken in some, which sounds awkward in English, but the difference matters because this time it is not a matter of God communicating a message through human agency. God has spoken in some. In the one who is the eternal word that we read about over the Christmas period in John. The one who was with God at the very beginning, who was God, the ones for whom the universe came into being, the word who became flesh and lived among us in history, God incarnate, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. This is communication at an entirely different and vastly superior level.

16:04 Jesus is not just another in the long line of prophets. He has not just come to give us words. He is the word incarnate among us. The communication then is no longer piecemeal and progressive. It is full and final because the promise is spoken by God to our ancestors down through the years, the prophets are now fulfilled in him. He has come. No more waiting for any other message. And we've got to feel the excitement of this.

16:44 It's expressed, for example, by Andrew in John 1. We have found the one. Spoken up in the prophets. We've found him. He's here. He's right here now in history. The excitement of it. It's the turning point in human history.

17:01 And in some, God has said all that he wanted to say. We don't have to wait for anybody else to come along. Unless, of course, it is the return of Jesus himself. Because Jesus is God's final word to the world. The word is not a series of messages only. the word is a person. The person who stands behind the entire universe. You see when we use words they are in a sense part of us but they aren't us.

17:44 But this word is different. This is God in human form. The word become flesh. Communication at a different level. So what does this son mean? Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that God has declared Jesus to be the son of God by the resurrection from the dead. But what does it mean? What do we mean when we say that we believe Jesus is the son of God?

18:19 So the writer proceeds to make six positive statements about the deity of Jesus, about the Son leading up to the climax, at the end of verse 3, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. These are, if you like, the core facts of our Christian faith. Facts that are often either denied or obscured. And all the theological debates and controversies within the church, these facts did not emerge from some progressive school of theology in the first century. These are the facts about the identity of Jesus. So wisely, our writer takes us back to the facts. In the midst of all the confusion and pressure, this is what you need to know about Jesus, about the Son of God. Number one, there's six of them.

19:33 I'm going to sort of skip through this. These are the highlights. You can fill in all the complexities. Number one, the sum is the goal of history. We read that God appointed him heir of all things. Often people will ask, is history going anywhere? In the West, the official view in the academic world is that there is no divine purpose and therefore it isn't going anywhere. one day the world that we know will burn up, crushed by the powers of a universe that doesn't even know we exist.

20:15 And before that happens, well, some still cling on to various dreams, such as the Marxist dream that history is inevitably moving towards a workers' utopia on earth. That has largely been replaced by other dreams, for example, the dreams of Yuval Harari and Elon Musk, that technology holds the keys at least to solving all our problems, including the problem of death itself, so that we are going to end up in a technology-led utopia in which humans become trans-humans. But I suspect for most of us, for most people anyway, in the culture around us, history just seems as if it's just a long going round in circles. One empire rises, another falls, and there's no rhyme nor reason to any of it. We just muddle along best we can. Hebrews tells us that God has appointed his son as the heir of all things. He inherits everything. He is history's ultimate goal.

21:17 History is headed somewhere, not to the annihilation of humanity by blind, unconscious forces of nature, but to the climax of the coming of the Son of God, to the creation of a new heaven and earth. So when we say that Jesus is the Son of God, this is what we're saying about him. He's the goal of history. Number two, he's the creator of the universe. Not only does he stand at the end of history, he stood at its beginning. The universe was made through him, Which means, of course, he is, in that sense, outside of creation. He didn't emerge from it like the Greek gods are supposed to have. He's outside of it.

22:03 He created everything. How different this is. The fact that there is a personal creator behind this universe from the narrative that is constantly being pushed out of the hopeless narrative of secular materialism. Apparently there's a new movie which I've got to see because it's about birds or a particular bird. And some of you will know I'm really interested in bird watching and bird photography. It's called H is for Hawk. And it's a moving tale of a woman trying to make sense of her grief at the loss of her father. And turning to nature in the form of a goshawk.

22:46 And if you don't know what a goshawk looks like, do look it up. It's a dramatic-looking bird of prey. So if you turn to this goshawk in the attempt to find meaning, but as even the newspapers you're pointing out this week, the approach is ultimately futile, hopeless, if we are simply the product of causes which didn't have us in mind, That we are simply organized mud, as one scientist has recently written. But according to the Bible, we are the results of the intervention of the personal creator, the Son of God. Number three, the Son is the perfect expression of God. He's the radiance and outshining of God's glory. It's not an easy idea to grasp.

23:51 When we think of glory, we maybe think of the glory of a sunset at Port Stewart, you know, when you can actually see the sun. And it's always best when there are a few clouds in the sky because it picks up the color and you have some of these glorious suns. That's what we call, oh, such a glorious sunset. We think of that. we could maybe refer to a piece of music as glorious or a building like Westminster Abbey in London as the glory of the city of London. God is glorious. And the sun is the outshining of the glory of God. He doesn't simply reflect the glory of God in the way that the moon reflects the light of the sun he is the sun he is the light he is himself the

24:43 radiance of god we see it in his character in his works the outshining of god's glory as john puts it the word became flesh made his dwelling among us we have seen his glory the glory of the one and only he came from the Father full of grace and truth. Number four. You hang it in there? He is also the exact representation of his being. Because the Son shares the exact nature of God, he is the exact representation of who God is. Do you remember Jesus was asked by his disciples once, show us the Father? And he replied, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. Christians do not believe in two gods or even three gods.

25:37 Like the Jews, we believe that God is one. But God is complex. He's not some great monolithic being. We humans are complex enough in ourselves. God is no less complex than we are. He's much more complex. God, from the first page of the Bible to the last, is presented as a fellowship. Number five, the sun holds the universe together.

26:12 So if you're asking, what is it that keeps our universe from disintegrating? It isn't gravity. It's the sun. He holds everything together by his powerful word, or as Paul expresses it in Colossians, in him all things hold together. And number six, he is the world's redeemer. He provided purification for sins. Notice not simply our sins, as some translations have put it. It's the purification for sins.

26:52 That is the entire problem of sin. How did he do that? Through laying down his life as the supreme once for all sacrifice for sin. And that, as with all these other great statements, sets Christianity apart. Because on the cross, Jesus, the Son of God, achieved what no other religious leader and what no other religion can offer, the solution to human sin and guilt, not by trying to explain it away, but by giving his life to provide a way through which we can be forgiven, cleansed and clear of sin. It's an amazing message and the core of the message is just astounding that the one who created the universe and he sustains it and he inherits all things and for whom and by whom and through whom it was all made,

28:10 entered his creation in order to die so that he could put right what sin put wrong. And so we come to the climax. He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. That is, of course, after he provided purification for sins, after his death, Jesus rose again, ascended into heaven, and sat down. It's a metaphor expressing that the work's done. He's fully accomplished the task that he set out to achieve. And he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. That is at the position of supreme authority.

29:01 He is heaven's commander in chief. And the conclusion then comes in verse 4. Jesus, son of God, is therefore superior to the angels. Not only because by right he has always had a name that is superior to theirs. but now also because of his achievement on the cross and of where he now sits on the throne of the universe. This is what we mean when we say that Jesus is the Son of God. And the remainder of the chapter, the writer sets out some supporting evidence. Now, if he had been writing for pagans or agnostics or even atheists, he might well have taken a different tactic.

29:58 He would have focused on the apostles' witness to Jesus and especially the evidence of the resurrection. But he's not writing, first and foremost, to agnostics and pagans, ancient and modern. That wasn't his primary audience. He was writing to help Christian Jews with the questions they were struggling with under pressure from official Judaism that didn't accept the witness of the Christian apostles, but they did accept, or at least claim to accept, the witness of the Old Testament. So what the writer does now is he sets out to support his case from the Old Testament scriptures. and he does it in particular by focusing on the difference the Old Testament makes between Messiah and the angels. Now my time will be done in four minutes and I have no intention of even attempting to go through all of these references. There are six of them but that's for you to do.

31:05 This is fun. This is great. You have fun. All I'm going to do in a very simple way is summarize it. Why this focus on angels, you may ask? Well, according to the Old Testament, angels played a major role in communicating God's message to the forefathers. For example, Stephen in his speech in Acts chapter 7 reminds the Sanhedrin that their law was given to them by God through the agency of angels. That's how it actually worked practically.

31:38 So to them, angels were majestic heavenly beings. Jesus was just a carpenter from Nazareth, a nobody, a fake, a fraud. So the writer has two tasks. Number one, to demonstrate that the Messiah, as described in their scriptures, is vastly superior to angels. that he is in fact deity and number two that Jesus is that Messiah so let me summarize it the Messiah according to the Old Testament is superior to angels there are occasions in the Old Testament for example in the book of Job where angels are referred to as sons of God and some people have pointed out there you are you see he's no different but the author cuts through all of this and i i think is brilliant he just goes straight for it with a series of questions are you ready here we go right through the chapter in one minute to which of the angels did god ever say you are my son none to which of the angels did god ever say today i have forgotten you? None.

32:51 To which of the angels did he ever say, your throne is forever and ever? None. To which of the angels did he ever say, you led the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the works of your hands? None. To which of the angels did God ever say, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? None. But he said all of those things to Messiah. He didn't say any of those things to angels.

33:19 Messiah from angels he's in a totally different category from angels from mortal kings or rulers even king david for he is the son of god and all six of these old testament quotations demonstrate in one way or another the deity of messiah but then you have a question i know you do because my wife asked me the same question in the car this morning. I'm really looking forward to this and what you're going to say about angels. Ooh. And when I came into church and I was coming down the stairs, one of the elders, and I'll tell you who it is, said to me, I'm really looking forward to what you're going to say about angels today. Okay, right. Now, I understand the interest. And in fact, the author does tell us something very significant because it ends, the chapter ends with a question.

34:18 And it's the only question that gets the answer yes. And the question is, are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? And the answer to that one is yes. They are ministering spirits sent to serve. They are God's civil service. And oh, you're going, oh I just want to know more I mean do we see angels today have you met one and then we get books about people who claim to have seen angels and there's all kinds of stuff and you know what if you're not careful you will end up exactly opposite what Hebrews want to say and Paul warns the folks of Colossians who said listen be very very careful there are people actually have gone as far as to worship angels and they take their stand on things they claim to have seen and visions and dreams and all of this. He said, but the problem with that is that those people end up, this is his term, not mine, disconnected from the head who is Jesus.

35:30 Now, knock yourselves out, find out all you want about angels, but please do not miss the point of this chapter, which is to say Jesus is vastly superior to angels. So if you're going to spend 10 minutes finding out about angels, spend 1,000 finding out about Jesus. Why would you spend your time on the lesser thing if you haven't got the bigger thing sorted? This is the point of the chapter. Don't get sidetracked. The focus is on Jesus. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the sheer privilege of letting these great statements wash around their minds.

36:22 And I pray we'll allow them to do that. All of us face questions, confusion. We wonder about where life is going. sometimes we feel hurt we don't understand the things that are happening to us help us just to step out of that for a moment and find this solid rock on which we can stand who is Jesus himself and I pray for those who are sick at the moment and are struggling with significant disability and bad news those who are struggling in their jobs finding it hard to make ends meet those who are facing relational disaster those where families are split and all the other things that cause us such great heartache and confuse our minds for all of us, Lord, may we just come back here

37:41 to the solid rock of who Jesus is. He's the Son of God. Not us. Not in that same sense. and help us to renew our confidence in him that whatever is thrown against us in this life, we can build our lives on this foundation. As Peter put it, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. So encourage us and help us and help us to grow in our understanding. Use your word in all our lives, we pray in Jesus' name.

38:30 Amen.