Hebrews chapter 1. Let me read the first full chapter
again and then we're going to talk specifically about, well, we'll talk about it. Long
ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers
by the prophets. But in these last days, he has
spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all
things, through whom also he created the world. He is the
radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his
nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After
making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand
of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels
as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
For to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son,
today I have begotten you? Or again, I will be to him a
father and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he brings
the firstborn into the world, he says, let all God's angels
worship him. of the angels, he says, he makes
his angels' winds and ministers a flame of fire. But of the sun,
he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter
of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved
righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, your God, therefore,
God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond
your companions. And the Lord, you, Lord, laid
the foundations of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens
are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain.
They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe. You will roll them
up like a garment. They will be changed. But you
are the same, and your years will have no end. And to which
of the angels has he ever said, Sit at my right hand until I
make your enemies a footstool under your feet? Are they not
all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of
those who are to inherit salvation? Now last week I gave an introduction
to this letter and we spoke briefly about the preeminence of Christ,
about the fact that he was appointed the heir of all things and through
whom he is the agent of creation. We are not just seeing this here
in the letter to the Hebrews, we also see it in the letter
to the Colossians, we also see it in John's gospel and many
other places throughout scripture and for time tonight we won't
go through all of those but we will revisit them in the weeks
to come. I want to walk through tonight
showing that the prologue here, that the introduction to this
first chapter, establishes Christ as God Himself. When we see, as we saw last week,
long ago at many times in many ways, God spoke to our fathers
by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us
by His Son. It could make us think, well,
just as the prophets spoke the Word of God, so the Son may speak
the Word of God as well. It doesn't necessarily mean that
the Son is God. And that's why the writer here,
Paul, continues that he appointed him the heir of all things, that
he is preeminent, he is the firstborn, he owns all that God owns. But
still that may not even be sufficient for some people to agree that
Jesus Christ is, in his person, eternally God. So then he says,
through whom he also created the world. That Jesus is the
agent through whom God the Father created the world. And we know
that God created the world so that there's no secondary cause
of the cosmos except that God created it. And here we see that
Jesus is the creator so therefore, in every logical sense, Grammatically,
Jesus is God. But just in case that wasn't
enough for us, we see in verse 3, He is the radiance of the
glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. And He upholds
the universe by the word of His power. After making purifications
for sins, He sat down at the right hand of majesty, having
become as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited
is more excellent than theirs. There's something I want to bring
to our attention tonight, and one of those things is that we
see here in this introduction two persons working. We see God the Father, and we
see God the Son. And we will also see that throughout
the remainder of chapter 1, God the Father speaking concerning
the Son. So when you have a person, someone
with a personality, has a voice, someone with a personhood, who
is a thinking, willed being, and we see them being addressed,
we know that God is not speaking in some figurative way, He's
not speaking in some metaphysical way, it's just not a figure of
speech, but He's speaking of Jesus the Son, who is a real
person, like God the Father is a has a personality, is a person. We understand the Trinity as
that God is one being in three persons, revealed in three persons. Each of those persons are equally
God, yet neither of those persons are the other at any time. And
as God is eternal and immutable and everything, all the attributes
that He has, all the prerogatives that are His, so therefore each
person of the Trinity are equally God in all of those ways. And
if you look here, you see that there is a difference. in creation
or anything that has been created and the person of Jesus Christ
who yes came into the world the firstborn into the world like
he says in verse six but this is the incarnation of Jesus the
eternal son Jesus the eternal God who is son He's different. He is the one who created all
things. He is not a created being in himself. So if he were, then
he could not be God. And this text really expounds
upon that. Not only do we see that God the
Son is the creator of the world, but in verse 3, let's focus here
for a moment as we move through this text and we'll get through
the end of the chapter here tonight, and we'll revisit it again next
week. But what does it mean to be the
radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of His nature?
Well, it seems to be obvious, especially as we continue reading
the book, if we know the other sections of Scripture, we know
that God, that Jesus declares to be God. It was the very thing
that caused Him to be but caused the spiritual leaders and the
Pharisees to want to put him to death. It was the very thing
that gave them fuel to arrest him and kill him. He is the exact
imprint of his nature. What this says is that as Jesus
is the radiance, he is the exact imprint of the nature of God,
that this present reality of Jesus is a continual state. So
that as Jesus is and always has been, eternally, as God is, God
is eternal. Therefore, the son who is God
is also eternal, because if something is the exact radiance and imprint
of the nature of God and yet had a beginning, he cannot have
the imprint, the nature of God, the essence of God, the reality
of God. As John would say, we have seen
the fullness of all that God ever could be and ever could
be revealed. That is glory in the person of
Jesus Christ forever and ever. Amen. So that means what? That means Jesus Christ, the
Son, from the beginning. That's why those words are there,
in the beginning and long ago. Because when there became something,
the first thing that was created, Jesus was. The Word was with
God. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became
flesh. You might think that we're beating
a dead horse and everybody here that's listening and everybody
out there that's listening is saying we know this, but we need
to arrest it in our hearts to such a degree to understand the
sovereignty and the supremacy of Jesus Christ so that we look
at the gospel in a clear way as the instrument of salvation,
as the hope of the believer, as the power of God and so forth. So what does that mean for us?
Today in our culture, if I can relate this to our present day
circumstances, in a way of application, we are in a grave state of fear,
panic, frustration, aggravation, bewilderment, uncertainty, etc. But as we'll see as we get through
this little message tonight, that God is not changeable. God
does not change. His purposes do not change. So
in that way, we know that many people are looking to God. You see, the lost world, and
the evangelical world, and the cult world, and the world religion
world, and the atheist world, and all the rest of the world,
they're crying out to whatever sense of deity, or non-deity,
or thoughts, or good spirits, or good feelings that they can
muster in their mind to try to find the answer to the dilemma
that we're in. If we want to know who God is,
and if we want to know that He's with us, then we need to recognize
that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God the Son, eternally as
God, is exactly, perfectly, right now, this very moment, representing
God. He is God, and He is with us. And He is distinct from all creation. He upholds the cosmos. He upholds all of creation. So
Jesus doesn't uphold Himself. He is the Creator who created
all things, so He upholds all of creation by the Word of His
power. Now, of course, I expounded upon
this a little bit last week, but here let us be reminded,
beloved, that Jesus Christ is holding the molecules of the
universe intact. He is holding everything that
exists by His power, by the pleasure of His will, so that everything,
the seen and the unseen, cannot escape His rule. So, COVID-19,
the disease that you get from the coronavirus, the dilemma,
the disaster, the despair, the destruction that comes throughout
all of these things, Christ upholds it all. The scripture says that
Christ also upholds the governing authorities. So that what they
are doing this present time, whether good or bad, whether
successful or ridiculous, Christ is upholding it. He is purposed
it. He is causing it. And if we want
to get it a little more specific, we can see over in chapter 2,
we can see in verses 5, 6, and 7 that all things in verse 8
are subject to Him and nothing is outside of the control of
Jesus Christ. He is God. He is God. But He is distinct from creation
because He controls all things. He owns all things. He is above
all things. So that means that no other thing,
no other person, no other being, no other creature at all ever
could ever be God. So that any created thing could
never be God, so God is the creator of all things. Jesus Christ is
the creator God. He is supreme. He is sovereign. And this is
review from last week, but we saw last week that not only is
He sovereign over all things and in control of all things,
more importantly, He is absolutely the ruler of salvation and redemption. We need to lose sight of the
idea that redemption means an easy life. We need to lose sight
of the idea that redemption means healing in the body. That's nothing
to do with it. The healing of the body in this
world is by the pleasure of God as He decrees. Most people will
die. All people, if He tarries, will
die. It is the point of sin. It is the point of righteousness.
It is the point of justice. Yet we who die in Christ live. But I don't believe it is the
fear of death that causes most people to be frustrated and fearful
in times like these. I believe it is the fear of the
loss of control. It is the fear of the laws of
being able to set our table the way we want it, to have things
the way we think it should be, and to set our minds apart from
our order and just go about our day. We need to recognize that
what we see as chaos, God has divinely orchestrated. And I
will give you a little bit of thoughts. This section of scripture,
was the catalyst that God used years ago to bring me out of
a deep and deathly depression. And as I've been looking at it
and reading it, I find myself in a different frame of mind
than that day, and in that moment of time, and in that season of
my life, but I see something that's very clear. And that is,
there is nothing different about this text than there was 15 years
ago, than there was 1500 years ago, than there was before the
foundations of the world that was true of Christ before there
ever was anything. So when it teaches me that Christ,
who is God, who created the world, came into the world and in His
incarnation He made purification for sins, that means He finished
the work of redemption and that there is nothing that you or
I can do whatsoever with our lives in any sense or any action
or any will or any motivation. that could ever cause us to stand
before God in any way, either now, or at glory, or at the judgment
seat, that could make any difference whatsoever, because there is
nothing that we can bring that Christ has not already given.
Nothing. He's made purifications for sin.
He has sat down. He has finished the work and
he is at the right hand of the majesty on high because he is
the God of creation, which makes him superior to all the angels
because he is the eternal son who is God. Nothing else can take this role.
Nothing else can take this work. Jesus is greater than the greatest
of all created beings, angels. For if he were just another creation,
he would just be like them. And that's a lot of cults who
would say that Jesus is just an angel who did something else.
Jesus, as the Latter-day Saints would say, was a man and he became
a God. Jesus, like some of the world
religions today, is just a prophet. He teaches of God. He just speaks
for God. No, he is God speaking. He is God speaking. And if this
introduction, if these first four verses aren't enough to
satisfy our souls, then we can go on and see verse 5 and verse
6 and verse 8 and verse 10 and verse 13 where Paul says, to
which of the angels did God ever say? And again, when he brings
the firstborn into the world, he says, but of the Son, he says,
And to which of the angels has he ever said? So there are some
things that God the Father has said. God the Father, one of
the persons of the Trinity, is saying, and here's the question,
for which of the angels, verse 5, did God ever say, you are
my son and today I have begotten you? Which of the angels, which
created being has God ever said to, you are the essence of me,
you are I am? None, but he said it to Jesus. He said it to Jesus at his baptism. He said it throughout the narrative
in the history of the Gospels. We see. Or again, Paul says,
I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me. And
again, verse 6, when he brings the firstborn into the world,
what does he tell the angels to do in the gospel accounts
concerning Jesus Christ? This infant who created the body
through which he came into the world, the womb, the woman through
which he came into the world, the creator of God of all things,
into this world, Like the creation, fully and truly man, but also
eternally truly and fully, without fail and never separating himself
from himself, He is God. What it must have been like to
see the Creator in the trough of an animal. But what did God
say to those angels? He says, let all God's angels
worship this child. We see the same thing over in
Revelation in 4 and 5 where everyone, all creation worships Jesus as
God. Here is this child, this man
who is God. Let all of God's angels worship
Him. But of the angels, he says, look at verse seven of the angels. He says he makes his angels winds
and his ministers a flame of fire. But the son, he says, your
throne, O God, is forever and ever. So here we have Jesus being
worshiped as God in verse six and then being called God in
verse eight by God, the father. In Exodus chapter 20, somewhere
around verse 4, 5, or 6, we see the commandment that you should
have no other gods. You should not worship them,
you should not bow down to them, you should not feed them, you
should not clothe them, you should not adore them, you should not
serve them, you should not worship anything because worship belongs
to God and to God alone. So here is God the Father speaking
through Moses, the prophet. And now He's saying, of His Son,
worship Him, angels. Worship Him, creation. Why would
God, who said no one can worship anything but Him, tell you to
worship His Son? Because Jesus is God. Let the angels worship Him. Jesus
is God who speaks. Jesus is God who came. Jesus
is the creator of the cosmos. Do you understand? Remember that
God the Son created the world so that He could enter into it,
so that He could redeem His people, so that we would have security
and assurance eternally in His work, in His promises, in His
power. And He says the angels, they
do what He tells them to do. They're just winds. They're just
a flame of fire. They're just messengers. Jesus
is not the messenger. The messengers worship Jesus,
who is God. If that's not enough, as we've
already seen in verse 8, the scripture here quoting Psalm
102, starting in probably around verse 24-25, it says, Your throne,
O God, is forever and ever. Your throne. Actually, this isn't
Psalm 102. I forgot where this was here.
Hold on. I've lost my... Psalm 45. Psalm 102 is up in
verse 10. Psalm 45. Your throne, O God,
is forever and ever. The scepter of righteousness
is the scepter of your kingdom. You have love of righteousness
and hate and wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has
anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. Here is God the Father speaking
through the psalmist that says, according to the Son, you, Oh
God, your throne is forever and ever. So the father is saying
of the son, you are the eternal God. Not only that, but he expounds,
and I'll talk about this more next week, the righteousness
of Jesus Christ, the display of what the law, the true, what
the shadow of the law of God is supposed to show, the reality
and the trueness and the fulfillment of all things concerning redemption,
And he goes on to say, therefore, God, therefore, God, the son,
your God, the father has anointed you. And verse 10, this is Psalm
102. You, Lord. You, Lord. laid the foundation of the earth
in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They,
that which you have created, will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a
garment, like a robe you'll roll them up, like a garment they
will be changed, but you are the same and your years will
have no end." This eternal essence of God, that which is always
known of God, is true of the Son, is true of Jesus the Christ. And where God has called him
the God over in Psalm 45, and now chapter 1 verses 8 and 9,
in verse 10, he calls him Lord. He calls him Lord. He calls him
Lord. The Lord of old. You, Lord, have
laid the foundation of the earth. The heaven is the work of your
hands. All that you have made will perish, for you are not
one that has been made. You are the one that lasts forever. You will always remain the same. God the Father calls God the
Son, Lord. Yahweh. This is God being called
God by God. The Trinity, people would like
to argue, is not a term found in the Bible. We don't have to
have a term to have the teaching. This amazing and glorious picture
here, sometimes it appears to a lot of people as just some
theology lesson. And I've got time tonight, so
let me deal with the righteousness of Christ. Here is Christ. who is sent by the Father as
God into humanity as a man. And everything that he's come
to do is to uphold the righteousness of God. The righteousness of
God that is shadowed by the prophets and the law, but is made clear
and manifest clearly through Jesus Christ, whom God puts forward
to be propitiation. God the Father sends God the
Son into the world because it is the decree and the will of
God. So that through all things, He is seen as the supreme and
preeminent creator of all things and He is not just the creator
of the world, He's the creator of His people and He's the creator
of the covenant and the fulfillment of that covenant that saves them. So as this world is seen, We
have to ask ourselves, what is truly righteous in the world?
Nothing. The greatest of righteous works
are filthy before the eyes of God. And that's not just judicially,
that's in a reality. There is no goodness of man.
Even in times like this where we serve each other, that's awesome. It is just our duty. Yet it is not righteous. But
Christ in the world is the righteousness of God and He declares righteousness
for His people in His death so that God can forbear their sins
and save them and redeem them because He finished the work
of purification for sins. And then it also declares and
decrees the righteousness of God against the wickedness of
the world of which all people except the elect will be held
to judgment And we think that evil in the world includes things
like calamity and flood and famine and disease like COVID or coronavirus. The virus isn't evil. The virus
is good. The virus is what God has sent
to do His bidding. The virus is what God has created
by the magnificence of His power. Jesus Christ, the very one who
laid His life down for His sheep, sends the gift of disease that
we might rejoice in it. That is the answer of the church.
As I posted earlier, and I've read so much stuff over the last
few weeks that it's just boggled my mind, it's not healthy for
me, I need to stay away from all of the social aspect of people's
opinions. Everyone is frightened. Everyone
is disturbed, everyone is confused, and everybody's grabbing for
straws. Some Christians are calling for healing, some Christians
are commanding the devil, some Christians, all this foolishness
and this silliness and this just, I don't want to say stupid, but
that's what it is, it's just stupid ignorance. When we take the Scripture and
the Word of God and we have all these practices, But if people
can't get the gospel right with the word of God, how are they
going to get all this other stuff? Where's the applied theology?
Where's the pastoral care in times like this? This is the
pastoral care in times like this, that Jesus Christ is superior
to all things and by his word of his power, he upholds the
universe. and that at His pleasure He has
brought a pandemic to the world, that He might be glorified in
it, that He might be worshipped in it, and that we might give
thanks unto Him for the great gift of all things that come
for Him. And I know that it's hard because
we don't have the answer. But we as Americans are always
looking for the answer. We want the checklist. We want
the to-do list. We want all of the things in
order. We want the right tools. We want the right preparation.
We want the right amount of toilet paper in the cabinet. But we
cannot have that and have Christ. We cannot trust in Him and know
where we're going. Nowhere in the Scripture, as
we'll see in this letter itself, did any of the people of God
who He had elected to snatch out of darkness to reveal Himself
to them, none of them knew where they were going. None of them
knew how they were going to get there. None of them knew if they
were going to survive. None of them had any idea or
any inclination whatsoever of any tangible reality of any promise
of God that they could hold in their hands and show to their
children and say, see, touch it, feel it, smell it, eat it,
taste it, you've got it, just we've got to get there. See?
No, they could not see what they were promised, but they could
see the promised one. by the divine work of God the
Spirit, who gave them hope in the hardest times of their lives.
So for me, this is revival. Not that people are going to
look to God and try to find Him, but that God's people are going
to thank Him for it every single day. That is my medicine for
the soul of the church of Jesus Christ, because that is the truth. that is found even in this first
chapter here. The Lord God, Jesus Christ, the
King of all things, the preeminent one of all the cosmos, laid everything
down and everything is the work of His hands. And all of His
righteousness and this temporary blessing of pandemics and fear,
and all of it, is just a small taste of what true judgment looks
like. But for the church, there is
no condemnation in Jesus Christ. And if God kills me through a
virus, praise to His name, glory, hallelujah, that He gave me Christ,
what shall I fear? What shall I fear? But the very
one that controls all things sits at the right hand of power.
What shall I fear? We need to pay attention. We need to pay attention to what
the scripture is saying concerning Jesus Christ. And beloved, I
will say this as a way of shaping our hearts when we feel compelled
to dig into facts or news or theories or economics or statistics
or all of these other things which I do. We need to put our
eyes on what is good for our brothers and sisters because
that is where we are to be. This very letter will tell us
to go and to admonish, exhort and encourage
one another on to work, on to love and to service to one another. That's what the word good deeds
means there. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus
Christ, we have full confidence to enter into the holy places.
And so we draw near with a true heart, full of assurance, of
faith. Our conscience is clean, our
bodies are clean, because the Spirit of God has given us that
hope. So we hold fast without wavering to that hope, for He
who promised is faithful. Beloved, the best thing we could
do as the believing ones is to stay focused on each other's
needs through the scripture and each other's physical needs through
this. The worst thing we could do is to become therapeutic and
to give counsel and to give advice. The worst thing we could ever
do is to make our day about what are we going to do next. You
know what we're going to do next? We're going to do whatever God has
ordained us to do next. We're going to do whatever. If
God wants to take it all away from us, he takes it all away.
What will remain? The Lord Jesus Christ. And if
we are his children and we want to love him, then we will focus
our efforts on one another. Intimacy is the reality of the
cross. for the Christians in this world.
It's not about ministries, it's not about pulpits, it's not about
things that people can see and encouragement in the world's
way, but it's about the power of God to show us that which
we cannot apprehend apart from Him. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing can turn the heart of
God from His people. I'm tired of the blasphemous
twisting of Scripture about if the country would turn. The country's
going to turn where God wants it to turn. And one day it's
going to turn to ash. That's what the country's going
to turn to. But the true sheep of Christ are going to stand
firm in the gospel of free and sovereign grace. And Lord, help
me. If everything comes undone, and
we have to be persecuted for our faith. Let it be for the
gospel we preach and not the practices of the pettiness of
our assemblies and everything else that we do. God, help us
to not make much of chairs and building space than we do about
truth and preaching and intimacy and ministry to one another.
Burn the buildings down, God, and then let us be the true church.
Burn them down. The churches of Satan would build
new synagogues, have campaigns, raise money in a quick minute.
The church of Jesus Christ can continue in the path. We're not
there. That's not being asked of us.
What's being asked of us is to have some sense, to listen. And
the yeah, buts are getting worse. What's worse? What's worse? Paul
says in Hebrews, what's worse than just heresy and evil and
falsehood is when someone knows the gospel and preaches something
else. When someone says it is about
Christ. Yeah, but you don't know. Be quiet, beloved. That's the
point. Rebuke one another. Quiet your
soul. Rest in the sufficiency of Jesus
Christ. This is where we are to be. For
He is the God of all things, and we are not. There is no other.
We aren't the answer. He's the answer. Pray. Read the Word. You know how hard
it is to read the Word? I mean, I went from teaching
and instructing and meeting five, six days a week to, you know,
a couple of hours. It's impossible. It's impossible
because I can't, for some reason, just get the Word in myself if
I can't get it out to somebody else. So I get stuck and I get
stale and there's nothing to do. And I just, it's the way
that I've been made and my makeup and my personality and the giftedness
that God has given me. It's hard to just pretend That
everybody's not apart. But it is God's sovereign will. For this moment. And so we need
to pay close attention. We need to pay close attention.
Look at verse one of chapter two. We need to pay close attention.
Much more attention to what we've heard. Lest we drift away from. Two implications of that statement.
First is we need to be careful not to drift away from the gospel
as our hope in the salvific way. This is where he's going to go
for the Jews to show them that Judaism is moot. It's a curse. But for us who aren't drifting
outside to another hope, Then why is, if our hope is in the
gospel eternally by the divine power of Christ, is our hope
not in the gospel circumstantially by the divine power of Christ?
Is He not the King? Is He not the One who gives us
gifts by the Holy Spirit according to His will? What gift do you
have? What gift has God given you for
the sake of the body? Exercise that gift! Be intimate,
be intentional, because Christ has set us free. Christ has set
us free from the law. There's nothing we must do so
that we might stand righteous before Him, because He's done
it all. But there's one thing He has commanded of us, to love
one another in our service. So just as we would not be together
for the sake of each other's health and the health of our
community as good citizens, let us be together spiritually and
more focused now than we've ever been for the sake of the health
of each other spiritually. It's as important. Paul would
tell Timothy, physical fitness is of some value, but spiritual
fitness is of all value. All value. It is better you are
diseased with your legs not working than it is for you to be healthy
and your spirit be empty. Be full, beloved. Be full. May God guide us to his word
that we might have more to give than the world has offered. And
may he protect me from this stupid brain that sits inside the skull.
By the mercy of Christ, who set us all before the Father righteous. May His Word have effect in our
hearts. Let's pray. Father, there is just nothing. I can't put together the words that help us to not fear at the
cost of faith. Lord, remind us that we indeed
must have fear and must have doubt so that faith is obvious. And that faith, Father, like
your word shows us, is not the absence of fear and doubt, but
in the presence of those things, faith is greater. Because we
look to Christ, who is greater. We look to the cross, which is
greater. We look to the promises that
you've made through Christ, which is greater. We look to that which
is unseen, not to that which we can see. So, Father, guide
us in that way. Lord, provide for our needs.
Provide for our hearts and minds. Provide for our bodies. Heal
us. Keep us all safe. Heal those
who are sick among us. Heal those around the world.
Lord, bring your elect to faith through these calamities. Father,
bring a time of peace. Do that which you will, Lord,
not what we won't. Because what we won't is what
you desire and what you have decreed. So bring it, Father.
Whatever it is, let it come. Let it come, Father, in your
timing and by your purposes and by your power. Because, Lord,
whether it be good or whether it be bad, in this world, it
is always good for us, your people. And we thank you for that promise.
In Christ's name, Amen.