And we're also going to do it
in similar style that we typically would do our midweek, the reading
of Hebrews, the reading of Hebrews. And so this probably would take
us as long as Romans took, probably 24, 26 weeks, versus like when
I taught it 15 years ago or so, it took me about three years. We're going to go at more of
a rapid pace doing theological themes and all of that, just
like we did with Romans and Revelation, and then we've just finished
Galatians, which I think went extremely quick with only 12
weeks. So let us hear the first four verses of Hebrews, and then
I'm going to talk about Hebrews in a technical way, and then
we're going to get into the text. But let's hear the word of the
Lord as we begin. 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."
As we hear these words, we see several things. We don't even
recognize that it's a letter. It almost sounds like a story
or a narrative or a historical record. But in one sense, we
know that it's a letter because we've got the rest of it. In
the other sense, too, we recognize that what the writer is doing,
who I will call Paul for the remainder of our teaching of
this letter, and I'll tell you why in a moment, is just setting
up his readers to a place of exalting Christ, what we would
call high Christology. The study and the teaching of
Jesus being the highest place, that Jesus is held at the highest
honor, that Jesus is God, He is Creator, He is the Creator
God, He is God the Son, He is eternal and He has done all of
the revealing of God and all the fullness of everything and
we'll see that as it unpacks. This first chapter will go a
little slower than others but there is a lot of stuff here
that's of vital importance. Paul wrote this letter and there
are many arguments as to why he did not write the letter.
I'll go through some of them. People say that he didn't write
the letter because in the higher criticism of the grammar and
the language and the syntax in itself, it doesn't sound Pauline
in the same way that his other letters sound. Some people say
he didn't write the letter because he didn't sign the letter. He
didn't put his name there, which is customary for Paul. Others
say that he didn't write the letter for many different reasons. People have attributed it to
Barnabas, to Luke, to Apollos, and to others. But for a historical
point of reference, most of the time throughout history, Paul
has been ascribed the author of this letter. And for several
reasons I hold to, not necessarily scientific reasons, but just
theological reasons. When you read Hebrews, it is
Pauline theology, it is Pauline phraseology, it is Pauline teaching,
it's Pauline doctrine, and it is so, we who know the writings
of Paul, we hear this language throughout it. So when someone
says, well, it doesn't have his grammar, it doesn't have his
actual vernacular. Well, listen, if I write you
a letter and send it to you, it's going to sound a lot different
than if I write a professor a letter on a particular thing, or if
I write a doctor a letter on a particular thing, or if I write
a lawyer a letter, because the verbiage in itself is going to
be different. And also, it could possibly be that Paul wrote this
in Hebrew and maybe someone else translated it into Greek. Either
way, it doesn't matter. There's no evidence that he didn't
write it, and there's no evidence that anyone else did, so it is
necessary to say that Paul probably did. Either way, we know that
the true author of this letter is God the Spirit. And it doesn't
matter who signed it, because it is here by the will of God.
Sometimes people think, well Paul didn't write the letter,
but he was a Hebrew. But he was not an apostle to
the Hebrew people, he was an apostle to whom? The Gentiles.
And so Paul was really hated by the Jews, and so one of the
things that he probably did, which was not very odd in this
first century context, just like John did not sign any of his
letters, he did not sign his gospel, because he did not want
people to take the fame of his relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ as something that would elevate him. He wanted to focus
on Christ, so he never put his name to anything that he wrote,
because he was known as the disciple whom Jesus loved. the favorite,
if you will. Paul, in like manner, would not
want to taint his writing to his Jewish brothers and sisters
in Christ to such a degree that they would not want to read it,
maybe. Oh, Paul wrote that? Well, I'm
not going to read that. This is a very good possibility.
But either way, it doesn't matter. We believe Paul probably stayed
anonymous and he wrote this letter. Another really interesting fact
is that Peter, in the canonical scriptures, mentions a letter
written to the Hebrew people by Paul. and tells them, remember
what Paul wrote to you when he wrote this letter to you. Well,
where is that letter? Well, this is the only letter
that we have to a Jewish sect of Christians that doesn't have
a name to it. How about that be Paul's letter?
You see, and the list goes on and on and on. John Owen, if
you were to look at his writings, I glanced through some of them
today online. I know Brother Trey has it in
hard copy. I'll get it from him in the weeks
to come. He gives pages and pages and
pages to the argument that Paul wrote the letter, etc., etc.,
and other people would argue otherwise. But for us as Grace
Truth Church and for me as a teacher of this letter for years, I have
always said, and I will continue to say, So when I say Paul, don't
take it an offense that I'm preaching erroneously the word of God because
if I were to sit here and every time I had to mention the author,
I had to say the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, it would
get a little bit ridiculous in order to save face through historical
tradition, I mean actually contemporary tradition. So with all of that,
Paul, writing this letter, he writes it to an audience of Christians,
those who are born of God, those elect saints whom God has given
to the Son and whom the Son has died for. And these particular
elect saints, these sheep of Christ, happen to also be ethnically
Hebrew. That's why it says Hebrew. So
we are seeing here that Paul is writing to Jewish Christians
who have been saved out of the shadow of Judaism, saved out
of the false worship of Judaism, saved from the false god of Judaism,
and the false messiah of Judaism. And they have seen the truth.
However, in this time, you might know, or maybe you don't, it
was not easy to be a Christian. It was not easy to truly be a
follower of Christ. It was not easy to say, I no
longer am a Jew. I now follow the way of Messiah,
the way of Christ. As a matter of fact, Christian
in its context, the word itself Of course, that's the English
word, but the word in itself, the name applied to the followers
of the way, that was a derogatory name. It was a derogatory label
that they received. Oh, you're these Christ followers.
You're these little Christ followers. Well, it happened to stick, and
throughout the history of the church, Christian has been an
identifier or a moniker of those who are in Christ. So he's writing
this letter, but why is he writing this letter? You see, of the
verses that we've read already tonight, the first four verses,
the point that Paul wants to make to his Jewish brothers and
sisters is that Jesus Christ is the point of it all. that
Jesus Christ, in all the shadows of the temple, in all the shadows
of the prophet, all the shadows of history, all the shadows of
Abraham, all the shadows of creation, all the shadows of worship, and
all the shadows of prayers, and all the shadows of all of the
different precepts of the law, and the death, and the blood,
and the burning, and all of this praying and doing, it's all nothing. It all pointed to Jesus. Jesus
is the point of it all. He is the ultimate everything
as the revelation of God fully. John says it much simply, much
more simply. He says that Christ, the Word,
became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen His glory. We have seen Him as He truly
is in all of His fullness. All of His fullness as the Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth. We have seen Him in
all of His glory. Glory is the only Son of the
Father, full of grace and truth. And Paul spends an entire letter
to illustrate this. Why? Because the Jewish people,
under temptation, under persecution, under frustration, were going
back to Judaism. There was a great influence by
Judaizers who said, we're Christians, quote, quote, quote, but you've
got to obey these laws. You've got to act this way. You've
got to live this way. You've got to follow these things.
And Paul, we saw in Galatians over the last few months what
he had to say about that. And that was to Gentiles, trying
to get Gentiles to become Jews as they were in Christ, which
doesn't work. It's a violation. It's an unbelief
to take on Judaism in any form or any part whatsoever is unbelief
according to Paul. But now it's the opposite. It's
those who are Jews and were raised and lived as Jews who saw the
truth were now being tempted to go back into Judaism. They
were tempted to arrest themselves in the formality of the shadow. And Paul wrote this letter, if
I could say it very clearly this way, as a polemic against Judaism. In other words, Paul wrote this
letter to attack the precepts of Judaism and to put them in
their place, to show these Christian Hebrew people that Judaism in
itself was just a shadow and to go back to it leaves you nothing. Leaves you nothing. And in order
to do that, as I've already said in some of my introduction here,
Paul takes great care with excellent rhetoric and perfect argumentation
to show just how Christ is the pinnacle of all things. That
Christ is the Lamb, that Christ is the Holy of Holies, that Christ
is the Great High Priest, that Christ is the promise, that Christ
is greater than everything that ever pointed to Him because why
would the true be equal or less in value than the type? A type is something that points
to something true. The antitype, the shadow, points
to the real, etc. So it starts out then as Paul
writes long ago, similar to the way John writes, in the beginning. There was God, there was the
Word, and the Word was God, the Word was with God, in the beginning,
long ago. Now, he doesn't go all the way
back to creation here, but he takes and arrests his audience
in this way, long ago. Now, many of us think Star Wars,
right? We hear that. Many of us think so, or maybe
if you said that in the company of some older people, of older
generations, you say, long ago, they may think of the 50s, or
they may think of the 30s. You say, long ago to somebody
like me, I may think of the 70s or 80s, or I may think of last
week because it doesn't really matter. It all feels like long
ago to me. But long ago to the Hebrew people
was not something that they experienced in their mind, in their lives.
Long ago took them in their hearts and minds to a place where Judaism
began. To a place before Judaism began. To a place before there was a
record of God written. to a place when even in the Garden
of Eden, Adam did not write Genesis, Moses did. And so the centuries
and millennia from there to Moses, we know that this was told by
the mouths of prophets. And so when we hear this, it's
hard for us to consider the lineage and the history and the archeology
and everything else that can go with the old ways long ago. It's hard for us to put ourselves
in this because we don't really have that type of heritage. But
for a Jew, long ago, they would think of Moses. They would think
of Adam. They would think of Noah. They
would think of Abraham. They would think of these prophets
and they would know the history of their people and they would
know the promises of God throughout this history and they would perk
up and think, what happened long ago? They long to hear it. And
sadly, they were falling back into the practice of these shadows. So here we have Paul saying,
long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers
by the prophets. So the only way that they had
the knowledge of God was that the prophets that God would speak
through would indeed tell of Him. And then they would tell
their families and children, and then they would tell their
families and children, and they would tell their families and
children, and then at a point in time throughout a 1500 year
period, God would pin this prophetic word. He would speak on paper
through the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Zechariah and
Malachi. And so God spoke to our fathers
by the prophets. We know the word. We have the
written scripture, Paul would say. You know how God spoke.
And then wrote it down. We hear God speak. But he says
this, but. Notice this tense. God spoke
long ago at many times and in many ways. to our fathers by
the prophets spoke, but in these last days He has spoken to us. So you see the difference. Paul
makes a clear dividing line between the prophets and the fathers
of old and the shadow of Messiah there with the present day revelation
of God and the fullness of His glory. in Jesus Christ. So we know that we are listening
to what is most important concerning the revelation of God. We are
not looking back to figure Him out. We are beholding now to
see Him face to face. He has spoken to us by His Son
in these present last days. In an eschatological way, that
word there means the last days or end days or end times. It
has nothing to do with millennia or rapture, all that. That's
all stuff that's been created through the last few hundred
years and its verbiage and broken out of the text of scripture.
In the context of scripture, when we see last days, it is
the days of the coming of Christ when he incarnated in the world.
Jesus incarnation and life and ministry and crucifixion, death,
burial and resurrection and ascension is the pinnacle of history. It's
the point that God created the world for. I know that's not
correct grammar, but that's why the world exists for Christ. And we see that very clearly
here, but we'll see it. We could see it even clearer
in Colossians. Maybe we'll do that one midweek next. if it's
not the book of James. But here, these last days means
the days of Christ, the days since Christ. It's always these
last days. This is it. There's nothing else
to happen except that Christ culminate His justice and His
righteousness with His elect and His recompense as judge against
the reprobate. and to destroy all nations, and
to destroy all rulers, and to destroy all kings, and to destroy
all things, and establish the true that was promised without
the taint of sin. So here is Jesus. Here is His
Son speaking. And the Son who speaks tells
us of God because He is God. He reveals God, as we'll see.
And so when we think to ourselves, well, how then shall we know
the voice of God? We have it right before us. How
is it that Christ can speak to us? If Christ is through whom
God speaks, then how are we to hear God? And it is here. It
is in the Word. It is only in the written Word.
Now, I'll say this, but it's not something I want to labor
on tonight. Those who claim to hear God apart from the Word
lie. And there are many of them. They
get a feeling, they get a vision, they get an idea, they get a
dream. And they say, well, God used to do that. God spoke to
his prophets that way. God led his people in the context
of that long ago and at many times and in many ways, but not
today, not in these last days. No, sir, never again shall God
speak that way because Christ is here. He speaks only. And no one else. So that sometimes
people get confused and they'll say, well, I'm a prophet. You're
not a prophet if you're not teaching the scripture as it's written.
You're not a prophet if it's not the written text. So that all people prophesy when
they teach the Bible. No one gets a word from God these
days. That's blasphemy. Because if
I get a word from God, I need to add pages to the back of my
Bible. And there are some blank pages,
but it is to protect those beautiful maps, not for me to add to God's
Word. The Word of God alone. We use
the historical mantra of sola scriptura. Through the Word of
God alone, do we know the fullness of the glory of God? Do we know
about salvation? Do we know about anything concerning
eternal life? And Paul is reminding these people
that though you know the Old Testament, now I'm not going
to say the Old Testament is not Scripture, it is and it's as
vitally important as the New, but it has a point just like
the New Testament has a point. And it has a purpose. And it has a power. He's saying to them, do not hold
and wait to hear from God apart from Christ. And do not look
to Moses in spite of Christ. Do not look to the prophets instead
of Christ. Because when Christ says what
He says and does what He does and reveals God the way He does,
He is explaining what they have always been saying. I want you
to get that. These are not two different sections
of Scripture. Learning and living over here
this way, and learning and living over here this way. This is wrong. This is an error. And when it
becomes divisive, the word for that is heresy. Divisive opinion. The beautiful thing about God's
Word is that there is no such thing as an opinion exegetically
from the Word of God. It is there, it is printed, and
here it is printed. God's Word says that Christ alone
is the one who speaks for Him. And so therefore that all we
have is the apostolic writing of and concerning Jesus Christ,
it speaks of Him. Paul would tell Timothy that
the scriptures that you grew up with are able to make you
wise unto eternal life salvation. So that even with the Old Testament,
one can be brought to life by the Holy Spirit to see and to
behold and to believe the witness and the testimony of Jesus Christ
through the apostles. Because how? The Old Testament. speaks of Him. And that's what
this book's about. That's what this book's about.
This book is about when I see a pamphlet about a play that
I want to see, and I've already seen it, I'm not going to make
plans to see it when it's not ever going to play again. And
if I want to go out and experience the true, why would I watch the
commercial? That's what it is. And that's
what Paul is trying to emphasize, and he does it in a way that
we'll unpack slowly in the beginning, and then it'll just be like a
rollercoaster ride of Christology, a rollercoaster ride of gospel-centered
hope, a rollercoaster ride of finished redemption, and explicit
redemption, and particular redemption. So here is Jesus, the Son, who
speaks to us now in these last days, who is God speaking, whom
God appointed the heir of all things. Now, you need to understand
what that means. The heir of all things doesn't
mean he gets all that God has. It means that he has authority
and prerogative as God. If He is the essence of the Father,
the firstborn, the Son, that means as the Father is, so is
the Son. All that the Father has belongs
to the Son. It is a statement of His authority. He has spoken to us and He appointed
the heir of all things. Some people like to argue, well
that means that Jesus was not an heir, He did a good job, then
God appointed Him heir. Because we already, we could
think that if this was the only scripture we'd ever read, though
it doesn't say that. But when we get through here,
we see what? Through whom also he created
the world. Who created the world? God created
the world. And then he says through whom?
Christ. Christ created the world. God created the world. The Son
created the world. The Son is God. That's a simple
way of putting it. God created the world. He, the
Son, who is God, who created the world, is now, verse 3, the
radiance of the glory of God. So we already understand glory,
to see Him as He truly is in all of His fullness. There's
nothing hidden. So if Jesus reveals God in all of His fullness, then
Jesus is God. Jesus is God. And not just that, He is the
exact imprint of His nature. So everything that God is, Jesus
is. And the scripture says there
is no God but Me. There is no other God. There
is only one God. There is no other God and all
the other gods, little G's I guess you could call them, that do
exist are not gods. They are not high ones. They
are not the one. I am the only God. There is no
other. I do what I want. No one can thwart me. No one
can stop me. No one can question me. All belong to me. I created
all things. And these are just run-on assertions
that you could find almost in every prophet of the Old Testament
specifically and exclusively, you can find some of them in
Isaiah. God speaking through the prophet. But we don't have
to go to Isaiah to see God, do we? Because Isaiah foreshadowed
the true God in the fullness of his glory, Jesus, the Christ,
the son who created all things, who is the exact imprint of the
nature of God because he is God. So all the essence of God is
Jesus, and he upholds I love this phrase here, and we're going
to see some of this over the next few weeks as this is sort
of an introduction. As he upholds the universe by the word of his
power, so that what Christ is and who he is as God, he creates
all things and he sustains all things. Christ sustains all things. Beloved, this is not some fancy
homage to Jesus, though it is an exaltation. though it is doxology
in that sense. This is not just flattery, this
is truth, this is doctrine. What you see here is theological
teaching that Paul is clarifying that makes the entirety of this
letter make sense. Because if we don't grasp the
essence of who Christ is as the Creator God, as also the Son
of God, as also the One who became lower than the angels, as a real,
true, and fully man, simultaneously being the eternal God. then nothing
else that we read in this text makes sense. And then what happens
in a, that's not the word, not in a historical sense, but it
is true, what happens in a cultural sense as people read this letter
and talk about it is they piece it out and they piecemeal it
and they cut it and they chop it and they make it into nice little recipes like
a fortune cookie and then they try to make it all say everything
that it doesn't say when everything that Paul writes in this letter
has everything to do with the supremacy of Christ. And so He upholds the universe
by the word of His power. What else does that mean? Everything
in it. I mean, this isn't the first time we've heard this,
guys. Paul says it to the Colossians. Everything was made through Him
and for Him and by Him. John says there was nothing made
that He didn't make. And so on and so forth. He is
the God of heaven and everything is sustained by the word of His
power. And this means the things that are seen, and this means
the things that are unseen. This means that everything that
exists in creation, whether it be an idea, a philosophy, concrete,
visible or invisible, whether it be a ruler or the idea of
ruling, whether it be an authority. So you can't see kingship. You can see how it plays out.
You can see the position of a king and the throne and the crown
and the swords and the armies and the wealth and the massive
military ability to hold himself safe. You can see that. You can
see what the rule looks like, but you can't see kingdom. Show
me kingdom. Show me rule. These invisible
things, Christ created them and he holds them up by the word
of his power so that when we see a nation fall, Christ throws
it in the ground. When we see a nation rise, even
a maniacal dictator that murders millions, Christ put him on his
throne. People don't like that because
people who are not converted don't know the God of Scripture
because they're still looking through the piecemeal bits and
and tethered pages of pretext after pretext after pretext,
putting together with pretty little flanagraph pictures and
everything else so they could come up with like a VeggieTale
idealism of Jesus, and they're making it all into something
that He's not, and they love that version of Grandpa Jesus. There's no such thing as Grandpa
Jesus. There's no such thing as a Grandpa God. There's no
such thing as a sweet little old man who is our God. God is
an all-consuming fire. And He does everything that He
wants to do and nothing stops Him. There is nothing that God
ever permits that is not decreed, purposed, and done by His hand. Even when He uses evil for His
own purposes, it is His doing. Because if that is not true of
God, then Paul is a liar. And you might think, well, I
don't see all that there. But see, you've got to understand how
I read the scripture. When I go to teach Hebrews, I read the
whole letter before I step up here. You just hear a few verses,
but the whole letter's in my heart. So when I get over to
chapter 2, verse 8, and I hear, Or verse 7, you made Him for
a little while lower than the angels, you've crowned Him with
glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under His feet.
That's a quotation. Now putting everything in subjection
to Him, He left nothing outside His control. Nothing. Now folks, I'm going to tell
you something. It takes the Spirit of God to reveal that to us in
a way that is unimaginable. So I know it's there. So I'm
not twisting scripture. I see it already in the text
here because Paul explains it later. That's what he's going
to do with the next two chapters. He's going to explain this supremacy. He's going to explain this sovereignty.
He's going to explain this superiority and this preeminence. Christ,
not only does he uphold the universe by the word of his power and
that which is seen, that which is unseen, that which is really in the material
and the immaterial and the metaphysical world, Christ upholds by the
word of His power, this is beautiful, and this is where the letter
actually goes, the salvation of His elect. Christ upholds it. Christ creates
it. This is the letter where we know
Paul says that Jesus is the author of our faith and the finisher
of our faith. And some translations say perfecter.
So when we see that Christ was perfected, that means he finished
the job that he had. Not that he got better. You can't
get better than God. So we have to read it as it's
meant to be understood. The context helps us in that. And where do you think I get
the idea that he upholds salvation? Look at the latter part of verse
3, after making purification for sins. So here's the work
of the God-man, Jesus, the Christ, Messiah. After making purifications
for sins, he sat down. Now this picture for Jews is
important because this is the path, this is the plan that Paul's
going to use. teach the rest of this letter.
This is important. He sat down. They understand
that the high priest, now he's using priestly language, the
high priest would go into the temple, do his deal, go into
the Holy of Holies, do his service, and then come out. There's no
place for a man to sit in the service of the temple. There's
no one who ever gets finished, as we'll see over in chapter
4 and 5, where it says that every day they had to pray and sacrifice,
and every year they had to atone for their own sins, and then
atone for the sins of the people. and then constantly over and
over and over and over again, a bloody, bloody mess of worship
showing that recompense is God's righteousness and that redemption
comes through the shedding of blood. It was a picture. So there
is no such thing as a high priest finishing the work of redemption,
finishing purification, and then just getting to sit down and
just be done. You don't stop. It's a constant
thing when it's a shadow. It's a constant thing for us
to cut our hair and shave and clip our nails and bathe our
bodies. It's a constant thing for us
to maintain a floor or to paint a wall or to keep our oil changed
in a vehicle. It's a constant state of maintenance. The Old Covenant in its shadow
and imperfect promises that pointed to the perfect promise always
must be maintained. But Jesus Finished. Finished. After making purification
for sins, he sat down. And he didn't sit down in the
Holy of Holies, because the Holy of Holies and the temple and
everything is just a shadow. That's why God destroyed it. So people
who want to see the temple rebuilt are devil-worshipping people
at heart. See, that's so rude. Why do you
say that? Because that's what the Bible
teaches. That's what Paul says to the
Galatians. That's what Paul says to the
Romans. That's what Paul says to the Hebrews here. Echoing
the teaching of Jesus himself, who said to the Pharisees, who
were the spiritual heads of Israel, you worship your father, the
enemy. Jesus sat down, but where did
he sit? At the right hand of the majesty
on high. You'll see as we get in here
next week, you'll see this probably. No one rules with God. Jesus is God. So this picture,
this is imagery, because we can imagine Jesus sitting down, right? That's imagery. He's painting
a picture for us to see. We can imagine a big throne with
little, with huge feet and then Jesus as a man sitting down next
to, you know, we've seen those in the cartoons and the commercials
and the books and the things of that nature. God is not a
person. God is not a human. He does not
have a body. He is three persons. The Father,
the Son, the Spirit. Three distinct persons. One God.
That's why we call it triune. Three in one. But Jesus is not
sitting at the right side of the Father. Jesus is on the throne
of heaven. He is the ruler. And that's the picture that we
get there. And I'll show that to you all as we continue to walk through
this. Because Paul explains it. He explains it very clearly.
But this is the road map for our journey in the reading of
Hebrews. So he sits down at the right hand of majesty on high.
having become as much superior to angels as the name He has
inherited is more excellent than theirs. So here we see now this
imagery of Jesus sitting down on a secondary stool next to
the Father, but that's not what Paul says. The imagery is that
He sat down on the throne of heaven. The idea of the right
hand of majesty is to be the supreme ruler. That he is the
son of the Most High so that he is God. Because God is not
divided. He's not a father one day and
a son one day and a spirit one day. He is always eternally one
in three. I mean, three in one. And he is superior than the angels.
Some people actually argue, and this is a heresy that's been
perpetrated for centuries. People argue that Jesus is just
a created being, that maybe he was an angel, that maybe he was
just something that God did to create. But as we'll see, he
is God and there is no question. And people who say that he's
not, Jesus says in John 8, that if you do not believe that he's
God, you'd perish in your sins. And we understand the formula
of how that faith is granted. If God does not change your mind
by giving you faith to believe that he's God, that Jesus is
God, then you are not born again. You are not alive and you are
dead in your sins still, and you will die in your sins. Jesus
says it very clearly this way, unless you believe that I am,
speaking to the Pharisees, you will perish in your sins. And
what do they get out of that? We got to kill this man. He called
himself God. And how dare you call us sinners? But He's superior to angels. Angels, He upholds by the word
of His power. They exist because He keeps them.
They exist because He created them. He is nowhere, He's not
a second-tier divine being or supernatural being. Jesus is
God who created everything else. And He's superior than the angels.
They worship Him. Now the Scripture tells us, and
I'm getting ahead of myself, but the Scripture tells us in
the Old Testament several places, but specifically we see it where
Isaiah, no one is to worship anyone but God. There's a paraphrase
of several different verses. No one is to bow down to anyone
but God. And God will say, the Father,
concerning the Son, He tells the angels to bow down and worship
Him. He's much more superior to the
angels. As the name he has inherited, and I'm really going to spend
more time on this next week, is more excellent than theirs. Jesus
wasn't given a name. He didn't earn a name. He is
God, the Son. And his name, Jesus, it's not
the word Jesus. Many people have the name Jesus.
Another iteration of Jesus is Jesus. Another iteration of that
is Joshua. Yeshua. depend on what language
you're speaking. The word in itself is not the
point. It's the authority. If I'm the king of a nation and
my son's name is Paul, and Paul has the authority to
walk anywhere he wants in the kingdom and to rule over everything
I tell him he can rule over, he has the name with the authority. But it's not because it's Paul.
It's because he's my son. And there's a whole bunch of
Paul's. They can't walk in and take authority. So it's not the
name. It's the authority behind who
he is. That's what that means. So he
has all authority and all authority as God, as the son who is Jesus,
the Messiah, the Christ is more excellent than theirs. His authority
is greater than theirs. His status is greater than theirs.
His purpose, His power, His essence. Why? Because He is God. And He has lowered Himself to
save His people from their sins. And everything that I've said
to you tonight will unpack beautifully over the next eight verses. So
beautifully that it'll give you some apologetic chops over the
next week, two weeks maybe, where you'll be able to defend the
divinity of Christ from Hebrews chapter 1. You'll be able to defend the
sovereignty of Christ. by using the word of God which
is what you always should do God does not use arguments he
does not use debate techniques he does not use all these different
instruments and employments of I'm just gonna let that go, of
other things to bring about eternal life or revelation of His Son,
no matter how many people say, oh I understand because of that.
If God the Spirit doesn't show us through the hearing of the
Word, we have not been taught of God. With that, Let me read
the next few verses. Let me finish reading chapter
1. 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. Or of the angels, he says, he
makes his angels' winds and his 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,
God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond
your companions. And 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 will 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
God ever said, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet? Are they not all ministering
spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to
inherit salvation? That's the question Paul poses. And then he answers this way.
Look at chapter 2. Therefore, we must pay closer
attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. So
you see the problem? These Jews have heard, these
Jews have been saved, these Jews have believed, and they're drifting
away from it because they're losing their focus on Christ
and they're putting their focus on the law and the precepts of
Judaism. This is it. This is a more thorough,
academic reading of the heated and passionate, zealous letter
of Galatians. with a lot thicker realizations. And I think as I sit here and
I read the rest of this text, I probably will take a little
bit longer than I first said tonight because I do want to
expose us to some of the Old Testament teachings that are
related to this. So I think it would be a good time for when
it's alluded to here to go back into the Old Testament and to
teach certain segments of that so that we have not only the
right foundation, but we do get exposed to the full counsel of
God's Word. So with all of that, let's pray. I'm so thankful that
we were able to get this letter started. Father, we're desperately
in love with the gospel because you are desperately in love with
us. And I don't like to use the word desperate in our culture
because it seems faddish and emotional, but Father, your love
for us eternally, it didn't start, your love for your children,
for your elect eternally, by the counsel of your will caused
you to create the world and to put your son in it and to send
him to die for us so that we might glorify you in your mercy
and grace toward us. Because of the great love with
which you loved us, you caused us to be born again to a living
hope through Jesus Christ who has been raised from the dead.
And so, Father, as we go out into this world, as we sit at
home into this quarantine where a majority of many believers
are this day, Father, help us to hold fast to this. Put our
minds away from the silliness of social media. Get off the
couch and get on the Word and get into the Scriptures. Father,
drive us by the Spirit to spiritual conversations. Thank you, Lord,
for the brothers who show up right on time. to pull my mind
away from the politics and the fear and the economy, that we
might let this stuff go, for it is all nothing. We can do
our duty when the duty calls, but Lord, let us never usurp,
or worse, never twist the Word of God to make it fit our cultural
distinctives, our politics, or our money. so that we would pray
effectively, that we would worship rightly. Oh, Father, break our
hearts. Help us to see just how low minded
we are when it comes to your greatness. that we might worship,
not in condemnation or guilt or fear, but in adoration and
thanksgiving. Help us to be thankful in the
midst of the gift that you've given us of this pandemic. Father,
I pray your healing hand upon this nation, upon all the nations,
especially the nations of the poorest of poor. They are affected
so. Lord, help us to not turn a blind
eye to our neighbor and help us to be willing to lay down
our very lives and our goods for one another. Never to hold
on to the world, but to hold on to that which is unseeable.
Lord, you rebuke in your word those who bury and store the
gifts you give them for a rainy day. Father, that is the teaching
of our Lord Jesus Christ. As you well know, against the
greed and the frustration and the self-righteousness of the
Pharisees and the Sadducees. But Father, to your church, you
teach us better. As Paul will say, these things
we say are not of you, beloved, but we think and look forward
to better things, things concerning redemption and glory and worship
and exaltation in a city that is unshakable, that is promised
to us with Jesus Christ. as its center. Lord, help us
to keep our eyes on that city. Help us to keep our eyes on grace.
Help us to keep our eyes and our hearts in tune with prayer
through your word for the sake of your name. In Jesus name,
we pray. Amen.