But if you will, turn in your
Bibles to Isaiah, to the prophet Isaiah chapter 40, holding your
place in Hebrews. In Isaiah 40, we read these words, after the
instructions to the preachers of the gospel, to comfort the
people of God, declaring that God has met their every need
doubly, and told the preacher to cry as one who cries in the
wilderness, and tell the folks that all flesh is grass, like
the flower of the field, the grass witherth and fadeth away,
but God's Word lasts forever. He says in verse 9, O Zion, that's
the church, Thou that bringest good things, that's the gospel,
get thee up into a high mountain, O Jerusalem, the city of peace,
the church of the living God. Thou that bringest good tidings,
the gospel, lift up thy voice with strength, lift it up, be
not afraid, say unto the cities of Judah, of the land of the
tribe of Judah, his city, behold your God. Behold your God. Behold the Lord God will come
with strong hand and His arm, that is His salvation, shall
rule for Him. Behold His reward is with Him
and His work before Him. He shall feed His flock like
a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with
His arm and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead
those that are with young. The first thing told to those
to behold their God is that God is set forth in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ as the shepherd of the sheep. I would say this morning as we
look at Hebrews chapter 1, Behold your God. Behold your God. The title of this message is
simply this, Nothing Missing. Nothing Missing. The first three
verses of the epistle to the Hebrews is really a divine synopsis
of the entire epistle. Everything that is said from
this point on to the next 13 chapters addresses the wondrous
character here described in this context in these three verses.
All the elements of the Old Testament worship are set forth and fulfilled
in this character right here, whose name is Jesus Christ the
Lord. The writer of the epistle will
go on to prove to the believer that everything that is important
and necessary in the matter of knowing and worshiping God is
met only in this one unique, excellent, and glorious person. And His excellency resides in
the fact that He is the complete fulfillment of all that the Hebrews
embraced in the Old Covenant. He is the better of two things. The better of two things, therefore
He's the best thing. If it's just two things and one
of them is better, then that one's the best. This book speaks
of Christ being better than all the things involved in the old
covenant. Better than the law, better than the priesthood. All
those things. He's better. because he did something
that the old covenant could not do. He accomplished all things
according to God's purpose. He is better because he is unique. There is no other person born
of a woman in this world, born of the seed of a woman in this
world. There is no person who is uniquely born, who is begotten
of God. He alone is one of a kind. Without controversy, great is
the mystery of godliness. God Almighty manifests in the
flesh. He's the one effectual high priest. There were many priests in the
Old Testament and many high priests, but they all died. They didn't
live. Our high priest, the great high
priest, liveth forever. He's the one and only effectual
sacrifice. All the sacrifices of the Old
Testament actually amounted to nothing but to teach us and remind
us of one who was coming, the Lord Jesus Christ. His sacrifice
actually, truly, and really propitiated God for the salvation of His
people. Jesus Christ is said to have
actually put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He's said
to have actually, by that sacrifice, to have obtained eternal redemption
for all for whom He died. He is said also to have perfected
forever those whom God has sanctified. He's blotted out the memory of
their sin in the mind of God so God will remember their sin
no more. He's satisfied all the demands,
every demand of justice and law and wrath. He's finished the
work that He was anointed and appointed to do. And having finished
it, He sat down in glorious repose. That rest afforded only to pure
and unqualified victory. And He sits now. He sits yet
at the right hand of the Majesty on high, at the right hand, the
hand of salvation, at the hand of power, the hand of entitlement,
the hand of salvation. And He is the only fulfillment
of the law. He alone fulfilled the law. He kept the law. How did he keep
the law? He was a good person? No. The
law had nothing to do with him because he was a righteous man.
How did he keep the law? He kept the law by dying under
the penalty of the law in the room instead of his people. He is the one person who perfectly
did God's will. He was always about his Father's
business. He was the only man who successfully
submitted to God's will throughout every breath he breathed. He's
the only mediator, the designated daysman between God and men.
If you're going to speak to God, you're going to have to go through
the mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He's the only one.
I know the Romans have Mary as a co-mediatrix, but she ain't
no mediator. She was a sinner who needed a
mediator, and her mediator was the Son of God. He is the one
true and living God, and at the same time, the one true and living
human being. He is worthy of an eternity of
consideration, meditation, and glorification, and worship. He's
worthy of that, and He will be given that. And if you are His,
you're the ones going to be giving it to Him forever and ever. I know people talk about heaven
being this and that, but let me tell you what heaven's going
to be. It's going to be a continual worship service of the Lord Jesus
Christ. For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. We're going to sing His praises.
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain. Now this glorious passage begins
as all things must begin with the beginner, God. God. This amazing book, this
Bible, commences with the words in the beginning, God. There's so much in those words
that I could spend the rest of my life talking about them and
never exhaust the subject. In the beginning God. He that
is the first and first cause of all things is God. He's the
creator of all things, the sustainer of all things, and the consummator
of all things. And He inspires the writer to
pen his precious name, God. It's an English derivation. It's
a transliteration of the English word, good. They just took an O out of it.
and called Him God. God said that which glorifies
Him foremost is His goodness. And even this single declaration
is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ because this is about
God speaking, God communicating, speaking, saying words, revealing
Himself. of Christ, it is said in John,
in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God, the same
was in the beginning with God. And you don't know God apart
from Jesus Christ. Our Lord looked at those who
despised His preaching and despised the preaching of John the Baptist,
and He lifted His eyes to heaven. And He said, I thank Thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things
from the wise and the prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.
Even so, Father, for it seemed good in Thy sight. No man knoweth
the Father but the Son. No man knoweth the Son but the
Father, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. What does God have to say? I
hear people talking a lot about God saying things to them. God
told me something. The only thing God ever told
me was right here in this book. I don't have any extra biblical
revelation for you. Neither does any other man. No
matter what he says, he don't have anything either. God has
spoken. This is a finished report. It's a done deal. Can't add to
it. Can't take away from it because
it's already finished. Whether you believe it or not
matters not. It's a finished book. What did God say? God,
who at sundry times in divers' manners, spake. He spake in times
passing to the fathers in the prophecy. What was the testimony
of the Most High? What will God say? Will He give
political and social instruction? Will He tell you how to vote? Will He declare a list of do's
and don'ts? by which His creatures can obtain
merit before Him? Will His words be a volume of
mottos and mantras to repeat and rehearse so that one can
transcend the world in a kind of ethereal oblivion? No, this
is the wonder of it all. God who sees all, God who knows
all and controls all, God the library and repository of all
that can be known, has but really one thing to say. one subject
to inspire, one thought by whom he engages the minds of his people. Though at times past he spoke
to the fathers by the prophets in various ways, he spoke in
dreams and visions, and he spoke to Moses face to face, he gave
all of them but one thing to say to his people. From Genesis
to Malachi. From Moses to Malachi. He gave
them but one thing to say to His people. His Word is about
His Word. The Word made flesh. Moses spake
of Christ. Christ said He did. The Pharisees
said, well, we listen to Moses. If you love Moses, you should
love me because he spake of me. Moses spoke of Christ. He spoke
of Christ when Moses wrote down these words, Let there be light. He was talking about Jesus Christ. Moses spoke of Christ when he
talked about beasts slain to cover Adam's nakedness, or the
ram provided caught in the thicket who substituted for Isaac, or
the tabernacle and the sacrifice of the high priest on the day
of atonement. He is speaking about Christ. When he talked
about the Passover lamb, Christ is our Passover, our Paschal
lamb slain for us. That paschal lamb filled the
blood of God's vision with His blood so He forgot the sins of
His people. When He talked about the brazen
auger, it was Christ's sacrifice thereon. When He talked about
the brass labor, it was Christ's effectual cleansing blood. When
He talked about the altar of incense, it was Christ's intercession.
When He talked about the table of showbread, it was the pierced
bread that was the food of the priest. When He talked about
the ark of the covenant, He was talking about the place of communion
where God would commune with His people, the only place, and
the only place God communes with His people is Jesus Christ. When
He talked about the cloud by day and the pillar by night and
the manna and the water from the rock, it even says that rock
which followed them in 1 Corinthians 10, that rock which followed
them was Christ. It was Christ. The serpent raised
up on a pole. Joshua alone leading them into
the promised land spoke of Christ. In the time of Judges, the one
who appeared and ascended in the flame of fire before Samson's
mom and dad, his name was wonderful and secret. Who do you reckon
that was? Ask Ruth about her kinsman-redeemer. Who do you think she's talking
about? Ask Hannah about him who kills and makes alive, who takes
the beggar from a dunghill and sets him among princes. Ask Samuel
about David's throne and who will inherit it. Ask Ezra and
Nehemiah about the temple which will be destroyed and raised
up again in three days. Ask Esther, how do you approach
a king? You come in by touching the scepter
of righteousness, which is the scepter of His kingdom. Ask Job. Job tells us about serving God
for nothing. Take the reward of service to
God and the promise of these preachers about health, wealth,
and Alexis, you take that away from them, they don't have anything.
The devil said to God, does your servant serve you for nothing?
You've made him a rich man. You've made him got plenty of
kids. You've got everything you can want. God said, well, I'll
let you take everything away from him. I guarantee you're
still serving. And he did. He did. Ask Joe about that redeemer that
he's going to see with his own eyes. Ask him about the ransom
that was paid that delivered him from the pit. David wrote
poetry about the man who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly.
About him who separates the sins from his people as far as the
east is from the west. Who comes in the volume of the
book to do the will of God. Who is a lamp unto your feet
and a light unto your path. Solomon spake of him who is the
wisdom of God. And the only thing in the earth
that is not vanity is Jesus Christ. Because everything else is passing
away. And therefore it is vanity. Isaiah spoke of the child born
and the son given, the suffering successful substitute, the travailer
who never knew a miscarriage, the justifier of many who bear
their iniquities. Jeremiah wrote of Him who is
our righteousness and the new covenant fulfilled by Him so
that God will remember the sins of His people no more. Jeremiah
wrote of the balm in Gilead and the physician there. He lamented
as one who says, is it nothing to you, ye who pass by? Ezekiel spake of the beast with
four faces. Daniel wrote of the fourth person
in the fiery furnace who was likened to the Son of Man and
the one before whom His comeliness melted into corruption. The Messiah
who would finish transgression and make an end of sins and bring
in everlasting salvation and everlasting righteousness. Hosea
wrote of the husband who loved his wife even though she was
a harlot. Joel wrote of Him who is to come,
whose name is salvation, who saves all who call upon Him.
Amos wrote of the Lord of hosts who all men must prepare to meet. Obediah wrote of him who is the
Savior come from Mount Zion to whom the kingdoms of the world
belong. Jonah told that salvation is of the Lord. Micah spake of
him who is born in Bethlehem, the ruler whose goings forth
have been from everlasting, who is God like no other that pardoned
iniquity and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his people.
Nahum wrote of Him who is good and a stronghold in the time
of trouble. Habakkuk glorified in the Holy
One who comes with lightning flashing from His hands, and
therein is the hiding of His power. Zephaniah spake of Him
who is the pure language of God. I will turn them to a pure language. The One who is mighty and who
has taken away the judgments of His people, who has fed them
and made them to lie down and taken the fear from them. Haggai
wrote of him who is the desire of all nations. Zechariah spake
of the cornerstone and the headstone established with shoutings of
grace, grace unto it. The king of Zion, the one who
was pierced and comes humbly riding upon a donkey, Malachi. prophesied of the messenger
of the covenant who quickly appeared, who is a purifier and a refiner
of the sons of Levi. You see, God, who at sundry times
and in diverse manners spoke unto the fathers by the prophets,
had but one thing to say to them. All the prophets, Peter said
in a sermon in Acts chapter 10, gave witness to Christ. All of them did. Our Lord said
to those who studied the Scriptures, you studied the Scriptures for
in them you think you find eternal life. They are they which testify
of Me. Me. God no longer speaks to the
fathers by the prophets. There are no prophets. I know
men call themselves prophets. I had a fellow call me a prophet
one time. I told him not to call me a prophet. I'm not a prophet.
I'm a voice. That's all I am. That's all I'll
ever be. He no longer speaks to the fathers
by the prophets, but the message has not altered one whit from
Genesis chapter 1 to Malachi. Not one whit. God speaks by His
Son. And literally, if you'll notice
this in verse 2, having these last spoken to us by His Son,
The word his is in italics, added supposedly for our understanding
by the translators. But he just speaks by son. And
literally, it reads he speaks in son. That's the language of
God. It is that pure language prophesied
in Jephthah 3 in verse 9 when God said, I will turn my people
to a pure language. to a pure language. He is the
Word. He's the message. And the message
is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That has not changed from the
beginning. And when the angels, according to Revelation, sing
and preach in the new heaven and new earth, they're going
to be singing the everlasting gospel. Rehearsing that glorious
message over and over again. The remainder of this passage
in Hebrew is very interesting, not only for what is spoken,
but because of the manner in which it is constructed. The
subject of the passage is the thing accomplished, and is centered
in the accomplishment that Christ procured on the cross of Calvary.
What is that? When He had by Himself purged
our sins. That's the subject. When combined with the past tense
of had, when He had by Himself purged our sin, declares both
intent and accomplishment. There is no future event discussed
here, but rather a thing intended and then accomplished. And all
that proceeds and follows the WHEN is set as proof of the absolute
accomplishment of that which is intended. Whatever was intended
was accomplished there. And it sits on either side of
the word WHEN. That's the central word in this
whole passage. That's what this whole passage
really hangs on. The first thing that God says
about His Son is that He is the sovereign owner of everything
and everyone. Do you realize that Christ owns
you? You say, well, I don't like that. That doesn't matter. That doesn't
matter. I've had a few Dogs in my time
that I owned, it didn't much like my ownership either, but
that didn't matter. I still owned them. And they
found out the hard way sometimes that I was their owner. But Christ
owns all things. Hath in these last days spoken
unto us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things. Heir of all things. He is the heir of all things.
John the Baptist said God has put everything in His hand. God loves His Son and has put
everything in His hand in John 3.35. In John 17.2 in the High
Priestly Prayer of Christ, Christ said, The Father has given me
power or authority over all flesh to give eternal life to as many
as God has given me. This is blessed good news to
those whom Christ has saved. Blessed goodness, I'm not ashamed
of the gospel, for it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believes. Christ is the creator of all
things because He's God. He's God incarnate, by whom He
also made the worlds. That's what He says, whom He
apparently poured into the air of all things, by whom also He
made the world. Look around you. Christ did that. Look at these mountains that
I love more and more as the older I get, the more I love these
mountains. Las Vegas has got some mountains and they're right
pretty at sunrise and sunset. I went out to see my grandbaby.
It was nice. I enjoyed it. I love my grandson. Trying to
figure out a way to get him here rather than me having to go back
out there though. Look around you. This place. Christ did that. Christ did that. He's the creator
of all of that. Verse 3 is a descriptive phrase
or sentence It says, "...who being the brightness of His glory,
and the express image of His person, and upholding all things
by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our
sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." The
first part of the declaration of Christ reveals the power that
backs up the second part of the revelation in this passage. Who
He is gives power and success to what He did. We do not speak
of a failing or a frustrated God, because such a God is a
God of your imagination, and not a God, the God of Scripture. Who He is gives power to what
He did. God, in describing His Son, does
not separate the person from His work, and you can't either.
You can't either. There can be no speaking of who
He is without reference to what He's accomplished. You can't
say His name without reference to what He accomplished on Calvary.
You can't say His name. His name is Jesus, Joshua, Savior,
Redeemer. Why call Him that? For He shall
save His people from their sins, Matthew 1.21. Thou shalt call
His name Jesus. Likewise, there can be no speaking
of what He accomplished apart from who He is. You just can't
separate the two. The accomplishment of what He
did is assured by who He is. The verse is spoken in continuum
with what precedes it. It begins with, Who being? Who
being? Who is Christ? He's the Great
I Am. The Great I Am. This is not about who he was,
but who he is, who being. This also is relative to the
fact that he was all this, what is spoken of here in this description,
when, at the precise time when he purged our sins, he was all
of this. when He purged our sins. He was
being all this when? When He was on the cross of Calvary.
He was being all this. When He was on the cross, when
His visage was marred more than the sons of men, when He was
drenched in blood, naked and humiliated, He was being then,
at that moment, the brightness of God's glory. You want to know
where God's glory resides? In that bleeding, suffering substitute
on Calvary's tree, right then, when He had purged our sins,
He was the brightness of God's glory. This speaks of effulgence,
of shining out, kind of like Habakkuk said, God comes from
teman and the light comes out of His hands like lightning and
there was the hiding of His power. Christ is the only display of
the glory of God. There is glory in nature and
in creation, but that glory will leave you only without excuse.
There is glory in the providential dealings of God bringing all
things to their appointed end, but there is no glory by comparison
to the glory of Jesus Christ on Calvary's tree. The brightness
the outshining, out of Zion our God hath shined, it says in Scripture. God cannot truly be referred
to except as He's seen in His redemptive glory. Don't talk
about God in creation unless you talk about the new creation.
Don't talk about God in Providence unless you talk about Him bringing
all His people from the North, East, and South, and West to
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom He gathers all His people.
Don't talk about God at all, except in His redemptive character. Because that's how He reveals
Himself. You see, on the cross, Christ was being the express
image or the brightness of God's glory. He has most gloriously
saved His people from their sins. He has most gloriously made them
holy, sanctified and justified from all things. He didn't try
to do something. He ain't trying to do nothing
now. He's God. He did something. It doesn't
say He tried to purge our sins. Or He made the purging of our
sins possible. It said, when He had by Himself
purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Father
Almighty. When He was on the cross, you see. Christ was being,
at that moment, the express image of the person of God. He's the
only way God is seen. He's the only God we know. If
you would see God, you must see Christ. He that has seen me has
seen the Father, He said. If you would know the character
of God, you must see Christ. And He must be seen on Calvary's
tree and accomplishing salvation. If you've seen Christ by the
gift of faith, then you've seen God. God is Spirit and no man
can see Him and live, yet He has revealed Himself in His Son,
who is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He's the image, Paul said to
the Colossian church, of the invisible God. I'm still trying
to figure out what the heck that means. Think about that. An image of the invisible. Well, it seems like if it was
invisible, it wouldn't have an image, would it? But Christ is. He's the image of the invisible
God. The image. When He was being crucified,
He was upholding all things by the Word of His power. Upholding all when He was being
crucified. In agonies and blood, when His humanity seemed to be
at its weakest, He was controlling the whole scene. Moving every actor to his place
on redemption stage giving breath to those who mocked Him, giving
muscles to those who drove the spikes in His hands and feet,
putting words in their mouth that they might fulfill the prophecies
that had been made. And they spoke on cue, because
unbeknownst to them, He was giving them what to say. He was perfecting
forever them that are sanctified, He on the cross. Who was that? That's the sovereign. The sovereign
substitute on that cross. Upholding all things by the word
of His power. What is the word of His power?
The gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation.
Being all this. Being this. He humbled himself
and became obedient unto death, and in doing so, by himself alone,
he purged our sins. You want to know where purgatory
is? Right there. Their sins were purged. Right
there. What does that mean? He did away
with sins, the sins of His people. He purged them. He purified His
people. He did not make purging possible.
He hath appeared, Scripture says, once in the end of the world
to put away sin. Now either He did that, or we
are of all men most miserable. Because if He didn't put it away,
it's still on us, and we've got to face God with it. He made
an end of sin. When He had purged our sins,
when He had purged our sins, He declares in no uncertain terms
that our sins, whoever the our are here, our sins were purged. For the what? Well, how can I
be sure? Preacher, I like that. It sounds
good to me. How can I be sure? Two bookends. right here in this
passage, enclose this purging work on the cross of Jesus Christ. First of all, when He purged
our sins, He was the testimony of God. He wears the air of all
things. He was the creator of all things.
He was the brightness of God's glory. He was being the express
image of God's person. And He was upholding all things
by the Word of His power. That's one bookend. You reckon
He was a success? How can He not be? Be in all
that? The other bookend is the last
phrase. When He had purged our sins, He sat down on the right
hand of the majesty on her. Sitting down may not mean much
to most people in this age, probably feels good, you're sitting down
now. But in the economy of salvation,
sitting down is really a big deal. Because in the old covenant,
the priest didn't even have a chair in the tabernacle of the temple.
There was no place to sit. Because they was busy 24 hours
a day, and still, everything they did 24 hours a day, they
didn't get anything done. No sins were ever purged. No
sin was ever put away. It says of our Lord in Hebrews
chapter 10, when He had, after He had perfected forever, them
that are sanctified by His one sacrifice, He sat down forever. He sat down. What does that mean?
Whatever He intended to do is finished. Nothing left to do. Nothing left to do. He sits, resting in the glory
that He has duly earned as the Savior of His people. He sits
enthroned. as King of Kings and Lord of
Lords. Why? Because He purged our sins. I say to you, behold your God. Behold your God.