Hebrews 1:1-3 - Jesus is God

We are in the very final season of Tabernacle Talk for 2024, and we're going to be going through the Book of Hebrews.

And this is going to be, Lord will, and if I counted everything correctly, this will be a 22 episode season. And this will be just a great time looking at an amazing book of scripture.

I think I mentioned in the last episode, Hebrews was the first book of the Bible that I read through the entirety of a book, and something that was not the King James version of the Bible.

And so, it was kind of the first book that I got to read in my English, so to speak.

And so, it really just kind of jumped off the page at me back in 2019, and helped cement so many wonderful truths in my heart that I have carried with me over the past several years.

My very last sermon that I preached at my ministry in Moses Lake, Washington, was from the Book of Hebrews, from the end of Hebrews chapter 13.

And so, it is a very near and dear book to my heart, and I believe that it will be an encouragement to us as we walk through it.

So, I'm going to give you a little background on the book, and then today, we are just looking at Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 3.

And I promise there's a reason for the fact that we're only going over 3 verses today, but I know that over the next 22 episodes, which will be just a little over 4 weeks or so, that we will gain some great encouragement and challenges in our faith.

So the Book of Hebrews, as I mentioned in the last episode, it doesn't state like, hey, here's who wrote it. So some people have thought it was Paul. Some people thought it was Barnabas.

Some people thought it was Apollos. And others thought that it might have been Luke translating a sermon, a Hebrew sermon of Paul's, into Greek and then adapting it for a specific audience.

Other people have thrown out a number of other individuals' names. What we do know is that this is a vital part of God's Word.

And you'll see kind of why as we journey through this over the next several weeks, that Hebrews ties together so many of the things that we read about in the Old Testament, that we go like, hey, what was the importance of this?

Why did it have to be done in this particular way for the children of Israel? And as we bring it to the Book of Hebrews, then we see, oh, this was all a picture of Jesus. Everything in it pointed to him.

And so that's really what Hebrews does. It declares for us that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God, that everything that God wanted to tell us, every character piece of God is all revealed in Jesus.

Everything that was good in the Old Testament it all points to Jesus. And we'll see that as we walk through and episode after episode after episode, we're going to see Jesus is better than this. Jesus is the true this or that from the Old Testament.

Though we don't know the author of the book, we know that they have a commanding grasp of the Old Testament scriptures.

And whoever their audience is, they don't necessarily say like, hey, for this particular geographical region, this is who this is for, or hey, this is for all of the churches in perhaps this locale.

It's just giving kind of in general to some Jewish individuals or some Jewish people that as you look at the book, you can see they are undergoing heavy persecution, which is kind of a recurring theme as you look at the New Testament.

And for these people, they are questioning, they're considering like, hey, should we just go back to Judaism? Judaism had some protections in the Roman Empire.

And so there could have been a thought that said, okay, well, it's a lot safer to be a Jew than it is to be a Christian during these days. And, you know, is it really all that different, you know, Jesus and Judaism?

And should we worship, you know, should we worship Jesus alone? Should we gather with Christians? Because that just really invites a lot of persecution against us.

And the writer here is communicating, Jesus is the entire point of the Old Testament.

Everything that you were looking for in Judaism, all of the sacrifices, the angels, Moses, the Torah, the Sabbath rest that we are aiming towards, every single iota of the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so no, don't abandon him.

He is the point of everything in your life. And it's not that your persecution and your suffering means that God's not with you or God's not for you.

Instead, just as Jesus suffered, just as all of these Old Testament people suffered, so we suffer as well. But that shows us that we are following in God's path.

If we are suffering, not for like wickedness that we're doing, but in following God's revelation. So to these people that the author is trying to convince like, hey, stay with Jesus. Stay with these Christians.

This local body of believers that you are with, as we'll read about in Chapter 10 here in several episodes. He says, don't leave them because Jesus is the point of it all. Jesus is better.

So let's start today with Chapter 1 and Verses 1 through 3.

And we'll see where we're at for time because the next section that we're going to be in tomorrow is Verses 4 through Chapter 2 and Verse number 9 where it says that Jesus is better than the angels. So we're going to see how much time we have today.

Verse number 1, long ago, God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. God has appointed Him heir of all things and made the universe through Him.

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of His nature, sustaining all things by His powerful Word. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Okay, we're going to stop there.

We're going to break this apart piece by piece, and we'll see where we're at for today. Long ago, He says God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways.

He reinforces for them here the Old Testament scriptures were not just nice things that guys wrote down as they thought about the world and went, hmm, I wonder if it all kind of works in this way. He says, no, no, no.

God was the one that handed down the Old Testament scriptures. This is not the Word of men. This is the Word of God.

So here, he is reinforcing the importance of the Old Testament scriptures. He doesn't tell them, hey, you've got Jesus now, you don't really need the Bible. Like, Jesus is the Word of God, and so you don't need any other words from God.

He says, no. In emphasizing how important Jesus is, he says, God sent the Old Testament to the fathers by the prophets. And he says it came in different times and in different ways.

It wasn't just kind of all at once. It was right there. You know, God spoke to Job.

God spoke to Adam and to Noah, to Cain and to Enoch. God spoke to Moses as he wrote much of the first five books of scripture. He spoke to Samuel.

He spoke to David quite a bit.

And so as God is speaking to all of these different prophets, those that would take the message of God to the people of God, he says, it came in various ways, but he says in verse number two, in these last days, which that is interesting as we look

back 2,000 years that the author here is saying, but in these last days, this is kind of the final expression of God. Here, there is not an expectation that God is going to continue to, through prophets, speak to his people in the same way that he

did with the Old Testament Scriptures. Here, he says, what has been done in Jesus and through the apostles, like this is it, like this is God's final revelation of himself to the world, and it is to the church.

So he says, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.

He says, listen, I know you guys, you guys are good Torah-obeying Jews, and as you should be, you love the Word of God, but I want to remind you of the fact that Jesus is the ultimate Word of God.

That would be why John would tell us in John chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word, the logos for the Greeks, and then some of the Roman philosophers after them, as they were thinking about the world, and like what is the like foundation of

everything, like what holds the entire universe together? If you're a Star Wars fan, you would know about the force.

And the Greeks thought that that force that held everything together, that it was logos, it was knowledge, it was the truths that held everything in the universe together.

And so John, when he writes his gospel, he lets his gospel audience know Jesus is the one that holds everything together. And so he says, in the beginning was the Word, Jesus. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him, there was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of man.

And so here in Hebrews chapter 1, this author reiterates those same exact thoughts, that Jesus is the final Word of God. Next, he says, God has appointed him heir of all things, and made the universe through him.

So I do want to highlight one little truth, which is that Jesus is what is often known as the first born. That is, in the ancient Near East, you had a practice where the first born son would receive the name and purpose of the father.

He would receive the family lands. He would get the majority of whatever riches that the father had. He would be the one, if his father was a king, he would be the one to inherit the throne.

And so over and over again, in the New Testament, Jesus is talked about as the one that he will receive everything from the father. That the father has handed him all authority and judgment. He has given him a people.

He has given him authority over the entire world. He has given him all power and wisdom and glory. As the second person of the Trinity, that this is what the father does in his love and in his giving.

He gives all of it to Jesus. And as 1 Corinthians 15 would state, then once Jesus has reigned for that thousand years with his people, then all of that glory gets re-centered back to God the Father.

That voluntarily, as the Spirit has been drawing attention to the Son for these past 2,000 years, as the Father has glorified the Son in everything that has happened, that the Son glorifies the Father as he did on earth.

And he will deliver the Kingdom up to the Father as well. That there is this wonderful Trinitarian work that goes on with everything. But God has said that he has appointed Jesus heir of all things.

That whatever exists, it belongs to Jesus. So for these people that are undergoing persecution, the writer lets him know, like, hey, you belong to Jesus.

Like, yes, you love the Father, but I want you to know that the Father has given everything to the Son.

And so you can't really choose between God and just worshipping Him or also worshipping Jesus because he has designated Jesus as the one who is to be worshipped and the one who gets everything.

And he says, not only is Jesus heir of all things, but he says also he made the universe, the ages through him. That's Colossians chapter one. I'm going to turn over there just because I'm not terribly far from that spot in my Bible right now.

There's a great little song. I think I've already referenced this one, but that's all right. By Charles Billingsley, who was the music pastor in Thomas Road Baptist Church, where Liberty University is.

He was the worship pastor at that church for several years. And there's a great little song called God of the Ages about Jesus that's taken right here from Colossians chapter one. And that passage says, he is the image of the invisible God.

That he is the like physical representation of everything that God is. So that's going back to Genesis chapter one, where we are said to have been made in the image of God.

That the kings during the time of like Babylon especially, they were viewed as the image of their Babylonian gods. That is that they were the full embodiment of everything that their gods were. And Jesus is the image of the invisible god.

He is the exact whatever god is, Jesus is that. Says he is the image of the invisible god, the firstborn over all creation. That is the one who is deserving of everything.

He says for everything was created by him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. Here, I just want to highlight a couple of things here. So verse 16, it's so rich.

Everything was created by him in heaven and on earth. Everything that's in the skies and everything that's on the land. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Paul in Colossians 1 tells us that Jesus created everything in the heavens, everything in the earth. This is what here the author in Hebrews is saying. Everything was made by him.

All of scripture is testifying to this exact same truth. It says that Jesus made the visible and the invisible. He made everything that we can see and everything that we can't.

He made the wind. He made gravity. He made all of the laws that govern all of nature.

Jesus made all of it. It says whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, that is all of the spiritual beings. Jesus created all of them.

No one created Jesus. He is an uncreated one. But he made all other things.

So, contra what perhaps some of the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons would say about Jesus, that he was just another spiritual being or he was like the best created spiritual being. He was a brother of other spiritual beings like Satan.

So, he's kind of like a brother to him. That is untrue. Jesus is the one that created all of the spiritual beings.

So, going back to Hebrews chapter 1, God made the universe through Jesus, that Jesus is the creator. Verse number 3, the son is the radiance, the reflection of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature.

That word expression, it's the representation, it's the copy, it's the reproduction.

It's one way that I've heard it phrased is back in Roman times, you would have a couple of different things that would be said to be like the exact expression of someone's nature.

One of those would be a coin that it would bear the likeness of the Caesar on that coin. You want to know what Caesar looks like? Look at the coin.

The other way would be with a stamp. When you have the hot wax and then you put the stamp, the seal on, you want to know what the seal looks like.

You look at that wax that has been imprinted with the seal, and you know exactly what the seal looks like. And so here's what the author is saying to these people, that Jesus is the exact expression of the nature of God.

You want to know what God looks like? You want to know how God thinks? You want to know how God acts?

You want to know how God loves? Look at Jesus. Everything that is true about Jesus is true about God, and everything that's true about our God is true about Jesus.

He is the exact expression of his nature. He is the radiance of God's glory. He is the reflection of God, that he doesn't bring any extra things in to God.

It's not that God was incomplete in some way, but everything true of the Father is true of the Son, is true of the Spirit. That is that they are all God, and they are one in nature. So much more could be said, but time fails.

So he says, the Son is the radiance of God's glory, the exact expression of his nature, and he is sustaining all things by his powerful word. And here there's another kind of illusion, it would seem, to Colossians chapter 1 and verse number 17.

He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. That Jesus holds our universe together. And what a wonderful, amazing, powerful God that he is.

In the end of verse number 3. After making purification for sins, how do we have our sins purified? Is it through our work?

No, it's through Jesus' work. He made the purification for sins. We either accept what he did, or we reject what he did.

He says, after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. That is a position of authority and glory. And someone that's seated, they're not worried.

They're sovereign. They are in control. And this is who Jesus is.

He is the one sitting at the right hand of the throne of God. And this was also what was told to us back in Acts chapter 7 in verse number 54, with the stoning of one of the first deacons, Stephen, as he preaches the gospel to them.

They heard these things. They were enraged and gnashed their teeth at him. Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven.

He saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

In that moment, in the persecution of God's people, in that moment, Jesus was standing to welcome home this person that would undergo stoning and persecution and death for the sake of Jesus.

And here in Hebrews, chapter 1, there is this reassertion of this truth that Jesus is there. He's at God's right hand. He didn't die and stay dead.

Instead, he ever lives for us. So what do we learn today? We learn that Jesus is the very nature of God, that you can't, you know, choose between, okay, do I do I want to worship God the Father or God the Son?

It's a it's a both and. Anything that is true about Jesus is true about the Father and vice versa. That Jesus is God's final expression, his final word.

And so you can't reject Jesus and still hope to be in good standing with God. It's Jesus or nothing. Jesus made everything.

He communicates to us who God is. He died in our place for our sins. And he reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Will you worship him today? I was a little bit worried about time initially because it was only three verses. But 22 minutes in, it looks like we didn't do too bad.

So thanks for tuning in today. Tomorrow, we're going to be looking at chapter one and verse four through chapter two and verse nine. Looking at Jesus is better than the angels.

He's going to draw attention to some Old Testament Psalms. And I'm looking forward to that time with you. See you next episode.