Hebrews 1.
You may be seated.
You say, this is the word of God.
Amen.
Today I want to do stuff just a little differently.
I want to set aside some time to frame all of Hebrews for us to kind of help us see this passage as we're going through it.
Jason gave me the opportunity to pick a book to preach through.
And after much urging and pleading from my wife and daughter particularly, they said, pick Hebrews.
So I want to kind of frame this out for us so that we have that in view as we go through the rest of it.
Every letter has a purpose, right?
When you write a letter, you're writing it for a particular reason.
The author's purpose for writing this one is to encourage and exhort those believers facing persecution and the temptation to turn aside from following Christ.
Four times in this letter, he tells them not to draw back from God.
Five times he tells them to hold on or hold fast to their faith.
Over and over, he says to strive and make every effort.
And twice, he encourages them not to neglect the fellowship of the saints.
Two times, he encourages them to persevere in following Christ.
So the message for us in this book that God has preserved for us, knowing that we still need it, is not turning aside or turning away from Christ.
I'm not going to spend long on the background because the author himself does not.
In fact, we honestly don't know who wrote it.
Origen, one of the early church fathers, says God only knows.
And I believe that's the position the author would have us to take.
We know that he was known to Timothy.
And we know that he was known to his audience.
But that is all.
I think that he does this on purpose, and we're going to see that.
This letter was believed to have been written to Hebrew Christians, most likely those that were in Rome, early in the church.
This was actually probably one of the earliest of the epistles that we have outside of a couple of Pauls.
That it was written probably between 1849 and 1870 at the fall of Rome.
Or sorry, the fall of Jerusalem and the siege.
Church history says that at this point, a lot of the leaders of the Christians were expelled.
They say it was the Jews under Claudius were actually expelled.
But looking back to the church historians, it was actually probably those Jews that had converted to Christianity.
Because at this time, the Jews had a protection under the Roman law to worship as was their custom.
They actually had protections and provisions for that.
But these radical Christians did not.
So it was most likely those Christian leaders, the ones that were expelled from Rome.
And now you have this Roman church sitting here without leadership, young in the faith, being faced with the temptation to turn back to Judaism.
See, some of them in this letter say that they'd suffered reproach.
They'd suffered affliction.
Some had been put into prison.
Some had had their property taken.
Certainly far worse persecution than we face today.
But that their suffering could all end.
If they just went back to Judaism.
They could still have their faith in God, which is the important part, right?
Just leave aside this Christianity.
They could have a quiet, comfortable life.
Their families could be safe.
Things could go well for them.
Church, does this sound familiar to us in our day?
Like I said, the divine author knows that we still need this book.
Few of us are being tempted with going back to Judaism.
However, we all can say that we are regularly presented with the prospect of turning aside from Christ.
Sometimes it's obvious and it's right in our faces.
The area we live in is middle class to obviously very wealthy.
All of it's put on display.
Worldly gain, vainglory, self-indulgence, materialism constantly around us as much as these Christians in Rome ever had it.
We are being bombarded with thing after thing after thing, seeking to draw away our attention and thereby our hearts to something other than Christ.
Sometimes it's obvious and loud.
Sometimes it's subtle.
Just like the old frog in the pot analogy of how you cook a frog.
You know, just put him in there and slowly turn the heat up little by little without him perceiving it until he's cooked.
Oftentimes, the church has suffered more under prosperity than it did persecution.
Because it's just a little, just slight degrees, as long as it seems normal.
We live in a world that says it's okay to be a Christian.
Just don't be a radical one.
You can have all your religion, your faith in God.
Just don't talk about sin.
Don't talk about repentance.
Don't talk about the need of a savior.
Unfortunately, how many of our churches today would preach the message that our author preaches in Hebrews 13, 11?
When he says,
For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.
So Jesus also suffered outside the camp in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.
Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.
For here we have no lasting city, but we seek a city that is to come.
Church, the enemy is only, is fine with our faith.
Just that little turning aside.
Just turning aside from Christ, just a little.
That's all it takes.
There's this old saying that's been used so many times by different leaders, we don't know where it comes from.
But the saying goes, do I not make my friends, do I not kill my enemies when I make them my friends?
Make no mistake.
There is open warfare going daily over your soul for who will have its allegiance.
Our foe is only too happy to have us caught up in the entanglements of this life.
We cannot turn aside and go to anything less than Christ.
It's subtle.
You say, well, I know I'm a Christian.
I follow Jesus.
But are you spiritually dry and sluggish?
I know for myself those days when I sit back and I say, well, where have my thoughts been?
Where's my attention been today?
Who has had my heart?
Is it myself?
Is it the cares of this life?
How many of them were occupied with Christ?
There's another old saying that goes, that where our eyes go, so shall our heart.
I can't say that I love my wife and give another woman my attention.
Pretty soon, I'll find my heart somewhere else.
The author of the Hebrews knows this and makes it plain to us by repeatedly comparing Christ to everything else they were being tempted to go back to.
Seven times in this letter, he calls the work of Christ, or our faith in him, great.
Ten times he says that it's better, that it's superior.
Twice he uses more excellent when comparing Christ.
The writer of Hebrews' constant theme is the supremacy of Christ.
Not just that he's better than what we're being presented with, but he is the best.
There could be no better.
When we see Christ, everything else, just like we sang in our song today, grows strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
Everything else grows sickeningly pale and weak and small.
All the comforts of religion and every effort that we make become weak and useless.
And then all the enticements of this world start to become vile.
When our gaze is fixed on the one who is glorious like no other, all else loses its value.
That's the theme that I want us to remember as we go through Hebrews.
That where our heart is, where our treasure will be.
It follows a suit.
Where our treasure is, what we set before us, our heart's going to be there.
Our hearts always follow our eyes.
So setting up that frame for Hebrews and that lens that I want us to start reading through.
I want to go into this.
We're actually only going to get through the first verse and a half today.
But I read all of Hebrews 1 so that we have a frame to understand it in and a context.
But the author lays out three things in particular here that help us to understand his first exhortation in verse 2.
So as we go through this, I want you guys to see this with me.
Often, in a letter, the greeting could be made at the end.
But generally, like you see in the other apostles, they lay out who's writing the letter in the beginning.
Our author doesn't do that here.
Why?
There seems like some stuff that you would be expecting to see that seems strangely absent in the first part.
Remember our theme that I said of holding Christ up.
The author doesn't give his name, his authority.
But he puts somebody else's there first.
So that we see, who does he hold up first?
His first line, he starts with a statement that at first is easy to read right over the top of.
But it is so packed full of meaning that I want us to stop here as we go through Hebrews and see the richness of it.
Because it's going to inform the rest of it and help us to understand it.
We have to put ourselves in the frame of the people that were reading this letter to who was written at first.
The verse says,
There's three contrasts that I want you to see in this verse by itself.
That we're going to look at today.
The first one, you'll notice, is long ago.
It's the when God spoke.
Long ago.
But the comparison is, but now, in these last days, it's easy for us to hear when and only think time, right?
Especially in our linear Western perspective, we hear when and we think yesterday or the day before.
But it also has the connotation, as the King James puts it, I think, better than it is, formerly.
In King James, it translates it, in times past.
There's a sense of time order.
However, the phrase, in these last days, literally reads, on these last of days, there's almost a stop to it.
Because the word used for last, here is the word eschaton.
And in Mark's telling of the parable that Jesus gave, that we read in Matthew, this is the word that Mark uses when he says,
Finally, he sent his son.
Eschaton.
This word we know from extra-biblical sources that by the point of Jesus' day, in Jewish teaching in circles,
this word eschaton had taken on a symbolism for the coming Messianic age.
And that's why I believe Mark uses it, is that he is trying to point out the Messiah Christ.
And here, he uses it as well.
This one, here, is meant to signify, this word is the last of things in an order.
The culmination of.
This would be a finality to it.
That's the last of all, the end.
It's a resolution of that time order and those things being described.
This last of these days, of the days.
What we see here is a finality with this Messianic one that the author is establishing for us.
There's a finality here that God has purposed from the foundation of the world.
In Ephesians 1, 7 and 10, he says,
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us,
and all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will,
according to his purpose,
which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time,
to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Scripture paints a full picture of when this Messiah would come.
That's it.
We looked back in our Sunday school and we saw all these ways that God spoke to his people.
And the author is laying out for us here that long ago, in many times, many ways,
God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
but in these last of days, he's spoken by his son.
This would stop them.
Here's the Messiah.
This is the one.
This is the end.
These are the last of the days.
Secondly, I want you guys to notice that he says that many times and in many ways,
this is how God spoke.
This is the when and now this is the how.
As compared to what?
By his son.
The phrase there, many times and many ways, in its simplest,
which means bit by bit or piece by piece.
In lots of ways.
The King James here says that sundry times and in sundry ways.
During Sunday school, we had looked at how God had used visions of his glory.
God had spoken to Moses face to face.
God had sent visions to his prophets.
And always there was signs, there's wonders that accompany.
But we never get a full picture.
We see God's holiness.
And it's plain that those prophets delivered the message that he had for them.
But we only got bits and pieces.
Is what the author is saying here.
We didn't get a whole picture of who God is and what he's like.
But scripture tells us that even those prophets of old were looking forward to Christ.
When Jesus shows himself to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he says,
And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow to heart,
to believe all that the prophets had spoken.
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
And then, if it couldn't be more clear, in Revelation 19.10,
the angel tells John that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
And then, Peter, in 1 Peter 1.10.12, says,
It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you.
And the things that you have now been announced to through those who preach the gospel.
I'm sorry, preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.
Things into which angels long to look.
So I want you to see that simple contrast.
Before, it was many times.
Many ways.
Bit by bit.
Cloudy.
Uncertain.
We got a glimpse of God.
But it was fire and thick smoke.
We got rumblings and peels of thunder.
But then what's the contrast?
His son.
One voice.
One way.
One time.
It's the son who says,
I am the way, the truth, the life.
No one comes to the Father but by me.
If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.
Clear.
Unveiled.
Christ before us.
The other contrast I want to see in there is by whom God spoke.
Before it was by prophets.
Now it's by his son.
Today and for the rest of our sermon, I want to unpack a little bit more of the method, the by part.
And then next time I get to preach, we're going to look at the whom a little deeper.
But in his closing to the church in Rome and probably much the same Christians,
Paul says,
Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages,
but has now been disclosed.
So there's,
we see this working with the scriptures that we already saw,
that all those prophets were looking forward to Christ and pointing forward to Christ.
But there's a full unpacking of the mystery of what God would do in the person and work of Christ.
Paul starts to make plain what he means in mystery,
in Colossians, when he says,
Of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that is given to me for you,
to make the word of God fully known,
the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.
To them God chose to make known
how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of his mystery,
which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory.
And then he clarifies even more when he tells them that his desire for them is that they would reach all the riches of the full assurance of understanding
and the knowledge of God's mystery,
which is Christ.
And then in 1 Timothy 2, 5 and 6,
Paul says,
For there is one mediator between God and man.
Remember we looked at the mediation of Moses.
We saw that.
We saw God mediating his word through Isaiah and through Ezekiel.
But now he says,
The man, Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all,
which is the testimony given at the proper time.
So for these Hebrews,
this introduction would serve to point them right to Christ.
First and foremost,
that's where the author heads.
When being presented with all the possibility of turning aside and going back,
he stops them with this idea
that they would be familiar with,
but points it right to the one.
This is it.
These are the last of days.
Truly,
the Messiah is here.
These are it.
The Messiah has come.
That is all.
There's no need for further speaking from God.
Nothing's lacking.
There is no other word.
Nothing more to look for.
Nothing to go back to.
Nothing more to add.
Christ is the pinnacle of God speaking to his people.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the fullness of the mystery of God.
Everything that had been proclaimed to all of God's people in ages past,
this is the end.
This is the end.
Here's that end mark.
God has spoken by his son.
God has spoken.
This is the perfect word of God.
Finally, he's spoken.
as opposed to times past.
Singularly he's spoken
as opposed to bit by bit
and by his son
as opposed to by prophets.
No one who seeks to add anything
to what God has spoken
can come away
and not have to deal with this.
Any other voice that claims
to be coming from God
and speaking a better word
is saying that they are speaking
a better word spoken by his son.
By holding up the supremacy of Christ
being the final word spoken by God
it leaves us in a spot
where all else is cut off.
What else is there to turn to?
What else is there to turn aside to?
If this is the word of God
given in his son.
In John, Jesus says
in John 5.38
he says
and you do not have
his word abiding in you
for you do not believe
the one he has sent.
You search the scriptures
because you think
that in them you have eternal life
and it is they
who bear witness about me.
Yet you refuse to come to me
that you may have life.
There's no way
we can go and dabble
in a Christless religion
and walk by this verse
and not be confronted
with an emptiness
to what we'd be playing with.
What worth is there
if it's not
in the fully spoken word of God?
I don't know
all of you
and where you all stand
with the Lord
but if you're sitting here
and you're waiting
for God to speak to you
he has.
Maybe you're unsure
that he exists
and you're waiting
for him to show you
that he's real
what he's like
he did.
Maybe you're not sure
who he is
and who
who he has
in relation to you
what he's supposed to be.
You have only to look at Christ.
When Philip
is there with Jesus
at the last supper
and he says
show us the Father
and it's enough for us.
Just show us God
and that'd be alright.
Jesus says
have I been with you
so long
and you do not know me?
Whoever has seen me
has seen the Father.
Friend
if that's you
come now to Christ.
He is the final word
you are going to get
from God.
come to Christ
simply trusting
that this is how
God has spoken to man.
We looked at
and it was
brought out by several
in Sunday school
how all those ways
that God spoke
it was God
who instituted it.
It was God
who initiated it.
God is holy
and he speaks to people
as he will.
He started it.
you are coming
and humbly agreeing
with scripture
that God has provided
that you can know him
and it begins
with faith
in the life
death
burial
resurrection
and ascension
of Christ.
He lived the life
that God required
of you.
his death
paid the penalty
for the sin
that keeps you
from him
and his resurrection
gives you the hope
that you will see him.
If you will not
come humbly
to Christ
what is there
else for you?
If you will not
your rejection
of him
is actually
rebellion
to God
because God
has spoken
to us
he chooses
he is holy
he has sent us
his son
and beloved
of Christ
this then
puts us
to how do we
portray Christ
to others
when we speak
of him
if we shy
away from
speaking the gospel
and we don't
ever bring
Christ
we actually
deny God
speaking
if this is
how he
has put
in these
last of days
this final
this end cap
and spoken
by his son
while we
profess Christ
do we put
Christ
forth
to others
I know
for myself
often times
it's easy
to talk
to co-workers
to friends
about all sorts
of stuff
and even try
and point
them to God's
truth
but if we
don't bring
Christ
we're not
agreeing
with God
he has
spoken
he decides
are we
quick
to speak
about God's
love
but never
hold up
the cross
of Christ
where God
put that
on display
in the most
vivid way
possible
do we
speak
to our
friends
and our
family
about coming
to God
for
his healing
his comfort
but never
show them
his physician
do not
forget
there's no
clear
fuller
picture
of who
God
is
and what
he is
like
than in
the full
person
and work
of Christ
see we
have to
remember
as we go
through this
that this
letter is
written
to those
in the
church
it's
easy
to say
this
to those
outside
but God
knows that
we still
need this
there are
so many
voices out
there calling
regularly
for our
attention
but if
God has
spoken
fully
and perfectly
in his
son
what are
we listening
to
what has
our ear
what's
clamoring
for our
attention
are you
satisfied
with lesser
things
maybe
your love
has grown
cold
where are
you looking
maybe
even
in those
subtle
sneaky
crafty
ways
of our
enemy
you know
a lot
about the
Bible
you love
listening to
doctrine
but has
it driven
you closer
to Christ
of late
do you
see him
more clearly
don't forget
its aim
may it
cause you
to see
him
we are
regularly
put forward
with things
to turn us
aside from
following
Christ
go to
God's
word
sit at
the foot
of Christ
and listen
to him
I wanted
to read
for you
the words
of Christ
for this
reason
he says
truly
I say
to you
the son
can do
nothing
of his
own
accord
but only
what he
sees
the father
doing
for whatever
the father
does
that the
son does
likewise
for the
father
loves
the son
and shows
him
all that
he himself
is doing
and greater
works than
these
will he
show him
so that
you
may marvel
for as the
father raises
the dead
and gives
them life
so also
the son
gives life
to whom
he will
brothers and
sisters
there is
nothing
left to
turn aside
to
that as
we go
through
Hebrews
and we
get to
study
this
letter
to
Christians
that are
really
much the
same
politics
that we
are
when we
come to
the word
there's
really
two
responses
that we
have
is to
be cut
with
conviction
when God
shows us
our need
of him
and those
things that
have turned
us aside
from seeing
the supremacy
of Christ
and the
other side
of that
coin is
to see
him and
rejoice
so my
prayer as
we go
through
Hebrews
together
is that
he would
hold up
Christ
before our
eyes
God
that
he would
be
glorious
to us
that
everything
else
would
become
pale
my
prayers
that
God
would
work
in
each
of
us
a
measure
of
both
may he
turn
our
eyes
fixed
to
Christ
let me
pray for
us
!
Heavenly
Father
Lord
you are
so good
that you
the holy
would step
down
and speak
to men
that the
word would
take on
flesh
and dwell
among us
that you
would show
your people
the full
picture of
you and the
glorious face
of Christ
Lord I pray
for all of us
here today
for those
that do not
know you
yet
that you
would
create in
them a
hunger to
where they
can turn
nowhere else
but only
find their
satisfaction
in you
Lord I pray
for your
church
that you
would preserve
us
by your
word
that this
word from
you
Christ
on full
display
would be
to us
sweeter
than honey
that we
could not
turn aside
to anything
else
that you
would capture
Lord the
thoughts and
the affections
of our
hearts
oh Christ
there is
none like
you
Holy Spirit
I pray that
you help us
to do this
it is in
your son's
name Lord
that I pray
all of this
amen