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I am continuing preaching verse by verse through Hebrews, here 1:5-6.
Now as we open your word we ask that you would be with us and give us understanding hearts and minds to understand your truth and to remember what we learned. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. I can see it coming, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Yesterday morning I was riding as most of you know I do. I was doing a 33 .5 mile ride and I was racing someone, mainly myself. It's really neat to live in these days where I have a little gadget on my bike.
It's a GPS unit and when I get done with the ride I can go back and look at a map of the whole thing. You can put it into Google Earth and zoom over it. It's amazing what you can do these days. I can't see myself on it, but that's coming I'm sure, which is sort of scary.
I can also put rides into it so that I can race myself. So I can take a ride I did before and I can put it in and it will put me and then me. So I can race me and I can guarantee you it's a really good training thing to do, but I was racing me and I was ahead by the way.
I came to this one spot in the ride where I keep forgetting that on Saturdays there's a lot more people on the trail than there are say at 5 a .m. on a Tuesday morning. I was going up to Thunderbird Road and if you've been there and you know where this trail is, there's a spot where there's guardrails.
They're big thick metal guardrails on both sides, not very wide. Generally I don't run into folks there, but somebody was having a birthday party in the park. Going through I had a little trouble, but not too much.
Coming back I could see what was coming. There's a fella and he's carrying, I don't know what this thing was, but he's carrying this big old box of wrapping paper. And he's going right where I need to go.
Well, I started yelling back underneath the bridge, Coming through, please stay to the right! I'm doing everything I could to try to avoid a problem, but he just didn't want to listen to me. And so I'm climbing this hill up behind him and he's not giving way, he just keeps on going.
I'm going right or back, right or back, and right as I get to him he decides to turn and take up the whole thing to see who's coming. And I was a nice guy, instead of running into him I rode right into one of those big old guardrails.
Thankfully I got my feet out of the clips fast enough not to flip over the thing, but it was sort of an embarrassing situation. I saw it coming. And you know how right at the end everything goes into slow motion?
I mean, this was only 24 hours ago and I could just see that guardrail slowly coming at me. I'm hearing myself yelling, I saw it coming, but there was nothing I could do about it. Well, how am I going to connect that story to Hebrews chapter 1?
You're wondering. Well, let me tell you something. I am, as most of you know, I do a lot of debating and apologetics and I know some of the toughest biblical questions out there. I mean, they get thrown at me.
But someday I think I'm going to write a book, The Toughest Questions. Two of the hardest questions that I know of in all the Bibles that I haven't even figured out yet. It's going to take a lot of work to get through them.
Two of them are in this book. Is there any need? And yet I keep plotting on. And I know that no matter how slowly I go, eventually I'm going to get to them. I see it coming, but there's no way to stop it.
I'm going to get to them eventually, and of course I want to get to them. Because when you work through the toughest questions, that's when you get the greatest rewards. And this is a tough book. Well, I want you to look at your Bible.
And I want you to just page through a little bit. And hopefully your Bible, maybe in some way, sets out Old Testament quotations. Maybe it does it in italics or bold. I know the New American Standard, it does it in capital print.
But look through this book and see how many citations of the Old Testament text there is in Hebrews. You are soaked in the Old Testament text when you read this book. And when the New Testament cites the Old Testament, issues come up.
Troubling questions come up. And today as we work through verses 5 and 6, Lord willing, at least in this morning time, we start really running into this use of the Old Testament by the New. And some of the toughest questions have to do with that very issue.
As we start looking today at the use of the Old Testament in the New here in Hebrews chapter 1, we're going to start laying some foundations. We're going to have to start laying some foundations that will help us as we work through the rest of this book.
Because I have become convinced, the more I have read and studied this book, that it is without a doubt one of the most ignored of the New Testament books. When I hear Christians talking about their favorite books, very rarely do I hear someone say Hebrews.
And I don't hear a lot of preaching other than from certain portions of Hebrews. And to try to walk all the way through it, it's a big task. No choice about it. But if we can lay a foundation now, it will help us as we work through these things.
And I want to assure you that given that the subject of Hebrews is who Christ is, the supremacy of Christ, the work of Christ, the cross of Christ, the mercy seat, grace, all these things are so much a part of the message of this book that it is worth the work that it will take.
And I assure you, it's going to take us some work. This is not easy preaching. It's going to be hard on me. And for you as the listener, it would be very easy to tune out, to not follow the references, to not go to them.
But I would like to encourage you, the reward is worth the effort. The reward is worth the effort. I was watching something I found on a channel that I had never seen before. And just briefly, they were talking about how you become a Navy SEAL.
And they were showing the process by which you become a Navy SEAL. And there's a certain week you go through that you sleep about two hours this entire week. They drag you out on the seashore where the water is 58 degrees and you have to sit there, locked arm in arm with the rest of your class in the surf, trying to keep your breathing going.
And they're shaking like... It is only the toughest can possibly survive this. But one man said something, I heard him say it, and I thought, ah, that's a wise man. He's standing there and he's shaking.
And it's during one of the brief breaks that they had. And he's going, a few days of pain, a lifetime. And he kept going. And there were people quitting right and left. But you see, he wasn't focused on what he was going through right now.
A few days of pain, a lifetime of accomplishment and pride. Good attitude when it comes to the fact that there are times that there's a section of the Word of God that requires us to go through a little pain, a little bit of work, a little bit of thought.
It might be a little bit uncomfortable. But the reward is truly worth it. So let's dig into it and take a look at it. Hebrews chapter 1. We have been working through it. We'll read the beginning of verse 1.
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the ages or the world.
And He is the radiance of His glory, the exact representation of His being or His nature, and upholding all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a better or more excellent name than they.
For to which of the angels, verse 5, for to which of the angels has He ever said, You are my son, this day I have begotten you. And again, I will be to you as a father, and you shall be to me as a son.
And again, when He brings the firstborn into the inhabited world, He says, Let all the angels of God worship Him. Now, we've already laid the foundation before. If you weren't with us then, I apologize for that, but we can't go back and recover everything.
Just a brief reminder that the writer is beginning his exhortation to Hebrew Christians to remain strong against all the pressure that's being put upon them to go back to the old ways, go back to Judaism, make sacrifice in the temple, deny that Jesus is the final sacrifice, deny the supremacy of Christ.
And so he's beginning by the demonstration here of who Jesus is. And the first four verses, he's already sort of laid this out for us, as presented Jesus in very, very high words, a very exact representation of the nature of God.
Now he begins the demonstration here, beginning in verse 5 at the end of this chapter, demonstrating that Jesus is superior to the angels. Now we need to keep in mind the worldview of the people to whom he's speaking.
If you're superior to the angels, it's not that you're just sort of a super angel or an archangel or something like that. The only thing that is above an angel is God himself. So if Jesus is superior to the angels, the greatest of God's creations, then Jesus is in fact truly deity.
And so he begins the rhetorical question, verse 5, Now, to which of the angels has he ever said, you are my son, today I have begotten you? Now, most of us have reference editions of the Bible. And in that small little print in the center column, side column, however your Bible has it, you will have references that will tell you where these various texts are taken from.
And you can see that this is a citation of Psalm 2 -7. Psalm 2 -7. Let's go ahead, and I think it's important that we look at these texts, because I know that even in my preparation this morning, I have learned things because I took a little more time to look carefully at the Old Testament texts that are being cited.
When we go back to the second Psalm, we are immediately struck by something. Hopefully we are aware of the fact that the second Psalm is a very strongly messianic psalm. It is a psalm that is cited a number of times in the New Testament.
That refers to, for example, look at verse 12, Do homage to the Son, that he not become angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Who is this son that is being talked about here? And in verse 7 we have the text that is cited in Hebrews. I will surely tell the decree of Yahweh, Jehovah. He said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you.
You are my son, today I have begotten you. Now immediately we have many questions that come into our minds. How do we understand prophecies in the Old Testament that clearly had a fulfillment in their day, and yet not a complete fulfillment?
So many of the messianic psalms, Psalm 110, Psalm 2, Psalm 22, had a meaning when they were written. It is not like this psalm is written, and then people start looking at it, and they go, I have no idea what is going on here, because this isn't going to be fulfilled for many, many centuries, and so it is just some type of language that makes no sense to me at all.
These were the hymns of the people of God. They had meaning to them when they were first written. But we know without a doubt that during the intertestamental period, that period between Malachi and the coming of Christ, that about 400 year period, that the Jews themselves recognized that no one in the Old Testament had completely fulfilled even the prophecies that were there.
They recognized that even though maybe David fulfilled a part of this prophecy, or Solomon fulfilled a part of this prophecy, that there was so much more to these prophecies that had not yet been fulfilled.
And so there was a recognition, there was a looking forward to the one who would come, who would fulfill these things. It was recognized that these had partial fulfillment, but that there was going to be a greater fulfillment in the one to come.
That's why there was such a strong messianic hope at that particular point in time. And so when we look at Psalm 2, we can see fulfillments at that time. We can see how in some ways these would speak of the Jewish kings, and the role that Israel had, but they would speak in such grand terms that they were pointing to a greater fulfillment in one who was yet to come.
And so the writer asks in a rhetorical way, to what angel has God ever said, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Clearly the one who is being addressed in the second Psalm has a special relationship and a special nature.
This has never been said to one of the angels. And so if this is said to one, and no angels have ever heard this, then clearly the one about whom it's being spoken is not angelic in his nature. He is not an angel.
But what does it mean, today I have begotten you? This in and of itself could take up two or three sermons if we really wanted to dig into it. There has been a lot of controversy over the history not just of Hebrews chapter one, but the entire interpretation of the New Testament regarding this idea of Jesus being begotten, and especially the phrase, today I have begotten.
There have been some who have said, well, you look at its use in Acts or something like that, and it refers to the resurrection. It refers to the resurrection, and so the fulfillment is that when Jesus is resurrected, then this is when his sonship is proclaimed to the whole world.
It vindicates his claim to have been the Son of God. He claimed to be the Son of God, and now the vindication of it is, he has been risen from the grace of the dead, and therefore he is the Son of God.
Others will say, no, no, no, no. This has to do with the incarnation. It's difficult to come up with a simple answer to the multiple uses of this particular text. There are some that seem to attach it to the resurrection, but I think both here and in verse six, we have to ask the question.
You have, today I have begotten you, and then in verse six, when he brings the firstborn into the world, it would seem that there is a parallel between the two, and there would be some who would say, well, especially that verse six, when he brings the firstborn into the world, and you'll notice I'm not saying when he again, I'll address that translational issue in a moment, but when he brings the firstborn into the world, it sounds like the incarnation.
That sounds like when Christ first comes into the world, but you'll notice, I think there's a better way to go, because when it says the world in verse six, it is speaking of, it's not the normal terminology for the world.
It literally is the inhabited world. It's not cosmos, which we would think of as the normal term for world here. It's a different term that is being used here, and I think that both in verses five and six, what we have here is Christ in his enthronement, his exaltation after the resurrection.
That is when his voluntary humiliation has been completed, and he has indeed been vindicated in the resurrection, and now he has taken the position of the one who indeed, as the preceding verses in verses three and four talk about, who's bearing all things.
He has made atonement for sin. He has sat down, the right hand of the majesty on high, and in that position of exaltation, is seen to be superior to the angels, is seen to be the one who has been vindicated in his claims to be the son of God.
And so if that is the case, then this idea of today I have begotten you is not talking about what has taken place in eternity past. The relationship of father and son never had any beginning. There was never a time when the father was not the father, and there was never a time when the son was not the son.
This confuses many people. This confuses many who have been given false teaching throughout their lives, because they take human relationships and they say, well, look, if Jesus is the son of God, there had to have been a time when he was not, when he came into existence, because every son is begotten by his father, and then he begins that relationship of father and son.
So they're taking the creaturely terms and they're trying to project everything that means back upon the divine. That's always a very scary thing to do. Any type of terminology that God uses to describe his unique nature to us that draws from our experience, you have to be very careful.
Not to project back upon God the limitations of these human terms and human relationships. Any analogy of the Trinity, for example, will break down at some point, because God is unique. And therefore, to use any language that is not unique, you have to be very careful to allow it only to speak to a certain extent and not go beyond that and read into God things that are non-unique because they come from the creaturely realm.
And so when we talk about the relationship of the father and the son, it is not that there was a time when the father was alone and then there's a thing called begettal and now the son comes into existence.
These terms, when used with the father and the son, are eternal in their nature. They have no beginning or end. They are simply recognizing the relationship that exists between the father and the son.
If God did not use these types of terms, we could never distinguish between the father and son spirit. We would not be able to tell who's who, in essence. And so, as John Calvin rightly put it long, long ago, in Scripture, God lisps to us.
He deigns, he condescends to use language that we can understand, but it is just like when we talk to the little baby. You know, over in the nursery now, we've got the little babies. And when you talk to those little babies, we use this strange language.
I don't know where we learn it. We never went to class to learn it. But some people, even their faces get contorted. And there's this, you start talking this strange way you hope no one's watching, but even if they are, they'll understand.
And some people don't like the idea that God is speaking to us in this condescending way. He's condescending to use our language that we might understand, but that is exactly what is going on. And if you have a problem with that, then maybe your views of God or your views of man are a little bit out of kilter.
Maybe you have too low a view of God and way too high a view of man. God does condescend to speak to us in terms we can understand. And so, it is not that in the exaltation of Christ He becomes the Son of God, but that it is in the exaltation of Christ that that is proclaimed in its fullness in a way that had never been proclaimed before.
For by rising from the dead, through the resurrection, you have the full vindication of all the claims of Christ. And so we have in verse 5 a rhetorical argument. These are words that can only have to do with one who is personally related to God himself in a way that no creature ever could be.
These words can never be said to an angel, and yet they are said to the Son. You are my Son. Today I have begotten you. Psalm 2, 7. Then we have the phrase, and again, giving us a second reference. This is 2 Samuel 7, 14.
Let's go ahead and take a look at 2 Samuel 7, 14. 2 Samuel 7, 14 takes us back once again into the story of David, who truly is the primary Messianic figure, both in the Psalter and elsewhere. 2 Samuel 7, 14.
Let's go back to verse 13. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish a throne in his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. When he commits an iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men, and stroke to the sons of men.
But my loving kindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established forever.
In accordance with all these words and all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David. So David has made a request, and God, through Nathan, has responded and has promised that the Lord will indeed, verse 11, the Lord also declares to you that the Lord will make a house for you.
When your days are complete, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. Isn't it fascinating how the Lord does this?
Yes, there is a partial fulfillment in this in Solomon. There is the fact he does build the temple. But by using this more general language and then this discussion of this eternal kingdom, there is again, and this was again seen by the Jews during the intertestamental period, a greater fulfillment that is yet to come.
And so this one, there is a partial fulfillment in Solomon in the building of the temple, but there is much more yet to come. So the writer of the Hebrews is again saying, to what angel could these words ever be said?
No angel has ever been described in these ways. And if you look at the two quotations together, what do they have in common? The idea of father-son relationship. You are my son. Today I have begotten you.
I shall be to you as a father. You shall be to me as a son. Father-son. Who is this one? He has spoken to us by his son. Verse one. So the point being made is there is this one who will be the son of God in a particular and peculiar way.
Yes, men were called the sons of God in the Old Testament. But there is going to be one who is going to fulfill that language in a way that no created being, no angel, the greatest and highest of God's creations could ever fulfill.
Then verse six. Here is where we are going to have to do a little work. I know it is hard to communicate this to you, but I got all excited when I was studying this. Now there are two ways to translate the beginning of verse six.
We need to handle that first. A lot of translations say when he again brings the firstborn into the inhabited world. And so you can translate in such a way that it is referring to a second time. When he again brings the firstborn into the inhabited world.
That is one way of translating it. That is grammatically possible. I know that is what the numeric standard says. But the ESV goes the different direction. And it says, and again when he brings the firstborn.
So it is paralleling. Notice in the middle of verse five he has had and again being the beginning of a citation in Old Testament text. So you can understand this to be he again brings the firstborn into the inhabited world or and again when he brings the firstborn into the inhabited world he says.
Now I go for the second option. I think that it is best to render it. And again this is just another citation. But then there is an introductory phrase. When he brings the firstborn into the inhabited world he says.
And then we have the quotation. And so I don't think we have to be going alright well which is this? This is the first coming, second coming. Is the first coming the previous one and now this is the second coming and so on and so forth.
I think that is missing the point. And there are people who argue with that. For example BF Westcott would argue very strongly. It needs to be when he again brings the firstborn into the world. But I don't think that is the strongest way of rendering it.
So I think the ESV has the best rendering there. And again when he brings the firstborn into the world. What does firstborn mean? Now what I am going to tell you right now is important for understanding this text.
But it is also very important if you happen to be anywhere on a Saturday morning ask Brother Miller and the Jehovah's Witnesses show up. Because Brother Miller will tell you one of the first things the Jehovah's Witnesses said to him when he began talking to him when he started talking about firstborn.
I believe in Colossians 1 .15. What does firstborn mean? The Greek term prototokos. It does not mean first created. In fact by the time it is used in the New Testament it becomes such a well known term that the emphasis on birth it almost completely disappears.
The emphasis of firstborn is always on preeminence, power and authority. In the Old Testament Israel is described as God's firstborn. What does that mean? Israel clearly was not the first nation that Yahweh had created.
But it was the nation that had preeminence in his purposes. God was doing what he was doing through the nation of Israel. So firstborn does not mean first created. It means the one who has preeminence over.
So in Colossians 1 .15 when it speaks of God's firstborn it then goes on to say that that firstborn is the one through whom all things have been made. The one who is in essence the creator of all things.
It is a title of exaltation. And why does it fit here? Well what have we just seen about proceeding through Old Testament texts we're citing? Sonship, relationship. And so here you have the emphasis upon the preeminence of this relationship.
And the writer's talking about when he brings the firstborn into the inhabited world he says let all the angels of God worship him. Now the term worship here is a term that can be used as something other than purely religious worship.
It can be used for example in those contexts where he has a Roman centurion. Just a plain old Roman soldier isn't just going to come walking up to the Roman centurion and go hey bud how goes it? When a Roman soldier sees a centurion or even a higher officer what's he going to do?
When he comes before him he's going to salute or he's going to bow the knee he's going to put his head down. There's ways of showing reverence that person with a greater position and this term can mean that.
There's no advantage to saying oh no it always just only has one meaning. No there are times it can mean that. But there are other times when it means pure and full religious worship. In the book of Revelation you have the instance where after John has seen all these amazing things he's overwhelmed and he tries to proscuneo worship the angel who has shown him these things.
What does the angel say? Don't do that! Proscuneo worship only God. And so in a religious context there is no room for this. Men try to proscuneo worship the apostles and they tore their clothes. No we're just men.
Don't do that. Only worship God. Now clearly this is a religious context and so we're talking about religious worship. But where did that come from? Where does this citation come from? Well again you might have a reference over the side that will direct you to Psalm 97.
So let's take a look at Psalm 97. And it's possible. Psalm 97 says let all those be ashamed who serve graven images who boast themselves of idols worship him all you gods. Well it's possible that the writer of the Hebrews is looking at that term God.
Sometimes Elohim is used in the plural to refer to angels or angelic beings or powers. It's possible. But I think there is a better explanation. This is where if you start if the blood sugar level is dropping and sitting for a little bit too long if we were in a conference on the Lord's Day it's about when I'd have everybody stand up shake a neighbor's hand sit back down get the blood flowing again this is where you need to tune in.
Because I find this absolutely fascinating and I hope you do too. We have to remember something. What Bible is the writer of the Hebrews using? That may sound strange to a few but he's in the Bible so how could he be using the Bible?
But remember the New Testament writers are writing people who already have a Bible. We call it the Old Testament. The Jews call it the Tanakh the Torah, the Neb, the Im, and the Kedvim. Law, prophets, writings.
But what version did they have? Well they must have had the King James. Not quite. It's old, but it's not that old. No, it didn't have the King James it was the English language at the time. What did they have?
It's called the Greek Septuagint. Some people say Septuagint my Greek professor said Septuagint and when you've heard it that many times that way for many years it just sticks that's why I call it the Septuagint.
It means the Seventy. It was a Jewish translation done before the time of Christ about 200 years before him. It wasn't done all at once. The five books of Moses are done very very well some of the prophets are done very very well Psalter is okay there are some sections that weren't done very well at all.
So it was done by different people at different times maybe down in Alexandria in Egypt but by the time of Christ there was a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. One thing we know without question the writer to the Hebrews is quoting the Septuagint and there is going to be no way to work through the book of Hebrews however long that takes without running across one simple reality there are times when the Greek Septuagint is different than the Hebrew Old Testament there are differences and this is one of them what do I mean?
Well, there is a much more probable place where this is coming from it's coming from Deuteronomy 32 43. Go ahead and look at Deuteronomy 32 43 while you are turning there let me point out that I will read Deuteronomy 32 43 but I will read it from the Greek Septuagint and the chance is 99 .99 that the English translation you are going to be reading will be following the Hebrew Masoretic text so compare what I have with what you have.
I will now read to you Deuteronomy 32 43 from the Greek Septuagint and it reads Rejoice, O heavens, along with him, and let the sons of God worship him, and let all the angels of God ascribe strength to him, for he avenges the blood of his sons, and will avenge it, and will recompense punishment to his adversaries.
Even to those who hate him, he will recompense it, and the Lord will cleanse his people's land. The end of the Song of Moses from the Greek Septuagint. The second line is Let the sons of God worship him.
This seems to be where the writer of the Hebrews is getting the citation of Hebrews 1 6 from the Greek Septuagint which his audience would share with him, and he's interpreting the sons of God as the angels because they are frequently identified as the angels and that makes sense because the second or the third line of the Septuagint says Let all the angels of God ascribe strength to him.
There is something in Hebrew called Hebrew parallelism where you'll say something twice and when you say it the second time, you are re-describing it as a way of expanding one's description of something it's called Hebrew parallelism it's right there found in Deuteronomy 32 -43 in the Greek Septuagint now it's interesting very interesting to me that until the middle of the last century what you had was the Greek Septuagint reads one way and the Hebrew reads a different way but how many of you know what happened in the middle of the last century when a shepherd boy threw a rock and it went down a hole and clanked against something I'm talking about of course the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran Scrolls, and the fourth cave, the Qumran Scrolls a Hebrew version of the book of Deuteronomy was discovered primarily and in that scroll guess what Deuteronomy 32 -43 reads just like the Greek Septuagint so it was known in the Hebrew language, in the Hebrew version of the time before Christ, the same meaning we have in the Greek Septuagint but there's one more thing, this is, sorry some of you are looking at me, why are you excited about things like this well I think maybe even brother Miller will understand why I'm excited about things like this who's being described in Deuteronomy 32 -43 who is to be worshipped to whom is strength to be ascribed Yahweh.
Jehovah God, why do I say the two different words, well Jehovah is the traditional term we use but it's not what the Jews said the Jews by the time of Christ would even say the divine name, but they did earlier and the best pronunciation is Yahweh, four letters Yahweh, it's the name of God in the Old Testament and who is being described in, if you were sitting there, if you were one of the first people to hear this epistle being read out, maybe in your congregation, and you're sitting there with the Greek Septuagint and you go, I'm familiar with that text, and you go Deuteronomy 32 -43 and you start reading this, you're gonna go oh but wait a minute when it says let the angels of God worship him, the sons of God that's Yahweh.
Yahweh is the one being worshipped here, how can this New Testament writer, how can this writer of the Hebrews take a text that was about Yahweh in a religious context of worship, and their monotheist is only one true God you're applying this to the son, yeah you are, and you say I've never seen this before most of my time in verse 6 has been spent on what prototokos means and what prosecutor means, but finally when you get to preach on something you get to spend a little more time with it and to dig back and find out that in verse 6, because I want you to keep this in mind, when we get to verses 10 and following, this is gonna become really important because there's this phenomena in the New Testament that's extremely important to understand.
How can the monotheistic authors of the New Testament, they believe in one God how can they take texts from the Old Testament that could only be used of that one true God, could only be used of Yahweh turn around and use them of Jesus.
What does that tell you about their belief, well young people you go off to university, you can go over here to ASU or any place else even Glendale Community College and you're gonna have people standing up there telling you all this stuff about the Trinity and the deity of Christ that came hundreds of years later and the council of Nicaea Constantine forced Roman paganism on the church and nobody believed that.
I hope when you hear that you sort of go well, right here in the New Testament in a book that scholars believe was written before the destruction of the temple in AD 7. So way back there we have someone writing to Jewish Christians in a unique situation prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and he didn't have any problem whatsoever identifying Jesus as Yahweh.
Don't tell me Constantine forced somebody to do that, this came hundreds of years before Constantine he was making an argument that would have required anybody sitting in the congregation with their Greek subject in their laps to go.
You're telling me this Jesus is God. He's got a greater name than the angels. He upholds all things for the word of his power, exact representation of the person the radiances of his glory. And now you're applying to him the very words that would be used of Yahweh in the Old Testament.
Who do you think the writer of the Hebrews thinks Jesus is only one of the things to ask about verse 6. When is this? Like I said I think this is in the enthronement of Christ and the inhabited world includes the heavenly realms.
And so he Jesus has taken his seat at the right hand of the majesty on high he's been vindicated as the son of God, his claims have been shown to be true. And what the angels do, they worship him. He's not one of them, he is worshipped by them.
So let me conclude our thoughts this morning. We'll be continuing by the way this evening with verse 7. Let me conclude our thoughts this morning asking you a simple question. How do you view Jesus Christ?
That is the question for every generation. Do you view him as merely a mythological figure? Someone who was made up by religious people in the past. Maybe a good moral guide. If the very angels of God the powerful angels of God who live in the very glorious presence of God are to bow in his presence.
What about you? If you have not bowed the knee to this glorious one. The scriptures tell us that someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Revelation chapter 5 the picture is given where all created things in heaven and earth bow before he who sits on the throne and the lamb the son of God Jesus Christ.
Everyone someday will confess the truth of what is being said right here. But you see only now in confessing that truth is it under salvation. Today is the day of salvation. And if you have not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ I say to you the gospel commands you to repent and believe to embrace the glorious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But if you're a Christian here today and I imagine most of us are not all of us but most of us are. May I just make one quick application. How joyous should be our service to one who is so glorious. We are called the service of Christ.
We pray often about the fact that we are looking forward to another work of service. Service to who? Service to Christ. And yet the world will constantly beat us down in our thinking to where we lose the sense of joy.
Think of the high calling to be called a servant of this one whom the angels bow to adore. Should we not have the greatest joy the greatest happiness and blessedness to serve the one whom angels adore.
I don't know about you. But it excites me not only to dig into his word and to see what was really going on and to see the consistency and to enter into what the word is saying but then to step back and realize yes these words were meant initially to encourage Jewish believers to press on.
But don't we need encouragement as well. The world wants to rob us of our joy and keep us from being servants of Christ. But when we keep our eye on the prize when we keep our eye on who Jesus really is the world cannot rob us of our joy.
What a privilege brothers and sisters we serve Jesus Christ indeed our heavenly father. We thank you for your word that reveals to us the glory of your shrine of majesty father, son and holy spirit. And we thank you that we still are caused to be amazed as we ponder what you have done in Jesus Christ.
The fact that this glorious God would condescend to provide for us salvation causes our hearts to go out and rejoice. Causes our hearts to desire to do what's right in your sight. To not live in sin but to live in righteousness all to the glory of Christ.
We thank you for this glorious gospel and we indeed rejoice in it as we ponder it this day in Christ's name.