The Supremacy of Christ

Hebrews and the Finality of God’s Revelation

We will now be instructed out of the Word of God by Dr. James White.

Turn with me, please, to the book of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews, chapter 1. You may recall that it seems like a long time ago now. We looked at Hebrews, chapter 1. We looked at just the first few verses on the Lord's Day.

I think it was as far back as possibly October now, unfortunately. That is one of the drawbacks to preaching only every few weeks, is if you try to do a series, by the time you get to the next part, no one remembers what you said in the last part.

But there might be some advantages to that as well, now that I think about it. So, we will continue in our examination of Hebrews, chapter 1. Before we open the Word of God, let us ask Him to bless our time together.

Indeed, our Heavenly Father, at this very time, we would ask that by Your Spirit, You would help us to understand, You would open our hearts and minds to this, Your Word, which You have preserved for us.

We know that we ask a great favor from You, that You would open our eyes to see wonderful things out of Your Scriptures. But we know You delight to bless Your people, and so we ask that You would come and be with us now.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. As you will recall, we, by way of introduction, emphasized, in looking at the book of Hebrews, the fact that it was written to encourage people who were under a tremendous amount of attack.

They were being encouraged to abandon the faith. Specifically, Jewish Christians who were being encouraged to go back to the old ways. Don't continue to follow this newfangled religion. Come back to the old ways.

You'll be received back into the synagogue. You'll be received back into your families, if you will but offer the sacrifice which would demonstrate that you have now denied that Jesus, this one you call the Messiah, was, in fact, a sacrifice for sins.

And so, great pressure was being placed upon them. Now, very few of us are under a situation today where we have family pressure to go back to Judaism, but there are similar pressures that are placed upon us in our society today.

Some of you sitting before me have come out of, for example, Roman Catholicism, and there might be great pressure from your families to come back to the old ways, to go to Mass and thereby confess that Jesus is being represented upon the altar, that there is not this one finished sacrifice that perfects for all time, but that there is this sacramental system that would require you to go back over and over and over again.

And our society itself places great pressure upon us to be ashamed of the Gospel, to be ashamed of this belief that we have that there is in one way that God has acted, one particular way that God has acted to bring about salvation.

There is almost nothing that is considered to be a greater heresy in the secular humanism of our day than to believe that God has acted in only one way, that there is one objective truth, that He has revealed that truth and that we are accountable to that.

This is considered great heresy in our day. So, there is much to be gained from looking at Hebrews and its encouragement to us. The writer to the Hebrews is saying to the Jewish people of his day, there is nothing to go back to.

Everything that Judaism would offer has been fulfilled in Christ. Indeed, it is the testimony of those Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus Christ is exactly who He was. So, there is a number of themes that the author will develop through the book of Hebrews to demonstrate that.

Remember what we read during the Scripture reading this morning. We read from Hebrews chapter 10. Last week, Hebrews chapter 9 in the morning and evening services. And there we had the emphasis presented to us of the once for all sacrifice of Christ.

The fact that the repetitive sacrifice of the Old Covenant were only pointing to the need for a finished action in regards to sin. Repetitive sacrifices cannot take away sin. The one sacrifice of Christ does.

Here at the beginning of this epistle, in the very first chapter, you have a lengthy argument presented concerning the person of Jesus Christ. And all through Hebrews, you have the author demonstrating the superiority of Christ to these things in Judaism.

Here in chapter 1, it is the presentation of the person of Christ and His supremacy over all of creation. His supremacy over the angels. And so, you may recall that we looked at the first four verses of the introduction.

After God spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways, I emphasized that time that it seems to be emphasizing the many ways, but the incomplete ways in which God spoke in the past, to our fathers, to the prophets, in these last days, He has spoken to us in the Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He created the world.

The Son is the radiance of His glory. The exact representation of His person or His essence. He sustains all things by the word of His power or His powerful word. And so, when He had accomplished, He had completed cleansing for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, a quote from Psalm 110.

Thus, He became so far better than the angels, as He has inherited a name that is superior to theirs. And so, we've already looked at this text. We'll be moving on from there. But just by way of reminder, again, maybe a little bit more in depth than we normally would as a reminder, because it's been a while since we looked at this particular text.

We have the emphasis given to here of the fact that Jesus is the final way of revelation. That is, that God has spoken to our fathers, our ancestors, by means of the prophets, in various and diverse ways.

He had done so at different times. And there's a lot of different ways in which this revelation came. Sometimes in visions and the messages of the prophets and the things that God did. But there is a break in verse 2.

In these last days, something has happened that has put us into the very last days. God has spoken with finality, because though He has spoken in the past through the human agency of prophets, now in these last days, He has spoken to us in not a prophet, but in a son.

His son, the one that He has appointed heir of all things. So there is a closeness of relationship. And in fact, in verses 2 and 3, we have this discussion of the relationship of the Father and the Son.

He is said to be the one who has been appointed heir of all things. Not just some things, all things. Why? Because through whom He created the world. This is the one through whom creation itself has come into existence.

The Son is described as the radiance of His glory. As I stand up here, you can sort of see it reflected from the walls in the front and from my forehead. But the radiance, there are certain people in the back who could be making faces at me right now that I could not see, because that back window is extremely bright.

Some of you have noticed that sometimes during the heat of the summer, we'll close the divider back there, just to help the air conditioner keep up with the load. And you'll notice how it's very different in here.

It's a very different feeling in here. Or if for some reason, Roxy's not here, and we forget to open the slats on the blinds on the windows. Very, very different. There is a radiance coming through, even from the millions of miles away that it is.

Right now, I can see very brightly the radiance of the Sun. And we talked about the fact that some feel that somehow, maybe that's a problem, because instead of the Sun being the brightness of the Sun itself, or the Sun itself, He's the radiance of that.

But we talked about that in the last time that we were together, and we looked at this text, and we emphasized that one cannot even know the Sun exists if we do not see its radiance. There is a close relationship, and probably what's actually being referred to here is in John 1, 1, when we are told that the Word reveals to us who God is.

He's eternally been God. In verse 18, He reveals to us who God is. This is probably what we have here in verse 3, that we know about the glory of the Father through the revelation of the Sun. He's the radiance of His glory, the exact representation of His essence or His person.

We talked about the fact that's the term character. We talked about the ring that you would press into the wax, and the exact representation that that would present, and how no mere creature could be an exact representation of the being, the person, of God the Father.

And that He is, in fact, the sustainer of all things. He sustains all things by His powerful Word. This went back to the book of Colossians, and Paul's emphasis there upon the fact that not only is Christ the one through whom all things have been made, but for whom all things have been made, and that He sustains all things by the Word of His power as well.

He holds all things together. Now, these are incredible statements concerning the person of Jesus Christ. These are not words that could ever be used of a mere prophet. And so, the finality of this revelation that has come in Christ is seen by the fact that it comes by the highest possible authority.

One who is the one who sustains all things, who has created all things, holds all things together. But then, having said that He sustains all things by His powerful Word, and so when He had accomplished cleansing for sins, when He had made cleansing for sins, He is the one who made atonement.

So, this very one who is the Creator, cleansing of sins is made by Him. Here at the very beginning of the book of Hebrews, an emphasis upon the fact that this idea of salvation, this idea of forgiveness, it is not something that man has cooked up.

It is not some system that God puts into place, and so you work the levers, and you pull on the pulleys, and you put the right combination in, and out comes forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness, justification, all of the Gospel is the work of God.

It is a divine action. That is why man's pluralism, man's hatred of the Gospel, saying you can't say it is just one way, is such an affront to God. Because forgiveness of sins, redemption, is a divine act.

It's something only God can do. To say there must be many ways is to demand of God that He, in essence, bow down to our whims, and that He do it our way. Such is the essence of human religion, but it is not the essence of divine religion.

But having accomplished cleansing for sins, then you have the citation from the 110th Psalm, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. We saw that in the later portion of Hebrews that we read this morning.

And you need to recognize why that's so important. We'll emphasize it more when it's developed. This is just an enunciation of it here at the beginning of the book. But the reason I think that the early Christian writers latched onto this and used this so often is sometimes lost on modern Christian readers today because we don't know our Old Testaments.

I am so thankful that we read through the Old Testament. We preach from the Old Testament. I've often said one of the things that drew me here was that first night when that first sermon I heard on a Sunday evening came out of the Minor Prophets.

And in my background where the church I was at the time, that really wasn't something you did unless it was during, oh, fundraising time and you had found a particular phrase you could use to try to make people feel real guilty if they didn't fill out their stewardship card or something like that.

But the idea of actually preaching through the Minor Prophets blew me away. And I'm so thankful that we do that. But this text, the reason this idea of sitting down at the right hand of the majesty on high, why that would catch people's imagination, catch people's understanding was because they knew what happened in the temple.

They knew that when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies, he didn't sit down. There was no place to sit. He had something he had to do. And then he had to get out of there once he had done so.

And there was even a fear that if the high priest would not be accepted of God, he'd be struck down in there. A great tragedy would take place. But he enters into that holy place and he sits down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Who sits at the right hand? That is the position of favor, acceptance. If you're sitting at the right hand of the majesty on high, that means what you have done has been accepted and it is completed. Finished, pleasing to God, accepted by Him.

That's why he sits at the right hand of the majesty on high. His work has been accepted. It is God who has raised him from the dead. That resurrection, evidence of the acceptance on the part of God of the perfection of the work of Christ.

How can there be some other way? There's not a number of seats there and Buddha is sitting there and Vishnu is sitting there and Mohammed is sitting there. No, it is Christ who is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high.

That means there's only one way that God has provided for the divine forgiveness of sins and that is in Jesus Christ. And so, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Thus, he became so far better than the angels as he has inherited a name superior to theirs.

And so, here is the transitionary statement. Here is where from this point on in chapter one, the author is going to be arguing the supremacy of Christ to the angels themselves. Now, again, we think back to the Old Testament.

We think back to the context. He's writing to Jewish Christians. What did they see as the situation where God is being worshipped? Are there not places in the Old Testament where we gain a brief vision into heaven?

And this was all the people of God had at that time to know what kind of worship was taking place and what is the greatest example of this, but Isaiah's temple vision in Isaiah chapter 6. And there Isaiah sees the Lord lofty and lifted up.

He's sitting upon his throne and the cherubim and the seraphim surround him and they say and call out to one another over and over again, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. And so, there is this continuous worship taking place.

The angelic beings are seen as those that are created to be the very closest to the throne of God. And so, if you demonstrate the supremacy of Christ to those creatures which are the closest to the very presence of God Himself, what are you demonstrating about Christ?

Yes, you've made the assertion here in the first few verses. You've made these assertions about who Jesus is. And a monotheistic Jew, a Jew who gets up in the morning and says the shema, when he reads verses 2 and 3, is not going to get the idea that you are saying to him, well, Jesus of Nazareth was nobody particularly special.

He was just a human being who had some great ideas about God. That's not what you're going to get. The Jewish mind who reads verses 2 and 3 is going, well, wait a minute. What you're saying about this person, you're talking about the Son of God.

And remember how the Jews responded when Jesus used similar language of Himself. When He identified Himself as the Son of God, what did the Jews do? They picked up stones to stone Him. They explained at His trial in John 19, we have a law and by this law, this man ought to die because he made himself out to be the Son of God.

Yes, the Old Testament uses that term sons of God. It uses it in other generic ways, even of the created beings, but that's not how Jesus was using it of Himself. And they knew that. They saw that and they recognized that.

And so here you have these strong words and now the argumentation to demonstrate to the person who might read this and go, what are you saying to me? And here to the Jewish Christian to say, you need to remember what you will be walking away from if you walk away from your confession of faith in Christ.

I unfortunately, given the work that I do, have to have a lot of encounters with apostates. And that's a technical term. It has a meaning in the Bible. There are such things as apostates. Sometimes people who rightly understand the perfection of the work of Christ and recognize that a person who has truly been regenerated by the Spirit of God to the glory of Christ is not going to be severed from Christ, is not going to be lost.

That Christ would not be glorified in that, that those who are united to Him in His death will likewise in His resurrection. Sometimes because of that, we figure, well, there's no such thing as an apostate.

But the Bible talks about them. 1 John 2 talks about people who once sat in the fellowship. They were once, probably in the context of 1 John 2, leaders in the Christian church. And yet, in that day, opposed the gospel message.

There are people who are apostates. Now, theologically, we would explain that on the basis of the fact that there is such a thing as false faith. There are those who say one thing and it has no reality in their life.

That's what James 2 is all about. We're not talking about a divine faith, a divine act of regeneration. There are people who sit in the pews of our churches who will never see the face of Christ except as their judge and as the one who cast them away from His presence.

And that should, of course, cause us to be exceptionally concerned that we make sure that the gospel is plainly taught, especially within the fellowship of the saints. There are apostates, and unfortunately, I have to have a lot of dealings with them.

And as I listen to the various reasons that people give, and I recognize in the vast majority of instances, the reasons given are actually a covering for sin, but there are, I think, things we can learn from what apostates say.

And one thing that I have discerned over the years is that many people who leave the faith, one of two things happens. Either they become extremely dishonest in their misrepresentations of what they claim they once believed, because I've heard a lot of folks try to describe their former faith, and I just sit there going, you went to what church?

You believe what? And it's such a horrific mishmash of silliness that I would have trouble even understanding. You're saying you once believed what I believe? And that's, wow, that's amazing. That happens a lot, but then there are other instances where it just seems very, very clear to me that there are entire swaths of what's called evangelicalism today, where I don't know why people keep going to those churches.

I just don't know why. Because when I listen to people who've left, and I listen to their reasons, I discover that they've never been challenged to get out of themselves long enough, to put aside the interests of the world long enough, to stop thinking about what they're going to be doing for lunch in a few minutes long enough to really think about the glory of Jesus Christ, the glory of the Gospel, the power of the Word of God, the awesomeness of the resurrection, the tremendousness of the sovereignty of God.

Let's face it, there are not a lot of places this morning here in the valley that are worshiping the way we're worshiping right now. And I certainly hope, I know if you're a member of this church, you know this, but if you're visiting, I want you to understand, we believe this is worship because we are opening the Word of God and we are seeking to seriously understand what the Word of God says to us.

We believe the Spirit of God comes and opens our hearts and minds to understand what His Word is and how we should live in light of it. And we consider that worship. There are all sorts of places today where people have done a lot of things that they've called worship.

But then when the guy gets up at the end to say a few words, well, the worship's done. We don't buy into that. At the same time, a lot of folks that are standing behind a podium like this called a pulpit are very concerned that they want to be very trendy.

They want to try to get people to like them because their message is pretty much just an interpersonal discussion anyways. And you've got to like the other guy. You've got to make that connection idea.

Now, you can tell how trendy I am because we don't think that the person behind the pulpit is the issue. The person behind the pulpit is a messenger. The issue is to focus upon the Word of God. And the serious Christian wants to be instructed, wants to know what the Word says.

The serious Christian will prepare themselves to come to this place, desirous of hearing the truth of God and desirous of the Spirit of God applying this to their lives and giving understanding as to what this means.

That's why we don't have to worry about trying to be all fancy with the preaching because we've got people here from every walk of life. We've got moms that work in the house and we have people that work in the office and we've got folks who do heavy construction labor and slosh concrete all over the place and make it nice and perfectly smooth.

And there are people who do everything in between. There are people who sit at computers and they do data entry. There's people who teach and demonstrate that they have a part of Job in them that they can put up with teenagers and things like that.

We have all sorts of people here. And I am not smart enough, Pastor Frye might be, but I am not smart enough to somehow craft something where I think I can somehow push the buttons of such a diverse group as we represent here.

But you see, we don't believe you have to do that. We believe that you present the Word of God and the Spirit of God ministers that Word to each individual and thanks be to God, the Spirit of God knows what you need.

And the Spirit of God makes the Word of God to come alive. And so in the hearts of the young people, we talk about this One who is the Creator of all things, who upholds all things by the Word of His power.

And you go into the university, you go into the high school and you hear the teacher trying to tell you that the tremendous and gorgeous, beautiful, awesome complexity of life is nothing but the cosmic toss of the dice.

And you go, I don't think so. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. And yet the same text to the woman who is working hard in her calling. You can have confidence in God's purpose in your life because Jesus Christ upholds all things by the Word of His power.

So His promise is to you of redemption. His promise to you of His comfort in the midst of the difficulties of your life. If He can uphold all things, if He can keep the sun in the sky and keep the universe revolving, He has the power to meet your needs.

You see, the Word of God meets every one of us where we are. So we don't have to play with it. We don't have to try to make it fit into anything. We allow the Word of God to speak. And so even here, as the author transitions into a specific argument about the supremacy of Christ and the angels, we as Christians can derive from this argumentation so much that it's relevant to anything that's going to happen to you in this coming week.

No, I'm not saying that if we add together the numbers of the Word or something like that, you're going to get some type of help with some computer problem you're going to have this week. No, but the fact that we can reason logically, that we can have a consistent worldview, that we can interact with all the tremendous things going on in our society and our society is changing so quickly, but the fact that we can have a firm foundation upon which to stand is revealed to us in these ancient Scriptures that are not just simply words mumbled by men long ago.

They are Theanostos. They are God-breathed. That's why they remain relevant to today. And that's why we take the time to look at them. And so we think of this One who has become so far better than the angels as He has inherited a name superior to theirs.

He is superior to those creatures that are the closest to God because He is the Son. He is the exact representation of His person. How does He prove this? First verse, verse 5. Rhetorical questions based upon the Old Testament Scriptures.

For to which of the angels did God ever say these words? And then the first quote comes from Psalm 27. You are my Son. Today I have begotten you. And in another place He says, I will be His Father and He will be my Son.

And so here we delve into the area of the apostolic interpretation of Old Testament texts. Now, this is not an easy area. This is not an easy area. And the wisdom of the modern consensus would be if you're preaching on something like this, don't even go there.

Just simply, you know, make reference to it, interpret it, and move on. Because there's a quagmire there. There's just too much to discuss. Well, certainly it is difficult, especially in the sermon rather than in the Sunday school, to say much about the use of Old Testament texts in the New Testament.

Some of you know, for example, a huge work came out, I believe, late 2007, possibly. Somewhere around there. Use the Old Testament in the New. I mean, the thing, deadly weapon if tossed. It's huge. It's massive.

Because there's so much discussion as to how to understand this. Let me just say this. The writer appeals to the scriptures of the church as they possessed them at that time. What was the Bible of the primitive church?

Remember, the New Testament is still being written. We don't know the exact order in which the books of the New Testament were written. It wasn't Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, we know that's not the case.

Because we know that some of Paul's epistles very, very early, possibly the earliest, like First Thessalonians or something like that, probably before any of the Gospels were written. So don't assume that because that's the canonical order, that's somehow a chronological order.

It's not. Hebrews might be one of the earliest epistles written. We don't know. It's not important to know. It's interesting to speculate on, but God has not deemed it something that we need to have a CNN-type reporter on scene to let us know, well, Hebrews began to be written at a certain time on a certain date, and then it was finished at a certain time at a certain date.

We may want to know those things, but they are not necessary. And so we don't know the order. So what was the Bible of the New Testament church in those early decades? Well, it was the Old Testament, obviously.

And specifically, as we will note here in the book of Hebrews, it was primarily outside of Palestine. And even in the land of Israel, it was what's called the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

The translations, the citations that we have in the book of Hebrews come almost exclusively from the Greek Septuagint. And as we'll see later on, Lord willing, over time, we get to it. There are even a couple places in the book of Hebrews where the Greek Septuagint is followed when it differs from the Hebrew.

That was the text that people had. That is what they would go to look these texts up in. Remember also, I can sit here and say, well, that's Psalm 2 -7. He's quoting from Psalm 2 -7. Remember, those verse divisions didn't come about until the Geneva Bible in the middle of the 16th century.

And so sometimes when we read things like, in another place, he says, or someone had said somewhere, we sort of go, why didn't he give us the exact verse? Well, because versification hadn't happened yet.

That's why. So you could say in the Psalms, in the Psalter, or you could say Isaiah said, but you couldn't give the specific reference in that sense because that is a later development. It's very easy to find things that way, but that had not yet taken place.

And so we have the first two references given and they come straight from the text of Scripture. But the big question that immediately follows from everyone's mind is, well, but you know, you could make an argument that any text you're going to cite from the Old Testament had to have some meaning to the people of that time.

I mean, the argument would be you look at Psalm 2 and yeah, we call it a Messianic Psalm. The Jews themselves saw Psalm 2 as having a lot to do with the Messiah. But the second quotation is actually from 2 Samuel 7 or 1 Chronicles 7, probably 2 Samuel 7.

And that's not normally what we would identify as a Messianic text. And so people get really bogged down in trying to figure out, well, you know, how is he doing this? The author is talking to us about this one who would be the son.

And we see in the intertestamental period, especially this development of the idea that, you know, David says a lot of things about himself, for example. Most of the Messianic Psalms are Davidic. They're about the kings of Israel.

They say certain things about themselves, but people began to see that there was a theme running through the Scriptures. And that that theme pointed us to a greater fulfillment of individual texts. And that's where we have problems today.

What do I mean by that? Well, I can tell you, and if you've taken any seminary level classes, you know this is the case. In the olden days, we looked at the Bible as a book that had unity, it had harmony, it had consistency.

And we could look for themes as the people of God did in the days prior to the New Testament. And they saw this revelation. People used to treat the Bible the way Jesus treated the Old Testament text or the apostles treated the Old Testament text.

Well, the main problems we have in scholarship today is that they just don't view it that way. You can't allow for there to be connections between Hebrews or Colossians or in the Old Testament. You can't allow for these themes.

The whole emphasis is upon diversity. Isn't that a wonderful word? I don't know about you, but diversity is a word that almost makes me ill anymore when I hear it. Because it has just become this mantra that can mean anything.

And even in the study of the Bible, this is the same case. People have lost sight of having a view of the text of Scripture that is commensurate and similar to that of Jesus Himself. And I'll never understand it, but there are people out there who will tell you, Jesus is my Savior.

But functionally, they don't believe about the Bible what He did as if they're somehow wiser. I'm not sure why you trust someone to save your soul when you think they were wrong in their interpretation of the Scripture, but there are people like that.

This is one of the reasons I really believe that we must approach the text of the Bible prayerfully. That we must seek the Spirit's assistance. Now, in saying what I just did, the vast majority of scholarship has just written me off because you can't confess the need for the Spirit of God.

But to me, after the years of study that I've put into the Bible, one of the greatest evidences of its inspiration, its divine nature, is seeing the harmony that exists if you'll just not preclude it by definition.

If you'll just put your humanism on hold a while. If you'll just think past the surface level of the way that our society thinks, maybe do some meditation. Maybe do some serious contemplation. You start to see this beautiful harmony.

It doesn't just exist on the surface of the level of the text. It's not just on the surface level stuff. You have to actually hear what the arguments are. You have to hear what the assertions are. But when you hear it, there is tremendous beauty and harmony in the text of Scripture.

And the writer to Hebrews saw that. The writer to the Hebrews understood that. And as such, he draws from the text of Scripture words about this one who will be a son. Was that said to David? Maybe to a king?

Yes. But is that the only fulfillment of that? Does it have to be completed in that one ancient context? The reason they were forced to the conclusion that, no, you can't just limit it that way, is because there are certain things that just simply could not be ascribed to just one person.

How can you fulfill Hebrews chapter 9? This wonderful counselor, this mighty God, this everlasting Father, this Prince of Peace, in just one person? There's something greater to be seen. They saw that.

They allowed for that. And the writer to the Hebrews follows that higher view of Scripture. I submit to you that one of the greatest problems in modern Christian scholarship and as a result in modern Christian preaching, because preachers get trained in seminaries.

If they're trained in seminaries that have a low view of Scripture, they're going to come out, they're not going to teach the people of God that we're handling the very Word of God here. I submit to you that the view of Scripture that chops it up into little pieces, that does not allow for God to speak as a whole, is not only sub-Christian, because it's not the view of Jesus and the apostles, but it is a lower view on even an academic level than allowing for the tough work of truly handling the Scriptures as they were written and as they were intended to be understood by those who wrote them.

And so we've just scratched the surface here. He is told, he's asked a question. To what angel has God ever said, You are my Son. Today I have begotten you. What does it mean to be begotten? What does it mean today?