'Hebrews' Monday - Part 3 (Keswick Convention 2003) — Charles Price

And it points to the train. I refuse to get on the train. You don't come to me. It's true. It's not the truth. I am the truth. To change the metaphor from the timetable, two years ago, at the end of Keswick, I left here and had one night at home, and we left the country to go to Toronto.

When I came to Keswick, I had a car which I was hoping to sell, and I hadn't been able to sell it, and I actually sold it here at Keswick, in my last week, which was great. In fact, it's back here this week.

I've seen it. Talk to the folks who own it. It's a Toyota Carina. When I got that Toyota Carina, I got with it an instruction book, a manual. And I read the instruction book, and the reason why I read the instruction book was not because I wanted to know all about the instruction book.

I had a far better reason. I wanted to know all about the car. Now, of course, I could have read the instruction book to get to know the instruction book. I could have read a little bit every night before I went to bed.

I could have underlined the bits I liked. I could have drawn the local Toyota Fellowship and gone every week for an exposition of the manual. This week's subject is stocking plugs. Next week, we'll have a message on tire pressures.

I could have put it to music and sung it. If I was a fanatic, I could have studied Japanese to read it in the original language. That would really impress everyone. But the day would come, having read the manual, memorized it, underlined it, put it to music, and sung it, and studied Japanese, the day would come when I would say, I am sick of the manual.

Scripture Points Beyond Itself to Christ

Why? Because the manual has one purpose. Take me to the car. You search the Scriptures, said Jesus. You think in them. He wasn't undermining the authority or the inspiration or the integrity of the Word of God.

He was simply explaining it's not the truth. It's truth because it points to the truth. That's why you can study this book, get a degree in theology, and know nothing of spiritual reality. I love that old hymn, Break Down the Bread of Life.

I love that line in it which says, Beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord. And from Genesis to Revelation, every verse leads to Christ, ultimately. Had an angiogram a while ago in a hospital in Toronto where they put a wire into an archery and pushed it through into my heart so they could pump some dye into my heart and then they could x-ray from three different angles and get a 3D picture of how my heart was functioning.

And as the surgeon began to weed the long piece of wire which had this tube actually to which the dye would come, he began to slide this. It looked incredibly long. I said, Are you sure it'll go to the heart?

I mean, it's not going to go to my toe. It was in my leg as he put it. He said, and I felt extremely foolish, but he said, All roads lead to Rome. Every artery, every vein, every capillary in your body leads to your heart.

And you know, every verse in scripture leads ultimately if you follow the trail. It's like when you buy a stick of rock. Do they still have this in Keswick? I don't know. It says Keswick, and you crack it anywhere you like.

It'll say Keswick. You open this book anywhere you like. It's about Christ. I make it a policy when I study to preach. I always ask myself of any text, What does it say about Christ? Now, if Jesus Christ is the truth, let me conclude by asking this question, What is he the truth about?

Jesus Christ as the Truth About God

I'm going to go back to the very first verse because this sets up what follows in the rest of the book as well. He's the truth about two things. First of all, he's the truth about God because in verse 3 it says, The sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

The radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being. In other words, if you want to know what God is like, where do you look? You look at Jesus. You see, God is nothing that Jesus isn't.

Or to put that positively, everything God, everything Jesus is, God is. He's the exact representation. That's why we don't know God propositionally. By that I mean we don't really know God simply by learning facts about God.

We can say that God is omnipotent. He's all powerful. God is omniscient. He's everywhere at the same time. God is omnipresent. That's everywhere at the same time. Omniscient. He knows everything there is to know.

God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. We can learn those propositional truths, but that won't make you love him. That won't make you respect him. It won't make you excited by him. But when you know Christ, you begin to love him.

And the Christian life is saying with Paul in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 12, I know whom I have believed. It is not saying I know what I have believed. Knowing what you believe is fine. Signing your name with a good conscience at the end of the creed is fine.

But the Christian life is about knowing whom I have believed. And the more you know Jesus, the more you know God. And the more you love Jesus, the more you love God. The more you trust Jesus, the more you trust God.

In fact, it's only when we know Christ that we know God. Jesus Christ is the truth about God. The exact representation of his being. But the second thing, that Jesus is the truth about, if he's the truth about God, the truth about deity, he is also the truth about humanity.

Humanity Created in the Image of God

You see, when the writer says, the sun is the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being, he is not only speaking about his deity, he is actually remarkably speaking about his humanity.

Why do I say that? Because that's exactly what it says about Adam. What did God say when he created Adam? Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. And of course, theologians have debated exactly the nature of that image of God in man by deduction.

We know there are things in God that are not true of man. God is omnipresent. We're not. There are lots of things about God that are not true of us. In what sense were we in his image? I suggest to you, we were created in his moral image.

God is love. We intend to be loving. God is kind, intended to be kind. We are created to be an expression of his moral image. And Jesus Christ is the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being.

If you want to know what God was like in the Garden of Eden, look at Adam. If you want to know what God is like now, look at Jesus, because he's the truth about humanity, what God intended humanity to be.

I want you to listen carefully to this. If we say Jesus Christ is the truth about deity, which he is, he is the truth about deity, because he is the truth about humanity. For this reason, human beings were created to portray the truth about God.

Adam was created to be a revelation of God. You look at Adam, you see what God is like. If you saw Adam leave in the garden, the way they acted, the way they behaved, you'd see what God is like. Adam would be very kind, because God is kind.

The way they treat each other, the way they handle the animals in the garden, the way they patted the dogs, stroked the cat, and fed the goldfish, you'd see what God was like, because they were in his image.

That's what image means. You look at an image, you see what the real thing is like. But Adam came short of the glory of God. He sinned. The result, he came short of the glory of God. Now, what Paul calls in 1 Corinthians, the second man, the last Adam, is the radiance of God's glory.

Adam came short of God's glory. Cease to show you what God was like. Here, now, is the truth about what human beings are intended to be when God created them in the first place. Someone who is the radiance of God's glory.

Do you want to know what you're supposed to be like? Look at Jesus. He's the truth about humanity. We were created to be a physical and visible expression of the moral character of God. The marvelous thing is, is not only is Christ himself the radiance of God's glory, do you know the object of his work and his ministry?

Bringing Many Sons to Glory

It tells us in chapter 2 and verse 10. Let me read you this first. The last verse I'll read you. Chapter 2 and verse 10. It speaks of in bringing many sons to glory. It was fitting that God for whom and through whom everything existed should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.

And by the way, don't misread that. That doesn't mean in bringing many sons to heaven. In evangelical slang, basically, the word glory has come to mean heaven. We die and go to glory, we say. That's not the biblical use of the word.

Glory is the character of God. John says of Jesus, the word became flesh, lived for a while among us. We saw his glory. What did he see? We saw in Jesus the way as a boy he kicked the ball up and down the road in Nazareth.

The way he went hunting in the hills with his friends hiding in the woods. The way as a carpenter he paid his bills on time, invoiced accurately on time, built someone's kitchen furniture to their specifications.

The way in his public ministry he crossed the road to sit with a dirty woman everybody else was embarrassed to do the same with. The way he touched the untouchables, the lepers. You ever notice Jesus always touched lepers?

The way kids would climb all over him and the disciples would try to shoo them away and he'd say, no, no, let them come, they're my friends. We saw what God was like. We saw the glory of God. We saw what God was like.

Because we're in the situation where sin comes short of the glory of God. We don't show what God is like. We're selfish and live for our own agendas. But now in Jesus, we see not only the glory of God, but we see one whose goal is to bring many sons to glory, to put back what was lost in the fall.

That's why Colossians 1, 27 says, that Christ in you is your hope of glory. He's going to bring you back to glory. And so the wonderful thing that we'll discover in these coming days as we look through Hebrews, and all the Old Testament shadows which it looks at and goes into the shadows through this book, through Israel's journey through the wilderness, it looks at the priesthood, it looks at the temple, it looks at the sacrificial system, it looks at the heroes of the faith through the Old Testament.

Connecting with the Heart of God Through Christ

We're going to see how this God who became a man can restore you and me to glory and put back what was lost. You see, the Scriptures are true, but it's Christ who's the truth. It's He. By His indwelling presence in your heart and your life, make us real.

That's why I gave us the subtitle to this series, Connecting with the Heart of God. It's how to come home, to be what God intended human beings to be, foreshadowed, but now brought out into the daylight by Christ himself.

Does that make sense? Let's pray together. Father, we're so grateful today that your Son, the Lord Jesus, came to be what we could never be, to accomplish what we could never accomplish, and having become what we could never be and done what we could never do, you exchanged that with us, that we might become what you are, that we might do what we could never otherwise do, walk with our heads held high, clothe with the righteousness of Christ himself, knowing that we can please you and your glory be restored into our lives.

Make this real for us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.