The Son of Royalty (Hebrews 1:8-9)

Hebrews 1 and Psalm 45: The Son as Greater Than the Angels

Hebrews chapter 1 and we're going to read together verses 5 through 14. For to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And again, I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me.

And when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, and let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels, he says, who makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire. But of the son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

And the righteous scepter is the scepter of his kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions. And you, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of your hands.

They will perish, but you remain. And they all will become old like a garment. And like a mantle, you will roll them up like a garment. They will also be changed. But you are the same and your years will not come to an end.

But to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?

Let's bow together before we begin. Our father, without the ministry of your Holy spirit in our hearts and in our minds to illuminate illuminate your word to us, we, we are hopeless to be able to understand it in any true and spiritual and meaningful sense.

And so we confess our need for you today to give us that insight and that illumination. We pray that you would send your spirit to be our teacher and our guide and that your word may be our concern and your glory may be preeminent in our minds as we consider who Christ is and what he has done.

May you be honored here in the midst of your people through the preaching and the hearing obedience to your word we ask in Christ's name. Amen. One of the themes that we have seen pop up over and over again in this first chapter of Hebrews is the theme of the sovereignty, the rule, the kingdom, the authority and the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in that series of seven descriptions that are in verses one through four, we saw a number of ways that the author of Hebrews shines the light on the kingdom and the rulership of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the creator of all things that as he spoke, he has the authority and dominion to speak and to bring everything into existence. Everything that he has created, he is also the heir of so that it all belongs to him by decision of the father, by the authority of the father.

And not only that, but he upholds all things by the word of his power. So everything that he created, he possesses and everything that he created and possesses, he governs and upholds and maintains, sustains it, directing it from where it was when it was created all the way toward its predetermined and appointed goal.

He carries all things along to that end. And then he has, having made purification of sins, he has sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. So just those descriptions alone present to us a Christ, a king who is the sovereign over all of creation, over everything that is created, everything that he possesses, everything that he maintains, and now he sits at the father's right hand.

And then as if that doesn't do enough to reinforce the theme of the rulership of the Lord Jesus Christ, the author turns to a series of Old Testament quotations. And we have seen this theme come up again and again in that series of Old Testament quotations.

For instance, he quotes right out of the gate Psalm 2, which is a messianic Psalm where God says, as for me, I have installed my king upon Zion. And that is God's answer to the raging of the nations and all the kings of the earth that rebel against him.

God's answer to that is to establish his king and to give to that king all the nations as his inheritance. And then he says in Psalm 2, to that king whom he has installed in Zion, let all the nations and all the kings of the earth bow down to him and do him homage, lest he be angry and you perish in the way.

Then he quotes 2 Samuel chapter 7, which is the promise given to David, that God would seat a descendant of David upon his throne and give to him the nations and his dominion would be an everlasting dominion.

It would go on forever and ever. There would be no end to his kingdom and over the house of David and over the land of Israel, he would rule and he would reign forever. That's 2 Samuel chapter 7. And then he quotes from Psalm 97 verse 7, which is a Psalm describing the coronation of that king, that this God is made king and he is coronated.

And at that event, which is still future to us, all the angels will be commanded to bow down and to worship him. So that is the theme of kingdom that's woven through those first seven verses. And now we return again to another kingly Psalm, another Psalm that deals with the king and with the throne of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're looking today at verses 8 and 9 of Hebrews chapter 1, and we are looking at him as being the son of royalty. Hebrews 1, 8 and 9 quotes Psalm 45, which is the Psalm we're going to be turning to in just a moment.

So all of this development of this theme of him being the king, the ruler, the sovereign, the creator, the owner, the possessor, the sustainer, and the governor of all things, all of that is intended to set him in stark contrast with the angels.

And it is really that contrast with the angels that is sort of the backdrop of this entire first chapter. The author wants to show us that Jesus Christ is greater than the angels. He is not an angel. He is not one of the angels that has been exalted to a great position.

He is by nature greater than the angels because all of the angels worship him. To none of the angels has God ever called them his son, the son in a unique sense. To none of the angels has God ever given possession of all things or told any of the angels that they will rule the nations or seated one of the angels at his right hand of the majesty on high.

So with everything else set aside that we know of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the angels, just what we find here in Hebrews chapter 1 clearly shows us that Jesus Christ is no angel. He's greater than the angels.

The angels worship him. They are the servants, verse 7, he is the sovereign. Their job is to serve and to worship. He is the one that they worship and serve, Jesus Christ is. So he is the sovereign. They are the servants.

They minister. He is the one to whom they minister. They sing his praise. They exist to faithfully serve him and to glorify him. So now we turn to verses 8 and 9. And as I said, these two verses are pulled from Psalm 45.

And we're going to be returning back to Hebrews 1 here in a moment. But you know what we have been doing all the way through this first chapter is every time we see a quotation from an Old Testament text, we want to go back to that Old Testament text and examine it in its context so we have some idea of what the connection is between that and Hebrews chapter 1.

So turn back to Psalm 45 while you keep your place here in Hebrews 1. Psalm 45. And we're going to work our way through this entire psalm. First, a word of introduction about this. I want you to try as best as you can as we go through the psalm to forget for just a couple of minutes that it is quoted in Hebrews chapter 1.

I want you to forget that connection. Just think of Psalm 45 in its own context as its own entity. And we're going to see what this psalm is about. So forget the connection with Hebrews 1. The connection is verses 6 and 7 of Psalm 45.

That's what's quoted in Hebrews 1. But I want you just to think of this psalm as it is written, as the author would have intended it, as it sits in its own context. That's going to raise for us a couple of questions, a couple of problems, but we'll answer those problems before we turn back to Hebrews chapter 1.

The introduction to Psalm 45 says it is a song of love. You see that before verse 1? It's a psalm of love. A song of love. Now that is those little words that are above verse 1, that's part of the original psalm.

That's not the the publisher's footnote. That is part of the psalm itself. Whoever wrote this psalm wrote that, and so that's inspired text as well. This is a song of love, and this is a song that describes the king of Israel in his beauty and his majesty.

It describes the wedding of this king, and it describes the bride who is going to be given to this king, who comes to the royal palace to be wed to this king of Israel, and it is a song of worship that wraps itself around this event of the king being wed to a bride, and it falls into three sections, verses 1 through 9.

Yeah, verses 1 through 9 is a description of this king in his royal beauty and his majesty and his power and his authority. Verses 10 through 15 describe advice or counsel that is given to the bride to be of the king, and then verses 16 and 17 is a benediction spoken over this wedding feast.

Now, this should seem a bit odd to us, does it not? Can you imagine cracking open your hymnal, which we don't have because we put the screen the words up on the screen, but can you imagine cracking open your hymnal to a song that is a song of worship to surrounding the about the marriage of the president of the United States?

Yeah, which marriage? That's what you want to know, right? Which marriage are we talking about? Okay, can you imagine such a situation where that isn't in your hymnal, and yet here in the inspired hymnal or songbook for the nation of Israel is a song dedicated to describing the glory of the wedding of the king of Israel.

That's kind of odd. Now, in our hymnals, in many churches in America, you will find a section where the worship of the church is designed around America. The national anthem, America the Beautiful, and other quote-unquote hymns that describe America in all of her glory and God's blessing upon that.

That to me is weird. That to me is out of place and odd. So does it not strike us as odd that you would find in the worship hymnal of the nation of Israel a song about her king and his wedding to a bride?

It is a bit curious until you kind of come to understand that in the Jewish mind and in the Jewish context, their covenant with God's covenant with the nation revolved around and involved the king and him being seated on a throne and the messiah that was to come through that line of David who would be established over the nation and then over all of the nations, and this was part of the fulfillment of God's plan for that purpose.

Not just so that the nation of Israel would be blessed, but that through the nation of Israel, all the nations of the world would be blessed as they are brought into this covenant and brought into this relationship with their messiah who is the messiah of love and truth and righteousness and justice.

And so when you look at it from a Jewish set of eyes, it should not surprise us at all that they would have a song dedicated to the king and his marriage to a bride since the king was central to their idea of the covenant and to the promises that God had made with them as a nation.

So now let's work our way through that psalm, as odd as that might be to our ears. Let's work our way through this psalm. Again, forget its connection to Hebrews chapter 1. We begin with verse 1, which describes for us the king and all of his majesty and his beauty.

So the psalm begins with, my heart overflows with a good theme. And what is the theme? His address, verse 1, to the king. I address my verses to the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. And here's his description.

You are fairer than the sons of men. Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore, God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and your majesty, and in your majesty, ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.

Let your right hand teach you awesome things. Your arrows are sharp. The peoples fall under you. Your arrows are in the heart of the king's enemies. He's describing the king of the nation of Israel there.

It's an earthly human king. And in that description, he is describing the majesty of the king, the beauty of the king, the victorious warfare of the king, that all of the enemies of the king fall before him.

He conquers them all. They all bow down to this king. So it is his military might, the glory of his name, the glory of his majesty that's being described. And then verse 6 takes a bit of a turn. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

Now that is addressed to this king. That is addressed to the earthly king. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.

Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of joy above your fellows. Let's stop there for just a second. We're going to return back to that because that creates a problem for us. How is it that this earthly king is called God?

Verse 8. All your garments are fragment with myrrh and the aloes and casea out of ivory palaces. Stringed instruments have made you glad. King's daughters are among your noble ladies. At your right hand stands the queen and gold from offer.

So there's this description of this of the king sitting on his throne and he is surrounded by these attendants and these servants. And what he is describing here is the majesty of the king as he has presented to the people in his royal palace.

And now the focus changes from that earthly king to the bride that is to be given to this king. Verse 10. Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear. And here is his counsel. Forget your people and your father's house.

Walk away. Write a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. The two shall become one flesh. You shall walk away from them. You are turning from your people and you are being joined or given to another one who is this king.

Then the king will desire your beauty because he is your lord. Bow down to him. That's not counsel you would give to. It just occurred to me. It's not counsel you would give to women at a wedding ceremony today, would you?

He is your lord. Bow down to him. I might drop that at the next wedding that I do. Shelby's happy with that. Verse 12. The daughter of Tyre will come with a gift. The rich among the people will seek your favor.

The king's daughter is all glorious within. Her clothing is interwoven with gold. She will be led to the king in embroidered work. The virgins, her companions who follow her will be brought to you. That is to this king.

It's described in the first part of the song. They will be brought to you. Verse 15. They will be led forth with gladness and rejoicing. They will enter into the king's palace. So the picture is one where this bride with all of her attendant company whom she has walked away from her father's house, she comes now to the king's palace to be joined in matrimony to the king.

Verse 16 and 17 is the benediction that is sort of spoken over this entire service. And it is a benediction whereby the success and the blessing and the prosperity of this couple is to be granted by God.

Verse 16. In the place of your fathers will be your sons. You shall make them princes in all the earth. That is to say that your sons will rule under you. You will have princes who rule over the lands in all the earth.

Verse 15. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore, the peoples will give you thanks forever and ever. All right. So that is Psalm 45. Again, description of the king, advice to the bride, and then a benediction that is spoken over the wedding ceremony.

Now look back at verses six and seven. Let's deal with this issue. How is it that this earthly king as his majesty and glory is being described, how is it that he is referred to as God? Because verse six says, your throne, oh God, is forever and ever.

Scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. You've loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of joy above your fellows. So this king is here addressed as God.

Now when we take this quotation and we put this forward into the New Testament and we impose this upon the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, we see him as the fulfillment of this. That doesn't cause us any problems to make that transition.

The problem is here, these words are used to describe an earthly king, a king over the nation of Israel in the time when Psalm 45 was written. Maybe it is describing Solomon or Solomon's son or one of Solomon's sons or some descendant of David.

We don't know who it is written of. We don't know who it is describing, but it is certainly a son of David before he is assumed as he is being married and probably as he is assuming the throne or after he's assumed the throne of the nation.

So how is it that verse six and verse seven are spoken of an earthly king that is called God? There's two ways of understanding it. The first, it's not that difficult. Actually, neither of them are quite difficult, but here are the two.

To the mind of a Jew, the individual who sat upon David's throne was God's representative. And so it is not uncommon in the Old Testament for the people who ruled the nation to be called gods or to be referred to as God, not because they by nature possess deity, but because they, by virtue of their position, their authority sitting on David's throne where God's representative to rule the nation.

So it is similar to how the word is used in Exodus chapter seven, verse one, where God says to Moses, see, I make you as God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. And was God saying to Moses that Moses would become God, that he would be deified?

No. The Lord was simply saying to Moses, to Pharaoh, you will be my representative. You will be as God. You will speak my word. You will do my miracles. You will obey what I have done. I will deliver this nation through you.

So to Pharaoh, from Pharaoh's vantage point, Moses was as God. He spoke for God. In the same way, the person who sat upon David's throne and ruled the nation was to the Jew, God's representative. And so Jesus refers to this when he quotes Psalm, I think it's Psalm 82.

Yes. Psalm 82 in John chapter 10, when they took up stones to stone him. And Jesus said, it says in your law, you are gods. And he quotes Psalm 82, where the rulers of the nation are called gods, not that they by nature were God, but that they by their position were rulers over the people.

And Jesus said, if in the old Testament, those rulers were called gods in that sense, how is it that you want to stone me being the son of man and being God by nature? How is it you want to stone me for saying I am the son of God?

And so it's kind of an old Testament thing that the ruler of the nation who sat on David's throne, the ruler over the people would be called gods because they would act as God's representative to the people.

That is the first explanation for it. The second explanation for it is that in Psalm 45, here's what I think is going on. I think it's partly what I just gave you. It's also partly this. The author of Psalm 45 is looking through the immediate context of the person he was describing, that king, he is looking through him to an ultimate fulfillment that would come later on.

We see this all the time in the Old Testament. God who has revealed his purposes and his plan throughout history interweaves revelation in history and into the storyline, into the narrative of history, so that we see individuals in the Old Testament, we see events, we see people, we see statements where we say, you know, that sounds a lot like the individual being spoken of there, but not everything that is described there is true of that individual.

There seems to be things there that are described that are not true of him, but are true of another and even greater fulfillment, and that greater fulfillment is the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's what the author of Psalm 45 is doing.

He's looking through that king and that marriage ceremony, and he is saying this is going to be fulfilled by somebody greater. There is another king who literally is God who would sit on the throne, and his throne would be forever, and so the psalmist is looking through that king to the one promised to David, who was not that immediate king, be it Solomon or somebody else, the one promised to David who would come later on and ultimately fulfill this, and that would be the Messiah, who was God, who would rule the nations, to whom all the kings of the earth would bow down.

He is the one who would be anointed above his companions. He is the one that is showered with grace and blessed forever in verse 2. See, there are elements of Psalm 45 that sound a lot like the king when it was originally written, and there are elements of Psalm 45 that sound a lot like the Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 6 and 7 are those statements. Your throne, O God. He's looking beyond that king to one who would come and sit upon that throne, who would be God himself, and then when we step into the New Testament and we look at it in Hebrews chapter 1, we see, ah, yeah, the one who came and fulfilled that word to David was himself God in human flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But what do we do with the fact that the psalm is speaking of Jesus in some ways, but it is describing a marriage when we know that Jesus wasn't married? Does that cause us a problem? Because he never was married.

He lived and died a single man. But the church is his bride. Is it not? Revelation 19 says that there is a wedding feast that is to come that will be the ultimate fulfillment of every wedding ceremony and every wedding celebration that has ever taken place.

It will be the greatest, the grandest fulfillment of that expectation. So though Christ was not physically married to any bride here on this earth, he is betrothed to his bride, which is the church. And from heaven he came and he sought her to be his holy bride, and we are the bride of Christ, and we will sit at that marriage supper of the lamb.

So the king who is described in Psalm 45 finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ. The wedding that is described in Psalm 45 finds its ultimate fulfillment in the wedding supper of the lamb described in Revelation 19, which is yet future to us.

Okay, so we have two things going on, an immediate context that's being described in Psalm 45 and a far distant context that's also being described in Psalm 45. Now with that in mind, turn back to Hebrews chapter one.

Hebrews chapter one, and we'll look here at verses six and seven as it pertains to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to notice first of all, quoted in verse eight, but of the son, he says, and remember he is contrasting the Lord Jesus with the angels.

He says in verse six concerning the firstborn when he brings them back into the world that the angels of God will worship him. And then he says of the angels in verse seven that their ministers sent to minister and to serve their ministers and angels are his winds and verse eight, but of the son, he says, so he's going back and forth between the son and the angels of the angels.

He says this of the son, he says this of the angels, they are the servants of the son. God says, and how is it that God is saying this in Psalm 45? Because that is God's word. He is the author of it in Psalm 45.

It is God who says to this king, your throne, oh God is forever and ever. So verse eight, but of the son, he says, your throne, oh God is forever and ever. And the righteous scepter is the scepter of his kingdom.

And I want you to notice the full throated emphatic declaration of the deity of Christ in Hebrews chapter one. You see that we have in Hebrews chapter one, the father calling the son, God, we have God, the father saying to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who will sit on David's throne, your throne, oh God, the father calling the son, God, your throne, oh God is forever and ever.

It is an eternal throne. Now, unless you have an adequate and intact Trinitarian understanding of the nature of the Godhead, verses like this will make no sense to you whatsoever. How is it that you can have God calling somebody else God?

Does that make any sense? That doesn't make any sense. Not unless you have a Trinitarian understanding of who God is, that God is one being that is possessed fully and always by three separate and distinct persons who are all called God, who can have a conversation with one another and who each one individually possesses all that is true of the divine nature.

The son possesses fully the divine nature. The father possesses fully the divine nature and the Holy Spirit possesses fully the divine nature. And these three persons can have conversations with one another.

They can talk with one another and all three of them are God, but there is one God because there is one divine essence that one essence or substance that is divine and it is shared by three separate and distinct persons.

So if we have a Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead, it is no problem for us at all to say that the father can call the son God and the father can call the Holy Spirit God as well. And the son can call the father God and say to him, he is my God and he is my father.

Because you have the son speaking to the father and calling him God. And notice that it is an eternal throne. And as we have a Trinitarian God who sits upon an eternal throne, verse 8, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

Now, the administration of God's kingdom takes different forms, various forms throughout the course of human history. It is not, it is not, he does not rule in the same way or the same physical representation at all times.

And in the Old Testament, the administration of God's kingdom, though he sits upon a throne, he rules over all things. It was visibly manifested in the nation of Israel through divinely appointed king, the David and his sons, many of his sons who made a hash, complete hash out of the administration of the kingdom.

But that was the way in which God's will, God's word and God's kingdom was administered in this world to the nation of Israel. Today, he rules over the same territory, the same kingdom, but he is manifesting that rule as head of the church.

And as head of the church, he sovereignly chooses its leadership and directs and guides the expansion and the outworking of the church and the ministry of the church. And there is coming at some point in the time in the future when the manifestation of his eternal throne will be on a physical throne in Jerusalem over the nation of Israel and over all the nations of the world.

So I'm a pre-millennialist and that's what I believe, that there is a literal kingdom who is coming to us, that kingdom is coming to us, and the king over that kingdom will rule and reign from the nation of Israel.

And that is how God's eternal kingdom, his eternal throne will be manifested in this world. And then in the new heavens, the new earth will be entirely different after everything is recreated. He will still rule and reign over this eternal kingdom with his people and he will rule and reign sovereignly in a new heaven and a new earth when we dwell with him in righteousness.

So what kingdom, what throne, what aspect is being described in verses six or verses seven and eight here from Psalm 45? I think that that is describing the Davidic kingdom. I think particularly he is describing here the outworking of the Davidic kingdom, which is in view.

And I would say that because all of the references to this theme of king and kingship and the sovereign rule of the Lord Jesus Christ have been to that aspect of the kingdom so far. Psalm 2, 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 97 verse 7 all have to do with that future physical reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so that is what I think is being described here. He has an eternal throne and he sits and he rules over it and it goes on forever and ever. God has never kicked off of his throne. Psalm 145 verse 13, your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

Daniel 7 verse 14, Daniel writes, and to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

That kingdom that the Lord Jesus Christ receives when he as the heir of all things assumes his position of rulership over all of the nations, that kingdom will go on forever and ever. It's an eternal kingdom.

It will never end. It will go through a thousand years here on the earth. It will endure the time immediately after the millennium. It will go on into the new heavens and the new earth and he will rule and reign forever and there will be no end to his kingdom.

Daniel 7 verse 27, then the sovereignty, the dominion, the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the highest one. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom and all the dominions will serve and obey him.

An everlasting kingdom. And notice that Daniel in Daniel chapter 7 describes that kingdom as being given to us. Did you catch that? The sovereignty, the dominion, the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the highest one.

We get that kingdom. We're the recipients of it. The beneficiaries of it. He rules and he reigns his people in this world. It is given to the saints. Abraham will be there. David will be there. You and I will be there if you're in Christ.

So it is the Davidic kingdom that is in view here. And the, and he, because he is righteous and because he loves righteousness and because he is gracious and because the foundation of his throne is righteousness and truth, he will reign in complete righteousness.

Such a rule by any man is unknown to us entirely. Do you know what it is like to live in a nation or in a world where the person who rules over it always rules in perfect righteousness and makes every decision for the benefit of his people and not because of some political or corrupt motivation?

Can you imagine such an environment? Can you imagine what the world would be like if only truth were allowed to rule? If only righteousness were done by the highest people in the land. That is hard for us to even fathom what that would look like because it is so foreign to everything we have ever experienced.

And yet that is the description of the kingdom that awaits us. When a righteous man rules well, it's described by David in 2 Samuel chapter 23 verses 3 and 4. David in his very last song that he wrote while he was lying on his deathbed, David said this, the rock of Israel spoke to me, he who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God, is as the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds when the tender grass springs out of the earth through sunshine after rain.

David describes what it is like to live in a kingdom or a nation where authority and power are used well and used righteously. 2 Samuel chapter 23. One who fears God, who rules over men righteously, and who rules in the fear of God.

Here's what it is like. It is like the light of the morning when the sun rises, when it is still and it is quiet and it is nice and warm outside. You step outside on the porch or into the yard and the sun is just coming up and it is peaceful and still and quiet and beautiful and all is well.

It is like the sun that rises up and blesses and benefits all of creation. It is as the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds. It's bright, it's beautiful, it's glorious, it's promising.

It is a morning without clouds when the tender grass springs out of the earth through sunshine after rain. A beautiful picture of power and authority used well. And David says when a man rules in the fear of God and when he rules righteously, this is what it is like.