The Creator of All Things (Hebrews 1:2)

Hebrews 1:1-4 and the Son as God’s Final Revelation

Hebrews chapter 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 the heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.

And he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds 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 more excellent.

Name than they.

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, 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, oh 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 salvation service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation? Let's pray together. Oh, father, it is our desire as we look at your word that you would open our eyes and our hearts to it.

We are dependent upon you for the illumination that comes in the power of the spirit and by the work of the spirit of God in the hearts of those who are yours. So we confess our dependence and we ask that you would be our teacher and our guide and assist us in the speaking and in the hearing that we have centered around your word.

May you be glorified in this time we ask in Christ's name.

Amen.

The Son as Heir of All Things and Creator of the Ages

Our beginning to the book of Hebrews has been a little start and stop. It's been kind of a herky jerky as it were, because we started Hebrews and then I was sick for a week and then I did one message and then Justin preached for me last week so that I could have some scheduled time off around the holidays.

But for the foreseeable future, we're not going to be interrupted in our study of Hebrews. So we're going to be plowing through these first four, four verses, particularly today we're looking at one phrase, this phrase that has to do with the son being the creator of all things.

Now, Hebrews starts out with this bold declaration that God has spoken. Then there are a bunch of prepositional phrases that are kind of attached to that and we looked.

At some of those.

He has spoken through various means and in various manners through the, to the fathers, through the prophets, the various ways in which God has spoken. But the author says that the penultimate, the ultimate and most excellent revelation of who God is and what his saving purposes are is not to be found in the Old Testament.

It's not that the Old Testament is incomplete, it's not that the Old Testament is incorrect, it's that the Old Testament is incomplete. It's like a story without a conclusion and the conclusion is Christ.

And that is the revelation that is higher and greater and clearer and better than all of the other means through which God spoke in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, under the old covenant, God spoke a little here and a little there, adding revelation and truth, light upon light, line upon line over a long period of time.

But the penultimate and ultimate explanation, I don't know what word I was searching for, explanation was right there in front of me. The ultimate revelation of God is in the person of Jesus Christ. And it's not that he contradicts the Old Testament, he completes the Old Testament.

So now we have all of that revelation in the person of Christ, but now that presents to us the question, what qualifies the son to be such a perfect revelation of the father? What qualifies the son to be that ultimate revelation of truth?

And that is what the author is turning to next. And we saw that he gives us seven qualities of the son, seven statements about the son that demonstrate his grandeur and his glory. And we see those in the first four verses.

And here were the seven. The son has been appointed the heir of all things. We looked at that in verse two. Through whom also he made the world. He is the creator of all things. Verse three, he is the radiance of God's glory.

He is the exact representation of God's nature. He upholds all things by the word of his power. That's number five. He has made purification for sins, number six. And he has sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Those seven statements describe the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And it's as if the author is saying, the best revelation of the father is in the son. Now here's what is true of the son. Here's how we know that he is such a perfect example, a perfect revelation of the father.

Because he is the one who will inherit everything. He's the heir of everything. We looked last time at what that means. That he will ultimately take possession of and rule over and bring into subjection to himself everything that exists.

All the far-flung galaxies, all the stars, all the planets, the far reaches of space. Every atom, every square inch of this creation will ultimately be his. And the very last enemy that will be conquered is death.

Death itself will be conquered. He will make his enemies a footstool for his feet. He will establish a kingdom. And then his rule will be and his reign will be manifested to the farthest reaches of creation.

As the curse is subdued and he brings everything in subjection to himself. That's the promise. And then, having received all that inheritance, he shares it with those who are his.

That's us.

You get to enjoy all of that because he shares it with us. The second statement has to do with the fact that he is the creator of all things. So we looked at him being appointed the heir of all things.

And now we're going to see that he is the creator of all things. These two are connected. When he says that he is the heir of all things, it means that everything that exists is made for him. It ultimately would be turned over to him.

And now when we look at him being the creator of all things, we see that everything that exists is made by him. Everything exists for him and everything exists by him. He's not just the heir of everything, he's the creator of everything.

And so all of this is connected. It's all his by virtue of the fact that the father in eternity past appointed him the heir of all things. It's all his by virtue of the fact that the father through the son created all things.

So the son then is the creator of everything that exists. And it is his by virtue of the fact that he has purchased everything and the right to everything by his blood by making purification for sins.

So all of these seven statements are all kind of tied together. So today we're looking at this creative act that the son is the creator of all things. And we're going to talk about the implications of that for us, for our theology, and what that means when we say that God created everything and the son created everything.

Obviously, this is an indication that the son shares full equality of deity with the father and with the Holy Spirit as he is credited with being the creator of everything. So we begin with then with the doctrine of creation itself.

Now the Bible teaches that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That's how the whole story begins. In Genesis chapter 1 verse 1, God created the heavens and the earth. So it is all here because God himself has created it.

So one of the very first things that we learn about God is his creative power. And that speaks of his wisdom and his ability and his strength, his might, his majesty, that he spoke all of it into existence.

He simply said, let there be light and there was light. And he is the creator of everything. Everything that exists exists because God by an act of his own will, uncoerced from anything outside of himself, unforced to do this in any way, he spoke and all of it came into being through him.

And God is the creator of everything so that everything that exists owes its origin to God. So therefore he has the right and the power and authority over all of it. We believe that our creator became God, or sorry, our creator God became or took upon himself human flesh and stepped into time and creation.

Because here in Hebrews it says that the son himself is the one through whom God created the whole world. So in Hebrews here we have a statement about the deity of Jesus Christ in verse 2, through whom he appointed the heir of all things and through whom also he made the world.

God himself is the creator of all things that exist. Now that is contrary of course to the secular humanistic atheistic perspective on the creation of all things. We know that from nothing nothing comes, right?

And it is evident to everybody, and I mean everybody, atheists and non-atheists or theists alike, that there is a creator that exists. That is patently obvious to all people. Now atheists may deny that, it shouldn't surprise us because they have a motivation for denying that, but atheists deny what is patently obvious to all.

And the Bible does not argue that God is the creator of all things. This is a significant point. The Bible assumes that this is true. In fact it assumes it so much to such an extent that the one who denies this is rankly called a fool in scripture.

The fool has said in his heart there is no God. To deny that there is a creator behind what exists is to deny something that is so patently obvious to all people that it makes you a fool for denying it.

Because the Bible doesn't give an argument, here's how we know that God exists, this upon this, and here's a cosmological argument, a teleological argument, and another kind of argument, and this kind of argument, and it doesn't give five or seven or eight ten proofs for the existence of God, it just says God is.

And this is patently obvious to all of creation. We know that from nothing nothing comes. We know that if there is an effect there has to be a cause big enough or adequate to explain the effect. That's rational, that's reasonable, that is scientific.

Atheists deny that. Atheists say you can have an effect without having an effective cause or a causer of that effect. So the Christian worldview says everything that exists came into being at a certain point in time.

Scientists will also say that everything that exists came into being at a certain point in time. They call it the Big Bang. They trace it back to the very beginning because we know that matter is not eternal.

We know that energy is not eternal. We know that at some point something had to come into existence. Now the Christian worldview says there is a God who spoke these things into existence for a purpose and for a time.

The Bible doesn't argue that there is a creator, the Bible assumes that there is a creator, and then it tells us who the creator is, why he created everything, and where the creation is going and when he created it.

It informs us as to when all of that happened and why it all happened. But the atheist says there was a time when there was nothing. Now nothing is what? Nothing. Nothing is what rocks dream about. That's how one philosopher described it.

Nothing is what rocks dream about. It's nothing, it doesn't exist. So the atheist says there was a time when there was nothing, and then in a flash, in a moment, there was everything, but that everything was compressed down into such an infinitesimally small point, so compressed that it would fit nicely on the head of a pin.

It was so small.

All energy, all matter, every atom, every molecule was pressed down. All of the space of creation was taken out. It was all pressed down into an infinitesimally small point. Now that small point was so small that it was virtually nothing.

Though it was everything, it was virtually nothing. Nothing existed, and then everything existed in a point that we would describe as almost nothing. Are you following this? Then all of that nothingness that was really everything, but nothing, exploded and became everything.

Magically. Galaxies leapt into existence. It expanded at the speed of light or even faster, and over the course of 15 billion years, now when I was a kid, it was 5 billion years, so the universe has aged 10 billion years in the 25 years that it's taken me after high school.

So now the universe is 15 billion years, and over the course of that 15 billion years, everything expanded and developed and kind of sucked together, and gravity did its thing. The laws of physics, the laws of math, the laws of motion, the laws of science, none of that existed.

Remember, there was nothing, and then there was everything, which was something, which was really nothing, and that exploded so that everything was there, and everything operated according to those laws, and then today, finally, we have what we see around us, before us.

That's magical, isn't it? It's a nice fairy tale. It is almost as if the atheist is arguing that there was magically a rabbit that was pulled out of a hat, and then there it was, except there's no magician, and there's no hat.

There's just the rabbit, and that's what they're left to explain, like a rabbit sitting on a table. Well, there's no table. There's just a rabbit. Just a rabbit hanging in space, which is the rabbit. So there was a point when there was nothing, and then there was a point where there was everything, and everything exploded.

Now, the Christian looks at that and says, well, we actually have a magician. This is not to negate God. We have a cause behind this. We have a way of explaining who did this, and how he did it. And the atheist has no way of explaining who did it, or even how it happened.

The Christian view says God is the creator of everything, and because he created all of it, he has authority over it. He has the power. He has the authority. He has the right to rule everything that is, and as the creator, it is all his to do with as he should please.

The Father, Son, and Spirit in the Work of Creation

Now, we come back to the book of Hebrews. So that's the biblical perspective on who God is, and what God has done. And so when we find out in verse 2 that God has spoken, and that God appointed the sun as the heir of all things, and then that God created everything through the sun, you'll notice in verse 2 that there are a lot of pronouns there that are mentioned, and we have to be able to trace the pronouns.

So when it says, through whom also he made the world, we have to ask, who is the whom, or whom is the whom? That would be grammatically proper. Who is the whom? The whom is he.

There we go.

Okay, I'm not going to worry about being grammatically proper, just so you can understand who I'm talking, whom I'm talking about. Okay, so we have a whom. So who is the whom, and who is the he? He did the creating, and he created through a whom.

So who do the pronouns belong to? The one doing the creating is the father. The one through whom he is doing the creating is the son. It is through the son that the father has created everything. So if you follow the argument from the beginning of the book, God spoke, and he, that is God, has spoken in these last times through the son.

The son is the one whom the father has appointed heir of all things, and the son is the one whom the father used to create everything that exists. So we have two individuals already in the passage. One of these individuals is referred to as God.

One of these persons is referred to as the son, and the son is also called God in the passage. Now, where would you look to find where the son is called God? Look in verse 8, for instance. Is that what I'm looking at?

Yeah, verse 8. But of the son, he, that is the father, says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. Now, later on in the passage, the author is arguing, look, Christ is superior to the angels. To which of the angels did the father ever say, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever?

To which of the angels did he ever say that? No angel can make that claim. But of the son, that is, of the son, the father says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. So here in the book of Hebrews, you have the father calling the son God and establishing his right to rule.

And you're going to see this all the way through the book of Hebrews in chapter 1 particularly, because here the author is laying out the argument that the son is fully divine. And this is what sets him apart from Moses and from Aaron and from Abraham and from Melchizedek and from the angels and from everybody and everything else that existed.

The son is the one through whom the father has created all things. And he used him to create all things because he is God. And the son can say, or the father can say of the son, Your throne, O God. Now, sometimes in scripture, when the word God is used, it is used shorthand of the father.

Of the father in distinct from the son. So for instance, sometimes you read the word God in scripture and it is speaking. If there's no distinction that is made, it can be speaking of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, the entire being that is God.

Sometimes in scripture, when the term God appears, it is speaking specifically. It's a shorthand way of referring to namely the father, the first person of the Trinity. And that is, I think, a distinction that is worth noting because that's how it's used here in Hebrews chapter 1.

So when it says at the beginning of the book, God, after he spoke long ago, he's referring there to the father because he's distinct from the son, which is why verse 5 speaks of these two individuals.

For to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me. So there we have two individuals, both of whom are God.

One is distinguished as the father and one is distinguished as the son. So they are separate persons, but they are the same being. Now if that confuses you, it's because the doctrine of the Trinity is probably confusing to you.

It should not be because when we speak of God, the nature of God or his being, we describe him in terms of being one. He is one being, one essence, one nature. But when we speak of God in relationship to whom he is in terms of his person, he is not one, but he is three.

He is father, son, and Holy Spirit. So the father is called God in Scripture, the son is called God in Scripture, and the Holy Spirit is called God in Scripture. And these three persons eternally exist together as the one God.

There is one being, that one being of God is shared equally and fully and for eternity by all three persons, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. This is why John in John chapter 1 can say that the word was with God.

It was alongside of God, but he was also God. Because there we have the father and the son existing side by side in relationship to one another, eternally so, sharing fully the divine essence, which is one God.

So Scripture affirms there's one God. Scripture also teaches that there are three separate and distinct persons. So in Hebrews, when we read that the son was the agent through whom God created the world, we're confronted with this reality that the son or the creation is a Trinitarian act shared in by the father and by the son and by the Holy Spirit.

So we read in Scripture that the father created all things. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That refers to all three persons of the Trinity, or it could refer to the father creating through the son and the spirit's involvement is in that as well.

We read in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 6, yet for us, there is but one God, the father, from whom are all things and we exist for him and our Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we exist through him.

So there are two individuals are called God. We have one God that is the father from whom all things come and the son through whom all things come. One God, two separate and distinct persons, the father doing the creative work through the agency of the son.

And the spirit is also credited with the act of creation. In fact, in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, we read the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

And there the idea behind the spirit moving over the surface of the waters, it's the idea of brooding. The word has to do with moving and brooding and being actively, not just floating about like a cloud, but that he is active in this, he is moving over and he is working over creation.

So the father is involved in creation, the spirit is involved in creation and the son himself is also involved in creation. And we look at two passages in just a moment. But before we do that, let's talk just a moment about how it is that the son is also the agent of creation.

So creation is a Trinitarian act. There are some actions in scripture that are credited to only the father or only the son or only the Holy Spirit. And there are a lot of activities in scripture that are given credit to all three persons of the Trinity.

For instance, it says that the father raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus said he would raise himself from the dead and the Holy Spirit is credited with the resurrection of Christ. So you have all three persons who are involved in the resurrection of the Christ.

There are some activities or things that God does in scripture that are done by one particular person and not the other two. For instance, it is the father who chooses us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

Election and adoption are the work of the father, not the son and not the Holy Spirit. The work of creating a fetus, a child in the womb of the Virgin Mary is said not to be the work of the father and not the son, but of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will overshadow Mary and conceive in her womb a child. Regeneration is said to be the work of the Holy Spirit. Inspiration is said to be the work of the Holy Spirit. So these are activities that are credited to individual persons of the Trinity.

The son, none of the members of the Trinity, the first or the third person are said to have taken upon themselves human flesh. That was uniquely the work of the son, not the father. Despite what the shack says, the shack is wrong.

The shack has the father dying for the sins of humanity. That's not what scripture says. The son did that, not the father and not the Holy Spirit. Only the son was incarnate. Then there are other activities in scripture where all three persons are involved and creation is one of those acts.

In the book, Biblical Theology, which is edited by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhew, they write this, this work, speaking of creation, was not distributed. Rather, each person of the Trinity acted in concert with the other two persons.

God the father is seen as the source. God the son is seen as the mediator of the acts of creation and the Holy Spirit is seen as the agent of these acts. Each person works fully and in concert with one another in the creation acts, close quote.

That's what scripture teaches. So who created the world?

God did.

The father, the son, and the Holy Spirit were all involved in the work of creation. The father creating, initiating that work, the son speaking everything into existence, you'd say in the power and by the activity and the agency of the Holy Spirit.

So all three persons of the Trinity are involved in creation. When you look out at creation, we can honestly say this is the work of God, all three persons. It is not as if the father said, okay, I will create the stars, you create the land, you create the water, I'll create the birds, you create the land animals, you create mankind.

And it wasn't divided up amongst the persons of the Trinity. All three persons of our triune God involved in creation. That's the glory of it. Now I wanna look at two passages that describe the son and his agency and his work in creation.

There are three passages you should keep in your mind connected at all times. And this will be easy. This will be easy because all three of these passages are in the first chapter of their respective books.

But here are the three passages, John chapter one, Colossians chapter one and Hebrew chapter one. You should always have connected in your mind Hebrews chapter one and John chapter one because those two chapters overlap each other so much.

They deal with the same subject matter, the same themes. They're introducing the same person that is the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's tremendous overlap between those chapters. And it shouldn't be hard for you to remember that because those of you who sat here and endured seven years of expositions in the gospel of John, you've got John in your head, right?

And now you're looking forward to who knows how many years in Hebrews. So you're going to have Hebrews in your head. So just remember John and Hebrews. And for some of you, that's the only Kootenai community church you've ever known is John and Hebrews.

So, well, in that brief time in Ecclesiastes, we won't talk about that. So those two are connected. And then you throw into that mix Colossians chapter one. So here's John chapter one. Listen to the language here.

And it's similar. The language is so similar to the book of Hebrews. John one, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God alongside of the father and the word was God. He was divine. He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him. And apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life and the life was the light of men. So there John credits the word, the eternal word, who was with the father and who was God with the act of creation.

And he says, all things came into being through him. That's not most things. It's not a lot of things. It's all things. Everything that has a beginning, has a beginning because the son created it. It all came into being through him.

So he is the agent behind all of that. He is the one who created all of it. Then John says in a negative way, apart from him, so he's stating the same thing negatively, apart from him, nothing that came into being came into being.

So he states it positively. Everything that exists came into being through him and then stated negatively as if to close up every loophole and close out every possibility of an exception. He says, nothing that has come into being has come into being apart from the son.

He is the creative agent behind all of it. All things came into being through him and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. Colossians chapter one, and this is what we read at the beginning of the service today.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. And by the way, that idea of being firstborn, it is connected to the idea of him being the heir of all things, being appointed the heir of all things, right?

That would be Paul's way of saying, he is the firstborn. He is the Greek word is prototokos. It's the preeminent one. It's not just the first one born as if he has a beginning, it's the preeminent one, the one who is above all other things.

He's the firstborn over all creation for by him that is by the son, all things were created, both in the heavens. And then Paul divides it up into all these categories, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things and in him all things hold together. All things have been created through him and for him. What did we say at the beginning? The book of Hebrews. He is the heir of all things. Everything has been created, what?

For him. And he is the creator of all things. Everything has been created through him. Paul's saying the exact same thing, almost using the same language that Hebrews chapter one does. All things were created for him.

He's the heir of all things and all things are created through him. He's the creator of all things. So he has a right to all of it. And then Paul says in Colossians one, in him, all things hold together.

And that's very similar to what Hebrews says in chapter one, when it says that he upholds all things by the word of his power. All of these things Paul brings in, in Colossians chapter one. So those are the three parallel passages.

What do John one and Colossians one and Hebrews one all teach? That Jesus Christ is the creator of all things. Now you might be asking yourself, but it says that he is through whom also he made the world.

Now the world isn't everything. The world is this world, right? Maybe Jesus is the creator of this world, but there is another creator, other creators for other worlds. That other worlds exist. He created this world, but not anything outside of this world.

You might try and limit it to that. But the interesting thing is that the word world here is not the usual Greek term used for world in the New Testament. The usual Greek term used for world in the New Testament is cosmos.

For God so loved the world, loved not the world and the things in the world. He gave his life as a ransom for the world. The idea of world there is cosmos, used most of the time in scripture. But this is a different world.

A different world, a different word. I own us from I own. And that is most often translated in scripture as age or forever. Describe something that is the eternity. It's used to describe that, which is the everlasting or the eternal.

It refers to long durations of time. So what is the author of Hebrews saying? Not that Jesus created a world or these worlds. It is far more encompassing and far reaching than that, which is why the NIV translates it.

He created the universe. But it's even goes beyond the universe. Speaking of the ages, he is the creator of time, of space itself, of the eras of human history, the long periods of time. This is as far reaching and all encompassing as language could possibly describe.

Imagine the limitations of all of time and all of eternity, past, present and future, all of it. The limits of space, the limits of time as far reaching go up as far as your mind can take you to the outer stretches of all that is and all had a beginning.

How would you describe that? He is the creator of the ages. All of time, all of space, all of energy, everything that we can say exists, exists because of him. It is through the son that the father created the ages.

And so we can adequately and accurately describe creation as being the work of the son. Everything that has come into being came into being through him. He is the creator of the ages. Now, what are the implications of this?

What does this mean for us? Let me give you a couple of them. Number one, this obviously establishes for us the full deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in this first chapter, the author is going to describe and defend and state the deity of Christ from almost every conceivable angle.

We've seen it even in the first couple of statements. He's a perfect revelation of the father because he is God. So we look at the son and we see him. Jesus said to Philip, you've seen me, you've seen the father.

There's nothing else to show you. He's the perfect representation of God because he is God. And he is the heir of all things. And only one who is God could become the heir of everything that God has made.

And not only that,.

But he is the creator of everything. Every statement in this chapter is aimed at convincing us that the one whom we worship, the Christian's God, is none other than Jesus Christ. This is the testimony of scripture.

And this is the belief of the historic Christian church. We believe that the creator of the ages of everything that existed, step it into human history. He lived a perfect life. He walked and dwelt among us, limited as it were, without divesting himself of his divine nature.

He limited the use of that divine nature and his divine attributes to experience life in this world. And he experienced suffering and he was falsely tried and falsely accused and slandered. And he died on a Roman cross.

And three days later, he rose again. And then he ascended back to heaven. That is the Christian testimony that this one who did this is none other than your God. Our God was manifested in human flesh.