Don’t Miss The Message!

We think we are observant people, yet how often do we watch a movie again, or read a book again and notice things we hadn’t noticed before? I’ve been reading my Bible now for several decades and I’ve done several cover to cover read throughs as well as book studies and years of sermon preparations, and yet I continue to find things I hadn’t seen before.

In seminary my inductive Bible Study professor impressed upon us over and over again that “good interpretation must be based upon quality observation.” If you don’t have quality observation you’re not going to get good input for your interpretation. You will be missing information. This is why eye-witness testimony does not carry much weight without corroboration.

Many years ago my older sister was at a bank when it was robbed. In fact, it was the person in front of her in line that robbed the bank. Immediately after the robber fled they locked down the bank and waited for police to arrive, a few minutes later. As the police interviewed those in the bank for information my sister and the teller were with one officer. The teller described the suspect as she recalled him and my sister kept saying, “Nah uh? He was wearing…” The officer finally separated them and interviewed them separately. After viewing the video my sister’s description turned out to be totally accurate. The officer asked how she got such a good description, and she said, “I was looking at his jean jacket and thinking it really didn’t go with his jeans. And his shoes didn’t really fit with the outfit either.” Then she said, “I teach dance and it’s recital time so my heads all about the costumes and matching colors right now.”

It is likely the teller was focused on procedures - she’d been trained for this, to do what the robber asked, to follow the protocols, that’s where her mind was. My sister was in “costume mode” not worried about other people’s safety, bank policies, whatever threat the robber made, etc. etc. Your state of mind when you make your observations matters.

This is one of the reasons why I like the “fly throughs” of the Bible that I’ve encouraged you to do with CASKET EMPTY, read through the New Testament during Lent, and more recently our 90 Day read through of the Bible. As a bit of encouragement it is called B90+, so if you’re still working on it, press on, you got this. When people do the fast read throughs they hear Isaac saying of his wife Rebekah “she’s my sister” and we pause, didn’t I just read that? Yes, Abraham said the same thing of Sarah.

Or when you get to Moses coming down off Mt. Sinai and Israel is worshiping a golden calf (Exodus 32) and then we get to Jeroboam and the divided Kingdom of Israel and he sets up golden calves, one in Bethel and one in Dan. And again, we say, wait a minute? That sounds familiar. Or perhaps you make a connection between Genesis 22 and Abraham offering his son Isaac on the altar and in the Gospels God offering Jesus on the cross. Or Psalms 22 and then Jesus on the cross. Or Peter walking on the water and Jesus “reached out and took hold of him” (Matthew 14:31) as he began to sink and then Paul writes to the Philippians, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Phil 3:12).

As we become more familiar with the Scriptures these connections become more and more evident. As a pastor, as a teacher I know that the greatest lessons are those discovered rather than told. There’s a teaching maxim that says, “Tell them they forget; show them they remember; involve them and they understand!”

The Epistle to the Hebrews, though it professes to be a letter is written more like a sermon. There is a whole lot in here and unlike a lot of parts of Scripture we like to think about, passages that tell us specific things to do - feed the hungry, care for the weak, give to the poor, etc. - this book is often less about pragmatic actions for us to take and more about ideas and thoughts we need to consider. And the author spends a good deal of time referring us back to the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) to bolster his argument. It is a book that makes us think theologically.

Throughout the chain of references here in Hebrews chapter 1, the author makes several assumptions about the Old Testament.

The Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) consists of the words of God.

The Old Testament presents truth.

The Old Testament presents a unified revelation.

The Old Testament bears witness to Christ.

Then the author makes 4 theological assumptions that we need to note to understand where he’s coming from:

The author understands the Son to be equal with God. This is something we find affirmed in Paul’s writing to the church in Philippi, the opening of the Gospel of John, and elsewhere. It is unmistakeable in the author addressing the Son with “O God” in vs. 1:8 as well as the application of the OT creation passages to the Son.

The author believes the Son to be Lord over the cosmos. He proclaims the Son as both originator and terminator of the universe; thus all reality has its unity in Him.

The author believes in a spiritual realm inhabited by spiritual beings called angels. These beings have specific functions in the mind of this preacher; especially the worship of God and ministry to his people.

The author assumes that Christ has his enemies and that all of the enemies have yet to be placed under his feet. As we shall see in later chapters, the listeners were overwhelmed with the sense that forces around them were out of their control. The author addresses their dilemma of persecution in this way.

Why are these important? It is foundational to the concept of the Trinity. Heb 1:5 It teaches Jesus superior to the angels and in unique relationship to God the Father.

Hebrews 1:5 ESV

For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”?

An error some fall into here is an “Arian” interpretation of the begetting of the Son by the Father in Psalm 2 which must be flatly denied. Arius was a 4th century heretic who insisted that the Son had a point of beginning. The council of Nicea which met in A.D. 325 answered Arianism by interpreting the begetting to mean that he was of the same essence of the Father, “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father…” This creed follows the pattern seen in Hebrews 1 stressing the Sons’s divine nature.

Throughout the Bible we read in Genesis 1 God said, “Let there be…” and there was… “God said, “Let there be…,” and there was…. and then we get to the creation of humankind in verse 26, God said, “Let us create…” and if we’re paying attention, we immediately note the change from a seemingly first person singular to a first person plural and we stop and say, “Wait a minute!”

We read in the opening of John’s Gospel, John 1:1-3

John 1:1–3 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Colossians 1 has another, Colossians 1:15-16

Colossians 1:15–16 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

So what are we getting at? This is on the one hand putting Jesus above the angels, and seeing Him as Creator and Sustainer of the cosmos. One with the Father. So how is he distinct from the Father? We see this in Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi:

Philippians 2:6–8 ESV

who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The challenge for us is the concept that Jesus is fully God and fully Man at the same time. My friend and mentor used the story of the Princess and the frog to help us understand this. The prince when he was turned into a frog was still the prince, and at the same time he was a frog. He would eat flies as a frog, sit on a lily pad as a frog, etc. etc. And, he’s still the prince. He still was able to speak as the prince, he still had the authority of the prince, he was still the King’s son as the prince.

It was after that death that Jesus rose again from the dead and as we know and as the author of Hebrews reminds us He 1:3-4

Hebrews 1:3–4 ESV

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

So What?

I titled today’s message as “Don’t Miss The Message” because so many will look at the person of Jesus and see a great teacher but not God, but we are not given that option in the Scripture. C.S. Lewis noted in his classic Mere Christianity, from what Jesus Himself taught about Himself, Jesus was either:

Lord, liar, or lunatic

If Jesus was just a good teacher, it’s difficult to call him good if He wasn’t also Lord because of what he said about Himself. He said He and the Father were One. He referred to Himself as Son of God and Son of Man etc. “I am the vine” and other illustrations He used speak to Him being the source of life. You have two other choices:

Liar - he wasn’t speaking truth about Himself when He said these things. So, He was lying which makes it difficult to call Him good, and then there’s the question as to why His disciples would follow Him to their own deaths for something that wasn’t true.

Lunatic - The other option is that Jesus delusionally but genuinely believed that He was the Son of God, or in other words was basically insane which again calls into question why anyone would follow someone clearly deluded.

That leaves us with one option and that is that Jesus was genuinely Lord.

If Jesus is Lord, then we also have to consider Him being one with God, thus at the beginning. Which means that there had to beginning. Scientists have also come to this conclusion. Gerald Schroeder in his book, The Science of God, points out that “Until the 1960’s, most scientists came to believe that the universe had no beginning…Because we have lived for the past forty years with the strong evidence for the big bang, we take the fact of a beginning as an obvious given as popular wisdom.”

Hebrews Contemporary Significance

We can say to our friends in the broader society, “This God, about whom scientists are uncovering so much evidence, has done more than create; he has entered our physical realm in the person of Jesus Christ, in order to communicate truth to us that is beyond scientific investigation. Part of that truth is that God’s Son, as the Agent of creation, is also our ultimate authority, to whom we all must give account.”

The author of Hebrews calls us to not miss the message - the message being the Word Himself. Don’t Miss JESUS is the Message. Jesus is the Word of God. All that was in the Old Testament regarding a Messiah, regarding God’s rule, regarding prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus. As He Himself said in the Sermon on the Mount, Mt 5:17

Matthew 5:17 ESV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

Jesus is the Word of God - John 1:14

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Understanding who Jesus is, and what He is, emphasizes our need to pay attention. We’ll get into more of this next week as we examine the warnings.