Hebrews
Notes
Transcript
I found this outline and tongue twister by Rev Huss.
Betty Botter bought some butter, "But," she said, "this butter’s bitter. If I bake this bitter butter, It will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter - That would make my batter better." So she bought a bit of butter, Better than her bitter butter, And she baked it in her batter, And the batter was not bitter. So ’twas better Betty Botter Bought a bit of better butter.
We aren’t talking about better butter or a better batter today but we are talking about something better.
It seems in America, we are always searching for something better. By better we usually mean bigger, faster, cheaper and more of it than what our neighbors have.
A lot of Christians get caught up in those lies even about church. It must be a better church if it is bigger, has more money, doesn’t ask us for as much of a commitment.
There are times we should be content.
5 Keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you.
At the same time, we should not always be content with some things.
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead,
14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.
Hebrews shows us there is something better we should pursue. The word “better” is used 13 times in this book. In its use, we can find that Jesus is better than anything else.
We have a better message
When that first word of Scripture was written, we have had a good message.
Hebrews states in the very first verse that God spoke. And what God spoke was written down. The OT wasn’t written all at once, It was written over fifteen hundred years by over forty writers. From time to time God would speak and in different ways.
The OT is progressive revelation; a progressive revealing of truth. It is progressive in the sense that each book reveals a little more truth. Genesis gives some truth; Exodus gives some truth and so on. Each book reveals a little more of the truth.
This progression doesn’t mean that each bit of truth had to correct some previous error. The revelation of truth was done in a way that built upon each bit of truth and given in a way that we could understand the truth. It isn’t about any error of truth but in the amount of truth.
In the past, God spoke through the prophets to the ancestors of the Hebrews. Today, God has spoken through His Son. And we now have a completed message with the NT.
The entire NT is Christ centered. The gospels give His sotry, the epistles comment on His story and the book of Revelation tells us of the competed history. Putting the OT and NT together gives us a completed picture of truth.
18 I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.
19 And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share of the tree of life and the holy city, which are written about in this book.
There is no new revelation. There is no new word from God. There are no prophets or apostles. We have the complete and whole truth that God has shared contained in the Bible. Its cannon is closed.
No one prophet was able to grasp the fullness of truth. That was left for Jesus to do and share. Which He has done.
We have a better messenger
Which mens we have a better messenger.
The message in the OT was good and with each revelation of God, that message got better. We gained more and more truth.
But when Christ came, we recieved all the truth.
58 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”
We know that Jesus claimed to be God. Not just a good man, a prophet or a good moral teacher. Jesus emphatically stated He was God and used God’s name from the OT. But in the NT, he went even further.
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
There is a difference in the word of Hebrews 1:1 and Hebrews 1:2.
The difference is the messenger.
In the OT, God spoke through many people at different times. His word was shared and written down so the church would have His word from the OT. Now we have His word in the NT but it is more than just God speaking.
We actually have the Truth, the Word and I say those two with capital letters. Jesus tells us He is the Truth. He isn’t just bringing another part of truth for us to add but He is the Truth.
He is also the Word. Not just another word from God that we need to write down but He is the Word.
14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
God spoke and His word was written down so that we might better understand who He is. But then God sent His Truth, His Word and His grace to take on flesh and live among us.
Michael Card’s song, The Final Word says:
You and me we use
So very many clumsy words
The noise of what we often say
Is not worth being heard
When the Father's Wisdom wanted to
Communicate His love
He spoke it in one final perfect Word
He spoke the Incarnation
And then so was born the Son
His final word was Jesus
He needed no other one
Spoke flesh and blood so He could bleed
And make a way Divine
And so was born the baby
Who would die to make it mine
Godly men wrote the NT. It was written by men but it was the will of God being put on paper.
20 Above all, you know this: No prophecy of Scripture comes from the prophet’s own interpretation,
21 because no prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
And it was written under the direction of the HS.
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness,
Hebrews 1:1 says God’s word came to us through prophets in the OT. Hebrews 1:2 says in the last days God spoke through Jesus Christ. The difference is we have a better message sent through a better messenger.
What makes Him better?
He is the heir of all things
A man who goes by the monicker the Biker Guru shares part of his life. He grew up poor, joined the Navy and left the Navy poor. He worked what jobs he could until he read about making himself a better person. He then went to work and remade himself and became a multi-millionaire. His family will inherit what he will leave behind.
Jesus, full of glory, left His throne and came to earth as a poor child. He grew up just as each of us have grown up but His inheritance is all of God’s creation. Jesus became poor for our sakes so that we can be made rich through Him. We will share in His inheritance.
3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
16 For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him.
It was through the Son of God that all things came into existence. We read that in the last two passages. But the writer of Hebrews goes even further.
2 In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him.
Someone once said, God spoke it, Christ did it and the Holy Spirit empowered it.
This is a concise statement about the work of the Trinity in creation. It is also a concise summary that highlights the Trinity’s work in salvation and the life of a Christian.
God spoke it refers to God’s divine plan of salvation and how we should live.
Christ did it points to His life, sacrificial death, resurrection, His ascension and His promise of atonement for our sins.
The Holy Spirit empowered it describes the Spirits ongoing work in our lives which gives us the power to follow Christ and obey God.
Verse 3 goes on to say:
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Jesus is the radiance of God.
Jesus brings the light. We aren’t the light but as children of the light we reflect that light in this dark world.
Jesus is the exact expression.
Through Christ we can see exactly what the Father is. Jesus said in John 14 that we have seen the Father because we have seen the Son.
9 For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ,
Through Jesus, all things hold together.
17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
Could you imagine what would happen if Jesus relinquished the universe to the laws and theories of science? It would not last.
And finally, it is through Jesus alone that we can be purified for our sins.
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
There is no other way that we can enter into a relationship with God but through the work of His Son the Christ. No other way.
But I like how this section ends. “He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
To me this ending correlates to creation. At the end of the creation account in Genesis, we are told that God completed all His work on the seventh day and then sat down and rested.
In Hebrews, we see that Jesus is the better messenger and after He completed all His works, He sits down at the right hand of God.
Everything has been done that can be, that needs to be, that will be. Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished” and it is finished.
Everything that needs to be done for you to be in a relationship with God is complete. Jesus did it all and God calls you based on the completed work of Christ.
As R. C. Sproul so famously said, “The only thing we bring to the table is our sin.”
Are you in a relationship with God? If not then I invite you into one. Is God calling you? If so, now is the time to answer His call.
Let’s pray.
