Hebrews 1:1-4 (2)

We are going to begin our series on Hebrews this morning but before we get to Hebrews we need to place it in the overall story of the Bible. We need to go all the way back to the beginning in and 2 and in the Garden of Eden.

In God says to man I have given you everything that you need. If you need it, I’ve provided it. is kind of the wide angle picture of the creation account. is a little more personal. And we see in when the camera pans in on Adam that his need for a suitable helper is fulfilled by God. is a picture of God doing what he said in —Giving to mankind everything that he will need. Everything they need is given by God. Everything! Everything! Everything that they need! No ache. No feeling distant from God. No broken relationships. No longing. No unfulfillment. No big questions that are under answered. No death. No doubt. No addictions. No brokenness. No shame. None of that stuff was present there. “Man, is God even there”. That wasn’t a question up for debate in and 2. It was obvious.

Now look at . There is something that they don’t have. And the serpent magnifies it. He shines a spotlight on what they do not have. What? You don’t know the difference between good and evil? Aww man God is ripping you off. I’ll tell you how to get this thing that you lack. And there it is. The goodness of God is questioned. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father. The serpent questions this. No, there is something good that he has yet to give you. “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”. If you want something you’ve got to take it yourself. The serpent wedged his cloven hoof into the heart of man and woman, dug in a little, and created a void in their heart. Then he said, “I’ll tell you how to fill it”.

And there it is. The goodness of God is questioned. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father. The serpent questions this. No, there is something good that he has yet to give you. “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”. If you want something you’ve got to take it yourself. The serpent wedged his cloven hoof into the heart of man and woman, dug in a little, and created a void in their heart. Then he said, “I’ll tell you how to fill it”.

Notice verse 7. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

So what do they do at this point? I mean this is where we are is it not. We, like Adam and Eve, feel the emptiness. We feel the brokenness. If we are even moderately honest with ourselves we will admit that not everything is perfect. We know that we’ve messed up. You may not even say that you’ve messed up and have sinned against a holy God. You may not even believe that God exists. Even still you know that you aren’t exactly as you should be. So what do you do with this knowledge? What happens when your eyes are open to not only your brokenness but also the shame and guilt that come with sin?

Here is what Adam and Eve did. “And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths”. They stood naked before each other and before their creator and they knew it. What did they do? Did they say I know who can fix this—the Lord, He gives us everything we need? Nope. Their response is to knit together a few fig leaves and try to cover their shame. They tried to fix their brokenness. We’ll hide our shame and our nakedness won’t be so obvious. Perhaps nobody will notice our brokenness.

Here is what Adam and Eve did. “And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths”. They stood naked before each other and before their creator and they knew it. What did they do? Did they say I know who can fix this—the Lord, He gives us everything we need? Nope.

Their response is to knit together a few fig leaves and try to cover their shame. They tried to fix their brokenness. We’ll hide our shame and our nakedness won’t be so obvious. Perhaps nobody will notice our brokenness. Shoot, they may even congratulate us on our sweet looking new attire.

“And they heard the sound of the LORD God”. They hear the covenant keeping Lord walking towards them. At first they may have assumed that their fig leaf underpants would hold. This will cover our shame. But as the holy God comes closer they know that it isn’t enough. His radiance exposes their rebellion. Deep down they knew it was not enough so they decided to hide in a bush just for good measure.

This story has replayed over and over for millenniums. You can see Adam-like hiding all throughout the Old and the New Testament. “Quick, God’s coming we better clean ourselves up.”

We engage in Adam-like hiding when rather than living in the freedom of being known by God we live in the fear of being known by God. This means that our lives are often very surface. Our relationship with other people is surface. And on the deepest level our relationship with God is surface at best, and non-existent at worse. It means that we do not face the monsters in our closet. Rather than tackling those really deep things like anger, bitterness, resentment, greed, fear, worry, shame, regret, unrest, guilt, lust, etc. we campaign to clean up the outside things that people see. We keep our visible anger in check but let it boil below the surface. We mask our fears and worry with shallow humor. We get uncomfortable talking about deeper things so we avoid them with movies, music, magazines, video games, videos. We make certain to look like good Christian people but inside all of these things are left unchecked.

You see from on humanity has been longing to return to the Garden. That’s the seed of all the desires that you have. What we are really longing for—and we may not even know—is to once again have the shalom (the peace, the well-being) that was present in the Garden. God has placed eternity in the hearts of men and this is in part what that means. We want to again have unfettered, unrestrained, unhindered access to God our Creator. To God our Father.

And this is really what the story of the Old Testament, and really all of the Bible is all about. You see three things pop up all throughout the OT but they have this one thing as their center. You see prophets. What’s a prophet? Well it’s one who speaks to us on behalf of God. It’s a divinely appointed messenger. But there wasn’t really a need for a prophet in the Garden was there? You just talked to God himself. And so the role of the prophet is also a statement that there is something wrong and messed up and we don’t just have access to God as we once did. It needs to come through a medium…through a messenger. And the messenger himself was dependent upon hearing from God—it wasn’t something that he was in control of.

Another thing we see crop up is the role of the King. Someone to rule us. Now we might not think that this is something that we desire. In fact part of the fall is that we want to be the king. But the truth is that we are looking for a ruler. We are looking for majesty. We are glory hunters. Part of our search for fulfillment is a search for a king. In the Garden God set up Adam and Eve as kings to rule the land. But they were still under his authority. He was the Big King. He was their King. They chose to rebel. And ever since that moment our leadership and our quest for leadership has been all messed up.

Another image that we have is that of the priest. A prophet is one who talks to us from God. A priest is kind of one who talks to God for us. He stands in between. He makes sacrifices. He makes the way so that we can be restored to God. Again there was no need for a priest in the garden because there was nothing to stand between God and man. But once happened you need something to stand between us and God—otherwise our unholy selves would be utterly consumed by the unflinchingly holy God of the universe.

We’re almost in Hebrews…hang on…we need to take one more brief stop in the OT because it’s central to understanding Hebrews.

If I tell you to recite the ABC’s I bet you break out into song. Music is a powerful tool used for memory.

It’s also a powerful tool used for evoking emotions. Patriotic songs stir up emotions within us. Likewise, there is a reason why I listened to certain music to get pumped up before a baseball game. I didn’t listen to Mozart’s symphony. I listened to Metallica’s symphony.

This is kind of what the Psalms were. They were powerful memory tools that evoked emotions. And so if you were heavily steeped in that biblical culture you would be able to recite something like or much in the same way that we might sing our ABC’s. And it also was part of your national identity. So when those Psalms have promises about a coming rescuer or are reminders about God setting up his king and you’d sing those songs in hope that God was going to bring His King to earth and set up his kingdom. That’d do something to you. It’d be ingrained in you.

and a bit as well serve as background to this letter to the Hebrews. We don’t know exactly why the author, and we don’t know specifically who wrote this, is saying what he is saying. Some believe that he is writing to Jewish people who have just become followers of Jesus but now they are being persecuted by their fellow Jews—so they are tempted to go back to the Old Covenant because it won’t bring them as much persecution. That’s possible, but we don’t know for sure. What we do know, though, is that the author of Hebrews is reciting for them and reminding them of that rescuer and that hope and the new age that was promised to come…and he’s saying…He’s here! So don’t go back. Jesus is better. The good news of the new covenant is far better and far more excellent. So don’t go back.

The author of Hebrews is making the argument that in Jesus we have the good news of the new covenant and what is that? It’s that we now have access. We are being brought back into the Garden. The curse has been and is being overturned. Jesus is the prophet. Jesus is the king. Jesus is the priest. And that’s what we see in these first 4 verses of Hebrews.

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We will come back to verses 1-4 next week and look at all of chapter 1. But I want to give us kind of an overview this morning. So I just want to make three points—that Jesus is the better prophet, the better king, and the better priest. I think that’s the argument that the author of Hebrews is making. The new covenant is better because Jesus is better. Because of this we now have access to God. We now see the curse broken and the garden being restored. So I think in the first four verses the author of Hebrews is setting that up.

Jesus is the better prophet of the new covenant

Look here at the first two verses. “Long ago” isn’t really a time thing so much as it is, “in a prior era”. Honestly, it might be better translated, “formerly” because what the author is doing is contrasting the way God spoke in the Old covenant and in the new covenant. Or how God spoke before Jesus came.

Note also many times and in many ways. Most see this as saying that before Christ God spoke partially, fragmentary, preparatory, incomplete. And that likely has something to do with the meaning here. But I think the author of Hebrews is making a much different point—a different contrast. When he says here, “to our fathers through the prophets” I don’t think “the prophets” is a synonym for the OT. The reason is that nowhere do we have “the prophets” as a summary of the OT Bible.

Instead what I think he is saying is this…God spoke through a middle man. I think you can see a bit of a picture of this in right after God had given the 10 commandments. Notice the Israelites response:

Formerly...

18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

21 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

This will play a huge role in Hebrews. Fear keeps us from having direct access to God. The fact that we are law-breakers keeps us from that as well. And so before Jesus there was always a middle man.

But notice what it’s saying here. In these last days…literally this days which are the last…the last era. Are we living in the end of days? Biblically speaking, yes. And we have been for about 2000 years. Now as opposed to the old covenant God has spoken to us directly by means of his Son.

It’s God Himself. Yes, Jesus is our mediator. He’s between us and God. He is the one of whom Job longed for. But he’s God himself.

So you’ve got God—>prophet—> audience “the fathers”

many times and many ways...

God spoke by the prophets…(Not a reference to OT canon)

but in these days which are the last...

spoken by means of his Son.

This is kind of tied to the next point. It’s significant that the Son is God himself. He’s the King. So what is the author of Hebrews doing here. Some people read this as if “the prophets’ is a reference to the entire old testament. And so they make a point from this that God has spoken completely and finally in the Son. I might be able to agree with some of that theologically but I don’t believe that is what this text is primarily saying. I don’t think prophets there means, “The Old Testament speaks this way... but now he speaks through His Son.” I think the main point here is to say that a prophet was a medium.

So you’ve got God—>prophet—> audience “the fathers”

In the new covenant—through Jesus—now in these last days you’ve got Jesus, who is God —> us.

See the difference? And do you know what that means? It’s access. It’s back to the garden. So he’s the better prophet because he’s God Himself.

You have access…do you know what that means? You truly can hear God. He speaks to us through His Son. Primarily through the Word. But also through other believers, His Spirit, the church, the preaching of God’s Word.

Have you heard the story of the elephant and the six blind men?

The first blind man put out his hand and touched the side of the elephant. “How smooth! An elephant is like a wall.”The second blind man put out his hand and touched the trunk of the elephant. “How round! An elephant is like a snake.”The third blind man put out his hand and touched the tusk of the elephant. “How sharp! An elephant is like a spear.”The fourth blind man put out his hand and touched the leg of the elephant. “How tall! An elephant is like a tree.”The fifth blind man reached out his hand and touched the ear of the elephant. “How wide! An elephant is like a fan.”The sixth blind man put out his hand and touched the tail of the elephant. “How thin! An elephant is like a rope.”

An argument ensued, each blind man thinking his own perception of the elephant was the correct one. The Rajah, awakened by the commotion, called out from the balcony. “The elephant is a big animal,” he said. “Each man touched only one part. You must put all the parts together to find out what an elephant is like.”

Enlightened by the Rajah’s wisdom, the blind men reached agreement. “Each one of us knows only a part. To find out the whole truth we must put all the parts together.”

-I need to clean myself up.

This story is used to make the argument that all of the major world religions are like those blind men grasping only one part of the elephant. As finite and small creatures we aren’t able to grasp but little pieces of the bigness of God…or deity…or the other…or whatever we are supposed to call him/her. We have to keep hedging so as not to appear arrogant.

Of course one massive problem to this is that there is somebody in this story who has eyesight and sees the whole elephant. What seems to be humble sounding, “All religions are basically the same” is actually an arrogant claim. To be the king sitting high up above all world religions and seeing through each and being able to claim that the elephant is too large to encompass all of them. That’s actually a pretty arrogant position to put yourself in.

But the good news here in Hebrews is that the elephant speaks. God has made himself known to us. When I say “know God” I mean cognitively…information about God and I mean relationally, to know God as one would know a spouse, a child, a friend. To put it simply if God does not reveal Himself to us then we have no way of rightly know who He is. As one theologian has said:

No he is an immovable door stop.

But the good news of Christmas is that the elephant speaks. God has made himself known to us. What I want to show this morning is that apart from the incarnation humanity cannot and would not be able to know God rightly. And when I say “know God” I mean cognitively…information about God and I mean relationally, to know God as one would know a spouse, a child, a friend. To put it simply if God does not reveal Himself to us then we have no way of rightly know who He is. As one theologian has said:

Only God knows God, so only God can make himself known. To say it another way, anything or anyone that is not God cannot make God known. Or, from the lips of Jesus: “No one knows the Father except the Son.” There is no true, saving knowledge of God except as he is experienced in the Son, as Father, through the Spirit.

So Jesus makes God rightly known. You can know God. It doesn’t have to be a big mystery. And this kind of connects also to our next point

Jesus is the better king of the new covenant

What’s all this talk about Jesus being appointed the heir of all things?

It’s connected to . There we see this promise that was given to David. God is going to establish His King. Now I could spend some time talking about how we really want a king and desire a king and even for teens who seem really rebellious part of what they actually want is authority. It’s helpful and we can thrive when we have boundaries. But I’m not going to spend our time trying to prove this. The point here isn’t “make Jesus your King” the point is that he IS your King.

You don’t make him Lord of your life. You don’t make Jesus Lord. He IS the Lord. We are either rebels or disciples. Talking like that is kind of still putting us on the throne. It’s like that person who just has to be in charge…”Well you can be in charge, but you are only in charge b/c I let you be…let’s keep that clear.”

What kind of king is Jesus?

This matters b/c he IS the King

You don’t make him Lord of your life. You don’t make Jesus Lord. He IS the Lord. We are either rebels or disciples. Talking like that is kind of still putting us on the throne. It’s like that person who just has to be in charge…”Well you can be in charge, but you are only in charge b/c I let you be…let’s keep that clear.”

This matters b/c it’s the greatest news in the world if you are part of his kingdom. It’s interesting that in the early church picked up this Psalm when they were being persecuted. Hear their prayer:

It’s interesting that in the early church picked up this Psalm when they were being persecuted. Hear their prayer:

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Do you see what happens? They use this Psalm as a great encouragement. When it looks like the cards are stacked against you, take heart—Jesus is God’s established King.

And notice what it says about God’s established king. The nations will be his heritage—the ends of the earth his possession.

He owns it all

You shall break them? What does this mean? It means that they are judged. Because of this we ought to have courage. Christ has conquered. What can man do to us? Take courage. Be like the early disciples in .

He rules over everything. Not just Israel. But all things. He’s holding it all together. We’ll see this a bit more next week.

connnection—promise to David. That’s Jesus.

He rules over everything. Not just Israel. But all things.

The story of the Bible, as we’ve seen though, is that we are all rebels. You see this at the end of verse 3. It’s why we not only need a prophet and a king but also a priest

Jesus is the better priest of the new covenant

What did a priest do? Stood between God and man. A mediator. A go between. Prophet words of God to man. Priest is speaking on behalf of man to God.

After making purification. Do you know what that means? It means he has made us pure. He’s done his job. We’re clean. We have access to God.

Jesus is interceding for us. Constantly.

It is a consoling thought that Christ is praying for us, even when we are negligent in our prayer life; that He is presenting to the Father those spiritual needs which were not present to our minds and which we often neglect to include in our prayers; and that He prays for our protection against the dangers of which we are not even conscious, and against the enemies which threaten us, though we do not notice it. He is praying that our faith may not cease, and that we may come out victoriously in the end. (Berkhoff, Systematic Theology p. 403)

“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me

He sat down. it’s done it’s complete.

it’s done it’s complete.

All of this is really good news. Maybe if I do this then I can hear from God again. Maybe if I do this then I can be restored into my God-given purpose and reason for existence. Maybe if this happens then I’ll be safe again and at peace. Maybe if this happens then I’ll be forgiven. Maybe if this happens I’ll be able to have that relationship with God again. That Jesus is the prophet, priest, king of a new and better covenant is tremendously great news.

The problem with Adam’s solution (and ours) is that it simply does not work. Sin is not conquered in the darkness of hiding—it grows. And because sin aims at destroying creation and dethroning the Creator it inevitably leads to brokenness. You can’t fix the effects of rebellion by rebelling further. Nothing we craft can fix our sin problem.

Adam tried sewing fig leaves. We do the same. The problem with Adam’s solution (and ours) is that it simply does not work. Sin is not conquered in the darkness of hiding—it grows. And because sin aims at destroying creation and dethroning the Creator it inevitably leads to brokenness. You can’t fix the effects of rebellion by rebelling further. Nothing we craft can fix our sin problem.

God knows the restlessness in your heart that cries out, “something is messed up here”. He knows your heart, your longings, and your most intimate desires. He knows your good motivations and your prideful and selfish ones. You will never catch God by surprise with your emotions, your thoughts, your fears, your dreams, your sin, your faith, or your life. There is nothing that He cannot handle that is going on inside of you.

So the Lord is coming near to you today. Do you hear him? He is walking in the cool of the garden. You are broken. You have rebelled. You are naked before Him. You have sinned. So, what do you do with it? What are you going to do with this sin? You know what your nakedness is? Oh, Lord give us the grace to be honest and to own up to our nakedness and rebellion. Yes, even us believers that are clinging to precious idols.

He is coming near—what are you going to do? Are you going to bust out your needle and thread grab some fig leaves and start sewing or are you going to find rescue for your rebellion and clothing for your nakedness? Adam-like hiding is really self-atonement. Their sewing fig leaves are an attempt to cover their sin by their own efforts.

It’s natural for us to want to fix our problems like this. And maybe there is even something noble in it. But there comes a point when nobility wears off and your just being stupid and prideful. Like when I don’t call an expert to fix something in our house that I really have no business trying to fix.

I suppose we do that for one of two reasons. We aren’t convinced that our situation is really that bad. “I could fix it if I had enough time. I could pay off the debt. I’m not in so bad of a hole. It’s not as bad as it looks”. And usually connected with this we don’t really believe the holiness of God. “He’s a good chap—He’ll let me off, that’s what he does.” Or, “If he really loved me he wouldn’t punish me. If he really cared he wouldn’t set up these rules.”

But the Scriptures are clear. Our situation is terrible. And God is unflinching in his holiness.

No other prophet

No other priest

No other King

God knows the restlessness in your heart that cries out, “something is messed up here”. He knows your heart, your longings, and your most intimate desires. He knows your good motivations and your prideful and selfish ones. You will never catch God by surprise with your emotions, your thoughts, your fears, your dreams, your sin, your faith, or your life. There is nothing that He cannot handle that is going on inside of you.

If you are anything like me then such information—that is when such information is really thought about and grasped—leads to a mixture of emotions. Part of you feels a little excited that God knows that much about you and it makes you feel loved. But then there is the other side.

If we take seriously the holiness of God and we have even a small understanding of our own sinfulness then saying, “God knows you inside and out” will not evoke exuberant shouts or shoulder loosening relaxation. No…such a statement often evokes panic, hiding, fear, denial, anger, fight or flight. We become like Adam (the first man) that hid from God and tried to hide his nakedness with a few fig leaves.

What does Adam-like hiding and fear mean for our everyday lives? It means that rather than living in the freedom of being known by God we live in the fear of being known by God. It means that our lives are often very surface. Our relationship with other people is surface. And on the deepest level our relationship with God is surface at best, and non-existent at worse. It means that we do not face the monsters in our closet. Rather than tackling those really deep things like anger, bitterness, resentment, greed, fear, worry, shame, regret, unrest, guilt, lust, etc. we campaign to clean up the outside things that people see. We keep our visible anger in check but let it boil below the surface. We mask our fears and worry with shallow humor. We get uncomfortable talking about deeper things so we avoid them with movies, music, magazines, video games, videos. We make certain to look like good Christian people but inside all of these things are left unchecked.

What I have just described is the human condition. We are broken people in a broken world. Yet, there is good news in the midst of this. If you are willing to own up to the stuff buried down deep then there is healing. God knows you are broken. God knows that we are broken people in a broken world and the message of the Bible

If I tell you to recite the ABC’s I bet you break out into song. Music is a powerful tool used for memory.

It’s also a powerful tool used for evoking emotions. Patriotic songs stir up emotions within us. Likewise, there is a reason why I listened to certain music to get pumped up before a baseball game. I didn’t listen to Mozart’s symphony. I listened to Metallica’s symphony.

Are you a rebel or a disciple?

This is kind of what the Psalms were. They were powerful memory tools that evoked emotions. And so if you were heavily steeped in that biblical culture you would be able to recite something like or much in the same way that we might sing our ABC’s. And it also was part of your national identity. So when those Psalms have promises about a coming rescuer or are reminders about God setting up his king and you’d sing those songs in hope that God was going to bring His King to earth and set up his kingdom. That’d do something to you. It’d be ingrained in you.

and a bit as well serve as background to this letter to the Hebrews. We don’t know exactly why the author, and we don’t know specifically who wrote this, is saying what he is saying. Some believe that he is writing to Jewish people who have just become followers of Jesus but now they are being persecuted by their fellow Jews—so they are tempted to go back to the Old Covenant because it won’t bring them as much persecution. That’s possible, but we don’t know for sure. What we do know, though, is that the author of Hebrews is reciting for them and reminding them of that rescuer and that hope and the new age that was promised to come…and he’s saying…He’s here! So don’t go back. Jesus is better. The good news of the new covenant is far better and far more excellent. So don’t go back.