The Superiority of Christ (2)

INTRODUCTION

The Author of this book is contested. Some say Paul, of which I hold to, some Apollos, some Barnabas, and to be truthful it doesn't really matter who the author is. The author chose to keep himself anonymous and what we do know is that this epistle is inspired scripture so ultimately the Holy Spirit is its author.

The Audience of the epistle appears to be to Hebrews as there aren't any reference to gentiles, nor to Gentile/Hebrew relations in the church. It’s implied throughout the letter that its readers had knowledge and understanding of Levitical law and Old Testament scriptures as the author constantly quotes from it. Its recipients are a local congregation of Jews. To understand the book of Hebrews you must understand that its recipients are comprised of three groups, kinda similar to what a church nowadays looks like. Failure to do so will lead you into major doctrinal issues as you approach Chapter 6 and 10.

1)Hebrew Christians: These were Jewish converts to the Gospel of Christ. They were Jews who heard the Gospel and accepted Jesus as their Messiah and Lord. They weren't eye witnesses themselvers according to Heb 2:3-4

3 How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; 4 God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?

They were now facing persecution, no doubt from their families and communities to leave this “new way” and go back to their heritage and familiar way. There was confusion and immaturity on their part, as the Spirit spends much time teaching and emphasizing the New covenant, and the better tabernacle and the greater sacrifice and the superior priesthood of Christ. They were in danger of returning to the old, so this “Letter of Exhortation” is written to them. Interestingly its written in a “Few Words”. I find it humorous that the author calls this letter a few words. This is a loooooonnnnnggg Book, but its a great one and its going to be an adventure to explore it with you all!

2)Hebrew Non-Christians, intellectually convinced of Christ: These were the Hebrews who had heard the Gospel, that had accepted that Jesus really was the Messiah. They had seen all the miracles and evidences presented by the Apostles or Prophets that first evangelized their community. These were the ones who went to that congregation and gave the lip service but who never commited themselves to Christ as their Lord. They were apathetic to Christ, as if his life and ministry didn't personally affect them and have implications on it. Its these Jews that I believe those stern warnings in chapter 6 and 10 refer to. There the group that i’d connect to Esau in Hebrews 12:15-17.

3)Hebrew Non-Christians, Not convinced of Christ: These were the Hebrews that were not spiritually convinced of Christ, nor intellectually. They didnt believe the Gospel nor the claims of Christ. Even the Spirit speak to them individually in this book, giving proof after proof of the necessity of a greater sacrifice and the provision God made, and how Jesus was the only one capable and qualified! That he was the true Messiah, the one written of in all the Jewish scriptures.

“The primary message is addressed to believers. Periodically there are interspersed warnings to the two unbelieving groups. In a masterful way, in a way that could only be divine, the Holy Spirit speaks to all three. He meets every one of their particular needs and their specific questions in this one supernatural masterpiece”.1

1 MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1983). Hebrews (p. xv). Chicago: Moody Press.

The overall theme of the entire book is this, Christ is better than everything! To be more specific, he’s better than any person, better than any system, better than any work or sacrifice, better than any prophet or priest, or King! He’s better than any institution, Better than any kingdom, He’s better than any and all of the angels, mighty as they are! He’s the best thing humanity has ever known and he is superior to them and because of this truth we must believe in him. He is the new and living way as Heb 10:20 states.

By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

As we start out study of the book of Hebrews, were going to look at each chapter and focus in on the theme of each chapter and explore that. 1 Month, 1 Chapter.

V1: GOD, WHO AT SUNDRY TIMES AND IN DIVERS MANNERS SPAKE IN TIME PAST UNTO THE FATHERS BY THE PROPHETS

God, who in many ways and in many places and people spoke to the Jewish people by the prophets. This is how God communicated to his people, through holy prophets 2 Peter 1:21.

21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

God wrote the Old Testament, and God prepared the way for Christ to come into the world to tell us about himself. Man is incapable of discovering God on our own. All throughout history man has made attempt after attempt to discover God themselves in spite of his revelation to mankind.

Man Lives in a metaphorical box, confined by space, time, and matter. Whenever we try to discover God we just go to the edge of the box and try to chip a hole in the box so we can peer outside. We’ve done this by building really tall towers, by repeating chants for hours on end, by beating and torturing the body, and many other wicked ways. But God has spoken generally through Creation and our conscience, and specifically through the Old Testament Prophets. Man can not understand God just as the little bug we hold in our hand can understand us. So God spoke to men in the box to convey the truths about himself. He did this until finally he did something so much greater than previously. He came into the box! God became man and took on flesh, he took on him the nature of Abraham, and spoke to us personally. He did this through the person of Jesus Christ.

God used men and spoke through them in may ways. Through dreams and visions, and donkeys and prophets and writings and in great power or in still voice. But God always spoke and holy men listened. The Old testament is Gods word yet incomplete. Starting from Genesis God revealed greater degrees of truth and light to mankind, until finally when the New Testament was completed in Revelations. This is called “Progressive Revelation”. The New Testament completes the Old. The prophets then didn't grasp the full truth because it had not been fulfilled yet. How blessed we are to have the full revelation of God before us, but How serious the responsibility that comes with having this knowledge. 1 Pet 1:10-12.

Justin Peters once said, “If you want to hear Gods voice.....Read your Bible...... If you want to hear Gods Voice audibly........Read your Bible out loud!”

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son

Gods perfect and full and final revelation awaited the coming of His Son, Jesus. The term Last days con be interpreted different ways but I believe its referring to the Last Days of the end of the world. The moment Christ came we entered into the last days. The Phrase “Last Days” was familiar to the jew, it was referring to the Messianic promises. This is why the woman at the well said what she said John 4:25. She understood, and most people understood that when Christ, Messias comes, he would give the final complete revelation of God.

The Old Testament is filled with bits and pieces of revelation concerning the Messiah. His first mention, Gen 3:15, His forerunner Mal 3:1, Mal 4:5,His birth Micah 5:2, His mission and office Psalm 110:4 , his purpose Isa 53:4-6 , His resurrection Psalm 16:8-10 , His universal Dominion that's everlasting Dan 7:14. Each Prophet given a little bit of truth, Each one building upon the other until the appearance of the Son of God, Messiah, the final prophet of God in the sense that he delivered the revelation of God.

In verses 2 and 3 the Author gives a sevenfold argument for Christs Superiority.

WHOM HE HATH APPOINTED HEIR OF ALL THINGS - His Heirship

By right as the Son of God he is the heir of all that God owns. His inheritance is whatever God owns. And since God is Lord over all things, Jesus is the heir of “All Things”. Abraham, he too was an Heir. God promised him all of the Land Before him, wherever he walked that would be his. But this promise was never fulfilled in his life, and he was buried in the only thing he owned in the land, a tomb. So with Christ, He is the Heir of all things and all things are his by right of his sonship Hebrews 2:8 .

BY WHOM ALSO HE MADE THE WORLDS- His Creatorship

Jesus was responsible for the creation of the world. Its an astounding fact. Its one of the greatest evidences of his divinity. Man cant create, only God can. How does Jesus feed thousands with a few fish? He creates more fish. Man can’t do that. Look at John 1:3 , or look at Colossians 1:16 . Its sad but I was never taught this fact of Jesus. I knew the general stuff, but I remember reading certain passages as Christian now and being in shock. Jesus’ Creator-ship is something to teach, its a great truth of the bible and one of the many reasons for his superiority over everything as we work through this book.

WHO BEING THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GLORY- His Brightness

Jesus is superior because of his great light. All throughout John 1 he is referred to as “The Light”. He lighteth this world, He shines Light, Jesus said that he was the “Light of the World” in John 8:12. Isaiah prophesied this, he said in Is 9:2. Jesus is the Light, but something to note here, is he’s the brightness of “HIS GLORY”. Jesus is the light that comes from the Father. They’re inseparable, just as the Sun was never without its Blazing light. Just as we receive warmth from the sun, and thankfully not the sun itself, so Christ warms us with that light that originates from God. The Brightness is not the sun, but its inseparable from the nature of the sun. So is Christ, who is God in nature, but separate from the Father, a distinct person. Light is symbolic of truth. Jesus was the one who brought the full truth from God 2 Cor 4:6.

AND THE EXPRESS IMAGE OF HIS PERSON- His Image

Jesus is superior because of his nature and being. Here in this verse its said that he’s the Express image of his person, other translations read the “exact representation of his nature.” The word image here is translated from the Greek word Eikon, which we get Icon (that's an easy one). It means a precise copy, or an exact reproduction. The idea is putting ink on a stamp and pressing it on a piece of paper. Jesus is the image of the invisible God Col 1:15, or in Col 2:9. John 14:1-8, 9-12 .

AND UPHOLDING ALL THINGS BY THE WORD OF HIS POWER- His Sustaining Power

Jesus is superior because he is the one sustaining all things. I love this one to be honest because its such an awe inspiring testament of his power. We live in such an orderly structured universe. There are laws that exist that Christ put into place that he sustains, like Gravity and Entropy. Things like the Sun, are crucial to our existence, and without it, we’d all die. Too much of it and we’d all die. Too little of it, and we’d all die. Too much for too long and we’d die, too little for too long and we’d die. Everyday we wake up and can feel the perfect placement of the sun and feel its nice warmth, that is if you live outside the county, in which case you can only experience this for a couple months of the year. We take for granted these things and we don't really think much about his power in sustaining it all, but imagine life if you were afraid of him not sustaining. It’d be a world where gravity could exist, and then all of sudden you start floating up. Truthfully this is what the Atheists believe, they have no basis that these laws will continue on as the Christian does.

-Only read if your doing ok on time, “id like to read this to you because its very well put and it will be a blessing to you, at least in the sense that its another thing we can praise God for. Im going to read it fast because theres alot.

Hebrews: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary His Administration

We base our entire lives on the continuance, the constancy, of laws. When something such as an earthquake comes along and disrupts the normal condition or operation of things even a little, the consequences are often disastrous. Can you imagine what would happen if Jesus Christ relinquished His sustaining power over the laws of the universe? We would go out of existence. If He suspended the law of gravity only for a brief moment, we would all perish, in unimaginable ways.

If the physical laws varied, we would have an unbelievable mess. We could not exist. What we ate could turn to poison. We could not stay on the earth; we would drift out into space. We would get flooded by the oceans periodically. Countless other horrible things would happen, many of which we could not even guess.

Consider, for example, what instant destruction would happen if the earth’s rotation slowed down just a little. The sun has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If it were any closer to us we would burn up; if it were any farther away we would freeze. Our globe is tilted on an exact angle of 23 degrees, providing us with four seasons. If it were not so tilted, vapors from the oceans would move north and south and develop into monstrous continents of ice. If the moon did not retain its exact distance from the earth the ocean tides would inundate the land completely, twice a day. After the first flooding, of course, the others would not matter as far as we would be concerned. If the ocean floors were merely a few feet deeper than they are, the carbon dioxide and oxygen balance of the earth’s atmosphere would be completely upset, and no animal or plant life could exist. If the atmosphere did not remain at its present density, but thinned out even a little, many of the meteors which now harmlessly burn up when they hit the atmosphere would constantly bombard us. We would have to live underground or in meteor-proof buildings.

How does the universe stay in this kind of fantastically delicate balance? Jesus Christ sustains and monitors all its movements and inter-workings. Christ, the preeminent Power, maintains it all.

Things do not happen in our universe by accident. They did not happen that way in the beginning. They are not going to happen that way in the end, and they are not happening that way now. Jesus Christ is sustaining the universe. He is Himself the principle of cohesion. He is not like the deist’s “watchmaker” creator, who made the world, set it in motion, and has not bothered with it since. The universe is a cosmos instead of chaos, an ordered and reliable system instead of an erratic and unpredictable muddle, only because Jesus Christ upholds it.

Scientists who discover great and amazing truths are doing nothing but discovering a few of the laws that Jesus Christ designed and uses to control the world. No scientist or mathematician, no astronomer or nuclear physicist, could do anything without the upholding power of Jesus Christ. The whole universe hangs on the arm of Jesus. His unsearchable wisdom and boundless power are manifested in governing the universe. And He does it by the word of His power, without effort. The key to the creation story in Genesis is in two words, “God said.” God spoke and it happened.

But an even greater element is his sustaining of the Christians walk. When I commit my life to Christ and believe in his Atoning work for me on the Cross, he says, in John 10:28 . Christ sustains my salvation. 1 Peter 1:5 says we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. Did you see that? We are kept. He keeps us, in other words, he sustains our salvation. Christ sustains us. Christ intercedes for us! Christ hold us and the universe and he sustains it all! He waters the rose in the jungle that no man has ever seen before all for his Glory! The word of God is amazing, turn to Jude 24-25 .

WHEN HE HAD BY HIMSELF PURGED OUR SINS

Jesus is superior because he did a work greater than anything done before. He purged the sin from sinful man. Jesus made purifications for our sins. This is a work of God, incaparable to anything else done on the planet. Angels cant atone for sins, Man cannot atone for sins, only God can, and yet he does this while remaining Holy and Just and Merciful and graceful. The Bible puts it this way, in Romans 3:26,

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; 12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. 13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: 14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 9:11-14 ,

Were probably going to have to close this here. Quickly read the rest of the chapter 1 starting from verse 3.

Ill close with this quote from some anonymous man...

Someone has said that Jesus Christ came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman. He put on humanity that we might put on divinity. He became Son of Man that we might become sons of God. He was born contrary to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, was reared in obscurity, and only once crossed the boundary of the land in which He was born—and that in His childhood. He had no wealth or influence and had neither training nor education in the world’s schools. His relatives were inconspicuous and uninfluencial. In infancy He startled a king. In boyhood He puzzled the learned doctors. In manhood He ruled the course of nature. He walked upon the billows and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His services. He never wrote a book and yet all the libraries of the world could not hold the books about Him. He never wrote a song, yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all songwriters together. He never founded a college, yet all the schools together cannot boast of as many students as He has. He never practiced medicine and yet He has healed more broken hearts than all the doctors have healed broken bodies. This, Jesus Christ, is the star of astronomy, the rock of geology, the lion and the lamb of zoology, the harmonizer of all discords, and the healer of all diseases. Throughout history great men have come and gone, yet He lives on. Herod could not kill Him. Satan could not seduce Him. Death could not destroy Him and the grave could not hold Him.

We serve a great Lord, a Risen Lord, A faithful high priest, an elder brother, A King, Gods own Son. This chapter is about his superiorty over all things, and each chapter thereafter is about his superiority over many specific things, good things, but in Christ, better things.

Lets pray.