Hebrews 1:4-14

Hebrews chapter 1, this is our third week in Hebrews.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

Here's my question for you right off the bat.

Right off the bat.

Have you ever thought, I wonder if angels are better than Jesus?

Come on, be honest with me.

Nobody ever thinks that, right?

No.

Thank you.

I'm glad you guys are so honest.

But this was a deal.

This was a deal for these Christians.

And we're going to go through a segment.

It's like a two-part segment, right?

Chapter one and then on through chapter two, verse 18, is this section about how Jesus is better than the angels.

And so my job as I preach to this is to help say, look, even though maybe that's not your struggle, this still applies to us.

So the first half of this section, chapter 1, 4 through 14, is all about how Jesus is higher than the angels.

Then we're going to come back and look at chapter 2, and that's going to be how Jesus descended and was lower than the angels in his ministry, and that made him superior.

So higher and lower made Jesus better.

So let's read this together.

Hebrews chapter 1, verses 4 through 14.

Hebrews 1:4–14

Says this.

For to which of the angels did he ever say, You are my son, today I've become your father?

Or again, I will be his father, and he will be my son.

Again, when he brings his firstborn into the world, he says, And let all God's angels worship him.

And about the angels he says, He makes his angels winds, and his servants a fiery flame.

But to the Son, your throne, God, is forever and ever, and the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of justice.

You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.

This is why God your God has anointed you with the oil of joy beyond your companions.

And in the beginning, Lord, you established the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.

They will perish, but you will remain.

They will all wear out like clothing.

You will roll them up like a cloak, they'll be changed like clothing, but you are the same, and your years will never end.

Now, to which of the angels has he ever said, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool?

Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve those who are going to inherit salvation?

Lord, we ask that you would just work in our lives by your Holy Spirit.

We want to have a tenderness in our hearts, a softness in our hearts as we look into your word.

And Lord, we believe that your word is authoritative, that we don't sit as the reigning rulers of our own lives, but we yield to you, Jesus, as the King and the rule of your word in our lives.

Would you come and just animate this text by your Spirit, apply it to our lives, that you would work in us.

Lord, we pray and ask for just the correction, the encouragement, the comfort of your word.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

This passage starts with a statement about how Jesus is better than the angels.

It says, he became superior to the angels, just as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs.

And so, as we said last week, this book of Hebrews, 13 times, I believe it's 13 times, uses that term superior or better.

And throughout the book, the writer of Hebrews is continually calling these Jewish Christians to see Jesus as the fulfillment of Judaism and the crescendo, the high point, the one that Judaism was leading up to, the fulfillment of the law, that Jesus is superior to the angels.

And so he sets this up in verse 4 by saying, Jesus is superior to the angels, and it's because of the name that he inherited.

And we're not going to spend a whole lot of time on this, but what he is meaning there is that Jesus was called the Son by the Father, and those are the um uh that's proved by quoting from the Psalms, and the writer of Hebrews is saying, this is the case.

This is why Jesus is better.

It's because he has inherited this better name.

Now, when I read through Hebrews chapter 1, the text that we just looked at, my own personal experience is that I feel this emotional gap between what is written and what is valuable to my own spiritual life.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

That's just being transparent.

This passage does not tend to move the dial for me emotionally, maybe like some other passages.

And it's because of that opening question that I asked you.

Do you have the do you feel the temptation to see angels as better than Jesus?

And usually the answer, at least for me, is no, that's not really a personal temptation.

Most of us, um that, at least in the past as I've preached this text, do not find um do not struggle with this temptation.

It's um it's it's like one of those um phobias, one of those rare phobias that you hear about, like, you know, somebody's afraid of Tupperware and something like that.

And it's like, it's like, okay, yeah, there may be there's some Christians out there that struggle with this.

But this doesn't seem to necessarily be the to me, this doesn't seem to be the biggest counseling issue that I face on a week-to-week basis, is like, Josh, I'm really struggling with, I like angels more than Jesus, right?

So that's the first kind of gap of why this text is difficult to connect with.

But the second is this it's the relationship with the Psalms.

A lot of this text, if you're looking at it maybe in the NIV ESV version, CSB version, you see that this is quoting extensively from the book of Psalms.

And most of us are not reading the Psalms and giving it the gravitational weight that the writer of Hebrews does.

At least I don't want to speak for you.

Let me speak for myself.

When I read Psalms, I read Psalms as this um devotional book that sings my heart song back to the Lord.

It's like when you're tuning a guitar.

Does anybody ever play a guitar here?

Anybody?

Like, okay.

So you tune a guitar, you tune a piano, and if it gets out of tune, you get a tuner that plays like a sympathetic, that plays a key, right?

And you're trying to get the um uh the what's it called?

The core, the wire on your uh guitar to resonate.

What is it?

The string, thank you.

Okay.

The string.

You're trying to get the string to resonate sympathetically with the tone that your tuner is playing, right?

And you're getting it to the place where it's like, oh, that's the same tone, it's the same vibration, the better you get at tuning a guitar or a piano.

And so when I read the Psalms, my experience with the book of Psalms is oftentimes this sense of like it is it is singing that sympathetic note of my heart.

Wherever I'm at, whether it's like, yeah, this is like expressing praise beautifully, or it's expressing my desperation to the Lord beautifully, or it's it's the cry of my heart.

But do you see the writer of Hebrews in this in this chapter is using Hebrews as like law.

Like this is prophetic code that is the proof case that Jesus is better than the angels.

It's just a different, I don't relate to Hebrews like that, I mean to Psalms like that.

So those are the kind of the two, as we engage Hebrews chapter 1, I just I feel like the one of the helpful ways to go through this is just to look at these two objections that we have and approach this text as not a cynic, but one who feels like disconnected from the text.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

Now, maybe I'm just preaching this to myself, and you'll be just like, man, that preacher was so off, he has issues, you know, I'm glad I only have to listen to him once a week.

But I'm gonna preach this from the position of the objection.

So the first objection is this the prescription is for a sickness that I don't have.

You ever walk through the mall, like a Rundle Mills mall, and they have like those little center kiosks, and people are like trying to sell you.

It's like one of the worst experiences in the mall.

And it imagine like somebody like approaches you and they're they're saying to you, like, hey, I've got this elbow polishing attachment that goes on your blow dryer, and you're like, I don't need that.

You're nice, but that's not what I need, right?

And so there is a sense when you get to this text in Hebrews where it's prescribing, it's a prescription for a sickness that I don't have.

I don't feel like I elevate angels to a position of superiority over Jesus.

But do you know that that argument is the fundamental flaw in our human experience?

I'm not guilty of elevating angels to a superior position over Jesus, and so I can tune out.

For lack of a better term, this is the phrase I don't care, right?

To care would be work.

To care would maybe be an emotional risk.

To care could be a sign of weakness.

But do you see when those are the the when we're saying like I don't care because I don't have that exact problem, there's either if it's too much work, then there's a laziness.

If it's too much of an emotional risk, then you're saying I don't want to expose myself to more hurt.

If you're saying I don't care because it's a sign of weakness, then there's an arrogance that's in our heart.

It's easy to tune out, in other words.

It's easy to say that this is not for me.

I'm not guilty of the um failure of the Christians being addressed in this passage, and so I don't care.

Here's the thing to engage the Bible is dangerous, it's about as dangerous as looking in the mirror every morning.

That's a joke.

Thank you, thank you, I appreciate it.

The Bible is showing us where we're at.

And this text, let me just suggest to you that this text is a little bit can be used in a way broader than just worshiping angels.

Look at just um verse 5 and verse 13.

Verse 5 it says, To which of the angels did he ever say?

I just want you to see that phrase.

To which of the angels did he ever say?

And then in verse 13, now to which of the angels has he ever said?

So the way the way in which the writer of Hebrews sets up his argument is by asking a question, did he ever say this to the angels?

Did he ever call the angels his son?

The way that the case is made, the way that this writer lays out the case for Jesus being better than the angels, it has utility beyond just the issue of angels.

You see, our hearts are one author years ago said our hearts are idle factories.

We can quickly create spiritual practices that replace the superiority of Jesus.

We have this amazing capacity to worship, which is why our hearts are these idle factories, and it is easy to find things, whether it's angels or people or places or things that we substitute out, that we put in the place of Jesus.

It may be people, maybe there are relationships, spouses, kids, parents who are a rival to Jesus.

Maybe it's a place, or we could include into that a schedule, our schedule.

Is there a place or a piece of your schedule that holds a superiority over Jesus?

Or how about things, the stuff, the stuff that uh where if you are given a choice between that thing and Jesus, you'd have to go with that thing.

Another way to identify just the idols of our heart is to consider the root of our fears or our anger.

By considering what makes us angry, sometimes, sometimes anger is justified, other times anger is at its root a Jesus rival.

It's there because it something is rivaling Jesus.

Or for me, it's fears.

You know, it's like I'm afraid of this thing happening because what's threatened is a rival to Jesus.

You see, for us, maybe it's not angels.

Maybe angels aren't competing.

Maybe they're not Jesus' rival in our own hearts, but there are our hearts are good at creating things that we worship.

There is a guy named Demas that Paul wrote about at the end of his life to Timothy.

He says, This, because Demas has deserted me since he loved this present world.

Paul just is writing to his friend Timothy, his ministry companion, and he says, Demas, who he's talked about other times about who was his companion, who was doing ministry with him, and he just says, Yeah, Demas isn't here anymore because he's loved the present world.

There's a writer named James K.A.

Smith that says this worship works from the top down.

You might say, you might say, in worship, we don't just come to show God our devotion and give him our praise.

We are called to worship because in this encounter, God remakes and molds us top down.

Worship is the arena in which God recalibrates our hearts.

You see that?

Worship is the arena in which God recalibrates our hearts, reforms our desires, and rehabituates our loves.

Worship isn't just something we do, it's where God does something to us.

Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts.

So maybe it isn't angels that you have are tempted to place your affections on.

But I know that if you're human, you're made to worship, and we so easily substitute out Jesus and find other rivals to Jesus.

I know that's pretty convicting.

It's convicting for me.

It makes me feel uncomfortable.

And even if we're able to identify what are the things that I'm tempted to set my affections upon, what are the Jesus rivals in my own life, that doesn't even just identifying doesn't necessarily eradicate that idolatry from our hearts.

Which brings us to the second objection that we bring into this text, or that I bring into this text, which is this.

These Bible verses are obscure, pulled quotes that mean very little to me.

He quotes seven passages out of Psalms that are obscure.

If you were reading the Psalms this morning for your devotions, you would not look at necessarily at Psalm 97 and go, that psalm proves that Jesus is better than the angels.

It probably wouldn't have been the natural conclusion that you would have come to.

And so when we get over into Hebrews chapter 1, it's just like, or all right, it's like, are you proof texting this?

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

The problem was that Jesus had a rival in the hearts of these Christians.

There was a competition for superiority, and the angels were winning.

In our hearts, there are things that are winning and have superiority over Jesus.

And that is a painful thing for me to admit and for you to admit.

What do we do about it?

We need to let God say his thing through his word.

Okay, follow with me here.

We need to let God say his thing through his word.

These seven quotes are God speaking directly into the moment.

They are decisive.

These passages are surgical, they're instrumental in eradicating the Jesus rival in the hearts of these Christians.

We don't read through the Bible just to learn more about God.

We read through the Bible to encounter God.

You see, the word of God is the medium for relationship.

Why do, like in our day and age, why do we call it social media?

It's because media is an extension of a thing, right?

A medium is an extension.

When you go and you're an artist and you're using like a paintbrush or you're using oil or you're using chalk or for me, magic markers.

It's a medium, right?

It's a medium of the artists.

And the word of God is the medium for relationship with God.

And so we come into God's word to encounter him, not just to learn more facts.

The one who's speaking is the one who formed our hearts.

He knows our affections, he understands what we long for.

And so it's not just enough to understand and recognize the idols of our own heart.

We need an encounter with God through his word that is surgical to the very things that are off in our heart.

So there isn't just a point to be proved by the reader of this letter.

He's not just taking psalms and like playing whack-a-mole on their hearts.

He wants them to engage these psalms in a way in which it challenges the Jesus rival, this affection for angels above Jesus.

There is a therapy to be done in God's word.

There is an experience to be had between the reader and the author.

That's why the Bible, we say the Bible is meditative literature.

It's not just like, oh, I'm gonna read through it, conquer it, I know all the facts.

And you've known Christians like that.

And usually they're arrogant.

If they're just engaging the Bible to know the facts, they just know the facts, and they and it's like, well, where's the devotion to Jesus?

Where's the changed character?

It's because they're not using the Bible in the right way, they're not letting it be the word of God.

There is a um in the realm of biblical hermeneutics, there's um what's called speech act theory.

It's not just interpreting or interpreting the Bible, it's it's used just interpreting um language as a whole.

Speech act theory, it asks the question: what action did the author intend to accomplish with their words?

Not what did they mean, what did they, what act were they hoping to accomplish?

Last night we were driving in the car and one of the kids said, I'm hungry.

And when that kid said, I'm hungry, were they just trying to inform us that they have they're in a state of hunger?

No.

They were hoping an action would occur, that we would pull off the road and go to McDonald's, which we did.

Speech act theory comes to the text and it's it asks the question when the writer said this, what act were they hoping to see accomplished?

And that's what we can ask of the writer of Hebrews.

It's not just that, oh, we prove, yep, that seals the deal.

Jesus is better than the angels, okay, we'll just move on.

No, no, the writer of Hebrews is dealing with a misalignment in the hearts of these Christians, and the Bible is the instrument that God uses to bring about change.

Look at just verse five.

Here's what he says: You are my son.

Today I have become your father.

Or again, I will be his father, and he will be my son.

This statement here is intended to go to war with the idols of these Christians' hearts and the idols of our hearts.

Our hearts, what we we when we come to our relationship with the Lord, we say to the Father, can't my idol be a son too?

Can't this thing that like I really like this thing, or or I really like this place, or I really like this person, can't can't they be called a son too?

Like Jesus can have his spot, but but can't can't you just like give that name to my idol too?

I'll carve out, maybe carve out an accommodation for my pet idol so that it can be a rival to Jesus.

Well, no.

Your idol and my idol didn't die on the cross for my sins.

It doesn't really have a throne next to the Father in heaven.

Jesus says, I know it's important.

The Father says, I know it's important to you.

But it doesn't get the title son.

It doesn't get to be called son.

No.

It is not called a son.

Not because he's mean, doesn't want to have, it's not because he doesn't want us to be able to enjoy life.

It's not because he's got a maniacal ego.

No, he designed you and I to be able to worship him.

He knows that our hearts were designed to have Jesus be the supreme, the superior one, the better one.

Our hearts were designed to place its affection upon him and to let him be the source of our life.

He will not come along and ordain our idols in our life with this kind of statement, because he loves us.

He deeply loves us and he knows that the misalignment of our hearts is not for our good.

Notice in verse 7, he doesn't altogether dismiss the angels.

He recognizes the angels have a place, they have a purpose in God's economy.

They just don't fill Jesus's, fulfill the purpose of Jesus.

And he says about the angels, he says he makes his angels wins and his servants a fiery flame.

They serve a purpose, but not the same purpose as Jesus.

These quotes are anything but obscure.

They go to war against the idols of our hearts, and Jesus is inaugurated as the king again.

You notice if you just spend some time looking at these actual quotes, the material in these quotes, it talks about Jesus inaugurated as the king.

In closing, let me just draw your attention to the conversation Jesus had with his disciple.

After the resurrection, Jesus appears to Peter.

When they had eaten breakfast there on the beach, the breakfast that Jesus had cooked over hot coals for them, Jesus asked Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

Yes, Lord, he said to him, You know that I love you.

Feed my lambs, he told him.

A second time he asked him, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Yes, Lord, he said to him, You know that I love you.

Shepherd my sheep, he told him.

He asked him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Peter was grieved that he asked him the third time, Do you love me?

And he said, Lord, you know everything.

You know that I love you.

Feed my sheep, Jesus said.

And it's all about just what's going on in Peter's heart.

And we know, you guys know the Bible, you know that Jesus is taking Peter through this just like God took Adam in the garden through a process of confession.

Remember, Adam and Eve sin.

They go out and they're hiding.

And what does God do?

He says, Where are you?

What have you done?

All of that, all of those questions are an invitation to confession.

And what has Peter done?

He's played the new Adam.

He has denied the Son three times.

And Jesus comes to him and he's asking questions, just inviting Peter to confess.

Such a healthy thing to do, but the confession is around the affections of the heart.

And so the writer of Hebrews uses the word of God to address the misalignment, the universal human experience, which is to place, to wrongly place affections on things that cannot ultimately satisfy our life.

And God so beautifully, like you can't go to enough therapy to get rid of your idols.

Like, you can go to therapy to get rid of a lot of stuff, and therapy's awesome, it's great, and I love all my experience in therapy, and I know you're all wishing I would go to it more.

But listen, it doesn't deal with idols like the Word of God does.

It doesn't, does not eradicate those idols.

And we're designed to be worshipers.

We're designed to be worshipers.

And so as much as, yeah, do you struggle with worshiping angels?

Maybe not.

But this week we were worshipers.

And this morning, the the desire of God is that our hearts would be realigned with Him.

That's one of the reasons why we're we're able to take communion together, is it's just a moment for us to again reflect on all that Christ has done for us.

Let's pray, and then I'm gonna have um Marvin uh pass out the elements, and uh we'll sing another song as he's doing that.

Lord, we um thank you for your word and that um your word has this power beyond the conveyance of facts, but it is an invitation to an encounter with you where our idols are challenged and the um the problems of our heart are addressed.

Lord, we pray and ask for your help as we read your word this week that we would um be open afresh to a personal relationship with you.

We believe in that work of turning and and um stepping into a relationship with you and being born again, but Lord, let us be walking in our born-again ness this week as we read your word and we give place for the work of your spirit in our life.

As we take uh the bread and the cup together, we pray that our hearts would be able to be aligned with you, that we'd reflect upon your goodness.

I guess this in Jesus' name.

Amen.