Hebrews 1:1-4 (Jesus > [Jesus is Greater Than.], Part 1) Ron Own 8/9/26

In your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 1.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

Jesus greater than, and if I were to spell it out, I'd have put a period right there.

Right?

Jesus is greater than everything.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom his son, he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

You may be seated if you'd like to.

Hebrews exhaust the themes of the Old Testament.

Now hear me.

Hebrews exhausts the themes of the Old Testament and compares them to Jesus, and it always comes out with this notion: Jesus is greater.

He's better.

He's pinnacle.

Jesus brings, now listen, the revelation of God to us, but more than that, Jesus is the revelation of God to us.

The author starts off with a flurry of majestic and awe-filled descriptions of his infinite subject, which is Jesus.

Are you listening to me?

You could almost see these four verses as a table of contents for most of the rest of the book, at least for the ethereological and doctrinal parts of it.

It is basically a table of contents.

And as we examine this section, we will see two, two main themes.

That means that I only have two points to this sermon.

Usually I have three or four, but I only have two.

Now, don't get excited if you're worried about time, which I hope you're not, but if you are, I've got ten pages of notes to get through and two points.

But hope, I have hope for you.

I'm only covering one today.

All right?

Because it's a lot of information.

Four verses, but good night, I could preach on it for the next year.

And if your ears were in the spiritual mode, they could listen to it for a whole year.

I'm telling you, this is good stuff.

I mean, I listen, if you don't walk out of here in the next few weeks excited and loving Jesus and full of the Spirit, either I'm a sorry preacher or your backslidden heart.

That's not funny.

I mean that with all my heart.

If you can't glory in the bragging on Jesus, something's wrong with you.

Do you know him?

Have you been baptized him?

Have you trusted him?

Do you understand the glory of his eternal majesty and the glory of his cross and the glory of his coming?

So I'm only going to cover the first point today.

And it's only one and a half pages long.

So we're not going to be here very long today, I don't think.

But I'm praying God will break loose in this place.

That I won't have to say, let's have an invitation or anything like people just running to the front of the altars and praying.

I hope and pray that happens.

I hope and pray people get saved today.

And I hope that Christians would be revived at understanding and looking once again at who we say is our favorite person, Jesus the Son of God.

Well, let me get into this.

We're going to examine this section, and in it we see two main themes.

Number one, the communication of the majesty.

And by the majesty, I'm taking that out of verse 3 where it says that Jesus is sat down at the right hand of the majesty.

And that is another word for God, the Father.

He is the majestic one.

And so he has sat down at the throne of the Godhead.

He sat at his right hand.

And so, first of all, we see the communication of God if you want that.

The communication of the majesty.

Secondly, next week we'll get into the qualifications of the messenger.

Oh, gosh.

I hate that I'm only doing this first one.

I'm telling you, you don't know, you don't know.

Number one, the communication of the majesty.

Verse one says, God.

God, Theos, who at various times and various ways, and uh the the King James uh puts a little more uh poetic to it.

It says, in divers, and uh what's the first word?

What?

Sundry times sundry times and in divers manners, or in divers manners, sundry times.

That's the way it puts it, but it's basically the same word, various.

He he uh in various times and in various ways, he spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, but he has in these last times spoken to us by his son.

Amen.

A, in your outline, we see that God spoke in times past.

God has always spoken to his people.

I want you to notice something that ever since Adam and Eve partook of that forbidden fruit, if the two human and the if the two, that being human and the divine, ever were to come together, it was God that sought it out.

Our sinful hearts know nothing but to run from the majesty, to run from the righteous, to run from the divine.

Why?

We don't like his standard, we don't like his righteousness, we don't like his ways, we want our way.

And we have believed, as our Father Adam and Mother Eve did, in the lies of Satan, which was P-R-I-D-E pride.

I don't need a God, I don't want a God, I don't want someone to tell me what to do or where to go or what to be, or I want to do my own will, I want to be my own captain.

I want to tell you, you can live your life thinking you are, but at the end of your life, you're gonna find out I was not the captain of my own life.

You can rebel against mom and daddy, you can rebel against the teachers, you can rebel against authority, and you may do it with that and escape uh escape uh poverty and escape the jail or whatever, but my friend, it is appointed under man wants to die, and after this the judgment, you cannot escape the judgment hand of God, and you're not getting into heaven if you have not been made righteous.

But here's the good news it is God that comes to us.

Notice it doesn't say that man and God spoke together.

It says God spoke to us various times.

What does that mean?

Just what it says.

It's not hard.

Uh like I said, we're not gonna be here long because this ain't hard to figure out.

It means now and then.

Now and then.

He spoke.

Now and then, but you know how long it took him to speak the now and then's of the Old Testament?

Four thousand years.

And the four thousand years from creation to Malachi, he spoke here and there, now and then, in various places.

That's the here a little and there a little.

And sometimes he would speak and sometimes he wouldn't.

And the prophet said, My people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.

That's because that God had been dry for a while, and they hadn't heard the voice of God in a while.

And so that's the way he did it.

He dropped in sometimes and he dropped out.

And the thing about it is, as he'd drop in, he would judge the people, they would repent, and they would make promises to him and said, We'll serve you and love you.

And so he delivered them, and then what would happen?

They couldn't keep it.

From the then to there, they couldn't keep up.

Here a little, there a little.

The Old Testament was written on two different continents, basically.

From Babylon to Egypt, the Old Testament was written in between the rest of it.

Syria, maybe, other places, but basically on those two continents, all of the Old Testament was written for a thousand years.

And it says that he wrote and he spoke in various times and various places, but and he spoke by prophets.

He spoke by prophets.

He would tell men over 1,500 times the Old Testament says, Thus saith the Lord from his prophets.

And he did it in various ways.

Sometimes through dreams, sometimes through visions.

With Moses, he spoke face to face, but not most any time with anybody else.

I don't know if anybody else heard a voice from God, but maybe they did.

Every once in a while, Jesus would manifest himself and come down as an angel, and he spoke to Abraham, and he spoke to one of them.

You ought to go look at Samson.

Samson's mom and dad.

When when Jesus, I believe it was a Christophany, an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.

And you say, was he was he back then?

You just wait.

We'll get into that next week.

And Jesus came and spoke to Samson's mom and dad.

One of the most glorious things in the Old Testament.

Go look that up.

That would have been in what book?

Judges.

Judges 14, I think, 14 through 16.

But he did it.

You can see part and parcel, here and there.

He spoke.

I want to tell you something.

He didn't forget things.

He did it just the way he wanted to.

He laid it out, and he revealed what we know now from the New Testament.

That's what he was doing.

He was revealing.

And he spoke by prophets.

Now, this is the glory of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is but a foreshadowing of the New Testament.

The Old Testament is not bad.

Some people say, well, we ought to do away with the Old Testament.

Some people don't even look at the Old Testament.

No, my friend, you want to have some shouting good times.

You look at the Old Testament.

You want to see some awesome views of God and who He is.

Look at the Old Testament.

If you want to see some good foreshadowing and some pictures of Christ, go read your Old Testament.

Go read your Psalms and your Proverbs, which gives you great wisdom and wonderful worship.

The Old Testament and the prophets are good.

And I want to tell you, without the Old Testament prophets, you couldn't be saved.

Did you know that?

The Bible says it's because of them that you are thrust towards Calvary.

They show you you won't be saved by me.

You won't be saved by doing good.

God said that you'll be his people.

You won't do, thou shalt not lie.

How many of you have ever not lied?

Don't raise your hand.

Or you'll be lying.

I've told them in the in the Seth School class, I could convince every one of you.

I can show that every one of you have broken every one of the Ten Commandments.

If not with your hands, feet, mouth, or eyes, you've done it in your heart, right?

The Bible says, you know, you might say that, you know, I've never committed adultery, but have you ever lusted in your heart?

Then you have committed adultery.

Why?

Because it's the intention of your heart.

And I want to tell you, unless you're a weirdo, that's all of us in this building, right?

We all have that.

We're all flesh.

Covet.

Covet.

To want something, desire something, to look at someone and say, you know, they don't deserve it.

That's why people always badmouth rich people.

Why is it so?

I mean, just naturally, people want to badmouth look down on rich people.

Even the Democrats want to look bad, you know, bad, bad rich people.

Why?

What's wrong with making some money?

I'm not rich.

But you know why it is?

Because you look at them and say, they don't deserve that I do.

And ain't one of you here wouldn't turn down a million dollars, would you?

It's covetousness that makes you not like others that have things that you like, right?

Covetousness.

How many of you ever obeyed your parents perfectly?

You know the Bible says if you don't obey your parents, you won't live long on this earth.

If you don't respect and honor your parents, you'll die young.

And you incur the wrath of God.

How many of you ever used, you know what I was going to call this sermon?

I was going to call this sermon today, oh my God.

Oh my God.

But I was afraid that people get offended because we think when we hear that, it's usually in the context of cursing God.

Oh my God.

You're not preaching, praying, or praising.

And you're using the name of God in vain.

And here is what the Ten Commandments says I will not hold him guiltless who takes my name in vain.

And the Old Testament gloriously reveals that to us.

It is a foreshadowing of Jesus.

Jesus, the Bible says, did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.

I have been using Arthur Pink, A.W.

Pink, his commentary on Hebrews, and I have forgotten how much I love to read A.W.

Pink.

And I found this comment in his commentary.

He's actually quoting someone else.

But this, listen to what this guy says.

Now listen.

Beautiful is the night in which the moon and the stars of prophecy and types are shining.

But when the sun arises, then we forget the hours of watchfulness and expectancy.

And in the clear and joyous light of day, there is revealed to us the reality and the substance of the eternal and heavenly sanctuary, Jesus Christ.

I love that.

The Old Testament is glorious.

It's the moon and it's the stars at night.

But let that sun come over the horizon.

Nobody wants to go out and sit and look at the stars for a long time, but we would love to sit and watch the sunrise on a sandy beach.

Amen.

Let's go.

Or a good sunset.

The glory of Jesus outshines anything.

Number B, or letter B in your outline.

God has spoken in these last days.

He spoke in time past by the prophets to the fathers.

Various times, various ways.

Four thousand years he'd used, but now he has spoken to us.

And I know he was talking about his immediate audience, but it's anybody.

Not mystically, but by his word.

By his son.

Not here and not there, not now and not then.

But Jesus spoke and revealed the gospel in three years of ministry.

In one country, within 100 miles of any given place of preaching, Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament, 4,000 years of law and prophets, and he did it three years.

He's God, He's Jesus.

He is what was being pointed to.

He's the pinnacle of it all.

He's worthy of it all.

The epistles are just expositions of the teachings of Christ.

And within 60 years, they were all complete.

This whole book you have in your hand from Matthew, from there, that right there, completed within 60 years of the death of Jesus Christ.

John 14, 26 says, But the helper, that's the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

That's the epistles.

The epistles have nothing new.

Now there's one or two places, two phrases that are used, and I can't remember the technical term for it, but they say Jesus said, and we can't find anywhere in the Gospels where he said it.

Well, that was illuminated prophecy, but it's just a phrase or something.

He basically taught it in his teaching.

But the epistles are just expositions of the Gospels.

And so all of it was written in 60 years.

And here's the thing about it a prophet sometimes didn't even know what he's talking about.

Did you realize?

They didn't even know what they're talking about.

They didn't understand some things.

They were promised a country and a city, and the Bible says, and we'll see it later in Hebrews, and they saw it afar off and they never got there.

They never got there because they didn't understand that he wasn't just talking about physical land and a physical homeland, but a spiritual homeland.

He was talking about heaven.

He was talking about a place beyond this place without sin, sickness, sorrow, crying, or dying.

And they didn't understand a lot of the things.

And a priest, a priest, he gets into a lot about the priesthood in this book, and he proves that Jesus is a better priest.

But the priest would go in, and you'd have a high priest.

Only he could go into the Holy of Holies.

And you know what happened after a while?

What happened to the priest, all of the priests after a while?

What happened to them?

They died.

They died.

You know, the statistics on death are very alarming.

One out of every one people die.

And they all died.

But the Bible says that they would have to do it over and over.

And every high priest, once a year before he died, would have to go into the Holy Holies, kill the sacrifice, take it in, sprinkle the blood on the altar, then go into the Holy of Holies after putting the incense.

Did you hear about the incense in that song?

He put incense and it would fill the why'd he do that?

So he wouldn't die when he saw the glory of God in the Holy of Holies.

And it would rise up as prayers to the people.

It represented the prayers of the people.

And so they would have to do it over and over again.

They sacrificed every day, every week, every hour, once a year, once a month, a feast, and all and all and all and all my goodness, can you imagine being under that system?

And Jesus came and once for all, once for all, he made a sacrifice for sin.

Can you imagine the heart of John the Baptist as he stood on that seaside or that riverside, wherever he was, and saw Jesus coming down to him?

And he cried out, Behold, the Lamb of God, not a lamb, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of not just the Jews, the world.

Once for all.

How could Jesus do what it took thousands and thousands of high priests and priests in the Old Testament to do?

Because, my friend, Jesus is God.

Here already, in these verses, already we see the greater than or better than comparison.

Now we see right off the bat, Jesus is better than.

Than the prophets.

Jesus is better revelation than the prophets.

What it took them 4,000 years to gather up and do, and what what all that, Jesus did it in three years.

He fulfilled all of what they said in three years.

Isn't that not glorious?

Did not John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets, tell us in Mark 1.7, there comes one after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal straps I am not worthy to stoop down and loose.

I indeed baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

That's Jesus.

He's better than the Old Testament.

He's better than the prophets.

He's better than the lambs.

He's better than the priests.

And all this is going to be borne out.

We'll see right at the very end of this.

He introduces something he talks about quite a bit.

Jesus is better than angels.

A.W.

Pink, again, said this and made this observation, and we're finished.

Our epistle, that is the book of Hebrews, paints a threefold contrast between the communications which God has made through Judaism, that's the Old Testament, and through Christianity, that is Christ.

Okay?

Something that listen to because this is good.

He's made three observations.

First, in their respective characters.

The one, the one was fragmentary, the Old Testament, and incomplete, the other, perfect and final.

Number two, in the instruments, in the instruments which he employed.

In the former it was sinful men, in the latter, it was holy son.

Number three, in the period selected.

The one was in time past, the other in these last days, intimating that God has now fully expressed himself that he has nothing in reserve.

I want to tell you something today.

I want to, anybody says, I want a fresh word from God, I want a new word from God, you're not getting it.

This is it.

He's revealed all.

You want to know God?

It's here.

You want to know how to get to heaven?

It's here.

It's complete.

Every revelation that there is, that it took the Old Testament all those years and only took Jesus three days to do it.

It is right here.

You need to go and look no further.

That's why we don't believe in prophets anymore.

You don't need prophets.

Why do you need a prophet when all of the revelation has been given?

Revelation says if anybody adds to or takes away from this book, I'll take away his name from the book of life.

There is no, you see these silly weirdo prophets on the internet, I'm telling you, they are deceivers.

They're trying to get you money.

You ain't gonna get healed by them unless you give them some cabbage.

I want to tell you, if these faith healers and these prophets and all these were real, they wouldn't be in a stadium charging you to get in the doors.

They'd been in a hospital clearing out the sick wards.

My friend, if you want to know Jesus, here is one revelation.

It's this book, Old and New Testament.

And God spoke to us in times past by the prophets, to the fathers by the prophets.

But when Jesus came, he spoke to us through his Son.

The Old Testament is just as inspired, just as holy, just as godly as the New Testament.

But the New Testament is weightier.

You know why?

Because it was revealed to us through the words of Jesus, the Son of God.

So why is your Bible collecting dust on your bookshelves?

If Jesus is this glorious, why does Brother Tim have to get up here and pump us up to get us to worship?

To raise our hands, to shout glory.

Why are we apathetic at worship and at Bible study and preaching at Sunday school?

Why are you apathetic about the things of God?

If you are, I'm just preaching.

I'm just here.

Y'all the one who called me.

You're the one who signs my checks.

Let me read this God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom he has appointed heir of all things.

He's the greatest.

And through whom also he made the worlds, who being in the brightness of his glory, he is the brightness and glory of God the Father.

He is the express image of his person, and he upholds all things by the word of his power.

When he had by himself purged our sin, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

When you read that, I ask you, why are you apathetic about a God like that?