Hebrews 1:1-4 | Who is Jesus?

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible with me to the book of Hebrews.

Last Sunday, we started a about a year-long study through the book of Hebrews.

We looked at the first two verses together.

And we'll look at a couple of more this morning.

But before we dive into the text here, I want you to think about standing.

Here, generally our pattern to stand when we sing.

And every culture, at least I think every culture, has a pattern of standing for certain things.

Maybe it's standing in the presence of elderly people, out of respect and honor.

Maybe it's standing because of somebody's position.

So, for example, in our country, people in a courtroom stand when the judge enters.

Or here in North Dakota and Minnesota, we we stand out of honor and respect when the family of a lost one, of someone who has died enters our sanctuary to come and sit down.

Everybody in the funeral service stands out of respect and honor.

Some cultures stand for people of high status.

So royalty.

We see people fall on their faces before Jesus.

But this morning I want to consider the opposite question.

Why would someone sit down?

Why would someone sit down?

There are obvious reasons, right?

Like fatigue, weariness, or maybe the inability to remain standing for long periods.

But more specifically than that, why would the preacher of the sermon that we call the book of Hebrews write that Jesus sat down?

As we started our study in Hebrews last Sunday, we saw that God has said everything that he intends to say in Jesus.

Said at the very beginning, he's spoken to us in these last days through his son.

He spoke first through the prophets, and now he's spoken through his son.

So that leaves an obvious question: who is he?

Who is this son through whom God speaks?

God says he's kind of put everything he intends to say in this son, and so that anybody who wants to hear what God has to say needs to go through this son.

So who is he?

The answer is in the first sentence of the book of Hebrews, which spans the first four verses in the original sermon.

If you have your Bible, I'd like to read those if you'd like to follow along with me.

It says, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to the fathers by or through the prophets.

But in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

There's a period there in our English Bibles, but in the original sermon it kept going in the same sentence, saying, He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is much more excellent than theirs.

Our focus this morning is going to be on verses three and four, and that's it's just overflowing with rich statements.

There's the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, the sense of upholding the universe, purification for sins better than angels.

But the richest element may be the relationship between the actions.

What does that mean?

Well, when it says in verse 3, he is, that describes a continuing aspect of the Son's being.

He is always, in any present moment, the radiance of the glory of God.

At every moment, every second of this universe's existence, he upholds it.

But those two actions and the other related verbal elements in these two verses support the single main verb.

He sat down.

The grand language describing this son draws us to listen to him because of who he is, and because he sat down.

Last week we saw that we must listen to the Son of God because God spoke through him.

Now I want to direct our attention to verses 3 and 4 to who the Son is.

And as we do that, I want to consider three qualities of this Son: His divinity, his sacrifice, and his seated lordship.

So let's begin with the call to listen to Jesus because he is a divine son.

Listen to Jesus because he is a divine son.

Now, last time we saw in verse 2 that God the Father appointed the Son as the heir of all things, and that all things were created through him.

So Jesus is the heir that the prophets in the Old Testament promised was coming.

Yet he's the one who made everything before they ever spoke.

Meaning, every decade, every century, every age of mankind has been his and is moving towards finding its fulfillment and its completion in him.

He owns the deed to everything.

Sorry, even the bank who holds your mortgage doesn't really own it.

Jesus does.

It's his.

And it starts by telling us that he is the radiance of the divine glory.

This is the only time in the New Testament that this word radiance appears.

The best image is probably the rays of light coming off of the sun.

Now that that ray of light is not a separate or smaller object that the sun has somehow created and sent out.

That ray of light is the sun's light.

It is part of the sun that has gone out.

You can't have a ray of sun without the sun, and you have never once seen the sun except by the sun's rays.

This is the primary image that has been used throughout church history and even before that, for the essence of God.

This same term about radiance appears in the apocryphal book, The Wisdom of Solomon, sometime around the time of Christ, to describe God's radiance.

In church history, Tertullian employs a similar image around 215 A.D.

And around 315 A.D., Eusebius said there can be no light without a ray.

Describing God and God's Son.

So this is the claim being made about Jesus of Nazareth that we read of in Mark 1.

He is not light that God created or a fire that he lit.

He is God's own shining.

As the Nicene Creed says, we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one being, one essence with the Father.

Which is what the second phrase in verse 3 talks about.

Jesus is the exact imprint of the divine nature.

This picture comes from the process of minting coins.

In the ancient world, shapes were carved or formed in harder metals and then stamped onto softer metals, like gold or silver.

And that stamping process, putting force into that, leaves an impression in the softer metal, so that whatever is in the dye comes out on the coin.

That's what's being drawn from for this statement.

Jesus is the Father's image.

He said so himself in John 14, verse 9.

John 14:9

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

Jesus is the exact imprint.

So both of these descriptions are in the present tense.

Now, why is that significant?

It's significant because there has never been a time when the sun was not God's radiance or was not the imprint of his nature.

He always is.

And because he always is, he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

And don't picture Greek mythology when you hear this.

Don't imagine Atlas struggling to hold up the world.

I told you, don't imagine that.

So stop it.

Even though I told you about it.

This is more like Jesus carrying the world in his hand.

He's sustaining it.

In fact, the word universe here in verse 3 has to be supplied by our translators.

It's not in the original sermon.

The original sermon simply says all.

He sustains, upholds all.

Everything.

The Son upholds everything he made, and he upholds it by his voice.

By the power of his word.

He spoke the universe into existence and he keeps it going by the same speech, by the power of his word.

Now, down in verses 10, 11, and 12, we're going to find that the heavens wear out like old clothes.

Like a pair of socks that the heels worn out and you have to throw away.

The Apostle Paul says it most simply in Colossians 1:17.

Colossians 1:17

In him all things hold together.

That's Jesus.

Now, put those concepts into the context or the setting of this original letter.

It was sent out or preached to a group of people, who at least some of them in chapter 2, verse 1, were drifting away from their faith.

Does drifting happen when you sing that last song that we sang?

No.

Drifting happens when you leave the building and you forget the song that you've sung.

And you forget the reality that it represents.

Drifting happens when we fail to think highly enough of God the Son.

Drifting happens when we're flippant about the Son.

Drifting happens when we disregard the Lord Jesus Christ and we refuse to listen to him.

But grasping the radiance of God's glory in Jesus and knowing that He is the exact image of God makes him so awesome that we don't want to turn away.

Instead, we want to move closer to him.

We want to know more.

We want to have more.

That doesn't make every situation in life understandable.

Doesn't make it so we feel safe or satisfied.

It doesn't take away the agonies of life in a fallen world.

Because none of the agonies and none of the sorrows of this life are outside of Christ's sustaining power.

The same Son, the same Son who made it all and upholds it all, upholds you.

And he is attentive to the details of your life.

The one who upholds and sustains everything cannot stop upholding you without ceasing to uphold all of creation.

So you can bring him your temptations and ask him to uphold you through them.

You can obey him when you feel weak, because he will sustain you.

You can trust him through the most uncertain of times because you are upheld by the one who holds all things.

You can find your way through the times of helplessness because you are not helpless.

You are sustained and upheld by the one who sustains and upholds all.

Not even one amen.

This is the Son who is speaking.

Listen to him.

The second quality of this son is his purifying work.

We should listen to Jesus because he is a purifying sacrifice.

After making purification for sins.

We move from the glory of heaven to the gore of sacrifice in one sentence.

Now, purification is priestly work, right?

In the Greek Old Testament, this is the same word for what happens when a priest pronounces a worshiper clean.

But that also happened for the entire nation of Israel.

One day a year on the Day of Atonement.

It's described in Leviticus 16, verse 30.

Leviticus 16:30

It says, On this day, on the Day of Atonement, atonement will be made for all of you.

Why?

To cleanse you, to purify you.

You shall be clean before Yahweh from all of your sins.

So everyone gathered at the temple on that day of atonement, waited while one man went into the Holy of Holies behind the curtain with blood in his hands, hoping that God would accept that sacrifice and purify them.

And the preacher to the Hebrews now says, Jesus did that for you.

The old temple system depended on the repetition of sacrifices, morning and evening, lamb after lamb, year after year after year, because it never finished anything.

This purification happened once because that's all that was needed.

That one sacrifice was all that was needed, not because God's people suddenly stopped sinning.

It was only needed once because it was the Son who was sacrificed.

It's all about the person who made purification.

Later, the author of Hebrews would tell us that the blood of Christ purifies our consciences from dead works to serve the living God.

Then he'll say that we can come into the holy presence of God as though we are walking with the priest into the Holy of Holies with him on that day.

We can come right to the presence of God with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.

Blood had to be sprinkled on the altar and then on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies.

The priest sprinkles blood to purify.

And Jesus now is the one who made purification.

So this is the Son in verses 1 and 2 who speaks.

He is the radiance of God's glory.

He is the exact imprint of his nature.

He made purification for sin.

You and I did nothing for our forgiveness, and nothing for our purification.

The Son did it all, and he did it once for all.

So if you have believed in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, you are forgiven.

You are purified.

You are cleansed.

It's done.

That's great news for anyone with a guilty conscience.

Now, first you must come to Jesus.

You must believe that he is all that this book says he is.

Believing that he gave himself for you.

You must repent of your sins and follow him.

Maybe you've done that.

And you know that Christ has forgiven you.

But even without trying, your your your consciousness replays the past.

And those things that you regret and the sins that you've committed, and the guilt can sometimes be overwhelming.

Friend, Hebrews says the cleansing of your heart, of your soul, of your mind, and your conscious self comes from Christ's completed work.

It's done.

You don't need to resurrect that.

The bill's been paid.

Confess your sin and receive his cleansing with a grateful heart and serve the Son with a clean conscience.

Because the Son made purification.

Isn't that wonderful?

Thank you.

I don't know who said that, but thank you for the amen.

Now there's a third quality to the Son that calls us to listen to him.

We need to listen to Jesus.

Because he's a seated Lord.

So let's say that you believe that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for sin.

And that you believe that his sacrifice was the cleansing that we all needed.

Great.

So glad you believe that.

How do you know?

How do you know that his sacrifice was effective and sufficient?

How do you know that it Worked you would know that because he sat down.

He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

So he offered himself as a sacrifice.

He died, he was buried, he rose again, he ascended into heaven, and then what?

He sat down.

We often stop in that rehearsal of events, sometimes with he rose again.

But it doesn't stop there, right?

He ascended.

And often we stop there.

But there's another step after that.

He sat down.

That concept comes from Psalm 110.

We'll look at this again later in Hebrews, where it says in Psalm 110, verse 1, that Yahweh says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.

Psalms 110:1

Sit here until I make your enemies your footstool.

Now the preacher of Hebrews doesn't quote Psalm 110 here in verse 3.

He will wait till verse 13 to do that.

But it does say he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Majesty on high is a Jewish way of saying at God's place, on the throne.

And Jesus used very similar language when he spoke to the Jewish councils after his arrest in Mark 14.

He would tell them that one day they would see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power.

The preacher of Hebrews here then says that a condemned and crucified man is the heir of everything.

The crucified and condemned man is the creator of the ages.

He's the one who upholds everything.

And he's the one who made purification for your sin and sat down at God's right hand.

Chapter 10 of Hebrews tells us that priests stand.

It says in Hebrews 10, 11, and 12 that every priest stands every day at his service, offering repeatedly, over and over again the same sacrifices for sin.

They can never take away sins.

So that's why it has to keep going.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice, he sat down.

He sat down.

I don't know if you've ever done this, but if you actually follow through in your Bible reading plan and you get through Exodus and Leviticus, you really do that, you'll see that in all of the elements for the construction of the tabernacle and later for the temple, there are no instructions for chairs.

We chuckle and we should.

But here's a son who did priestly work and sat down.

That's why back in chapter 1 and verse 4, it says that Jesus, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is much more excellent than theirs.

That is, he sat down because he's much more excellent, and because he's made atonement, he's made purification.

Better.

Jesus is better.

In this book of Hebrews, he is the better hope.

He provides a better covenant, better promises, better sacrifices, a better country, a better resurrection.

He's always better.

There's no one better.

And it's not even close.

As much superior to means as much better.

That is, the son is better by the same amount that his name is more excellent than theirs.

Which name?

Look at verse 4.

Having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

What name?

What name?

Verse 5 tells us.

In former times he spoke to us through the prophets.

In these last days, he has spoken to us through his son.

So why bring angels into it?

Well, we're going to look more at that next time.

But the short answer is because angels were the go-betweens of the old covenant God had with Israel.

So the law came through them in chapter 2, verse 2.

You can see that in Acts 7 and Galatians 3, 2.

So this is verse 1 explained a little bit more.

God used to speak through what we might call middlemen.

Prophets on our side, and angels on God's side.

God communicated through angels to the prophets who spoke.

And now he's spoken to us in his son, and that son isn't even comparable in greatness to angels.

He's that much more better.

I know that's not grammatically sound, but you get my point.

Jesus is much more better.

Always and forever.

So how do you know that purification worked?

Well, you look at the priest.

Your priest, the one who is at the same time the sacrifice and the priest, who is at the same time purification and purifier, is not standing there behind the altar.

He's seated.

A seated priest is a finished priest.

He's done because his work is done.

That changes, friends, how we come to God.

We come to a God who welcomes us because he has purified us.

The priestly work has been done and it's effective once and for all.

He did the work and he wants us to come to him in the radiance of his glory.

He did the work, so we don't need a grand list of accomplishments.

We can come without fear to the brilliant radiance of his glory because our priest has made an acceptable sacrifice for us and has then sat down and invited us into his presence.

Your confidence, Christian, is in a seated Lord.

You need a seated Lord.

And a seated Lord is a ruling Lord.

And all of that points to what we're going to find later in chapter 4, where it says, let us then, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace.

Confidence is a strange word, don't you think, to use about walking up to the throne of the most radiant being that is even beyond our capacity to imagine?

Imagine walking confidently right up to the sun and reaching out and touching it.

That's impossible.

We wouldn't do that.

We'd be fried before we even got there.

But that's kind of what's behind this imagery.

Let us then, with confidence, with boldness, walk right up to the throne of grace.

Who's at the throne of grace?

The Son.

What is he doing at the throne of grace?

Sitting.

Why is he sitting?

Because he's made purification.

And that purification means that God the Father sees you in the righteousness of his son, and you can come right up to the throne of grace.

That confidence makes sense once you know who is sitting on the throne.

It's the son of whom the father said that listen to him.

So who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus?

He's the heir of everything.

He's the maker of the ages.

He's the radiance of the glory of God.

He's the exact imprint of the Father.

He's the one carrying the whole universe by the word of his power.

He's the one who made purification for sins.

He's the one seated at the right hand of the majesty on high.

He is the one who is better than angels.

And each of those characteristics rests on one action.

He sat down.

So what do we do with that?

There's lots of things we could do with it.

Let me put it in terms of listening.

We should listen to him in all areas of our lives is probably the broadest way to say it.

To get more specific than that, we could say when your worry and your anxiety weigh you down, listen to the one who upholds all things.

When shame threatens to pull you away from Christ, convincing you that you're too sinful for God to cleanse.

Listen to the one who made purification for your sins and sat down.

Listen to what he says, not what the tempter says.

When sin promises you something good and pleasurable, listen to the son who actually paid the price for that sin.

When Satan offers you the world with all of its successes, all of its approval, all of its comforts, listen to the son who is better than them all.

Now maybe you've never trusted him.

Maybe you're realizing for the first time, I don't know this son.

I don't know this Jesus.

Well, here the preacher of Hebrews.

The one who is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on High is not a far-off king whom you should just admire or respect.

He's the very image of the living God who entered time and space to make purification for your sin.

So come to him for forgiveness and cleansing.

And for all of you who already belong to him, don't drift.

Draw near to him and listen.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus.

There are so many voices and sounds in our world that want and demand our attention.

And not just demand, but expect us to follow through and doing what they want us to do.

The world wants us to conform to it, and you want us to conform to you.

Oh, open our ears to listen, give us ears to hear.

Transform our hearts and minds into cleansed vessels for your word.

And by your word, work powerfully in us to mold us into your image so that we might be representatives of the radiance of the glory of God.

Lord, help us this week.

There are going to be moments, probably as soon as we leave this building today, when we're going to be tempted, to be distracted, or to drift.

Keep us to yourself, so that we might be to the praise of your glorious grace.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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