Hebrews 1:5-14 | A Better Name

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

You take your Bibles with me to the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews chapter one, if you have a Bible or a device to follow along.

I remember at some point in my childhood doing something.

I don't remember what it was, doing something, to which my dad replied, homes don't do that.

Okay, thanks, Dad.

Names often come with reputations, don't they?

In our country here in the United States of America, the name Washington has a certain reputation.

As does the name Lincoln.

Same could be said to be true for Roosevelt and the Kennedy names.

Maybe we should say it a little bit more pointedly for Grand Forks.

The name Ingolstad has a reputation.

Maybe that's part of why a proverb says a good name is rather to be had than great riches.

Now, last Sunday in the book of Hebrews, we finished the first unit, the first four verses, which is just one single sentence.

And the end of that unit talks about a son who has inherited a better name.

The rest of Hebrews chapter 1 substantiates that claim.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

It says, here's why Jesus is better than anything.

So if you have your Bible, look with me at Hebrews chapter 1, beginning in verse 5.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

Knowing that Jesus has become superior to angels, as the name he has inherited is much more excellent than theirs.

For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my son.

Today I have begotten you.

Or again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God's angels worship him.

No, of the angels, he says, He makes his ministers wins.

Sorry, his angels wins, and his minister is a flame of fire.

But of the Son, he says, Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever.

The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.

Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.

And you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

They will perish, but you remain.

They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment, they will be changed.

But you are the same, and your years will have no end.

And to which of the angels has he ever said, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who to are to inherit eternal salvation?

This is a heavy text.

It's a heavy text in part because it contains seven Old Testament references.

In fact, that's essentially all that there is.

The writer to Hebrew, the book to the Hebrews, lays out an argument that Jesus has a better name through the Old Testament.

Now that would be very simple for a Jewish Christian in the first century to follow.

They would be very familiar with the verses that we've just read.

They would ring a bell in their minds as they've heard those statements read over and over and over again in their synagogue times.

For modern Christians who aren't as familiar with their Old Testament, it can seem much more difficult.

So we're going to do our best to simplify what's going on in this text this morning.

But it's not a simplification that I'm trying to accomplish.

Because God has already done it.

You see, the first four verses of Hebrews assert that God has spoken.

In the past, in many ways and many times, God spoke to the fathers through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us in his son.

He's spoken in the past through the prophets.

In these last days through his son.

Now the remainder of the chapter makes a third claim.

We must listen to the son because he has a better name.

It's as simple as that.

What it does in the rest of the chapter is answer the question: why does the son have a better name?

Why is that significant?

Now, if we were going to assert that everyone must listen to George Washington, we might lay out the reasons for listening to him from his leadership time in the Revolutionary War, or maybe in his years as the president.

Or for President Lincoln, we might point to his leadership in the Civil War.

In similar ways, the writer to the Hebrews could describe everything the Son of God has done to justify that he has a better name.

Look at all that he's done.

He did this, he did this, he did this.

But that's not what happens.

The author makes his claim by quoting God the Father.

These ten verses contain seven significant quotations, all represented as coming from the mouth of God.

It starts with a question, it ends with a question, and in between are multiple statements, all Old Testament quotations.

That means that we are going to hear reasons to consider Jesus Christ as greater than anyone, as having the greatest name, and I'm not going to be making the argument.

Neither is the author of Hebrews.

We miss the whole point if we think that the preacher is making the point, or the preacher of Hebrews is making the point, because he organizes his passage to say, God, the Father, made the point.

He puts all of the statements in the mouth of God himself.

So we could say it like this Jesus is better.

And God said so.

So consider with me four claims that God himself makes about the Son in these verses.

First, God tells us the name.

He says, For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my son.

Today I have begotten you.

I'm going to be pausing every once in a while this morning to make some important clarifications.

Because this text is twisted and abused often in our world.

At the same time, it is critical for us to understand what's being said because this counters the religious claims that you hear in the world today.

So, for example, the Old Testament does call angels sons of God in a collective sense.

It's interesting here that as we start this section, the author of the Hebrews says something that God didn't say.

Did you catch that?

So he starts us off on the negative.

God never said to the angels, You are my son.

Well, to understand that, we need to know he did call angels sons of God.

So for example, in Job 38, verse 7, and in Job 29, I'm not Job 28, Psalm 29, we see an example of that.

Job 38:7

But we need to understand the clarification that's happening.

The writer to the Hebrews knows his Old Testament, so he knows that the angels are sometimes referred to as the sons of God.

So what's the difference here?

The difference is in the first pronoun after the quotation mark.

You.

It's singular.

So he's not referring to angels as the sons of God in a collective sense.

He's saying, which of all of the myriad of angels did God pick out and say, You, this one is my son?

And the answer is no one.

None of them.

God didn't do that with any angel.

Instead, he says to the son, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

And that is a quotation from Psalm 2, which is a coronation song.

There the nations rage, the kings take counsel against the Lord, and it God answers by setting his son in Zion on his royal mountain, enthroned on the throne of the king.

So Hebrews is saying that God's son is the ultimate fulfillment of that declaration.

You are my son.

Today I have begotten you.

Hebrews says, look at the son.

The Father did something to the Son that he never did to a single angel.

Now there's a problem that some people hang on to.

Today.

Today, that little word, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

Now in the Psalms, that word refers to Ascension Day, coronation day, the day that the newly enthroned king is established before everybody as this is the king.

It's a day of declaration and celebration.

So it's not necessarily the day of the birth of a new royal son, it's the day that he's declared to be the king reigning and ruling on the throne.

Most theologians today say that this then refers to either the day that Jesus was born or to the day of his resurrection.

I think it's best to connect it with the resurrection for two reasons.

The Apostle Paul used this same verse from the Psalms and tied it to the resurrection of Jesus in Acts 13, 33.

And then later in Romans chapter 1, verse 4, the Apostle Paul says that Jesus was declared the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead.

Romans 1:4

So why is this important?

It's important for two reasons.

Number one, it can make it seem like Jesus has a beginning.

As if in his being, he was created in time and space and had a beginning point.

We have to be very, very careful because this concept can get twisted.

Because the scriptures say that Jesus has been the Son of God eternally.

There was never a time when he wasn't the Son.

There was never a time when he wasn't the second person of the Trinity.

He didn't become the Son of God when he was born in a manger.

He didn't become the Son on Easter morning.

Which of those two options, birth or resurrection, the author had in mind, isn't really important for his argument.

What matters is that there was a specific day that served as the father's universal announcement of what had always been true and is now applied in a new way.

And that matters for several reasons.

One of them is that in Jewish minds, to claim sonship is to claim equality.

You can see that in the Gospel of John over and over again.

The Jews picked up stones to stone Jesus because of blasphemy by claiming to be equal with the Father in sonship.

To be a son is to be equal with the Father.

That's likely part of what's behind this statement, especially for those early Christians with a Jewish background.

But it's significant in our times in a different way.

Especially in a world that loves to claim that everyone worships the same God.

Let me tell you that that cannot be true if Hebrews is true.

And it cannot be true if God is true.

Let me show you why.

Islam honors Jesus as a prophet.

But the Quran teaches that God has no son.

And it isn't even fitting for God to have a son.

That's not what Hebrews says.

So either one of them is wrong, or what do we do with that?

Here's the issue: the psalmist has God calling him son 1500 years before Muhammad.

Hebrews also tells us it's one of the reasons that we must listen to the Son.

From that point alone, Islam and Christianity do not have the same God.

You can look at Psalm 2, verse 3.

Psalms 2:3

It says, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

We don't want this son as our king.

That psalm ends with a warning to the kings of the earth.

Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.

The preacher of Hebrews points to a psalm about people refusing to acknowledge God's Son as the ultimate king.

And that's just the first quotation.

The second quotation is from 2 Samuel verse chapter 7.

When God promised David a son whose throne would last forever.

So David, David is humbling himself before God, and God is declaring everything that he's going to be doing for King David.

He says, I'm going to establish your line of rule forever and ever.

And I'm going to give you a son at some point whose kingdom and whose rule will have no end.

And then he says about him, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

So this second quotation ties in God's son into the messianic promises given to the line of David.

He says that the Son has a better name because he is in David's line, and he is God's promised one, whom God calls son.

Therefore, the angels must worship him.

That's what he says.

And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God's angels worship him.

Firstborn refers to rank or status, not a birth certificate.

So God says of David in Psalm 89, I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

Well, if you remember the story of David, he was the youngest of the sons in his family.

He was the smallest, the puniest, the most unlikely to succeed.

Whatever your term you want to throw in there.

But God says, I'm going to establish him as the firstborn.

So God is declaring something to be true.

He's establishing a pattern that runs throughout scripture that firstborn often means first in status or first in rank or first in position.

You must understand this, friends, because we have a terrible trend going on in the United States and worldwide where Mormonism is trying to be more and more like Christianity.

But Mormonism contends that this is a birth certificate, not status.

Their teaching makes Jesus the firstborn spirit child of the Father, and Lucifer is his spirit brother.

That's a problem.

Because verse 3 tells us that this son is the creator.

And verse 6 has every angel who's ever been made bowing down to him.

We can go a step further.

Latter-day Saint theology says that Jesus gained his position as the honored son through his obedience.

But here the preacher of Hebrews says that the angels must worship the Son, not because he earned the status, but because God orders them to.

Not because he earned it.

So already, we're not even halfway through this passage, and the text itself, grounded in what God Himself has uttered, undermines at least two significant areas of religion in the world today.

Either scripture is true and they are not, or God is made a liar.

In Revelation, John falls down at an angel's feet twice.

And both times, maybe you remember this, both times the angels pull him up onto his feet and say, Don't worship us.

Because angels don't receive worship.

God commands them to give it.

And they must give it to the Son.

So friends, Son is the better name.

Three times God has declared Christ's name to be Son.

Once by decree, once through eternal covenant, and once by the order of angels to worship him.

Jesus is better because he is the divine son, and God said so.

That's the name.

The next claim made about the Son is that God made angels servants.

But the Son is God.

One is made, the other is.

Of the angels, he says in verse 7, he makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire.

This quotation comes from Psalm 104, a hymn about creation.

And its significance, the significance of this statement, this quotation, lies in the word makes.

Angels are on the creature side of creation.

They are made.

As God would make wind, as fire is made.

The psalmist calls them ministers, servants, which refers to their role.

They are made first, and then they're given a job to fulfill.

Now, surely, angels are glorious and powerful beings.

They're a large part of God's work in his world.

But they're created beings who serve the Creator.

And why is that significant for us?

Well, it's significant at least in part because, as we've already noted, it contradicts Mormonism, but it also contradicts what Jehovah's Witnesses teach.

They teach that Jesus is Michael the archangel.

But that's contradicted in verse 8, where the preacher of Hebrews says that the Son is God, not a created angel.

He says, Your throne, O God.

And notice he says, of the Son, he says, Your throne, O God.

Son is God.

This quotation from verse 8 comes from Psalm 45, which, ironically or not, is a love song.

It's true.

You can turn there and see the little heading.

It says it's a love song.

In the middle of the song, though, the singer turns and addresses the king that he's singing to as God.

And this preacher of Hebrews puts those words in the Father's mouth, directing them at Jesus.

Your throne, the Son's throne, O God.

The Son sits on a throne and reigns forever and ever because he is God.

Scholar, biblical scholar Richard Bacham has shown that this comes from Jewish tradition.

Jewish tradition, or not comes from, plays off of.

Jewish tradition uses this phrase like a fence to distinguish the creator from the rest of the creation.

No created thing is ever described like this.

But here the author uses that phrase to contrast the sun with created angels.

And it continues, as if saying, your throne, O God, isn't enough.

He goes on to describe what that God on that throne is like.

He says, You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.

That's Psalm 104.

Or Psalm 45, sorry.

The scepter in his hand is a scepter of righteousness.

So whoever this son is, he's on a throne, and this is God's throne.

So the son is God on this throne, and he uses his status and his being to do what is right and just forever.

And the last line, the last line brings all of us into the picture.

Still quoting from Psalm 45.

God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.

Companions is a word that's used throughout the book of Hebrews.

Most often it's translated partakers in most translations.

So, for example, he calls believers in Christ partakers of a heavenly calling in chapter 3, and partakers of Christ, also in chapter 3.

Here, that same word is translated companions.

His companions are his people, those whom he's purified from their sins in verse 3 of chapter 1.

So here's a king who's seated on a throne.

This king is God who rules with righteousness and justice forever, and he is greater than all of his companions, the people who are with him.

He is the one who is celebrated with oil of gladness more than anybody else.

He's the one that we praise.

Praise him above all things.

Now that tells us, friends, that the common fascination with the spirit world of angels and demons is at best misdirected.

Okay, on the one hand, that fascination is directed towards glorious, powerful, awesome kinds of creatures.

But they're creatures.

They're made.

Just like you and I were made.

The writer to the Hebrews says, why would you bow down and worship something that's made instead of worshiping the Maker of the Maid?

Our fascination and our awe and our worship should be toward the one who made it all, not towards what is made.

He deserves our worship, he deserves our admiration, he deserves our awe because the Son is God.

We should give our attention to the King whose throne has no end and who does everything in righteousness and justice.

No other name compares.

Why would you give your attention to another name?

The Son outranks, is greater in status and position than every servant he has made, whether that servant is a human being or an animal like Balaam's donkey or even an angel.

And now the preacher of Hebrews says that he is better because he will outlast everything that he's made.

And you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

They will perish, but you remain.

They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe, you will roll them up, like a garment, they will be changed, but you are the same, and your years have no end.

This is from Psalm 102.

Psalm 102.

And notice what's happening.

In Psalm 102, the psalmist is quoting, or not quoting, he's speaking to Yahweh, the God of Genesis who made everything.

But the writer to the Hebrews is now putting that together, pointing towards Jesus.

Jesus is that God.

Jesus is that creator.

That's why he said back in verse 2 that Jesus is the one who created all the ages.

He's the one who made everything.

Now Psalm 45 is a love song.

Psalm 102 is a sorrowing song.

It's the prayer of a person who's afflicted.

It says at the beginning of Psalm 102 that it's written when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

So there's a heaviness to Psalm 102.

It's the prayer of someone who feels like their life is just coming apart at the scenes.

At one point, the psalmist then takes his eyes off of his own circumstances, his own situation, and he looks up to the one who laid the earth's foundation in the beginning.

In the psalm, he's talking to God.

Here, the Father says to the Son, You, Lord, the Son laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning.

The heavens are the work of your hands.

They will perish, but the sun will remain.

They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe.

You, the sun, will roll them up like a garment.

They will be changed, but you, the sun, are the same, and you, the sun, your years will have no end.

I mean, this is a really hard thing to imagine.

How many of you did laundry this week?

Most college students don't do laundry once a week, but right?

We take clothes and we we fold them up.

I've even seen some people roll them up.

However, you want to do that, what works for you.

That's that's the image here is laundry day.

Creation is pictured like clothing.

It wears out like your socks do.

Maybe not as quickly.

To God, the universe is like clothing that you you fold up and you you store on a shelf or put in a drawer.

So on the one hand, this imagery shows God's immenseness, how great He is, and how tiny and insignificant we are.

On the other hand, it shows us God's permanence.

He is enduring.

Nothing moves him, while the universe is transient.

It's it's here and it's gone.

Notice the the way the verbs work here, beginning in verse 10.

Sorry, verse 11.

We start with a future tense.

They will perish.

Then we go to the present tense, but you remain.

Then we go to a future tense three times.

Then back to the present, you remain the same, and then a future that's it's open-ended.

Your years will have no end.

Why is this significance?

Because it's a repeated error or heresy in church history.

The heretical theologian Arian taught that there was a time when the sun was not.

So that the sun didn't exist at some point.

And then he did.

And his years have no end.

That's why John heard him say in the revelation, I am the one who was and is and always will be.

This gives us a reason to listen to the sun, friends, and a reason to not drift from God's word.

But it's also a reason to focus on what matters.

The things we worry about and the things that stress us and grow the anxiety in us are things that are gonna be gone.

We let ourselves be worn down and worn away by things that are just not gonna matter eventually.

Maybe they feel like they matter in the moment, but they will perish, they will expire, that will all get set aside.

But the son of righteousness who sits on the throne of heaven is always the same.

He never changes, he remains firm to the end, and he is always trustworthy.

Why would we not rest in him who is our true enduring fortress?

The writer to the Hebrews says, this isn't my idea of the Son.

God the Father said this.

So don't believe me.

Believe what God said.

Now at the end of our text for this morning, the author returns to questions again about angels.

He starts with questions and he ends with questions.

And he does this to contrast the better name of the son with angels.

And that sets up something that we're going to look at next week.

So the final characteristic here that we need to see is that God treated or seated the Son, but he sends angels to serve.

All along he's making distinctions between God's highest, most powerful, most glorious created beings, and he says, that's wonderful, they are great, they are awesome, but guess what?

Jesus is better.

Now, to which of the angels did God ever say, sit down here at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for you.

That's from Psalm 110.

And it's a psalm that is quoted more often in the New Testament than any other psalm.

Now, last Sunday we we ended in verse 4 and verse 5 with the image of a sitting son.

And the preacher of Hebrews returns to that same image now in verse 13.

This is the sovereign throne of the ruler of the universe.

And the point is that the sovereign God of the universe never invited any created being to sit on his throne.

Lucifer tried it once and it didn't work out so well.

That means that if the Son is invited to sit on the throne of the sovereign God, his nature, his being must be identical to the Father's because only God sits on God's throne.

God never invited a created being to sit on his throne.

Angels have never been invited to that place.

And the son is told to sit there until I make your enemies a footstool.

So he's seated, he's seated until the conquest of his enemies is finished.

We've already seen that the son's work to deal with sin is done.

He made purification and he sat down.

But the work of putting everything else in creation that is opposed to the sun under his feet is still in progress.

So you should listen to the sun, or you will become an enemy of God supporting his feet.

Jesus is better.

The angels, on the other hand, are just ministering spirits.

And even more than that, they're ministering spirits that have a primary duty to serve on behalf of those who are about to inherit salvation.

You see, angels were made, number one, number two, they were made to serve.

So they serve.

They do their job.

They don't have a greater position and they don't have the better name.

The Son does.

And that belongs only to the Son.

And they serve on behalf of the Son's people, or more specifically, those who are about to inherit salvation.

It's a way of looking forward.

We look forward to the completion and the wrapping up of everything that God is doing in saving his people.

And angels serve on behalf of that program.

What's interesting here is that verse 2 calls Jesus the heir of all things.

Verse 4 says he has inherited a better name.

Verse 14 says that there are people who are about to inherit salvation.

So the inheritance starts with Jesus and ends with his work to draw us into who and what he is.

So you eventually get to the point where it's not just the sun and angels and human beings, but as we will see later in Hebrews, those who are about to inherit salvation get elevated to the point of sitting with the Son so that they judge angels.

How awesome is that! Now, angels are surely magnificent and great and awesome and powerful beings.

Demons are fallen angels, and they're surely fearful, but they're creatures.

They're made by the better one with the better name.

And even holy angels are sent out to serve those who are about to inherit salvation in Jesus.

Everything the author of Hebrews says points to Jesus being better.

Because God said so.

So Jesus is the Son by God's own decree.

He is the Son of David by covenant.

He's the one whom every angel is commanded to worship.

He is God whose throne endures forever and ever.

He is the Lord Yahweh who laid the foundation of the earth and will outlast it.

He sits at God's right hand.

And I'm not trying to convince you of those truths.

I've tried to do exactly what the preacher of Hebrews does.

God said it.

You just go to those psalms.

God said it.

So if the Jesus that you believe in is smaller or more manageable or more insignificant than the one that is revealed here, you've got a problem with God.

Because this is what God says.

And if this is what God says and you don't believe it, then you need to hear the warning of Psalm 2.

You better kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish.

And so chapter 2 sets the stage for us.

Those who who do claim Christ, who do uphold this high Christology?

If that's what you believe, pay much closer attention to what the Son has said.

So that you don't drift away from it.

For how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Here's an encouragement for you.

Take one of these seven quotations this week and read the psalm that it came from.

Read it slowly, maybe several times.

And ask yourself what God wants you to know about his son when he said it.

Be in awe of how God was pointing to his son all along the way.

And as you do that, you'll find, I think, that everything else that we might stress over will fade away one day.

Oh, we might worry about it today, but if we have a proper view of God the Son, and we rest in Him, understanding that He remains forever, everything else will take its proper place.

God has never said to any angel what He said about the Son.

His name is better.

And He's called everyone who believes in Him to join Him by believing in Him for eternal life.

Because God has said, This is my Son.

Listen to Him.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, open our ears to hear and our eyes to see who you really are.

Help us to see from your word that you are utterly trustworthy.

That we can believe in you for who you are and what you've done.

Lord, sometimes we we struggle to believe, and we ask that you would forgive that unbelief and that you would help it.

Strengthen our faith to know that you are the one who gives life.

And you're the only one because of who the Father said you are.

Draw our eyes to you, we ask, in your name and for your glory.

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.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.