Clough Hebrews Lesson 5
The Son: God’s Superior Revealer – Hebrews 1:1-4
We said the first four verses of this epistle are sort of summary; a summary of the Son as God’s superior revealer, and the thrust of these first four verses in today’s world and the importance of these four verses for today’s situation is that they completely set off Jesus Christ from every religious prophet who has ever lived. And these verses are here using every single noun, verb, preposition, and what have you, in the entire Greek language to get across this concept, that Jesus Christ is absolutely unique. He cannot be put into a box along with (quote) “other” (end quote) prophets, such as Mohammed, Bahiullah or what have you. These other prophets, even if they were prophets, which they’re not, but if they were prophets they still would not fall into the same category of Jesus Christ. Isaiah, Moses, Amos, Hosea, they were great prophets, true prophets, ordained spokesmen of God, but still they do not fall into the same category as Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is absolutely unique.
So we come back to the main verb of verse 2, “God has spoken.” God, God the Father, understood here in terms of the Trinitarian analysis, God the Father, “God spoke,” that’s the main subject, that’s the main verb, every other noun, preposition and particle modify, amplify and specify this subject and this verb. And all of the first four verses basically is one sentence and it all hinges on this subject and on this verb, “God spoke.” And since God speaking is revelation, again let’s review the two categories of revelation: general revelation, special revelation. What is general revelation, what distinguishes general revelation from special revelation. What is the distinguishing feature, a distinguishing feature of general and special revelation. [someone answers] All right, general revelation is about nature but general revelation, let’s say is by means of nature and man; that’s the means.
General revelation is available in the way the world is made and general revelation is available in the way man is made. So when men reflect upon themselves, their conscience, their desire and so on, they have an idea somewhat of God, when reflected upon correctly of course, with the Holy Spirit, and nature. So both of these are bona fide sources of revelation. That’s called general revelation. However, the general revelation is about… this is the means, this is the subject, the subject of general revelation can be nature, man or God. God can be known in general revelation, Romans 1:18-21. God Himself can be known in His creation, general revelation, however it’s a limited revelation.
Now special revelation. The means is God, whereas the means of general revelation is nature and man the means of special revelation is God. The subject content of special revelation is again nature, men and God. The subject content is the same with both categories of revelation. The difference is the instrument used. To go back before the fall, when Adam was plopped in the Garden the Garden itself witnessed to God’s character. It witnessed to itself, it witnessed to what man wants, it witnessed to God’s character. Do you know how it witnessed to what man wants? Remember, what was the test that Adam was required to do? He had to name all the animals to try to try to find a helper fitted for him and he couldn’t find one among the animals. And he came to the conclusion, without any special revelation, he came to the conclusion that there was no helper adequate for him. He was able to conclude within a framework given by special but actually most of the data was from general revelation, he was able to conclude there was no helper suited for him. And then God gave him the right helper.
That’s general revelation but the important thing is that special revelation is the presupposition for interpreting general revelation. There is a logical priority and in this logical priority special revelation precedes general revelation—very important principle for every area of life because all of your areas of life and living are all in the area of general revelation; whatever subject you’re studying it’s in the area of general revelation. But, the Bible says that in order to interpret general revelation you must have special revelation, therefore, for example, when God placed Adam in the Garden He didn’t just leave him in the Garden without instructions. God told Adam something and that telling, God speaking, was special revelation. God gave Adam a working vocabulary, God revealed to Adam how He had made him because man did not know his own origin, being finite he wasn’t there when creation occurred. Man had to have an eyewitness report, he had to have a report from infinity, so to speak, on his own origin. And God gave that report to Adam and therefore special revelation establishes a framework within which all of the data of general revelation fits.
Now Adam had not yet become a sinner; Adam had not yet fallen, and even though he was sinless, even though Adam had no sin nature, Adam still requires special revelation. God still had to speak to the non-fallen man, and if God has to speak to the non-fallen man He has to certainly speak to the fallen man before he can have his head screwed on right. And no subject material, no area of your life, whether it’s teaching or whether it’s something else, you can’t do anything in those areas correctly unless you first start with special revelation, the presupposition of everything that you do.
So that’s the concept of revelation and the point that Hebrews is going to make is that the special revelation has come by many means. When you have God speaking you have not general revelation but you have special revelation. Special revelation means God speaks through some instrumentality and in this case instead of speaking through the prophets He speaks through His Son. And the argument, basically, of this epistle is that when God speaks through His Son you’re really in close touch with high voltage. And you can be blessed or you can be cursed but you can’t stay neutral and that’s the thrust of this epistle. This epistle totally destroys the concept of neutrality; there is no neutrality. There’s no neutrality at any point in the Christian life; you are sliding down tonight or you’re moving with it; you are with it or you’re not and if you’re out of it you are sliding. You can’t remain stable, you’re going down or you’re going up but the elevator doesn’t stay at the same floor. That’s the result of the destruction of neutrality.
Last week we dealt with something about the Son. It says in Hebrews 1:2, He “has in these last days spoken unto us by a Son,” emphasizing His character, and then it supplements the word “Son” with two clauses beginning with “whom,” and these two clauses describe something about the Son, something about His character, something the Father has done and these amplify. And these two clauses are the reason why Jesus Christ is unique. These two clauses cut away all competitors. No prophet will ever come into this world, no prophet has ever come into this world who can qualify at these two points. Therefore Jesus Christ is unique.
The first point of His uniqueness is that He has been appointed heir of all things. He has been appointed heir of all things. History is in forward motion and the first “whom” refers to the goal of history. Jesus Christ is the heir of all things. History is moving toward a goal and Jesus Christ is that goal. Jesus Christ, therefore, is an object of the future as well as the present, and we can therefore say very clearly that ours is a future oriented worldview. All other religions are present centered; Christianity is future centered. What difference does it make.
Let’s take the area of economics as one quick illustration. Whenever Christianity has exercised a potent influence in the business areas you will always have a maximum number of people capitalizing; that is, a maximum number of people putting away assets in savings and capitalizing, building up resoivoirs of capital for future work. Christianity always has this economic byproduct after effect, you can look at it anywhere it’s gone. Christianity has a net effect of always causing capitalization to occur, where people have their mind on what is going to happen in the future and therefore they have hope for the future, they put away money and so on. It is a savings oriented society business wise, when Christianity has the upper hand.
And by the way it also is future oriented in the area of personal discipline. You cannot discipline yourself and your own desires and your own lusts and your own likes and dislikes unless you’re future oriented. A person who’s future oriented puts aside the present lusts for future enjoyment. He’s not a victim of impulsive buying, he always thinks ahead and that’s a future oriented person.
Now where Christianity goes into a decline you always have it reflected in the way people conduct business, and one of the reflections is that you will have a borrowing society, a credit society, where people will want it now and will mortgage our future. And so the tendency will be to mortgage the future for the present, whereas when Christianity is in its ascendancy people always mortgage the present for the future and it’s exactly reverse, it involves an entire difference of mentality and business attitude. It also means that where Christianity goes into decline you have an emphasis on the immediate satisfaction rather than long term satisfaction.
Now why is this so important to see? Because the Bible is always looking forward,
looking forward, looking forward, looking forward, and it’s this perpetual
looking forward that grounds you in discipline.
The reason we have so much confusion, heartache, suffering, sorrow, in
Bible-believing Christian circles is because you and I have borrowed what we’ll
call human viewpoint
I will say, after counseling, I will venture to say 90% of all Christian problems have to do with one thing: lack of self-discipline. It’s that simple, and I’ve tried to think and think and think, why, why, why is this a particular sin of our generation and it’s only because our whole culture is oriented this way. When you decide that you are not going to satisfy a present desire because of something better in the future, you are required to cut across the way you would like to think, you are forced to oppose the way your family thinks, you are forced to oppose the way your professors think, you are forced to oppose the way your living group thinks, you are forced to oppose every person in the society by merely stepping out and saying I am not going to mortgage my future, I am going to build for my future now instead of blowing my future for the present. It’s a completely totally different opposite way of thinking. And when you latch onto it it’ll mean a big, big difference in your Christian life.
But I want you to notice that Christ is the goal of history; Christ is the heir of all things, Christ is a future oriented person. Jesus Christ, when He walked the face of this earth faced trials. Satan tried what he has tried on us all and that was Jesus, all you have to do is bow down to me and I’ll give you it right now; I’ll make you present centered Jesus, just bow down to me now and we’ll have it all right here, on a silver platter and you won’t have to sweat, you won’t have to wait, you won’t have to postpone, you can have it right now. Of course, there are some problems with credit and I.O.U.’s for the future but we won’t worry about that, we want it now, so Jesus, why not get your kingdom right now and pay it back later. Jesus didn’t buy that line; Jesus Christ postponed His kingdom, if it can’t be brought in God’s way it won’t be brought in. Jesus Christ rests in God’s sovereignty. Sovereignty promises it will be, Jesus Christ is heir of all things, therefore Jesus Christ rests in God’s sovereignty and He doesn’t refuse to trust in the Lord, He relaxes and He waits for the future, not for the present.
Christ is heir of all things. He was appointed heir in eternity past, which means Jesus Christ has waited for eternity; all eternity Jesus Christ has been waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. No matter how long you wait you’ll never wait that long. But Jesus Christ has been waiting for eternity for His inheritance, perfect patience. And this is what made Jesus Christ so fantastic, he was totally future oriented.
Now the second clause in verse 2 that describes Christ’s character is a very interesting one, “by whom also He made the worlds.” Now we dealt in the first clause with the goal of history but the second clause deals with the origin of history. There you have the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. Jesus Christ is the goal of history; Jesus Christ is the origin of history, therefore Jesus Christ is absolutely separated from all prophets. NO prophet will ever claim to be the goal of history or ever claim to be the origin of history and have it verified.
Now let’s look at that clause a little closer, “by whom He made the world.” It’s very interesting, those of you who have Greek, you’ll notice that before the word, poieo, to make, before the verb to make you’ll see a kai. Now normally you’ve probably been taught kai means “and.” This is one case, or one of the many cases in the Greek text where it doesn’t mean “and,” it means “indeed” or “even so” or “even.” Now the way this should read then with kai placed before the verb is: “By whom He even made the world,” that’s the emphasis. “By whom He even made the world.” Not only is He goal, but He even is the origin of history. See, the kai emphasizes the action of that verb and the action of the verb is to originate history. And so when it says kai or even, it means that added to the fact that Christ is the goal, Christ is also the origin. You’ll also notice the word “by” in the Greek is dia and that is the preposition of intermediate agency. That means Jesus Christ was the means by which the Father made history… the means by which the Father made history.
Now there’s a proof for Christ’s deity here. If Jesus Christ is dia, the One through whom God made history, turn to Romans 11:36. In Romans 11:36 you read: “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things,” now that’s obviously talking about God, but if you’ll notice the “through Him” is dia, and there it says that all things are through God, and the parallel passage in Hebrews says dia, all things are through the Son and it shows, therefore, the Son is cast directly into the role of God. No monotheistic Jew can make that mistake without claiming Christ is God. An Indian, a Greek, yeah, but not a monotheistic Jew. You can’t get your way out of this; this is clearly ascribing to Christ the works of God Himself.
Back to Hebrews, “by whom,” or “through whom He made,” “through whom He made the worlds” the King James says and that’s a good translation. The Greek word, aionos, aionos usually means age but in rabbinic literature it had a Jewish flavor to it. You can’t just use the direct Greek meaning here; aionos means the entire age of history, including spatial dimensions in it, everything in it, so it’s translated “worlds.” What are the “worlds.” We call it dispensations. Let’s look at world history; before the flood you have the antediluvian era. If you have a classic dispensational background it usually breaks down into the dispensation of innocence, the dispensation of conscience and right after the flood the dispensation of human government. But that whole thing can be classified, the whole antediluvian period can be classified as the time of the Gentiles in the sense that the means, there weren’t any Jews, there were just Gentiles. Gentiles in this case means goiim, the nation, and there were no special nations, they were just the people. So during this period you have the Gentiles.
Then, the next great age begins with
Abraham and extends down to Jesus Christ and that is the age of
So when it says in Hebrews 1:2 “through
whom God the Father” programmed, you might say, He programmed the ages of
history through Jesus Christ. Now I want
you to notice something the author is doing to us. The author is going to say something later on
about why we should pay attention to Christ’s words and He doesn’t use the
approach most Christians would use. Most
Christians would come to this and say Jesus said so therefore believe it. Well, that’s true but it isn’t true enough
because you haven’t defined who Jesus is that’s doing the saying that you
should believe. So what the author is
doing at the very start, notice what he’s doing, He is going back to the basic
foundation, creation itself and he’s laying his groundwork there. He’s making a fantastic cosmic picture of
Christ, so that prophet of
Now in Hebrews 1:3 he has several more things to say about Christ but these all begin not with “whom,” but “Who.” And this shows you that we are now moving away from the main verb of verse 2, speaking, and now we’re almost on a parenthesis, though it’s not really a parenthesis. We’re moving over to consider the personal of the Son, not apart from the Father but… the idea is it’s more focused on the Son than it is on the Father. So “Who” indicates a shift of emphasis. Verse 3 emphasizes the Son; we’ve moved away from the act of revealing more now to the character of the Son. Now some things are going to be said about Christ that are even more astounding than those things said about Him in verse 2.
“Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,” now entire church fights down through history have been made on this one verse. “Who, being,” those of you with the original text will see oun, here you have the participle, the present participle “to be,” and that’s unusual that that is there, you don’t usually have that; that is emphasizing His abiding character. And this participle, “who being” means that from eternity to eternity this is the Son, there never was a time when Jesus Christ was not this, including when He hung in utter humiliation on the cross outside of Jerusalem. He was still, even that moment, “the brightness of His glory.” See, the “being,” this oun, indicates continually this was His nature, moment by moment by moment by moment by moment by moment, from eternity to eternity, there never was a time when Jesus Christ was not this. You see the titanic claims that are being made for Christ in these verses. There never was a time when Jesus Christ was not “the brightness of His glory.”
Let’s look a little bit at “brightness,” the word “brightness.” This is a word which in the original is apaugasma and when you get the ma on the end of a noun in the New Testament, generally it refers to the substance of an action, just a little hint on memorizing what nouns mean. That is usually a key that the emphasis is on the content, the substance of something. Now this comes from a verb which means to shine forth. It means to… just a light turns on and blazes away. In fact, probably the best translation of the verb stem behind this noun is “blazing away,” and if it’s ma on the end of it, it means what is blazed away by that action. So this is the blazing forth, the shining forth of His glory… the shining forth of His glory.
Now this, therefore, indicates the
light. You know John would use the word,
“the light of the world” and so, “the light of truth,” this is an equivalent
term. Those of you with a Greek text are
going to notice something else, there’s no article in front of this, no article
at all. Now what does a lack of an
article and a noun usually mean? It
emphasizes the character again. This has
very astounding implications. I said
that usually in the English text you can get everything you need for your
Christian life, but here’s one of those little tidbits that you can pick up by
knowing something of the original languages.
This particular noun, coming as it does in this text, without the
article… if it said “the blazing forth of God’s glory” it would refer to a
specific blazing forth. In other words,
you might think of
But there’s no article in front of this noun so what does it mean? Without the article this noun means whenever God blazes forth it’s His Son. Jesus Christ always is God’s blazing forth, whether it’s on Sinai, whether it’s on Patmos, whether it’s to Abraham in Mesopotamia, whether it’s Adam in Eden, it doesn’t make any difference, time or place, when God’s glory blazes forth that is the Son, right there, at that moment in history. There never will be a revelation of God that is not totally centered on the person of His Son. Every revelation of God at every point for all time is always and totally centered on the Son of God. He is the blazing forth. We have to translate it in English as “the blazing forth” but in the Greek it wouldn’t. “He is blazing forth of His glory.” Or we might translate it better this way; this would probably be the best way of translating it without the article, “Jesus Christ always,” that’s to translate the present participle, “was always His,” that’s the Father’s, “His glories blazing forth.”
Now you translate it that way and you see what this loads into the picture of Jesus Christ. It’s putting a fantastic content into His person, that whenever you have God’s glory appear in history it is the Son at that point. No person can look at the glory of God and not see the Son, and this is the ultimate Christian refutation of all the religions of the world, that any religion that truly has the truth, any religion, any prophet, any teacher, any Hottentot, anybody anywhere who claims to have seen God’s glory will know that Jesus Christ is that glory because he can’t see God without seeing His glory. So “His glories blazing forth.” The Son, therefore, is the content of all revelation… ALL revelation.
Now let’s look at the word glory, “He
always is His glories blazing forth.”
Now what is this glory? What is
the glory of God? Let’s do a little
study of some passage and the first place to do some study and the first place
to do some study is the Gospel of John; John 12:40 and also turn to Isaiah
6. In John
In other words, the Jewish people of Jesus day had already rejected the available revelation through Moses and so when additional revelation came God said you didn’t listen, you weren’t listening to Me the first time, why should I tell you again, so I’m just going to confuse you so you won’t believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I’ll put a stumbling block so you’ll never be able to get the truth straightened out, you had a chance, I talked to you and talked to you and talked to you for fourteen centuries and you wouldn’t listen, so now when My Son comes some of you are going to be blind. This is a judgment. By the way, this judgment can occur on believers also; believers who are not obedient to God’s Word and play games with it, who trot around learning a little bit of Scripture and then say well, I’ll put off until tomorrow before I’ll obey, I’ll think about whether I’ll obey or not, that attitude is going to lead to your personal blindness, and I’ve seen some people who have a great deal of difficulty understanding Scripture, and the reason they do is because they didn’t obey when they were told to obey; they knew the truth once and they didn’t obey it so now they’re suffering.
But now John 12:41, look what it says,
“These things Isaiah said, when he saw” what?
“when he saw His glory, and spoke of Him.” Now “His glory” and “spoke of Him,” that is a
personal pronoun that in the context, verse 37, must be Jesus Christ. Now look at the connection here; Isaiah is
seeing whose glory? The Father’s glory or
the Son’s glory. Obviously it’s the
Son’s glory because that’s the context of this passage. Now, let’s turn back and look at Isaiah
6. Here is what the glory of God looks
like. Isaiah 6:1, “In the day that King
Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and
His train filled the temple.” Now what
Isaiah is doing here in verse 1 is that he literally, physically is in the
temple in
Isaiah 6:2, “Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly. [3] And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy,” there’s the [can’t understand word] Trinity right there, “is the LORD of hosts,” that’s the Lord of armies, “all earth is full of His glory.” Now verse 4, Isaiah takes us from looking at this vision and notice the vision occurs in the middle of real history; he’s not out on a trip somewhere, this is actually occurring in the physical temple because he turns around in verse 4 and says “And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.” In other words, there was some physical, measurable things that were occurring during this vision, it was not in Isaiah’s head. It was something objective, something external to Isaiah’s head. Isaiah was not just dreaming this. The posts were shaking in the temple and these were tremendous things if you read about them in history. They weighed many tons.
And notice what made them shake? “at the voice of Him that cried.” Whatever the noise sounds like, whatever this noise, this awesome noise that seems to accompany the glory of God, it doesn’t hurt your eardrums, because you can hear it, at Mount Sinai millions of people heard God’s voice speak the Ten Words, but whatever it is the sound is of such a frequency and such an amplitude that though it doesn’t bother the human ear drum it literally shakes the earth around it, everything begins to shake and it must give a tremendous impression of awesome power because ever person who’s ever seen this in Scriptural history is just totally…is just appalled at the power, and the power always, and I want you to notice this because it’s going to come out in Hebrews, the power in these visions of glory always comes from the voice they hear. It’s always someone speaking and it’s the spoken voice that shakes everything. Now you keep that in mind because of something we’re going to see in a moment.
Turn to Isaiah 40:5, this is a prediction of John the Baptist and I want you to know an impending John the Baptist prediction which is, of course, split into First and Second Advents, “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.” “All flesh shall see” the glory of the Lord. The next passage is in Revelation 20:23, “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did light it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Notice the difference; “the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” In other words, the glory of God looks and has the appearance of light, when you see it, it looks like light, the kind of light that you’ll never forget once you’ve seen it, but an overpowering light, and an overpowering sound, an awesome sound, and an awesome light.
We have all memorized Romans 3:23, what does that verse say? We have come short of what? “The glory of God.” Now maybe that verse means a little bit more than it used to mean to you; that’s what it comes short of, and it’s quite obvious that everyone comes short of it, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Remember Isaiah’s reaction, he’s standing there in the temple, certainly if there’s one religious leader of his time, he’s born again, he’s trusted the Lord and yet in his physical body when he sees this thing it’s immediate revulsion, he feels polluted, totally polluted. And this is the effect it always seems to have on everybody who’s ever seen this throughout history, is that when you gaze at God’s glory you suddenly feel absolutely filthy from one end to the other. It has a very heightening sense of filth; it exposes sin and it’s that filthiness, and that is, by the way, the sign of the working of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit truly works in one’s heart the result is not a (quote) “peace,” it’s quite the opposite. When God the Holy Spirit works in our lives He always heightens our sense of sin to cast us further upon grace and then there’s a peace, but only after we’ve had a renewed and deepened sense of our absolute reliance upon grace for cleansing. So “glory of God” has a sense of heightening filth, you just feel absolutely polluted and filthy in its sight.
Now let’s turn back to Hebrews and present ourselves with a theological problem in the light of the glory. We’ve got a tremendous problem that has occurred now, because if it really is the case that Jesus Christ is the flashing forth of God’s glory, how can we ever approach Christ? If it’s true that in the presence of God’s glory we always feel filthy, it always exposes our sin and our corruptness, how then can Christ ever be the mediator that comes between God and man? How can this be, the One who Himself is that flashing forth of the glory of God, the One who causes the very sense of sin, how can that One be the mediator that touches man with one hand and touches God with the other, how can Christ fulfill the mediatorial office if He Himself partakes of God’s glory? How can that be?
The answer is given in the last of verse 3; we’re not going to get into the details of the answer but I want to set you up for later on when we do deal with it. Notice how in the first part of verse 3 it deals with Christ’s glory; why immediately after dealing with the glory does it say in the last part of verse 3, “when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” You see the close intimate connection; Christ could not be our mediator unless He did something about the filth, the filth that comes to light when God shines His searchlight on our hearts. Think of this, if forever Christ is going to expose sin and do nothing about it, how can He be a Savior. You would never love Him, you would never enter into a personal relationship with Him, it would be just like you… [tape turns] The only way we can get close to Christ is because of what He Himself has done to take care of the sin problem. That’s the only reason. That’s why Christ’s mediatorship is dealt with in these passages.
We’ve worked enough with the first clause,
“Who, being the brightness of His glory,” now the next one, “the express image
of His person,” the word “express image” comes from the Greek word from which
we get the word “character.” It was used
in Classical Greek for the coins; you’d have the coin like this and you’d stamp
it with a die, and on the bottom of this thing you’d have the mark that it
would leave on the coin. That mark was
called the caractar [sp?], the
character, this is the sign of what the die would do. Now that later on came to be the trait of
someone. For example, think of someone
you know. You can undoubtedly list
certain traits, certain things that distinguish them. If that’s the case, then this word
“character” means the distinguishing trait.
I want you to see how powerful this phrase is; if you read over it quick
you’ll never get it. But look at it,
“the express image,” that should be the character or the distinguishing trait
“of His person.”
We haven’t got to time to go into why the King James translation translates
“person,” it’s a problem that they have with the doctrine of Trinity at the
time, but this doesn’t mean the person of God, this word, hypostasis, you probably recognize the word from the hypostatic
union of Jesus Christ. But hypostasis means the foundation or the
essence. Now look at what a powerful
statement you’ve got for the deity of Christ.
“The distinguishing trait of His essence,” could you ask for a more potent
declaration of the Son’s deity than this?
The word hypostasis refers to
divine essence. The word “express image”
means the chief characteristic. Think of
all the characteristics of deity; Christ is the distinguishing trait of all
that. Now that clearly declares Hid
deity.
But there’s more to this verse and we have to go on to see the rest of it. “Who, not only being the brightness of His glory, the character of His essence,” He now is said to do something else. He is said to “uphold all things.” Before we go on to that one we want to tie together the first part of verse 3 with these two statements. First, He is the shining forth and second He is the distinguishing trait. All of these together refer to a role or a picture of Christ not usually discussed. Usually people say Christ fulfils the office of priest, King and prophet. Well, I’m here to tell you that Christ fulfills the fourth office, the office of Wisdom, with a capital “W.” Christ fulfills this office.
Turn to Proverbs 8:22; remember from the Proverbs series what wisdom is? It’s skill in living. Try to follow this one carefully because it could mean a change in your attitude toward certain things in the Word of God. I hope if some of you are afflicted with the problem I’m going to mention that this truly be an answer that the Spirit would give you in this area. Wisdom means skill in the every day world; certainly we’ve established that from the Proverbs series; all right, nothing ethereal, mystical, philosophical, abstract about the word “wisdom,” it just means skill in the everyday world, all the details of life, skill, chokmah. The person who has chokmah is the good craftsman that works with his hands with the metal or the wood; the woman who sews is a skilled craftsman, she has chokmah; that’s what chokmah means in the Bible, skill in coping with the everyday world.
Now, verse 22-26 makes a titanic claim.
“The LORD possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of
old.” The word “possessed” there is the
word which can mean to bring forth by birth; here’s the begetting, the eternal
begottenness of wisdom. “The LORD begat
me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. [23] I was set up from eternity, from the
beginning, before the world was. [24] When
there were no depths, I was brought forth—when there were no fountains
abounding with water. [25] Before the
mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth. [26] While as ye He had not made the earth,
nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.” [27, “When He prepared the heavens, I was
there; when He set a compass upon the face of the depth; [28] When He
established the clouds above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep;
[29] When He gave to the sea its decree, that the waters should not pass His
commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the earth, [30] Then I was by
him, as one brought up with him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always
before Him, [31] Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and my delight
was with the sons of men.”
This is explaining as powerfully as can be done in Old Testament language that when Yahweh preexisted, when He made the world, as it were, He put forth Wisdom and then together Wisdom and Jehovah made the universe. Now if wisdom means the everyday world, the structure of the every day world, the reason the universe has wisdom (with a little “w”), the reason why wisdom with a little “w” works in everyday details of life is because the universe as a whole was made with a Wisdom, capital “W”. The form of the universe, the structure of the universe, was determined from something outside of the universe. We call this the transcendent wisdom.
Another illustration: you deal in science with physical laws, the laws of nature. The Jew would say no laws of nature, huh-un, nope, no laws of nature. You had the Law, so to speak, capitalized as a person, and nature has laws in it because of the One who made it. Nature, in other words, bears the characteristic of Wisdom. Now this doesn’t mean that Jehovah got separated from His own Wisdom. This is just the two personalities of the Trinity, the first and second personalities under the Old Testament concept of wisdom. And we don’t have time, I could go into how this is developed in the wisdom of Solomon, about 150 BC, some of you have come out of a Catholic background of you have an Apocrypha somewhere, if you look up Wisdom of Solomon, chapter 7, verse 25-26 you’ll find an amazing passage there that shows this concept of wisdom with Philo and so on had developed to prepare the way for Christ.
This passage now, as we turn back to Hebrews, this passage pictures Jesus Christ as the Wisdom, even though the word “Wisdom” isn’t here, this is Christ’s role and this explains why, you see in the last part of verse 2 he said “by Whom He even made” or even designed history, history has chokmah behind it. Whose chokmah? Christ’s. “Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,” now if we have dealt with this point with creation, we now in this author’s attempt to blow up, to amplify, to enlarge our picture of who the Son is, he now deals with the second great problem, the problem of providence. And so the last part, “upholding all things by the Word of His power.” Now the word “uphold” is a Greek word which means to phero, literally, it means to carry, it doesn’t mean to just uphold in the sense of Atlas, holding the globe on His back, that’s not the picture here. It’s not the picture of Christ holding the physical universe in His hands. Now that’s a true picture but it’s too static; so far we haven’t dealt with anything but moving history. Verse 2 is moving history; verse 3 is some abiding character. This phero is in the present participle form, so it’s something that continues, continues, continues, continues, continues, continues, continues, continues. And it means to bear in a dynamic sense.
I’ll give you a fine illustration from
Numbers
Now with the dynamic idea behind it, reread Hebrews 1:3; don’t read it any more as Christ statically holding the universe that never changes in His hands. It’s not that at all, it’s more powerful than that. “Who upholding” means “who carrying all things.” In other words, He’s behind history, as history creeps forward Christ is the One behind the scenes that’s moving the history along. I don’t like to use the word “puppets” because it conveys determinism. But the idea is that if you can visualize all of history as one puppet, all of history together, it’s Christ that you don’t see that’s pulling the strings. That’s the picture. He is “upholding all things.” Now again, a little fine point from the original text. “He is upholding all things,” this time “all things” has the article, ta, “all things;” that means the whole thing, not all individual things, if it said “all things” without the article it would be just a lot of little details, here’s Christ holding up all these little details. It’s more magnificent than that. Christ is on a moment by moment by moment by moment by moment base holding the whole thing in His hands, moving history this way. That’s the picture.
Now, do you see what this author has done to the person of Christ in trying to
prepare us to listen to Him. He hasn’t
even said anything about what Christ has said yet; all he’s concerned with is
that we first understand who Jesus is.
He doesn’t have a sign, “Honk if you love Jesus.” He has a great philosophical discourse on who
this person, Jesus Christ is, first.
Now there’s something more in this clause. “Who carrying along the whole thing,” that’s literally the way to translate it, “the whole thing,” it means the whole portion of history, all the ages fit together, He carries the whole thing along, “by the word of His power,” now “the word of His power,” or it can be translated “His most powerful word,” there are two words in the Greek that can be used for “word.” One is logos, very familiar, that can be translated word, that’s the one in John that’s usually used; then they have another one, actually kind of an “h” here, hrama, and this also means word but it means a spoken word. It refers to an utterance. So like we have two English words, we have word, w-o-r-d, and then we have the word utterance. Well, if you want to translate it to be nitpicky about this it should be translated by utterance, “by the utterance,” “His most powerful utterance.”
Now look at the dynamic potent thing this does. Jesus Christ is guiding history, guiding it mind you, by His spoken Word. What did we see back in the vision of the glory of Isaiah, when just the seraphim were saying “Holy, holy, holy,” God wasn’t even speaking there, just the seraphim were just simply saying “Holy, holy, holy” and these multi ton rocks start to shake as Isaiah watches. Do you know what the author Hebrews is saying? Christ is speaking and history is moving. That’s how powerful Christ’s words are. The seraphim moved the pillars in the temple; Jesus Christ speaks and he moves history. Now that is the kind of Christ that’s going to be doing the talking from now on in this epistle, and you can see why.
Now where does this powerful word come from? That’s also pulled out of the creation narrative. Remember in the creation narrative it says, “God said, Let there be light.” And what happens? There’s light. Do you realize what has just happened there? The word “light” means visible energy, God just said “Let there be light,” poof, suddenly energy, billions and billions and billions of quantities of energy suddenly there, that was the word of His power, the spoken word, He said it and it was true.
Now there was another famous verse in the Scriptures that depict creation as a work of God’s spoken Word and I want to take you there in conclusion, Psalm 33:9; you think of this now, Jesus Christ is the One who speaks and moves history. What a titanic picture; can you imagine sitting down here watching some unbelieving historian say boy, I’ve worked fifteen years and I’ve unlocked the secret of history and he has this formula all made up that he can understand all the historical facts and Christ speaks a word, tomorrow it’s outmoded. Just like Christ, you know, you really think you understand it bud, try this one on for size, and He speaks and history changes course. Now that is the picture, the Biblical picture of history; not the picture of Hegel, not some absolute spirit that just sort of grinds on but a speaking Christ controls history.
Look at Psalm 33:9, “For He spoke and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” That’s it. There’s no ifs, there’s no ands, no buts, no excuses, He speaks and it’s done. Do you get a hint as to what the author of Hebrews is working up to about Christians who hear the Word and nothing happens? How incongruous, this author is going to point out later on, here the same One who spoke the universe into existence, He spoke and it was done and He speaks to you and nothing happens. Or you think nothing is happening and the author is going to say huh-un, if you have heard the words of Jesus Christ speak something is happening and it’s blessing or its cursing but don’t you think you’re neutral; you are being blessed or you are being damned, one or the other, but the words that come out of this mouth are never ignored and can never be escaped from. These words have compelling force, they have total authority because it goes all the way back to the foundation. Christ’s words are the words that spoke the universe into existence; they are the words that guide history and those same words are addressed to those who supposedly follow Him as Savior. That’s going to be the pattern. Do you get the idea now that the author of Hebrews has a high view of Scripture. He’s one of those fundies that believes that these words are meant to be read literally and to be obeyed and have power in and of themselves.