Clough Hebrews Lesson 7
Christ
is
If you look at the first handout sheet that
will give you the outline of chapter 1 and I want to add to that so this is the
way it looks. Hebrews 1:1-14, the whole
section we can say is God the Father who Has spoken by His Son who is superior
to all angels. And then we said in
Hebrews 1:1-4 that we have here a summary of the Son as God’s superior revealer
and we spent considerable time on the first four verses because these first
four verses deal with the areas of theology known as Christology or the
doctrine of Christ. And you ought to
know some of the proofs for the deity of Christ. What are some verses in the New Testament
that specifically label Jesus as God? [people answer] John 1:1-2 which clearly teaches Jesus deity
unless you buy the Watchtower mistranslation.
I John 5:20, the last verse in 1 John, this is eternal life through God.
Titus 2:13, a very critical verse.
Another one, John
Now what are some other lines of evidence that you get in the discussion about the deity of Christ? Jesus is God because of what beside the verses that specifically state so. What’s one of the main lines of argument in the New Testament toward this end? [people answer] There are verses where the Son is placed in a Triune relationship, two specifically, one at the end of 2 Corinthians and one at the end of Matthew; one is a baptismal formula and one is a blessing formula. But what is the main thing that you encounter over and over and over and over in the New Testament that points to Christ’s deity. This happens again and again and again, over and over; what is the argument? Jesus Christ is pictured as doing things that only God can do, such as forgiving sins. Now he’s not saying “I say God has forgiven sins,” Jesus says I forgive you your sins. That’s a declaration of deity. Jesus manifests certain attributes of God doesn’t He, in these actions that He does. He’s said to be the Creator, obviously a claim to deity.
But now another line of reasoning, the attributes of God Jesus shows in His life and so on, what’s another line? [someone answers] All right, that is your most powerful evidence because if you’re in an argument with somebody, Jehovah’s Witnesses or somebody else comes up to you and says well, the New Testament says… they can always get away from most of the other verses, they can get away from the God verses by saying it’s a god or something, but when you have the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament and where in the Old Testament it’s said Jehovah does something and when it’s requited in the New and says Jesus does something you’ve got something powerful there and that is the main line of evidence in the New Testament for Christ’s deity; the Old Testament quotations are reused with Yahweh’s name dropping out and Jesus’ name replacing it. Now if that isn’t a claim to deity I don’t know what is. It’s very, very foolish to try and get around that piece of evidence. You might as well just say the whole New Testament blasphemes by calling somebody less than God than trying to get around that evidence.
All right, tonight we want to continue on;
verses 1-4 we have seen certain things about Christ. Verse 3-4 that we dealt with last week, what
is the name that is used in theological circles to describe Christ’s humanity
and Christ’s deity? The hypostatic
union. The doctrine of the hypostatic
union. Can anyone give the elements of
the doctrine of the hypostatic union, the formula that was worked out by our
forefathers in the faith at
Let’s start with Hebrews 1:5. We have dealt with all of Jesus’ person and His work, now beginning at verse 5 we have the proof. The author is going to prove the first four verse. Remember the epistle to the Hebrews probably was originally given as a synagogue address. Now just think, here a man gets up in a Jewish synagogue and testifies to these things and he just does it, just in the course of the conversation. Go home and read Hebrews and figure out how long it takes. That’s how long this man spoke. Now at the average way we speak, the average speed of our voice, think of how much content this man taught this group. And here we have been four weeks on his first four verses. Do you know long it takes, it takes less than a minute to speak the first four verses. In less than one minute this man, addressing a synagogue somewhere in the ancient world to believers taught them more doctrine than we have studied in four hours so far. We have spent at least four hours on these four verses and he taught this within sixty seconds. Now that shows you the tremendous level of comprehension of doctrine in the early church. Don’t let anyone ever say you can get too much of the Word of God. Huh-un, never! Until you can perceive and understand all the complex doctrines of Christ and Christology in sixty seconds or less then you don’t come anywhere near the comprehension of the first century believers. So it just goes to show you what we’re up against as far as the way we have to go yet.
Now the proof, let me give you the argument that’s going to be repeated over and over and over in this, then we’ll deal with it. But the proof is given in verse 5-14 and it’s divided in half. Verses 5-6 and then verses 7-14. Verses 5-6 prove that the King-priest is greater than angels with respect to authority, and verses 7-14 with respect to power. Okay, authority verses 5-6; power 7-14. What is the difference between authority and power? Authority means that you have a position, you have a legal position. In other words, you could have power but no authority to exercise it.
For example, you may have a gun and you may
have the power in the gun to kill someone but you don’t have authority to kill
someone. On the other hand, you can have
the authority, such as civil government, lawful civil government has, you may
have the authority to kill someone through capital punishment and have no power
to do it because the Supreme Court or some other bleeding heart took away
capital punishment. So you can have one
without the other but you have to have both to make things work right. You have to have both authority and power;
authority gives you the right to use the power and the power is there to make
sure the authority is used. This is why
every nation must have an armed force because there is no international law,
there is no international government and there is no international
authority. All nations life, so to
speak, autonomously, with regard to international law. And the only thing that we have to back up
the
Now the argument here, we’re going to study this one tonight, that the king-priest is superior to angels because of his authority, and later we’ll deal with because of his power. Now in both verses 5-6 or in verses 7-14 the argument proceeds this way; here’s the logic of the argument:
Point one, this is the syllogism that’s developed. Three steps; the first step is that Messiah is greater than the angels. Second step, Jesus is the Messiah. Third step, therefore Jesus is greater than the angels. Now the second step of the syllogism is assumed. Why? Who read this thing? We re the readers believers or unbelievers mostly? Believers. Well, obviously if they’re believers then they have already been convinced that Jesus is Messiah. So this is unstated point in the syllogism, it’s assumed throughout. But what the author is trying to do for believers is to strengthen their faith. Hebrews is here to strengthen your faith. And it does so by going back to the Old Testament and showing just what is involved in the office of Messiah, so that when you say I believe Jesus is the Messiah it means something. They probably had a lot of people that went around, “do you love Jesus” in the first century and this person was trying to say well you can’t love Jesus until you know something about Messiah from the Old Testament. You have to have the Old Testament. If you didn’t the Holy Spirit would never have preserved it. Now it took the Holy Spirit a lot of energy and time to preserve the Old Testament down through the centuries if it was wholly unnecessary. Obviously it is necessary for us.
So the Messiah is greater than the angels, Old Testament. Therefore Jesus is greater than the angels. Now let’s see how he reasons. Hebrews 1:5-6, “For unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee? And again, I will be to Him a Father, and Human spirit shall be to Me a Son? [6] And again, when He brings the first-begotten into the world, he says, And let all the angels of God worship Him.” “… let all the angels of God worship Him.”
The first word in verse 5, “For,” whenever you see “for” in the text it’s a red flag for you, just slow down because this verse explains something to you. You’ve had an assertion in the first verse, now “for” and here we have reasons why. “For,” so you’re going to have an explanation. That particle, immediately, before we go any further, should clue you to watch it, here comes an explanation for something. “For unto which of the angels said He at any time,” now the word “said” is a past tense, it’s an aorist and it refers to past time. “unto which of the angels said He at any time,” that means any time up until the present. So here’s the present, and here’s all the way back to the Old Testament era, during this time, fourteen centuries that we have of the written text, during this time did God ever address this to His angels. In other words, the challenge is go back to the Old Testament and find out whether any of the angels were recipients of this kind of authority.
Now when since this is our first quote, a real strong quote from the Old Testament, I want to give you some pointers on this author’s use of the Old Testament. We’re going to see this again and again and again. I’ve summarized this, we’ll see more as we go along, but I’ve summarized it as follows; there’s five points.
The first point is that he quotes 29 Old Testament passages in the course of this book; 29 passages. That’s a pretty good record; some of them are quoted more than once but there are 29 Old Testament passages. Of those 23 are from the Pentateuch and the Psalms. Now look at that, that tells you a lot about the author right away. Out of 29 quotations from the Old Testament 23 are from the Pentateuch and the Psalms. What is the Pentateuch? Someone define it. The Law; the first five books of the Bible. Penta, five, the first five books are called the Pentateuch, and the Psalms. What does this tell you about this man? Why would you tend to quote from the Pentateuch of the Old Testament rather than, say, quoting from Isaiah or Jeremiah? Just think of the progress of revelation.
Why would it be important for you to quote from the Pentateuch? [someone answers] Well, the prophets record direct visions too. Anybody got another reason. [someone else answers] Because the laws…. All right, the laws are set up, you’re getting hot now, just one more step, the laws are set up here and what? The Pentateuch is the basis for the old covenant. In other words, this author is going back to the original revelation, isn’t he? He’s not going back to the later revelations, he’s going back to the first revelation in the whole Bible. He goes back and he quotes even from Genesis.
So he goes all the way back to the
foundation, that’s why he’s quoting from the Pentateuch so much. He doesn’t bother with a lot of details of
Why do you suppose he goes to the Psalms so much. Just think of a normal, what we would say a church service. With what would the people be most familiar with? What did they sing? They sung the Psalms. So he is quoting from their hymn books; the Pentateuch and their hymn books. The Psalms refer to a… the hymn book of the synagogue and so he is quoting from these and that’s the first thing, that he quotes 29 passages, 23 from the Pentateuch and the Psalms.
The second point about his use of the Old Testament; every reference to Jesus Christ, except one, is from the Psalms. Christ and the Psalms. Now isn’t that interesting, you’d think he could quote from all those beautiful prophetic passages in Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 9, Isaiah 7, could quote from all the other wonderful things that point to the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet when he discusses His person and His office he uses the Psalms, probably because the Psalms depict the problem of Christ’s personal life and His office.
The third interesting thing about it, He quotes his passages without reference to the author. This is interesting; he quotes his Old Testament passages but never tells you who wrote it. Now we can go back in the Old Testament and we can find out, but he doesn’t tell us. Now what does this characteristic remind you about the whole book of Hebrews? [someone answers] Okay, he’s trying to diminish the humanness of the authority of Scripture and emphasize the Holy Spirit’s work but what is true of the epistle of Hebrews itself. He doesn’t tell us who he is either, does he. This seems to be a characteristic of the man’s mentality. He doesn’t tell who wrote these passages of the Old Testament, nor does he tell us who wrote his own epistle. He doesn’t tell us who he is. His only concern is the words that God speaks, regardless of who spoke them. So the third point, he never tells us the author.
The fourth point about his use of the Old Testament, he doesn’t make any difference between the past written word and the present spoken word… the past written word equals the present speaking words. For example, he says, “The Holy Spirit today says,” but then he’s point to a Psalm that’s ten centuries old. Why didn’t he say “the Holy Spirit said ten centuries ago,” something. Why does this author say “the Holy Spirit says today,” but he quotes a written Scripture written ten centuries before; what’s his emphasis here? Anybody, what’s his emphasis here? By constantly doing this, he does this all the time in this book. What do you think he’s trying to do? He doesn’t quote it as past. [someone says Scriptures are never out of date] More than Scriptures are never out of date but what else could you say. [can’t hear] God’s immutable and eternal, but His Words, once addressed into history, are or continuing validity.
In other words, don’t look down on the Old Testament, well, that’s ten centuries old, like we could look down, oh, the Bible’s twenty centuries old. Tough! God still says present tense, today in 1973, “these are My words.” A lot of people are going to be shook up when they finally get evaluated because they’re going to say well, I didn’t know about that Lord; oh yes you did, you read My Word and I told you. When did you tell me Lord? Every time you read the Book I told you. I didn’t know it was You telling Me. Yes you did, you just weren’t interested in listening to what I was saying to you. But God’s Word is present tense, regardless of the fact that the canon is closed.
Now the fifth point in the use of the Old Testament. He concerns Christian faith by exposing the pattern of history. His method is to help us believe more by exposing before us God’s perfect pattern to history. I find it most interesting; every type and antitype shows this. Here’s what a type is. Suppose we have a type and an antitype. A type would be David and Christ would be the antitype. What does that mean? It would mean that the sovereign God of history has put things into David’s life that correspond to things in Christ’s life. And so you see that history is carefully controlled by the decrees of God. There are no accidents; Chance does not rule, God’s sovereign decrees rule all things, everything, evil or God, God’s decrees rule all. So that means, though, our faith will be confirmed in trusting and relaxing and just resting in the God who is that kind of a God, who is so powerful that He can, ten centuries between these men, work it out so that David’s life is a picture of Christ’s life. A God who has that control over history, the argument would go, would have control over the details in your life, and so there’s the confirming nature to this.
Let’s look at verse 5 again. “For unto which of the angels said He,” now there is a past tense, “said he at any time,” it’s the past tense and not present because he’s saying at any time in the Old Testament can you find out whenever God said any such thing. Then he says, (quote), this is a quotation of Psalm 2:7, “Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.” Now this speaks of the Sonship of Jesus Christ. There are two parts to the Sonship of Jesus Christ. There is the eternal Sonship of Christ and there is the temporal Sonship of Christ. The eternal Sonship of Christ is immutable; it expresses an eternal relationship between the First and Second Personalities of the Trinity and it has to be eternal because if there is no eternal Sonship, then you’re going to have some sort of a… well, let me ask you, if somebody came up two or three times and asked me, I can see where Psalm 2 would be applied to a king, I can see where Psalm 2 is used here of Christ that when He ascended He became a Son… he became a Son, but how do you get this eternal Sonship. I can see the temporal Sonship but I can’t see the eternal Sonship. Why is it necessary for us to believe in and eternal Sonship?
Let’s start thinking theologically. Why is it necessary to go beyond mere temporal Sonship and go into an eternal Sonship? Why is this important? [someone answers] No, we could argue that Christ became the intercessor. [someone else] All right, if you have Christ becoming a Son you’ve got a change, don’t you? You’ve got a change in the relationship between the First and Second Personalities of the Trinity. But what does that do to your attribute of immutability? How can God be unchanging and yet all of a sudden now inside the Trinity you’re inventing a change that’s happened. You can’t have that. So out of respect for the attribute of immutability we say God the Son was eternally the Son.
Another feature that flows out of this is that if the Sonship is only temporal and not eternal, it doesn’t reveal anything about the Godhead. Do you see that? If it’s just a temporal thing it can’t reflect what’s eternally true of the Godhead and if it doesn’t reflect what is eternally true of the God head then we don’t know anything about God. So you can talk about the Son all you want to and that doesn’t communicate anything about what God really is like. So the eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ is something that we must adhere to and the Church for all time has done this. God the Father eternally begat God the Son; it means He didn’t begin at a point in time like Arius, the Arians and the latter day Arians such as liberalism and Jehovah’s Witnesses believe. There was never a beginning to the Son; the Son was always eternally the Son and the point about Sonship in the eternal plain is that it describes the relationship, a relationship between those of equal nature. The Son has the same nature as the Father. And by saying that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son we say Jesus Christ is as much God as God the Father. So it’s necessary that we dogmatically teach an eternal Sonship. Jesus Christ always was the eternal Son of God.
But now we also have a temporal, apparently
a temporal Sonship. Now what about this,
what about this temporal Sonship thing.
There are six areas in the Bible that show Christ, so to speak, becoming
a Son, that appear to contradict everything I’ve just said, that there’s such a
thing as an eternal Sonship. Let’s look;
the first one is Adam. Adam was given
dominion, this is inferred in Psalm 8, to rule and the role that Adam plays in
Psalm 8 is the same as Christ’s so we can presume that mankind, so to speak,
here is cast in the sonship role, the first Adam. Second is an Old Testament king was the son
of God, Psalm 2. Third relationship,
Jesus Christ virgin birth, Acts 13:32.
In Acts
Now all those areas is when, so to speak, He begat the Son. So obviously what do we say then? That these six points in history are points are points where the eternal Sonship is revealed. So in back of the temporal Sonship of Jesus Christ lies the eternal Sonship that comes to the surface, more potently with each passing historic event Christ’s Sonship is depicted in more powerful terms. What next in the plan of God is going to reveal Christ’s Sonship even more powerful than it is today? When Jesus Christ comes to set up His kingdom in the millennium, that’s the next act and that certainly will show His Sonship like nothing ever has before and presumably when Jesus Christ begins the millennium all earth will hear the words, “This is My Son, in whom I am well-pleased, this day have I begotten Him.” And at that point Jesus Christ, so to speak, becomes the Son before the eyes of men, but He always was the Son in the eyes of God.
Now let’s go to the next verse; the next verse is parallel, [5b] “And again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me as a Son.” That is a quotation of 2 Samuel 7:14. It’s parallel with Psalm 2, it teaches the same thing. Let’s turn to 2 Samuel 7. Historically, by the way, this is where the Son of God concept got a big boost in the Old Testament. 2 Samuel 7:14, see how this man expected his readers to know the Old Testament? Now here’s the picture. God rules through a king rather than ruling the creation directly. He rules through a king; the king is the focus of authority. God’s authority is dispensed through the king. That’s why He says, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son.” And verse 16, “And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever,” that is David’s house, the line of David, and in the time in which Jesus Christ lived and just prior to Christ’s life, throughout the Ancient East in Jewish circles there was an intense Messianic fervor that identified the son of David with the Son of God.
To show how this came about turn to the Gospel of Luke 1:32. This was when the angel made the announcement to Mary and the angel told her about her baby and he told her, “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.” Now the word “Highest” was just a Jewish idiom for God; they referred to heaven, highest power, just as synonyms for God Himself. He “shall be called the Son of God; and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father, David.” See the consciousness of David there. Then again in Luke 1:68, [67] “Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit prophesied, saying, [68] “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He has visited and redeemed His people, [69] And has raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant, David. [70] As he spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began; [71] That we should be saved from our enemies.” Isn’t that interesting in verse 70, Since creation. He has raised up an horn of salvation in the house of David.
Now to show you that this happened in areas
other than the New Testament, it was quite prevalent in the ancient world, I
have before me, I’ll read a section of it to you, a passage from the Dead Sea
Scrolls. This is called A Messianic Florilegium and what that
means, it’s a commentary that they found at
‘The reference here is talking about I will
appoint a place for my people
Let’s read further: “What, in fact, God here declares is that in the future there shall be built for Him a sanctuary,” and this is the bombshell, “a sanctuary built out of mankind itself, not out of brick, built out of mankind itself,” remember what we studied in Ephesians? Now this is before Christ. This is the way the Jewish people were thinking before Christ came. You see, the New Testament wasn’t that new. “A sanctuary in which performance of the things laid down in the Law shall rank as equivalent to the burning of incense in His presence, for as His saying today that I will give thee rest from all they enemies, this means that God will then give them rest from all those sons of Belial who put stumbling blocks in their way in order to compass their rack and ruin,” etc. etc. etc.
Now the passage that is directing to us
tonight is this next one in the same thing.
It’s called The Scion of David
and this is how the
This is why the author to this epistle doesn’t bother to prove to us that the Son of David is the Messiah; that has already flooded the whole culture. He doesn’t have to prove that; the people that he’s talking to already know that, that the Son of David is the Messiah. So that is why when you read, if you turn back to our passage, you read this and you know it’s a quote from 2 Samuel and you know that it’s talking about David, you wonder, wait a minute, there’s a step of logic missing here, how can you go from what’s talking about David over to Christ, or over to Messiah. Well, here’s how they do it. From David to the greater David, and the greater David is the Messiah. And then of course the author goes to Jesus, who is that Messiah. But this step of logic, going from David to the greater David has already been done, so the author of this epistle doesn’t bother with that since everybody buys that anyway. He just builds on where his audience is, the greater David, and he then shows that Jesus is the greater David.
Now let’s go to Hebrews 1:6. Verses 5 and 6 teach Christ, or the Messiah’s superiority and authority and verse 5 is simply saying this; look, here’s God and here are angels and here’s the world. You’re going to get a heavy dose of angelology in this epistle so let me warn you about that. Look what he’s saying; he’s saying that God… [tape turns]
…and we’ll see how startling their picture of physical reality was, where they believed that angels could transform themselves into fire and appear in non-living form. That was how vivid they pictured as the angels controlling physical creation. God rules the world through the angels. Now you see all the authority is vested in God; God never lowers the authority point down into the angels here, but God does in the case of His Son. Now the authority point is lowered into the Son He now rules the angels and the world. Now that’s the difference of administration and that’s the superiority of the authority of the Son. The Son is given the authority, He’s given the control seat. No angel was ever given the control seat. If you want to do research on this I suggest you read 1 Kings 22:19-22 and in that passage you’ll see a case in point when angels were used to affect history and they couldn’t do it directly, they had to go direct to God. The angels themselves don’t have authority, only God through Messiah has authority.
Now we come to verse 6, still trying to prove the same thing as verse 5 except it does it differently. Verse 5, “unto which of the angels said He at any time,” in other words, in the past did He ever say this, did He ever invest the angels with this kind of authority. Now we come to verse 6 and since you are the advanced people around here supposedly we have a little interpretive problem that I want you to work with here; I want you to reason this thing through so you can get a feel for how you interpret the Bible. Now we have a problem in verse 6 as to whether it should read “when He brings,” or “when He again brings His Son into the world,” or whether it reads “again when He brings His Son,” what’s the difference between those two statements? [someone answers] And which would this refer to, Second Advent or First Advent. “When He again brings His Son,” it would be Second Advent, right. Now if the “again” is out before it, it is just mean again, here’s another quote, “when He brings His Son into the world,” what advent would that be? The First Advent.
Now we’ve got an interpretation problem and I want to take you through this so you get used to seeing how you interpret Scripture. You just don’t come at this 80 miles an hour and guess. There are certain logical things you go through to figure whether this is the Second or the First Advent. Okay, in the Greek the word “again” is palin, and this word is, the question is how is it being used; is it being used to introduce a quote or is it used to attach to the verb. Those of you who have the Greek text can see that at various points, for example in verse 5, those of you with the English can see this too, in verse 5 he uses “again” as an introductory formula to a quote, doesn’t he. See where it says “again,” “And again,” comma, “I will be to Him a Father,” in other words he says here’s another quote and he uses palin to refer to this.
Now if palin is an introductory formula, then what advent would you think, First or Second, if palin is being used here as a simple introductory formula. It’d be the First Advent. However, the word that is used in the Greek with palin here is a little word, d-e, de, and this can mean in the Greek “and” or it can mean “but,” it can be used as an adversative or a simple connective. This shows you how nitpicky you have to be. To interpret how the de is used, whether it refers to “and” or “but” you have to go in the context. And if you go in the context you find out in verse 8, “But unto the Son he says,” the word translated “but” is de, d-e, and it’s obviously not connective there, is it. In verse it is adversative, it contrasts verse 7 and verse 8; verse 7, “And of the angels He says ….” And then verse 8, “But of the Son, he says….” So de is used there as an adversative. Then in verse 13, at the end of the chapter, verse 12, “And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up,” etc. verse 13, “But to which of the angels said he at any time,” and that word “but” is de again, so de is used there as an adversative. Now if de is used there as an adversative we have established on the basis of context a preference for the author’s use of de which is as an adversative, not connective. So learning this from the context we now come back to check that particle, de in verse 6, “And again,” so if verse 6, in verse 6 de is an adversative it sets verse 5 off from verse 5.
Now let’s go back; if verse 6 is to be sharply contrasted to verse 5, then what Advent is it? The Second Advent isn’t it? Verse 5 would be the First Advent and verse 6 would be the Second Advent. Now you say well Clough, are you going to establish an interpretation just on the use of de from the context. No, we have another event and that is also in verse 6 it says, “when He brings the first-begotten into the world,” oikonomia in the Greek, and that word, if you look in the context is used again in Hebrews 2:5, so let’s turn there a moment. The next place in context where oikonomia is used is referring to the present or the future? The future. Ah, second reason why we take verse 6 to be the Second Advent. Not only is de an adversative in context but the word oikonomia is used in context with something future. But that isn’t all, we’ve got another reason for taking this to be the Second Advent and that is the quote itself and where it comes from.
What does it say? “When He brings His first-begotten into the world, he says, And let all the angels of God worship Him.” That is apparently taken from Psalm 97:7. Those of you who were at the Psalm series should begin to put some things together here. Psalm 97 is what kind of a Psalm? All the Psalms in the 90s, remember what they were called, they all speak of what? They are enthronement psalms. Now, when does this enthronement occur. The enthronement Psalms refer to what do you think, First or Second Advent? Second Advent, because in Psalm 97:1, “The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice…. [2] Clouds and darkness are round about Him,… [3] A fire goes before Him….” Verse 5, “The hills melted like wax….” Verse 6, “The heavens declare His righteousness….” Verse 7, “Confounded be all those who worship graven images, that boast themselves of idols, worship him all ye gods.” And literally, “all you angels.” So it’s a call to worship, for cosmic worship to occur. And so our third reason for taking verse 6 to be the Second Advent is the context of the thing.
Now, “…let all the angels of God worship Him,” connotes what as far as the angels and their authority. How do the angels authority compare to Christ’s authority, if in the future they’re going to be worshiping Him? Doesn’t that prove the point? I’m surprised no one… I just skipped a whole point just to see if anybody was watching the argument. The one point I skipped and that is I didn’t prove that Psalm 97 refers to Messiah. It just says “The LORD reigns,” you could argue well Psalm 97 doesn’t refer to Messiah, it’s talking about the Lord. But in this time the people of Jesus’ day took the enthronement psalms to be the Messiah also, which proves… did they expect a human Messiah or a divine Messiah? If they took those enthronement psalms to be Messianic what kind of a Messiah were the Jews looking for? At least theoretically? Divine or human? A divine Messiah. The very fact that they were taking enthronement psalms in a Messianic light shows that they saw the Messiah as God Himself.
Now to get a vivid picture of the import of
what we just said in verses 5-6, that Jesus Christ has authority, the Messiah
is greater than the angels as respect to authority, therefore Jesus is greater
than the angels with respect to authority.
Now you see this all through the New Testament but I want to give you
two verses where this principle comes out.
One is in John and one is in Revelation.
Let’s turn to the one in John first; John
Now one graphic scene at the end of history when Christ is worshiped and it’s a familiar one in Revelation 5:6 but since it is such a neat picture let’s look at it again. This is what happens finally with all the angels. “And I beheld and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. [7] And he came and took the book out of the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne. [8] And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials [bowls] full of odors [incense] which are the prayers of the saints. [9] And they sang a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, to open its seals thereof; for Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; [10] And has made us into” what? What was Melchizedek? A king-priest wasn’t he? And what are we made into here? King-priests. And what does Jesus say? I am the first begotten of many brethren. Jesus’ priesthood is the Melchizedekian priesthood. And if we are His brethren we share it. “Thou hast made us king-priests.”
But there’s something else in verse 9-10; remember back in Hebrews we just got through saying that Jesus Christ, by doing something became better than the angels. Now it couldn’t be His deity, His deity always was better than the angels. So it must have been His humanity. What did His humanity do that made Him better than any angel? He gave His life, He “purged,” remember when it said “He purged He sat down,” when He became better than the angels he inherited, and here the same context. Why does the Lamb walk to the throne? Why does the Lamb… all heaven cries out for somebody to open the seal. See verse 2, “Who is worthy to open the book and loose the seals, [3] And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth was able to open the book.” Nobody qualified and that means angels are not qualified to handle this scroll. There’s only one person and it’s the Lamb that steps forward. Why? The only thing that’s mentioned in verses 9 and 10 about the Lamb, and that is He shed His blood, He died for our sins. That’s what makes Him worthy, that’s why Jesus Christ is the King priest.
Now you stop and think of this, Melchizedek was a king-priest. That meant the epitome of political and religious power; Church and State united in one person over an entire dominion, king and priest. Now in God’s program of history, who is the One who is qualified to be the supreme king and priest? The one who dies for every citizen in the kingdom, who loves every citizen in the kingdom enough to die on the cross for their sins. That one and only that one can be the one who rules them. He rules them because He first loved them. A marvelous picture of Christ.