Clough Hebrews Lesson 9
Christ
is
Tonight we’re in Hebrews 1 and the block of material from 1:5-14, which is that part of chapter 1 that is the Old Testament proof of the superiority of the Son, the Old Testament proof of the superiority of the Son. You should have this on the first mimeographed outline. Now we’ve dealt with the first two verses of that where the King-priest is superior by way of authority and the proof there was that the Messiah conceived in the Old Testament, the Messiah was to reign over the whole cosmos, and because the Messiah has a cosmic dimension to His kingdom, and Jesus is the Messiah, therefore Jesus has a cosmic domain and therefore Jesus is in authority over angelic forces. That was the first comparison.
We are working now with verses 7-12 that have to do with the Son’s superiority by way of power. The two words, authority and power, are always used in political thought to distinguish the legal situation or status of a government from power which enforces that legal status. And to have a fully functional system you always have to have authority and power. In this proof that the man is going to give, I spent all last week on verse 7 to show you the nature of angels.
Now if you recall I dealt with this
problem, not only from the standpoint of the Bible but also from the standpoint
of the
The big point about verse 7, you remember last time, was the fluidity or the transitoriness of angels, namely that it was the understanding in the Old Testament and at the time of Jesus that angels could appear as natural elements. They could appear as two, wind and fire, and then they would go back again. Now how they do this don’t ask me. The spiritual world is almost inconceivable. This is why personality theory exists about man because the minute you start dealing with man’s soul you deal with spirit, the spirit part. How, for example, can you have one ego divided in a whole person being called Legion, and then the Legion is cast out, appears as one ego and then it appears in multiple forms in all the swine. Now it’s just inconceivable to us but this is the problem we have in working with the spiritual world. There are parts of it that are just inconceivable and we just have to throw up our hands and say we don’t know. It’s nothing embarrassing to admit you don’t know. So we admit it, we don’t know; all we can do is bear witness to what the Bible tells us in this area.
So Hebrews 1:7 is one of these odd things that angels appear as natural phenomenon sometimes. Now all that I did last week, all the emphasis that we had on the nature of angels was to show you the transitoriness of them, that they appear here and then they disappear, and they appear here and then they’re over here, in other words, they’re constantly changing, so the big word to describe angels from last week’s study is they’re changing. They’re constantly changing, they’re mutable. They change their nature from point to point.
Now tonight we work with verses 8-12; all of these verses are quotations from the Old Testament. And they’re neatly divided for us, verse 7 we’ve done, verse 8-9 is one quote and verses 10-12 is another quote. Now verses 8-9 is the first quote and first, before we get to the quote we want to notice how the author introduces the quote. As I said last week, those of you who know Greek, there’s a construction in this, m-e-n and in the next sentence, d-e, and when you have that usually in the first year Greek they teach you to translate it on the one hand, on the other hand, it’s a contrast type thing. So he said, “of the angels,” that’s where the men is, the de is connected with verse 8. So that tells you immediately that whatever is taught in verse 7 is going to compare or contrast with what is taught in verses 8-9. You’re led into that by the very syntax of the sentence.
So the content of verse 7, the fluidity and transitoriness, mutability, changefulness, of angels is obviously going to be contrasted and you can guess what the contrast is going to be. If the angels are something that change, if the angels are something that mutate, then obviously the comparison is something that does not change or is immutable, and the contrast then in all these verses is the immutable eternal power of Jesus Christ versus the mutable transitoriness of angels. That’s not the only… there’s going to be another surprise that comes up in these verses but at least you can guess immediately, before you go any further, that this is one of the great contrasts between angels and Christ.
Now [Hebrews 1:8] “Unto the Son,” he says.
Now the word “unto” is very important to understand the nature of these
quotes. There’s going to be a vital
lesson tonight in the deity of Christ.
People say well the New Testament doesn’t say Jesus is God. Well here’s one place it dogmatically
does. And for you to see the point
please look first at “to,” “to the Son, he says,” and in the Greek it’s pros, so it’s emphasizing a face to face
address, a personal address. So what
does that tell you about how this author conceives those Old Testament
texts? He conceives these Old Testament
texts as being addressed to the Son, so whatever these texts are talking about
in the Old Testament, ultimately they’re talking about Jesus Christ. pros
huion, “to the Son.”
Let’s see what the first quote says. Verses 8 and 9 are a quotation from Psalm 45 so let’s turn to the Old Testament quote and look at it in its original setting and this should give you… I want you to try to mentally as you do this tonight, to mentally relive how the readers of Hebrews must have lived with their Old Testament. I want you, as you look at this psalm and how the author of Hebrews interprets this psalm, I want you to see if you can imagine if you would have interpreted this psalm this way, because if we believe the Holy Spirit inspired the author of Hebrews to give us an authoritative interpretation of Psalm 45 and we don’t read Psalm 45 that way, we must not be taught correctly by the Holy Spirit. So let’s see if your would normally read Psalm 45 the way he reads it. See if it would be a surprise to you; it wasn’t a surprise to his readers, incidentally. It may be a surprise to some of you though.
Psalm 45, notice the heading on the psalm. I hope all your translations have the heading because that’s part of the Hebrew text. “To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, for the sons of Korah, a Maschil,” a Maschil is a very skillfully written piece of music, “A Song of loves.” So it’s a love song, and it’s a very interesting point about Psalm 45, it was apparently sung at a marriage feast, which should immediately ring bells with what the Church is to Christ. Psalm 45, the whole setting is a marriage feast, and it’s a song of love. It apparently was sung by the entourage of the queen when she was being married to the king, and we don’t know historically what queen this was and we don’t know what king it was; some have suggested this was Pharaoh’s daughter and this is what she sang when she married Solomon. We don’t know. But apparently it was done during the feast and describes it, and it’s a description of the king. Notice how it begins.
Psalm 45:1, “My heart is inditing [overflowing with] a good matter; I speak of the things which I have made touching the king. My tongue is the pen o a ready writer. [2] Thou art fairer,” and this is the way they begin, now this sounds like the guy is a fairy or something, it’s not the correct way, “Thou art fairer” means just the old King James way of saying handsome, “You are more handsome than the children of men;” this is a superlative way, you are the handsomest among men; “grace is poured into thy lips; therefore God has blessed thee forever.” Interesting. Again I’m going to go back to one of the targums, these were commentaries on the text and here’s what a targum on this particular verse, this is an interpretation… now we’re not saying this interpretation is right, we’re simply saying this is the interpretation by the average public citizen at the time Hebrews was written. And the interpretation of this particular targum on verse 2 is: (Quote) “Thou, O King-Messiah, are fairer than the children of men.” So obviously by the time of the Lord Jesus the Jewish people as a whole had seen in Psalm 45 something more than just the King. There was a Messiah involved here. “Thou art fairer than the children of men,” there’s something that’s beautiful about this and it’s emphasizing the nature of Messiah.
Now to get this straight as to the difficult verse we’ve got ahead of us here, let me try to summarize for you a way of mentally hooking onto this thing and then as we go through I’ll keep referring to this mental set of hooks. The way to look at this is the type, antitype. This is the way the Old Testament oftentimes is. A type is an illustration, it’s a literal illustration, there’s nothing allegorical about it, it’s a literal event that mirrors another event way on down the line in history. For example, Noah’s ark is considered as a type of baptism in 1 Peter 3. There are lots of types; David is a type of Christ. Now here’s a principle about types and antitypes and it comes out in this psalm. The type in literature, though literal, will be exaggerated, so we’ll call it hyperbole. There will be hyperbole that has to do with the type; in other words, people will tend to exaggerate the qualities of the type; though it’s literal type, they will look at it exaggerated. But, here’s the principle: when you come to the antitype in history the hyperbole does not exist, it’s knocked out. In other words, the hyperbole is fulfilled in the antitype so you can have an exaggeration about the original type but that exaggeration comes true with the antitype.
Now here’s how it works here, let’s go to verse 6, we’ll read through verse 3-5 to get the context. “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty.” See, there’s the picture of the valiant king, the warrior king. [4] “And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and re; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible [awe-inspiring] things. [5] Thin arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies, thereby the people fall under thee.” So it’s the picture of a victorious reigning king.
Then it says, Psalm 45:6-7, which is what is the quotation in Hebrews: “Thy throne, O God, is forever, and ever; the scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter. [7] Thou lovest righteousness, and hate wickedness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” Now it doesn’t require too much imagine to see that we’re challenged here to a detailed interpretation of these two verses to find out what is going on. What does it mean, “O God,” “Thy throne, O God, is forever,” and what do we mean in the 7th verse, “therefore God, thy God, have anointed thee?”
Well, let’s take the first part of verse 6,
“Thy throne, O God, is forever.” Now the
best way to handle this that I know of is to look at the debate. There are two interpretations of verse 6 that
have been suggested down through the centuries.
Let me give you those two and then we’ll settle on one of them, but let
me give you both of them so you can see why we take one. You may say well this is all academic on and
tonight’s a Bible class. Those of you
taking notes, I hope you take notes on this particular one. I’ll tell you why: this has to do with one of
those passages in the New Testament
where the deity of Christ is at stake, and if you, for example,
open your door some day and the
Jehovah’s Witnesses trot in with their specialized
Here are the two interpretations; they surround the word “God.” One interpretation takes the word “God” as a vocative; that means “O God,” I address Him, “O God.” So that’s the vocative, we take the noun as a vocative. Another interpretation takes the word “God” as a nominative. Now let’s what difference it makes. If I take the word “God” as a vocative, the sentence reads: “Thy throne, O God,” I’m addressing God and I’m saying God, Your throne is forever. That’s the way it would read if it were a vocative. If I read it as a nominative how do you suppose it would read. Some modern translations read this way, incidentally. How do you suppose it would read if, instead of taking “God” as a vocative we took it as a nominative here? It would mean “God is Thy throne forever and ever.” Got that, “God is thy throne,” or “Thy throne is God forever and ever,” or you can say “O God.” Now there obviously is a slight difference in these two interpretations.
Let me give you first the argument for the
nominative. The argument that the word
“God” should be taken in the nominative case and that what the sentence really
means is “God is thy throne forever and ever.”
The first argument for the nominative is that it would be inappropriate
in a monotheistic culture to address the king as God. That’s the first argument. It would be inappropriate to address the king
as God in a monotheistic culture. You
can get away with it in
A second argument, and some of you who know the Greek can appreciate it and that is God appears as ho Theos, which is a nominative, when the Greek way of writing the vocative would Thee, why isn’t it written this way? Why is it not written this way when it is written this way in other points when the vocative occurs for God in the New Testament. This has been a big argument and people argue and say well see, we’ve got two reasons here, and scholar after scholar will discuss this point. All right, why do we take it with the mainstream, so to speak, and the majority of scholars have always taken this as vocative.
Let me give you the reasons why and they’ll answer these two reasons. Here’s the reasons we take it as a vocative, as addressed to God. First, in answering the second argument that I just gave you, that it’s not written as a vocative would be written is that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew vocatives always by ho Theos. This is normal for the Septuagint and a case in point would be Psalm 43:4 if you want to be technical about it, there’s an illustration of it. So in the Septuagint this is normative. So you can’t argue that, it’s an illegitimate argument to argue that just because it’s not written like a vocative it’s not a vocative.
The second argument and this is more
complicated and with this argument we get into the meat of the whole
application of Hebrews so let’s pay careful attention here. The word Elohim, which is the Hebrew word,
that’s the Hebrew word God, notice it has an “im” ending which is the Hebrew
plural, it means God. It’s interesting
that the monotheistic
Turn to Exodus 21:6; the King James does not translate it properly here; anyone have the New ASV, let’s look at what it’s got for Exodus 21:6. In the King James it says, “Then his master shall bring him unto the judges.” Somebody that has a New ASV, what have you got? [someone answers] “To God,” capital “G?” Okay, Exodus 21:6 is Elohim. [someone says something] It has a footnote to the judges. Okay, see what they’ve done, they’ve chosen between the God use or the judges use. But this is one of those cases where it refers to the judges as gods and literally it says, “Then his master shall bring him unto the gods,” the Elohim, see it’s plural. Now I’m going to justify this in a moment but just notice, this is a context situation. It obviously, if you read God in it, it doesn’t make sense in verse 6, “then his master shall bring him unto God.” And “He shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post,” etc. etc. etc. and it’s in the process of a legal literature, a judicial decision has to be made here, so if you’re going to read God there for judges you’re going to have to argue that they had to take them to the tabernacle every time they had to do something, that’s just kind of ridiculous. So the word “gods” is used here for judges.
Now if you turn to Exodus 22:8, “If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall be brought unto the gods,” what do they read there? “the judges.” Does the New ASV read judges? See, it’s inconsistent because it’s Elohim again. Interesting, I’m surprised, the New ASV is usually consistent here. [someone says something] Yeah, but you see the last time they but “God” and footnoted “judges.” You know what probably happened here, this often happens in translation, is you have different committees translated sections and that’s how you translate, they have committees and so you have one committee puts a translation and then they sew it together with the translation of another committees. The committees didn’t get together on this one. [someone says something] Apparently what it indicates is that the translators of the New ASV were indecisive at this point and they want you to know that. Pay attention to those footnotes because that’s apparently what they’re trying to tell you there is that you can handle it both ways so go back and look how he did it before; that’s what they’re saying. So verse 8 is another illustration of Elohim in the place of judges.
Now in Exodus
Now there’s another one, a very famous one in Psalm 82:6 where this occurs. We turn here, some of you should recognize this because Jesus spoke about it one time. “I have said,” now before you go too far in verse 6 let’s look at the psalm overall and notice it says, verse 1, “God stands in the congregation of the mighty; he judges among the gods. [2] How long will you judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked ones,” he says in verse 2. Well, that’s a complaint against injustice by civil magistrates. See, he’s arguing look, how long are you going to judge this way, how are you going to run your court system like we run ours, that’s the argument there. [3] “Defend the poor and the fatherless,” is what he’s saying. Now in verse 6 he says, “I have said, You are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. [7] But you’re going to die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” Now “you are gods,” is again a reference to civil magistrate and to prove the point, turn to John 10:35 where Jesus Himself discusses this very verse.
I’m going to show you something very interesting here because this is the verse that most people argue shows that Jesus didn’t claim to be God. And we’re going to argue tonight, no, it’s exactly opposite, this is the very verse that shows Jesus was God. Now it takes a little following to catch it. The reason it does is because we’ll all Gentiles and not Hebrews and so our lack of Jewish background is hindering us from understanding this thing. But Jesus, you see, they’re starting to stone Him, the Jewish people are very decisive. You can argue what you want to about what Christ is claiming to be but they knew what Christ was claiming to be and He was claiming to be God and they were picking up rocks because that was the sin of blasphemy.
So Jesus is trying to calm them down, and He says in verse 34, “Is it not written in your law,” and by the way, what passage, what book of the Bible did we just find this verse in? Psalms. Now usually how is the word “Law” used? The first five books of the Bible. Notice the way Jesus uses the word “Law,” He includes even the Psalms in the Law, which was considered the weakest link in the Old Testament. That was the least (quote) “inspired” some people thought. So here Jesus equates the Psalms in authority with the whole rest of the Old Testament. “Is it not written in your Law, I said, You are gods?” And then Jesus said, [35] “If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, [36] Say ye of him, whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” In other words, Jesus is arguing look, if they called the civil magistrates gods, what are you stoning Me for when I claim I’m the Son of God. Now most people read that as this: this is what most people think when they see that argument; they’re arguing well, see Jesus says because it was okay for a man in the Old Testament to get away be calling gods, therefore it should be all right for Him as a man to get away with being called God. But that’s not what He’s arguing. He’s arguing that it was all right in the Old Testament for men to be called God; now He says when you have someone qualified for the office, why do you pick up rocks, because in verse 36 where He says, “Say ye of him, whom the Father has sanctified,” in other words, the implication being that the ones in the Old Testament weren’t sanctified, they weren’t elevated to this position. He says if you allowed men in the Old Testament to be called God then why don’t you allow Me to be called God.” And I am greater than they are, I’m the Son of God.
All right, but show you the force further, let me turn back in the Old Testament to why this all happens. Why is it that the civil magistrate is called God in the Old Testament. It goes back to a verse, many, many different verses but I think probably the best one to show you the principle is in Deuteronomy 1:17, I told you this is why the book of Hebrews has to be taught to the Wednesday night group; it’d never make it with the 11:00 o’clock crowd, they’d have been lost about 15 minutes ago, but we consider you an advanced group on Wednesday night. Deuteronomy 1:17, here’s the theory of what was going on in the Jewish mentality that led to the calling of civil magistrates as the Elohim. Here’s why, and this is a very important point about the philosophy of government and law in the Bible. “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but you shall hear the small as will as the great; you shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s’ and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.” This is talking about the Urim and the Thummim.
What is he saying? That the fourth divine institution, which is instituted at the flood and persists until the return of Jesus Christ, that is the institution of government, law and order, that is an institution which is momentarily functioning inside our history as God. Now be careful how you read this; we’re not saying the institution itself is God. If you come Sunday night you’re going to hear a very interesting historic example of when somebody tried that. But the point is that we’re not calling the institution God; we’re saying the institution does function in one of God’s places. That is, the institution of government during this era of history is carrying on judgment, which, when Christ returns, He carries on. In other words, for the time being God has turned over part of His prerogative to man. This is the basis for capital punishment.
It is not an argument that capital punishment is community vengeance. It’s not that at all, the Bible authorizes capital punishment because the judgment of God has been credited to the institution of government. And you say well, you know, government can make mistakes. God foresaw that, because if you stop and think, God in His omniscience foresaw that His own son would die by a miscarriage of justice. See, His own Son was trapped in the wheels of justice. God knows exactly what it is when the institution of government isn’t going to work right because His Son was killed and murdered by a false trial, an illegal trial, and the whole thing was illegal from one end to the other; there was violence in the courtroom, there was unagreed upon testimony, they couldn’t get two witnesses to agree, the whole trial of Jesus Christ was absolutely illegal from one end to the other. In fact, one of the professors over at the law school once to the Lion’s Club here in town gave an interesting talk about how that was truth, that the whole legal format of Jesus’ trial was just apostate from one to the other.
Now God knew that but still He risked that in order to give an institution to stand in His place during this era of history and if you argue with it and say why did God do it, we can only say we’re rebellious creatures; why do we have to have government in the first place? Because we’re sinful. So here’s why the civil officials are called gods. They are called gods because they function in one office of God—judgment. Judgment is a divine task and this is why God is furious in the Old Testament when the courts and the leaders don’t judge fairly. It infuriates Him, this is one of the pet sins of the prophets. Why don’t you judge the poor like you judge the rich? It infuriates God because that’s what He would have done and those people that are supposed to be functioning in His office aren’t functioning that way. So it’s a thing that angers God terribly in the Bible. I’m sure He’s angry today in history over what goes on.
Turn back to Psalm 45, I’ve got a little bit to go there, we want to finish up just that last part, after it says, “Thy throne, O God;” it’s addressed to the king, the queen sings to him and she says “Thy throne, O God,” and she means it as the divine official, the man who carries out God’s prerogatives. But then she adds something that clues you that she’s exaggerating; just the use of the word “God” you could say is not too much exaggeration because it’s used of the judges, but when she says, “Thy throne, O God, is forever,” you know, wait a minute now, that’s hyperbole. All right, what did we say? The type in the Old Testament exaggerates, yes. And then let’s go on, “the scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter.” The word “right” is a word in the Hebrew that meant a straight line. There’s many words for righteousness in the Old Testament. This was taken from when the farmers would plow their fields and the idea is that the field would be plowed in a straight line. Well, that was the word that came to be used for justice that is straight; justice that is correct. And so interestingly notice what verse 6 does. Why is the throne of this king forever? Because the throne of this king is always righteous and in God’s world righteousness is the only thing that survived.
Now in verse 7 it amplifies that very point I just made. “You love righteousness, and you hated wickedness; that’s past tense, these are all perfects in the Hebrew and when they come over in the New Testament they’re written as aorists. “You loved righteousness, and you hated wickedness” sp whatever the king has done, up to his marriage, here’s his marriage, here’s his coronation, here’s when he was on the throne, he’s coronated, and he was hating evil and he loved righteousness and all this period of time he did this. “…therefore,” verse 7, “God, thy God,” now this is not a vocative here, this is not addressed to the king, this is God or Elohim, your God, has done this. The reason it’s this peculiar [can’t understand word] is if you were with me in the Psalm series you’ll remember this, the second book of Psalms, Psalm 42-72 replace Jehovah with God. Normally this would be written “Yahweh, your God….” But in the second book of Psalms Yahweh usually appears as Elohim.
So “God, your God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” Now the oil of gladness is not the anointing, it’s the word Christos, yes, to anoint but this isn’t the anointing at the coronation. This is the anointing that happened at a party; the “oil of gladness” was just ointment that they used on their bodies when they were having a good time, it’s just like our perfume and then of course when they got involved in the various orgies they had other uses for it, but the point is that in the normal good clean marriage feast the lotion and the oil was put on and it was associated with joy, the joy of that particular feast. So the oil of gladness was literal, it was a literal oil of gladness, but it came to mean an inner joy, the joy you see that accompanied this thing, and here’s the king on his marriage feast, “thou hast anointed him with an oil of gladness,” “above thy fellows,” notice, thy fellow officials, thy fellow kings.
Now, “a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom,” when will He be saying this. Well have we just seen in the book of Hebrews. Look at verse 4, “Being made so much better than the angels, He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” When did Jesus receive a more excellent name than they? At His session. Remember Jesus Christ died, Jesus Christ rose, Jesus Christ ascended to be at the Father’s right hand. At that point Jesus Christ was installed in His humanity as the God-man King. He was always with the Father in His deity but now His humanity is joined, so now, as the God-man He reigns. Now when He reigns there is going to be a marriage and this is a faint echo of this because who is Christ’s bride? The Church. And so Christ’s reign and His joy… see, that’s why it says down in verse 9, “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” Above thy fellows? Who were the fellows? The angels. And Christ has greater… [tape turns] than the angels.
Now what is the joy that Christ has? Well, Hebrews tells us. Turn to Hebrews 12:2, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. [3] For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself,” now what was it that Jesus saw, “the joy that was set before Him?” All right, go back to Psalm 45, what was the joy of the king in the context of Psalm 45? It was his bride, it was the marriage feast. What is the joy of Jesus Christ? Believers in the Church, and therefore what this is arguing about in Hebrews 1, “the oil of gladness,” “thou has anointed…,” means that Jesus Christ has a fantastic joy that exceeds the joy of the angels and His joy, bluntly stated, is you. Even sad sacks, all sad sack believers are a joy to Jesus Christ. Even in your darkest hour, when you think everything’s against you, oh everybody’s against me, and God has left me, I face a problem too big for the grace of God, you know, all the promises work except for me and all the rest of it. When you’re in that kind of a situation you remember something: Jesus Christ is ecstatic over you, even in all your mess Jesus Christ is ecstatic over you. Now I grant you that we give Him a lot to be un-ecstatic about but the Bible in the big picture views Christ as being excited with tremendous joy about believers.
Now Hebrews 1:10-12, there isn’t such a big hairy background issue here so we can proceed faster. This is a quotation from Psalm 102, so let’s go to Psalm 102 and look at that Psalm. You see now why the epistle to the Hebrews is not for new believers; you don’t just become a Christian and whip through Hebrews in your devotional period in five minutes. By the way, I don’t know if any of you have tried it but if you read the epistle to the Hebrews out loud, remember we said when we first started this thing, it was an address in the synagogue, and I think it takes about 50 minutes to read it, just normal conversation. Now you stop and think how long he would have paused on these verses, and think what he expected his listeners, they weren’t reading it so they could go back, they didn’t have a tape recorder so they could go back and replay it either. These people just sat there in that synagogue and heard that guy teach this stuff. Now you can imagine the loaded background these people had for him to be able to communicate. Can you see now why he says in Hebrews 5 hey, you’re dull and hard of hearing? Well, they’ve been concentrating on this stuff for five chapters. It took work for them to pay attention to what he was doing.
Psalm 102; now some of you sharpies that came during the Psalm series, just look at that psalm and tell me what kind of a psalm it is. What does it look like to you? Individual lament; okay, written by an individual, not the nation, so you know it’s an individual psalm and it’s not primarily praise, it’s concern so it’s a lament psalm, individual lament psalm. And you’ll notice the telltale sign, verse 12, here’s “But Thou,” remember the “But Thou’s” we learned. This shifts over to confidence, see, he’s complaint, complaint, complaint, complaint all up until verse 12, and then you get to verse 12 it says “But Thou, O LORD, shall endure forever.” Now notice the background, just like you did with Psalm 45 the background was a marriage, joyous celebration, the background of Psalm 102 is a believer that’s bombed out. Now that’s going to tell you a lot about the background this author of Hebrews is laying to cope with bombed out believers he’s going to have to deal with in a moment.
Psalm 102:12, “But thou, O LORD, shall endure forever,” then he comes down to verse 24, here’s his petition, “I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days;” this is a petition for him to survive, physically. Apparently this was written during the exile or some period like that when everything was very, very bad. Think of the readers of the Hebrews, they’re having problems too. Remember we went into the persecution of this group of believers; see, they’re having the same trouble so you see he goes back to a psalm that’s similar in its situation. Then he says, after his petition, “I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days; thy years are throughout all generations.” And then he quotes a praise section that immediately follows his petition; this is kind of a descriptive praise section about God’s character, and the verses that follow teach something about the essence of God, that the psalmist in the middle of his bad situation is hanging onto; there’s something about God’s character that he’s just got lock on and he’s going to hold onto that in the middle of his problems. Now let’s see what it is.
In Psalm 102:25, “Of old has thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. [26] They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall become old like a garment; like a vesture shall thou change them, and they shall be changed. [27] But thou art the same, and thy years have no end.” And it should be, [28] “Therefore, the children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before forever.”
Now, what are the attributes of God in verse 25-27? [people answer] Eternality; another one, someone said omnipotence. Immutability, all right, there are some others faintly but these are the two major ones. Notice these, immutability and eternality. And what is the conclusion in verse 28? Because God never changes His promises never change, His covenant’s never change and He is reliable, not like a person, fickle, up and down. Not God, He’s immutable, His character never changes. And He’s eternal which means it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Now let’s go back to Hebrews and notice something.
Hebrews is written to bombed out believers who are in trouble. What are doctrines are brought in to help them in the middle of their trouble? That God… and by the way, remember when you were memorizing verses for the attribute of immutability, do you remember one that comes in this book, it’s taken right from this same psalm, it’s an adaptation from this psalm. What is one you think of; think of the attribute of immutability, God never changes. [someone answers] What does Hebrews 13 say? “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.” See that theme comes up again and again in the epistle to Hebrews. What does that tell you about immutability and a Christian’s problem? Immutability is one of the key attributes this author is tying to believers who are bombed out, that God never changes.
Now let’s look at some fine points in Hebrews 1:10, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands; [11] They shall perish; but thou remains,” you see verse 11 and 12, it’s talking about the changefulness of nature. Now I said in the beginning that in verse 7 the angels were what? You turn your messengers into wind and fire and back again, “But thou, O Lord,” the Son, this is addressed to the Son, You are forever, You don’t change, You don’t change from fire to air to water or something else, you’re not fluid God, You don’t change Your form, you’re always constant. Always, You’re the same dependable God. He is immutable. That’s the contrast but there’s another contrast. What part in the scheme, God, man, nature, what part includes the angels, according to verse 7? Nature. Do you notice something that happens in verse 10.
What did we say, it was a question on the exam, remember I gave a question on the exam that read something like this: all the religions of the world have their myths of origins; Christianity is no different, refute the statement. Most of you got that one right. What was the answer to the question? What’s different about Christianity than any other religion in the world; that’s it’s fundamental point. [someone answers] All right, our God is above nature, ex nihilo creation. He is above nature, He is not part of nature; in every other religion God is part of nature, including evolution; it’s just a natural process to deify it. But the God of the Bible stands outside of nature and above nature. And that is the thing that … now watch how powerful this is to show the deity of Christ here because in Psalm 102, what was Psalm 102 talking about? Was it talking about an angel or was it talking about Jehovah? It was talking about Jehovah. Now verse 10, because of the introduction of verse 8, “But onto the Son He says,” means that he takes a passage that in the Old Testament referred to Jehovah God, he moves it over and says that refers to Jesus Christ. Now what more powerful proof of the deity of Christ can you have than that? A passage in the Old Testament that’s clearly Jehovah, clearly Jehovah, Jehovah has done this, Jehovah has made this, Jehovah has made this, Jehovah takes the heavens off as a garment and puts them on again, Jehovah does it, and then bang, when he pulls it over into the New Testament in place of Jehovah, he erases the word Jehovah and he puts Jesus Christ, the Son. How can you explain that if Jesus isn’t God? And the people of the New Testament don’t think He’s God. Why would a monotheist ever dare to do something like that to a passage like this if he wasn’t teaching Jesus was God? It’s ridiculous, the New Testament never says Jesus is God.
Notice verse 10 again, the word “Thou” and “Lord” are out of place, in the original language it reads, “And in the beginning, Thou laid the foundation.” Why do you suppose the author, when he quotes from the Holy Spirit, unto the Holy Spirit gives flexibility to their quotes, he rips the word “You,” puts it at the beginning of the sentence, and then continues the sentence. What does that do? What does that modification of the sentence do to you, I mean when you read it? [someone answers] Okay, it’s a deliberate emphasis. So the very fact that the man has changed the quote in two ways… how has he changed it? He took it, when it referred to Jehovah and now he changes it to point to Jesus Christ, then when he quotes it he takes the subject and puts it at the beginning of the sentence to emphasize it even more. So wouldn’t you say that the speaker here was tying to make a point. He’s deliberately trying to make a point. And you’re foolish if you read these kinds of passages so quick you don’t understand the fine details. These find details are worth the five or fifteen or twenty minutes that it takes to explain them because this is what makes the passage say what it really means, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning” did all these things.
Now there’s one other thing in this that we want to look at and that’s in verse 12, notice he says God is equated with Jesus, Jesus stands outside of nature, angels stand inside nature. And we come down to the last thing, “they are changed.” You’re going to take them and “fold them up.” [12. “And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.”] Now when that’s going to happen? That’s the final change in the book of Revelation, 21 and 22, and that’s a very interesting statement because that says even the laws of nature are mutable. See. You get all your equations worked out that control, your principles of physics, for example, get them all laid out… all the physic books are going to go out of date one day when He folds the whole thing up, and then we’ll be all eternity working out some new equations for the new heavens and the new earth. You see, He’s going to change. Now that’s the power that’s mentioned here.
Now there’s something else that we want to see to and I want to conclude with this because this points up what I’ve tried to do in this framework course. Two things come to bear here in this chapter, in this section. One is creation, that’s obviously verse 10-11. Now what have you learned, I hope by now, what area of doctrine have you learned to associate with an ex nihilo creation. Just think of the doctrine, what difference does it make whether you have an ex nihilo creation or just an eternally transforming universe. What does it do? If you have an eternally transforming universe, such as the Hindus and modern science, what are you going to have? What does it do to God? It destroys God’s character. So, the event of creation and the divine essence of God are linked. And here you see it.
What does this author have to do to get across divine essence? He has to pull in what? Creation. And what does he play one off against the other? He plays God kind of just standing there immutable, in the sense that His character never changes, and underneath Him the cosmos that changes, and it’s taken off like a garment and folded up and put away. The whole cosmos, great as it may be, powerful as it may be, with the angels in the cosmos and in nature showing up as water and fire, very powerful, very exciting, very impressive, but not half as impressive as the Son that is the same yesterday, today and forever. Then he roots, now he’s laid the basis so that when you have all these problems that are going to come up in the book, he’s just going to hook them on to the immutability and eternality, that’s basically the theme of the … these are the attributes of God that are emphasized in this book.