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Good morning.
Greetings in the name of Jesus our King
and our Great High Priest.
Turn to the book of Hebrews for me
this morning.
We will be studying this book this week
in some detail.
It will not be possible to finish this
book this year.
Lord willing, I'll be able to do that
either next year or some other time.
But we'll do what we can this year.
As a way of introduction, ideally it probably
would take two or three hours just to
introduce it, but we don't have two or
three hours, so we'll just take a few
minutes just to introduce a few thoughts to
you to kind of set a little foundation,
set a little background for you to understand
some of the things you need to have
in the back of your mind as we
then look at the specific verses.
This letter, this epistle of Hebrews, first of
all, is especially valuable in our day because
there is abroad in the world, and it
seems especially in our world here, a widespread
conception of Jesus Christ that does not match
the reality of what is given to us
in the Scriptures.
We live in a day of easy believism
and chief grace.
And I believe that the root of that
wrong teaching is a wrong view of who
Jesus Christ really is.
And one of the purposes of the book
of Hebrews is to show us who Jesus
Christ is in all of His offices, in
all of His adequacy, and that He is
better than anything else.
He is the best.
And better is one of the key words.
If you had to pick a key word
in the book of Hebrews, it would be
better.
There are many other key words, but that's
one of them.
So, that is one of the themes in
the book of Hebrews, is the preeminence of
Jesus Christ.
There are other themes.
Clearly, just by the name of the book
Hebrews, we see that God has some thoughts
for the Hebrew.
If you're here today and you understand anything
about nationalities, you realize that just because a
person gets born again, it doesn't change their
nationality, does it?
Because we know in heaven, there will be
every tribe and tongue and kindred and people.
And today, if you're here...
I wonder how many different nationalities are here
today.
Today, if you're here, and you're Hispanic, as
some in my family are, after you're born
again, you know what?
You're still Hispanic.
And the Hebrew, even though He was born
again, some of the Jews, they're still Hebrews.
They're still Jews.
And so, there's some things that God has
to say to them that we need to
hear, because some of the things that God
has to say to them are directly applicable
to you and I today.
And it seems like in that day, that
this group of Jewish Christians, which were born
again after Jesus Christ came and after the
apostles began to teach, they were reaching a
time in the church here where some of
them were starting to drift.
They were starting to slip.
They were starting to ease back and look
back at some of their tradition and their
form and the way that it used to
be.
And it seemed like they were losing the
reality of who Jesus Christ really was.
And, you know, we have that problem today
too, don't we?
You know, man, it seems like is too
easily attracted to form and function and tradition
and religion and so on and so on
and so on.
We haven't outgrown that problem in our day,
have we?
And so, what God has to say to
the Hebrew Christian in the early church is
for you and I today.
They stood at the junction or the juncture
of the two great dispensations, the Old Testament
and at the New.
It was like they were at that junction
where it used to be just a few
years ago what they needed to do to
get to God was this way.
The old dispensation, the old covenant.
But then suddenly at the cross, everything changed.
And what used to be very meaningful is
now, according to the book of Hebrews, meaningless.
What used to be pleasing unto God now,
according to the book of Hebrews, is sin.
What a place to be.
And yet we can understand because in our
day there are people who are very sincere,
very religious, doing religious things that are not
pleasing to God.
That are not pleasing to God.
And so there are things here for you
and I.
And what God is trying to show you
and I in this book is that for
believers of every nationality, in every age and
of every age, the way to God is
through the Son.
The way to God is through the Son.
And it's so important that we see that
one of the themes here, again, in the
book of Hebrews, is that we understand rightly
the place of the Old Testament, the Old
Covenant, and that we pick up the New
Testament and we interpret everything back there through
the eyes of that.
So many well-meaning Christians are mistakenly taking
and choosing things out of the Old Testament
and trying to make it part of the
New Covenant.
And you cannot do that.
Those things are good.
Those things were written for examples to us.
But it is not the way to God.
It is not the way to God.
And so we need to see that very
clearly.
We will speak more about this later.
But mostly, mostly today, you need to understand,
as it says in Hebrews 3.1, Wherefore,
holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider.
And the key word there is consider.
It's one of the key verses in the
book of Hebrews.
Consider the apostle and high priest of our
profession, Christ Jesus.
This week, today, we are going to consider.
And the word consider means to behold, to
gaze upon, to meditate upon, to perceive, to
receive, to sit and wonder about, and to
think about Christ Jesus.
And that's what we're going to do.
We're going to consider Him.
And I'm convinced that that is the most
important thing that you can do this week,
is to consider our Lord, Christ Jesus.
And as far as the authorship of the
book of Hebrews, I cannot be rigid about
that.
I don't believe anyone can.
But I am dogmatic that it is the
Word of God, that it is inspired by
the Holy Spirit, and it lines up with
Scripture in that Jesus Himself said that when
the Holy Spirit comes, He will teach us
and show us all things, but especially what?
Jesus Christ.
And the book of Hebrews, almost like any
other book in the New Testament from beginning
to end, shows us a magnificent picture of
the person and the life and the ministry
of Jesus Christ.
And so, I'm excited about this book.
I hope you are.
I believe that this book is the clearest
and the most, if I may say, systematic,
and orderly is what I mean there, presentation
of the availability and the adequacy of Jesus
Christ.
And that is important to you and I
today.
The availability and the adequacy of Jesus Christ.
It shows that He is the perfect man.
And that Christianity is therefore the perfect and
final religion.
There is nothing else that God has to
say after this.
This is God's Word to you and I.
In every age, the things that we'll see
in this book are the answer to every
man's need in every age.
And so, as Brother Moe's challenged you this
morning, you came here and you were praying
for something, I tell you the way to
find the answer is in the person of
Jesus Christ.
It is in the person of Jesus Christ.
The way to God is through the Son.
And what you believe this week and what
you receive from Christ will mean everything to
what you get out of this week.
Alright, let's go ahead and begin to read
here in chapter 1.
There's much more we could say about some
different themes and some different foundations of the
book of Hebrews, but we won't do that
here this morning.
Some of them will come out as we
make our way through, as we take a
very short walk through this wonderful book.
Beginning in verse 1, God, who at sundry
times and in diverse manners, spake in time
past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath
in these last days spoken unto us by
His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of
all things, by whom also He made the
worlds, who, being the brightness of His glory
and the express image of His person and
upholding all things by the word of His
power, when He had by Himself purged our
sins, sat down on the right hand of
the Majesty on high.
We'll stop there.
Aren't those wonderful words to your heart today?
Challenging words as well.
It's interesting how the book of Hebrews begins.
Did you notice?
With one word, God.
Very unusual.
It's the only book of the Bible, I
think, that begins that way.
It's the only book in the New Testament,
certainly, that begins simply with the word God.
No salutation.
No introduction.
No explanation.
No qualification.
Did you know that the Bible makes no
provision?
The Bible does not try to explain or
prove the existence of God.
It just starts, God.
God.
What a way to start a book of
the Bible.
Maybe it's the best way, isn't it?
You know, if I were teaching anything else,
maybe mathematics, I would have to start with
certain premises and certain truths and certain postulates
and work on those to get you here.
To teach you geometry up here, we'd have
to start with addition and multiplication and subtraction
and division.
And to prove geometry, we'd have to start
with certain basic facts like the shortest distance
between point A and point B is always
what?
A straight line.
But I don't have to do that with
God.
I don't have to do that with God.
God is.
And the Bible makes no effort to prove
the existence of God.
You know, sadly, there are Christian seminaries in
our land that have courses that try to
build some sort of, I don't know, philosophic
reasonings for the existence of God.
That is so sad.
I say that is a great waste of
time.
Because if you cannot walk outside and see
the sky and see the changing of the
leaves like we have on a beautiful day
today and see the mountains and smell the
fragrance of the air and realize that there
is God, there is something off in your
thinking.
There is something wrong with you.
The Bible says in Romans 1.24, the
invisible things of Him from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made, like the things
I just mentioned.
Even His eternal power and Godhead so that
they are without excuse.
If the created universe is not speaking to
you, not revealing to you that there is
a God, there is something wrong with your
thinking.
There is something wrong with your thinking.
Let me ask you another question here.
Do you want to hear God speak?
Amen.
Have you ever said...
I have.
Have you ever said, Oh God, I need
to hear You.
I need to hear from You.
Speak to me.
Haven't you ever said that?
Amen.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with
saying that.
I trust that it's out of a heart
that really does want to hear God.
And yet, the Lord has patiently and tenderly
sometimes rebuked me for saying that.
Because as He says here in Hebrews 1
and 2, that God has spoken.
He is not silent.
He has communicated.
Did you see what it says?
God, who at sundry times in diverse manners
spake in time past unto the fathers, hath
in these last days spoken.
He has spake in times past and He
has now spoken.
I don't have to wonder what God wants
to say to me.
I don't have to wonder what God wants
to say to me.
God is communicating with you and I.
He is a God that speaks.
He is a God that wants to connect
and say something to your heart and to
my heart.
God is not silent.
He is not just an idea.
He is not a philosophy to be thought
about.
He is a person who has spoken in
eternity past and is speaking now and He'll
continue to speak in eternity future.
He is a speaking person.
Now, in the past here, His way of
speaking was through prophets.
Prophets were those go-betweens.
The direct interpretation of the word prophet is
messenger.
God had a message.
He got a prophet.
He gave him the message.
And the prophet would say something like this,
the word of the Lord, and it would
say, has come unto Isaiah, Jeremiah, whatever.
And if it's God's word, it would come
unto Him, then He would speak it out.
God didn't choose to sky-write His message
in the sky.
He didn't choose to just whisper it in
the ear of every person at the same
time.
He could have done a lot of different
things, but He didn't.
He spoke in time past unto the prophets.
He spoke to them.
But it also says an interesting thing here.
It says He spoke in diverse manners.
And what that means is He spoke in
many different ways.
In many different ways.
Did you ever consider all the ways that
God spoke to us in time past?
As you pick up the Bible and as
you just stop at Malachi there and as
you just look at the Old Testament, all
the ways that God spoke in time past.
You know, it begins with Genesis and the
wondrous, magnificent tale of creation.
Then it goes on in the historical account
of the patriarchs.
And the Bible moves on with other stories.
Stories about individual people like Esther and Ruth
and Job.
And it moves on to the beautiful, melodious
songs of Psalms, to the wisdom of Proverbs,
to the tenderness of the song of Solomon.
God spoke in many different diverse ways.
He spoke in whirlwinds, earthquakes.
He spoke in visions and in dreams and
in a still, small voice.
Why did God do that?
So many different ways.
But it seems like we needed to hear
from God in different ways, and yet in
speaking in all those different ways, did you
know none of them was complete?
None of them was the absolute end.
None of them had all the answers.
None of them had all of the things
that God wanted to say.
Now, hidden in a lot of those ways
He spoke were shadows and types and hints
and prophecies and all these different ways and
these diverse manners.
But the Old Testament alone as it stands
is an unfinished story.
Do you realize that?
It's an unfinished story.
It's not complete.
It's not done.
As wondrous as it is, and it is
the Word of God, and God spoke in
many ways, still, small voices, dreams.
You know, it seems like I've noticed that
in our day there are still Christians who
want to be spoken to the way God
used to speak.
They want dreams or visions or things like
that.
And I don't understand all that, and I'm
not saying God is limited and God doesn't
ever use that, but I would beg you,
along with the writer of Hebrews, don't look
for dreams.
Don't look for those things.
God has spoken now in His Son.
And that's the best Word.
And that's the Word God wants you to
hear today.
You don't need to wait for a dream.
You don't need to wait for some special
revelation.
It probably won't come because God has spoken
in His Son and by the work and
the life of His Son.
And when you turn the pages of the
New Testament and you read the fourfold picture,
it's like there's this four-dimensional, fourfold picture
of Christ in the Gospels of Jesus Christ.
You find that the old suddenly merges into
one voice.
The voice of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.
Jesus said He didn't come to destroy that
or pitch it out.
He came to fulfill it, which means He's
going to now take the whole thing and
bring it to where it needs to be.
That's what He's going to do.
That's what He's done.
And therefore, God's Word to man is fully
uttered, fully spoken in the Son.
And that's the title of our message for
today is The Best Last Word.
The Best Last Word.
That's the title today.
And therefore, the Word to the Son of
God is greater.
It is a better revelation.
It is a better revelation than all those
other revelations.
Now by saying that, we are not putting
them down and saying they're bad.
But we are saying we have a better
revelation.
Do we see that?
We have a better revelation.
The writer says here in the second verse
of the Son whom He hath appointed Heir
of all things.
Do you know what an heir is?
An heir is someone who receives everything from
the person that is giving it to them.
They get it.
They get the full ownership of everything.
And when He says He is the heir
of all things, that's a tremendous statement.
And the reason I think that this is
in here is God is trying to show
us as He's looking down both into eternity
past and in the future, and He's trying
to get us to see as far as
our eye can see of understanding, that if
we listen to Jesus Christ, that we've heard
the One that owns everything.
Did you ever think about that?
The heir owns it all.
He inherits everything.
And Jesus Christ is the heir of all
things.
And that means this, beloved, it means He
can make good on His Word.
He can make good on His promises because
He owns all things.
Everything, all things, will be at His disposal.
All the world, all the heavens above and
below, all the angels, all the demons, all
things.
It doesn't leave anything out.
Everything is under Jesus Christ.
He has been appointed heir of all things.
All the resources of heaven.
He even said as He was leaving in
Matthew there in the Great Commission, all power
has been given unto Me.
Do you remember that verse?
And here He says that He's the heir
of all things.
So He has all power and He has
all things.
And so the important thing to remember about
this is that when Jesus Christ makes a
promise, He has the authority and the position
to make good on His Word.
When He says something, like in Revelation where
it says there shall no longer be death
or mourning or crying or pain anymore, He
owns death.
He owns everything.
He is the heir of all things.
And so He can say that and He
can back it up because of who He
is.
He can make good on His Word because
He is God.
I'm from the state of Florida originally.
I've been living up here eight years.
When I used to live in Florida, I
had a friend who was a doctor at
the University of Florida about 30 miles north
of where I used to live.
It's a big research facility.
And one day he was showing me around
some things there.
One of the things they had was an
electron microscope.
You ever heard of an electron microscope?
Supposedly the most powerful microscope.
It was hooked up to computers.
It was this huge thing and lasers and
I don't know what all.
And I asked him, well, I mean, why
do you keep going?
How much more is there to see?
What are you trying to accomplish?
And he wasn't a Christian.
He said, well, we believe that by looking
through here, we're going to use this as
a tool as a lever to sort of
pry off the lid of the secrets of
what holds everything together and what is really
the force or the glue of everything.
You know?
And I mean, well, I mean, I guess
that's a good thought.
I don't know.
But I asked him, well, what do you
call it?
He didn't have a name for it.
But the Scriptures do.
Jesus Christ is that force.
He is that glue that holds everything together,
that owns everything.
I don't need an electron microscope.
God has spoken.
And the reason that we can sit here
today is because Jesus Christ is the secret
behind everything that exists.
Because in here we also see by whom
also He made the worlds.
See, He's not only the heir of all
things, He's the Creator of all things.
The reason that the sky is blue is
because of Him.
The reason that the robin sings is because
of Him.
The reason the grass is green is because
of Him.
He gets to choose those things.
He gets to do those things because He
made all things.
He was there back at creation in eternity
past.
He was there.
And the reason the things work the way
they do is because He made the worlds.
Notice it's plural there too.
I don't have time to get into all
that.
This is so different than a prophet speaking,
isn't it?
Did you know the fastest growing religion in
the world is the Muslim or Islamic religion?
They recognize Jesus Christ.
They do.
He is in their writings.
They acknowledge Him, but they do not acknowledge
this.
They call Him a prophet.
They would relegate Him to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
those others.
They are wrong.
That is not what these are saying.
Jeremiah and Isaiah is not the heir of
all things.
They did not create all things.
They were not there at the beginning with
the Holy Spirit and God.
God has spoken to us by inspiring prophets
and apostles, but in our day, He has
spoken to us in the person of His
Son.
And what He spoke was what He accomplished
by His life and by His death on
the cross and by His resurrection.
This is what God has said.
This is what you need to hear.
This is what God said of Jesus Christ
after He was baptized.
This is My beloved Son.
Hear ye Him.
And He didn't just mean audibly.
He meant receive everything about Him.
His life.
His teaching.
His ministry.
His work.
What He's done.
And so on.
And so the question for you to answer
this morning is have you listened to the
Son?
Have you heard what He has to say?
Have you heard God?
Has He spoken to you today?
And really the question is, have you heard
Him?
Well, the other thing I want to just
mention briefly here that's important, and we've kind
of said it, but I just want to
say it again because it's so important.
The first part of this verse 2, it
says, Hath in these last days...
The word last there is an interesting word.
We are living in the last days according
to the Bible.
Did you know that?
And you may think, well, I'm not sure,
Brother Rick.
It's been almost 2,000 years.
That's a pretty long last.
Well, God is patient.
God is merciful.
God is gracious.
I'm thankful He does not define days like
you and I do.
I'm so thankful for that.
I wouldn't be standing here today, and neither
would you be sitting there if He defined
time like you and I did.
But we are in the last days.
Well, what does it mean?
If it doesn't mean what you and I
think it means, what does it mean?
Well, it means several things.
One, we've already said, this is God's last
word to us.
But the other thing it means is this.
The last days begin with the coming of
the Son into the world.
And we are still living in the last
days since the days of Christ.
And that is the last days of history
as we know them before the full and
final establishment of the reign of Christ forever
and ever.
Let me give you an illustration that maybe
will help you understand it.
During wartime in a war, the last days
of the war are those days that come
after the final decisive battle or the final
decisive bomb or whatever that lets you know
everybody knows who's going to win.
But do you know in most wars after
that decisive battle, there are other battles that
follow?
Let me give you an example from World
War II.
August 6, 1945, the United States did an
awful thing.
They did a terrible thing.
They unleashed the most powerful bomb that's ever
been exploded on the surface of this earth.
The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
And on that day on August 6, 100
,000 people died.
The power that was unleashed by splitting that
small little atom in that fusion nuclear bomb
spread out over about a 6 or 7
mile area and 100,000 people died.
Boy, that's an awful thing, isn't it?
Well, the war was decided on that day,
but the battles were not over.
Three days later, a second atomic bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki and about 60,000 or
70,000 people died on that day.
But it wasn't until about a week later
or more, actually it was a couple weeks
later, until September 2, that a full and
final and unconditional surrender was signed by the
Japanese.
Now, between August 6 and September 2, there
were still battles that were fought, but you
know what?
That was the last days of the war.
Those battles, frankly, didn't matter anymore.
I mean, they mattered to the people that
were in them, but the decision who was
going to win, the victor, was already decided.
Do you understand?
And that's the days we live in.
The victory is already decided.
The decisive thing has already happened.
On the cross on Calvary, the victory was
made.
Death was destroyed.
Satan was abolished.
On that day when Jesus Christ gave up
the ghosts, and right before that when He
uttered, it is finished.
Telestia.
The greatest power that has ever been unleashed
on the history of this earth went forth.
And the shockwaves of that atomic bomb which
went five miles are nothing to the waves
that rolled out of that cross that went
up through the heavens, down into the lowest
pit of hell, out across eternity past, and
into eternity future, and it's still hitting you
and I today.
That force that can do away with sin
and change where a man is going to
spend eternity was unleashed on the cross that
day.
We are in the last days.
The decisive battle was won on that day
on the cross.
Amen?
Now, there are still casualties today, just like
in World War II, but the battle is
won.
And we need to see that.
And that's why we're in the last days.
And when we see it that way, we
begin to understand a little bit about what's
going on.
And things begin to line up in our
heads and our hearts about who Jesus is
and what He really did on that day.
This is the Word of God.
This is what God has spoken.
In past, He spoke through the prophets.
But today, He's spoken through His Son.
And what His Son has to say is
that He died on that cross and He
was resurrected.
That's what God has to say to you
and I today.
That's what God has to say to you
and I today.
He doesn't have anything else to say.
That's His last word.
Do you know there's no third covenant coming?
There's no third phase?
There's no special better revelation coming.
This is God's Word.
And man must deal with it because God
has dealt with man.
Mercifully.
But He has dealt with man.
Who being the brightness of His glory...
Brightness here actually means the outshining, the outraying.
It means He is the light being.
It means He is the light carrier.
All of those things.
He is the brightness.
The brightness of His glory.
It's just like you and I, we cannot
understand the true glory or the true shining
of the physical sun because we cannot look
upon it with our naked eyes in its
full force.
We have to see its effects.
We have to see the radiance of the
sun through the sun rays and its effect
on this earth of growing things and healing
things and heating things.
And so, Jesus, by looking at Him, we
see the outraying, the outshining, the radiance of
God in the person of Jesus Christ.
As He said to Philip that day, if
you have seen Me, you have seen the
Father.
And that's why the next part is also
true.
It says He's the express image.
And the word express image there in the
Greek is where we get our word character.
And what it literally means, He is like
the steel engraving image of God Himself.
It's just like if you want to make
a coin, you make a steel engraving mold
and that mold puts the exact image in
steel upon that coin.
And that's what God is.
He is the express character and image engraved
upon who He is of God Himself.
And that is why if you want to
know about God, if you come here to
learn about God, the way to the Father
is through the Son.
The way to the Father is through the
Son.
He is the express image.
Upholding all things by the word of His
power.
We mentioned the atomic bomb a minute ago.
The amount of power that was released, really
all we did when we split the atom,
I'd rather say it's like we untied something
there.
And when we untied it and loosed it,
we loosed the power that Jesus Christ put
in it.
Because the Bible teaches us in Colossians that
He not only created all things, but He
sustains, which means He holds all things together.
And when we untied one of those little
teeny things you and I can't even see,
except if we have an electron microscope, by
the way, the power that was unleashed was
awesome.
It was awful, but it was awesome.
It's just a little touch.
Not even a drop in the ocean of
the power that He does, but He upholds
all things by the word of His power.
Well, the other thing that I want to
talk about here for a few minutes is
it says that when He had by Himself
purged our sins.
Purged our sins.
You know, we live in a world that
is desperate for redemption.
They may not know it, but they are.
We need to be brought back out of
a state of hopelessness and restored to that
right relationship with God.
And the number one thing that keeps us
from that is sin.
It's sin.
Why is it that nothing really completely satisfies?
Why is it that nothing really does the
trick, so to speak?
Why is it that so many people in
a world where there's so many gadgets, so
many things, so much to do, hundreds of
television stations, millions of movies, entertainment galore, that
the suicide rate increases exponentially every year?
I'll tell you the reason.
It's sin.
Because none of that stuff satisfies.
It never has and it never will.
And the reason is sin.
Sin is a reality.
You open up the book of Romans, you
will have to come to terms with the
fact that sin is not just a little
problem.
It's that sin has a grip upon every
human being on this earth.
You were born with a sin nature.
And the main problem with sin, beyond that
you have a sin nature, is that men
choose to sin.
It's as if they cannot help themselves.
They do not have the power or the
ability to purge themselves or get rid of
it.
They do not have that ability.
You know, it's like they're infected with some
disease, but the problem is it's self-inflicted.
If I were to have a syringe up
here full of some horrible disease of cancer,
and I would say, well, who wants to
come up and let me infect you with
this cancer?
Let me impute it or put it into
your system.
And it won't hurt.
In fact, it will feel pretty good.
You'll sort of enjoy it for a while.
And oh, by the way, you'll be dead
in less than six months.
Nobody would come up here.
And yet, we drink the cup of sin
willingly because we think it tastes good or
feels good.
And yet, the sad thing is we don't
seem to be able to help ourselves.
We don't have the power.
We know it will kill us.
Sin is a destructive thing.
Sin is an awful thing.
It wastes a man.
It wastes his life.
It wastes his spirit.
It wastes his soul.
And it wastes him for all eternity.
Sin is an awful thing.
The other problem with sin is God is
angry with sin.
The Bible says in Psalm 2 that God
is angry every day at sin.
We don't say that very much in the
21st century here.
You know, we live in the 21st century
over here where we hear God is love,
God is love, God is love.
And He is.
Amen?
And now back in the 18th century in
Jonathan Edwards' day, he preached a sermon.
What was it called?
Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.
They talked about God is angry at sin,
God is angry at sin.
And somewhere between the 18th century and the
21st century, we need to get this thing
together, don't we?
And depending on where you are in your
theology, you need both.
And thank God for both.
I'm glad God is angry at sin.
Because that means He's going to do something
about it.
And He did something about it.
And He did something about it in the
person of His Son.
The cross.
And because of that, the cross is an
expression of two things.
A just anger of a holy God at
sin, just like they understood back in the
18th century, but also the incredible love and
mercy of a God that would die.
Amazing love.
How can it be that Thou, my God,
shouldst die for me?
And that, on the cross, came together.
The anger of God and the love of
God in the person of Jesus Christ.
Why do you think God is begging you
to hear His Son?
This is the reason.
God is pleading with you now.
He will not plead with you forever.
God will not strive with man forever.
There will come a day when God will
stop speaking.
I hope that shocks you just a little
bit.
God is still speaking, present tense continuously.
But you know, there will be a day
when God says enough.
And He will not speak with man anymore.
Sin is a great offense against God.
And it was Jesus Christ alone who by
Himself notice the emphasis of the personal pronouns
there, by Himself purged our sins.
Purged our sins.
And what did He do after that?
Another one of the themes of the book
of Hebrews is He sat down.
He sat down.
It's finished, young people.
He sat down.
Do you know when the high priest went
into the Holy of Holies?
There was no chair in there.
No high priest ever got to sit down.
But Jesus, when He entered into the veil
for you and I, He got to sit
down.
And He got to not just sit down.
He sat down on the right hand of
the Majesty on high.
And you know, there's something in heaven now
that wasn't in heaven 2,100 years ago
if I may say it this way.
There's a glory in heaven today that wasn't
there 2,100 years ago because not only
is Jesus the Son of God now, He
is the Son of Man.
And now there's a man sitting by the
right hand of God that has nail prints
in His hands.
I believe they're still there.
And because of that, there's a glory in
heaven that wasn't there 2,100 years ago
because what He did on the cross forever
changed not only earth, but it changed heaven
forever too.
Did you ever think about that?
It wasn't just the earth that was shocked
and rocked that day on the cross.
All heaven was rocked as well.
It was rocked.
And then Jesus went home.
And He sat down.
And somehow He was the same, but He
wasn't the same.
I don't know how to explain all these
paradoxes sometimes.
He was still fully God, but He was
fully man now because He came here as
a man.
And there's something in heaven that wasn't there.
There's somebody in heaven that wasn't there 2
,100 years ago.
Jesus was there before, but the Jesus that's
there now, He's different.
He's also a man.
And He died on a cross.
And that brings a glory to Him that
wasn't there before.
I believe that.
I don't know how to explain all that.
I hope you hear my heart.
He's God and He's man.
Well, I want to go through this next
section a little more quickly here about angels.
I'm not going to spend a lot of
time on them.
I'm just going to read 4-14 here.
Sit up straight.
Listen.
God is speaking.
You need to tune in your mind and
your heart.
We're speaking of Jesus.
"...being made so much better..." There's that key
word.
"...than the angels, as He hath by inheritance..."
We've already talked about that.
"...obtained a more excellent name than they.
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 He shall be to Me a
Son.
And again, when He bringeth in the first
begotten into the world, He saith, and let
all the angels of God worship Him."
See, there's no angels that have ever worshiped
a prophet.
But they worship Jesus Christ.
"...And of the angels, He saith, who make
this angel's spirits and his ministers a flame
of fire.
But unto the Son He saith..." Now watch
this carefully.
"...Thy throne..." This is God speaking to Jesus.
"...Thy throne, O God..." So this is God
speaking to Jesus, calling Him God.
Do you get that?
Jesus Christ is God.
He is deity.
And that's why one of the root problems
with almost every cult that has ever existed
is they try to do away with the
fact that Jesus Christ is God.
Because once you deal with that truth, it
opens up what all the rest of the
Bible really has to say.
But if you can shove it aside, you
can shove aside a lot of other doctrines
too.
But once you come to grips with that
truth, my, then you have to read the
Bible.
I truly believe the way God meant you
to hear it.
So God is saying, "...Thy throne, O God,
is forever and ever.
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of
Thy kingdom."
Now watch this.
Thou, speaking about Jesus, has loved righteousness and
hated iniquity.
See, not only God hates sin, Jesus does.
We always think of the meek and lowly
and lovely Jesus, and He is.
But did you know He hates iniquity?
He hates iniquity.
That's what the Bible says.
He hates iniquity.
He hates sin.
He hates it so much that He died
to purge it out of your life and
my life.
"...Therefore, God, even Thy God hath anointed Thee
with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows."
And what this is saying is that Christ
is above everybody else.
He's been anointed with an oil, a kingly
oil, a righteous oil, and He is to
get preeminence in all things.
What does it say in Colossians?
That He might have the preeminence in all
things.
All things.
That means not only in heaven.
That not only means in eternity future.
That it means in your heart.
And some of you Bible school students that
are here that are Christians, you're Christians, but
Jesus Christ is not where He needs to
be in your life.
And some of you know that.
And maybe that's why some of you are
here.
Some of you are here because you know
you need to dethrone yourself.
You cannot have the cross without the crown.
We try it, and we're frustrated in our
Christianity.
Isn't that right?
He must have the preeminence in all things,
even in your things.
Even in my things.
Do you know that in the Bible, Jesus
is called Savior only 15 times, but He's
called Lord over 500 times?
Do a study on that sometimes.
It will shock you.
We like to call Him Savior at Amen.
But God only called Him that 15 times,
but He called Him Lord over 500 times.
We need to get our thinking right, don't
we?
We need to get our thinking right.
And Thou, Lord, in the beginning, hast laid
the foundation of the earth.
We've already talked about that creation.
And the heavens are the works of Thine
hands.
They shall perish, but Thou remainest, and they
all shall wax old as doth a garment.
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.
But to which of the angels said He
at any time, Sit on My right hand
until I make Thine enemies Thy footstep.
Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth
to minister for them who shall be heirs
of salvation?
And you may wonder why did God, why
did the Bible spend so much time in
verses 5-14 talking about why Jesus is
so much better than angels?
And it's because God knows us.
We continually get some of these simple things
so wrong.
In those days, the people, there were religions
that worshiped angels.
There were religious rites concerning angels.
And this letter was written to a people,
the Hebrew people, who had a great interest
and almost preoccupation with angels.
And if you look back at their history,
some of it is almost understandable as angels
would visit them and bring proclamations and bring
words from God and different things would happen.
But God is saying, enough of the angels!
It's Jesus Christ.
And I think God is saying the same
thing today.
Have you ever gone in a Christian bookstore
lately?
Calendars with angels.
Mugs with angels.
Half the books on there are sometimes about
angels.
I'm not against angels.
Please don't misunderstand me.
But why is it people that seem so
preoccupied with angels are not really as spiritual
as they need to be?
They're not really interested in the things of
Jesus Christ.
I don't know if there are any angels
in this room right now, but I know
who is here.
Jesus Christ.
He is here.
He is real.
Cultivate a relationship with Him.
And may I say, just forget about the
angels.
If God sends one to you in a
moment of distress because He's ministering to you,
amen.
But that doesn't mean you then want to
hang out with the angel, does it?
I mean, come on.
I think some of us are falling into
this.
It's not about angels.
It's about Him.
Jesus is so much better.
I come from Florida.
Like I said earlier, I remember meeting several
people there over the course of one week.
The first one I met...
Well, in Marion County, where I live there
in Florida, there's over 500 very beautiful, attractive
horse farms.
And I used to do business with some
of those farms.
And one day I met this man who
actually worked at a farm.
He was one of the hired help on
the farm.
And he invited me to come out.
And I drove out there.
And he took me into the farm.
And he showed me around some of the
barns.
The real showpiece of the whole farm, though,
was the main house.
It was this big, beautiful, colonial house.
Big stone pillars.
I really wanted to go see it.
And he said, I'm not allowed in there.
So I said, okay.
About a week later, I happened to meet
the son of the owner of the farm.
And he asked me if I wanted to
come out.
And I said, sure.
I still wanted to see the house.
And now the other guy that brought me
in, he actually brought me in from the
back of the farm.
On all these horse farms, there's always four
or five entrances.
He brought me in the back where he
always went in.
And we looked at these barns on the
outer area.
I never made it to the middle of
the farm.
The other man that took me, the son,
brought me right through the main entrance.
You know, big main entrance, big sign across
the front.
We went right in the main entrance.
First place we went, we drove right up
to the main house.
Not only that, we went right immediately into
the study of the house, the inner sanctum.
And there sat the owner.
He introduced him to him.
He shook my hand.
What a difference.
Same farm, but my, what a different tour
I got that day.
One was with a servant.
The other was with a son.
You see the difference?
What a difference.
We need to see the difference between the
servants of God, the angels, and between His
Son.
Now, I want to finish by reading these
last four verses and making a few comments
here in chapter 2.
Again, Hebrews, like many books of the New
Testament, don't necessarily break as smoothly with a
thought at the end of a chapter.
So chapters are very useful to find things,
but we still want to go with the
flow of the thought.
And so look at this word, therefore, meaning
all these other 14 verses have been said.
God has spoken so that you can hear,
so that I can hear, so that I
can preach and say what Paul is saying
here in these first four verses.
Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest
heed to the things that we have heard.
See what you've just heard?
What have you just heard?
That God has spoken through His Son, lest
at any time we should let them slip.
For if the word spoken by angels was
steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a
just recompense of reward, how shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation?
Which at the first began to be spoken
by the Lord and was confirmed unto us
by them that heard Him, God also bearing
them witness, both with signs and wonders and
with diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy
Ghost according to His own will.
This is the first of about seven major
signposts.
There are seven major warnings in the book
of Hebrews.
The book of Hebrews is a wonderful book
of the revelation of Jesus Christ, but sewn
into the fabric of Hebrews are some warnings.
There are some warnings.
There are some signposts.
You know what a signpost is and a
warning is, don't you?
Danger.
There's a bridge out ahead.
And if you don't heed it, if you
don't give it earnest heed, you'll just go
into the canyon.
People have done that, haven't they?
It happens in real life.
People don't pay attention to the warning.
There was a man where I used to
work at a job I had in central
Florida.
His name was Paul.
He was getting some pain in his back
up and down his spine.
It lasted for several weeks.
Do you know pain is a warning?
We don't like pain, but you know God
gave us pain to warn us of things.
You ever think about that?
But anyway, he got this pain in his
back and his friend said, you need to
go to the doctor.
He said, I'll be alright.
Weeks went by.
Months went by.
A year went by and finally he went.
It ended up that he had cancer of
the spine.
I'd never met anybody that had cancer of
the spine, but somehow it got in his
spine.
I mean, this whole spine was just riddled
all through all the vertebrae and everything right
into the interior of the spinal cord.
And the doctor just said, you know, we're
not even going to treat you.
There's nothing we can do.
I mean, it's so full.
We're wasting your time and our time.
You're gone.
And he said, if you had come a
year ago when it first happened, I think
we probably could have helped you, but it's
too late.
Why didn't you come?
And he admitted and said, well, people warned
me and told me to come, but he
ignored the warning.
See, ignoring the warning didn't make the cancer
go away.
He had the cancer anyway.
He had the cancer.
You don't have to ignore the warning to
be lost.
You're already lost if you're not born again.
If you don't know God, if you were
born with the sin of nature, you're already
lost.
You don't have to do anything to be
lost.
He didn't have to do anything to get
cancer.
He had it.
You don't have to do anything to be
lost.
You already are.
You're already under judgment.
You're already lost.
That is your condition.
But if you neglect the word that God
has spoken to His Son and let it
slip, how shall you escape?
And that's what's called a rhetorical question.
The question answers itself.
You won't escape.
There is no escape because this is God's
last, best word to man.
There is no other answer.
There is no third covenant.
There is no special dream or revelation you're
going to get that's going to fix everything.
God has said everything that He's going to
say.
He has spoken.
Just as a side note, on Paul on
his hospital bed, sick, he was the first
person I ever led to Jesus Christ.
I'd only been a Christian about two years.
He didn't neglect that warning.
And you know, he even thanked God before
he died for the cancer because he would
have neglected the warning.
But God in His mercy gave him cancer
to put him in a position he wouldn't
have allowed himself to be in before.
God will do that.
God is merciful.
Give the more earnest heed.
You know, this part of this convinces me
that the writer of Hebrews was a preacher
because it's almost as if he's heartbroken here.
There's this earnestness in his plea.
And there's nothing more heartbroken, I don't think,
for a preacher to preach the truth, to
expose, to bring forth the truth of the
Word of God that you know could change
a life and set it free and have
people just let it slip by.
That's what it says here.
The word slip here means just kind of
let it coast on by.
The Bible speaks of the people in Thessalonica
that when they heard the Word, they received
the Word with all readiness of mind.
That means they put it to the front
or the forward part of their mind.
And what you need to do here this
week is you need to put what we
have to say to the forward part of
your mind.
You know, I realize that even as I
speak here this morning, there's a chance that
some of you are letting some of this
slip by and drift by.
Some of you are thinking about home.
Some of you might be thinking about your
job or your car or the weather.
I don't know.
But I beg you, don't do that.
Don't let it drift by.
Receive the Word with all readiness of mind.
In verse 2 here, it talks about the
Word spoken by angels was steadfast.
And what he's talking about is in time
past, angels brought words of judgment that were
true.
Remember Sodom and Gomorrah?
Who brought the message?
Angels.
What did they say?
This place is going to be judged with
fire from heaven.
You need to escape.
And they dragged Lot by the scruff of
the collar, it seemed like, out of there.
That was the mercy of God to Lot,
wasn't it?
But their word was steadfast ensured.
The judgment, the recompense of what they said
happened.
And if that happened, and it did, Sodom
and Gomorrah were destroyed.
How much more is the Word of the
Son and how shall we escape so great
a salvation if we neglect it and let
it slip?
You see, God is using a comparative way
to try to get your attention and my
attention here.
And then he says there's eyewitnesses to what
Jesus Christ did.
Here it says in verse 3, "...spoken by
the Lord and was confirmed unto us by
them that heard Him."
You know, even in our land this day,
2,000 years past that, if there are
enough eyewitnesses that can confirm a thing happened,
the judgment is very easy to make, isn't
it?
And he's saying here there are eyewitnesses that
saw and heard and they've confirmed it.
They've affirmed it.
They've testified this is true.
This was the Christ.
This is the Messiah.
These things have happened.
We have touched the nail prints in His
hands.
We have spoken to Him before and after
the resurrection.
And so God is using all these things.
Then He attests it or confirms it with
signs and miracles.
You know, those things haven't even stopped in
our day.
God is still testifying to what He did
on the cross by signs and miracles and
by gifts.
He even mentions gifts.
You know, when gifts come forth and are
manifested in a church, when there's healing, when
there's mercy, when there's prophecy, it's actually a
testimony that Jesus Christ spoke for God 2
,000 years ago.
It's not about the person with the gift.
It's about the giver and the reason He's
given.
We need to see this and understand this.
And so to you today, non-Christian, God
lets that question hang at the end of
this passage and so will I.
How shall we escape if we neglect such
great salvation?
But to the Christian, the writer is also
saying in the flow of all of this,
you can't escape this fact either that Jesus
Christ is to have the preeminence in all
things and He has a more excellent name
than all things and He has a throne
of righteousness and He hates iniquity and where
is your life and when are you going
to surrender to Him and dethrone yourself?
You can't escape that fact.
Oh, Christians try to play around with that
and play games with God.
This is a week to stop playing games.
Dethrone yourself.
You cannot escape this truth because God has
spoken by His Son and it is God's
best, last Word to you as well.
May God bless His Word and add His
applications to your heart this day.
Thank you.
Amen.