Why Study Theology? An Introduction to a 6 part study on the Doctrine of the Word of God

What is Systematic Theology and why is it important to us?

            Many Christians, and even people who call themselves Christian, are very suspicious of anything academic and involving the mind as we are so used to being “entertained unto death” and “amusement” seems to be a priority in the Church. This worldliness and lack of attention to the mind has crept into much of the Church through the modern period and the postmodern Church seems to care little for topics like theology or anything involving the use of the mind.  For the next few blogs, I want to engage in a discipline called “systematic theology”.

The vocabulary itself is intimidating. “Systematic Theology”; “Doctrine” all very serious sounding words and even words that sometimes bring up divisions. But theology is important. Theology really does matter.  In an age of “no Creed but Christ” and “I’m spiritual but not religious” the identity of the Christian faith is really at stake.  Christianity loses its identity when anybody who simply mentions Jesus but doesn’t define anything about him can be called “Christian.” Several years ago, a professor from BYU wrote a book called “A Different Jesus?” in which he argued that the Mormon Jesus was essentially the same as that of the Evangelical Jesus.  When Christianity can be defined as anything and everything, then essentially, it means that the Church will be another participant in the “well that’s true for you but not for me” free for all. Theology matters.

The following set of lectures will be a presentation of Systematic Theology on the Doctrine of the Word of God or Scripture. Now, before the word “systematic theology” scares you off, let me define it. Systematic Theology is just a summation of what all of Scripture teaches about a particular topic. For instance, the doctrine of the Justification would be a summation of what all of Scripture teaches about how sinners are justified before a righteous and holy God. The Doctrine of the End Times (Eschatology) is the summative teaching of what the Bible says about the end, etc…So basically, it’s like looking at all the parts of one thing and bringing them all together in a summary like fashion. The same could be done as Christiology, Soteriology, Pneumatology and other sub-topics in systematics. Systematic Theology is one discipline, or methodological approach, in Theology. There are various other disciplines like “Biblical Theology” which seeks to study the development of particular themes as they progress, or unfold, in redemptive history. There is “Historical Theology” which seeks to understand how doctrines were developed through the ongoing history of the Church (in this field, history, not Scripture is the text). Apologetics is another field of study that seeks to make use of methods to defend and promote the truthfulness of the Christian faith against various oppositions from other religions, atheist and even within the Church itself. There are also various subfields that can be created like “Old Testament Theology” or “New Testament Theology” or “The Theology of John” or “The Theology of Prayer in Isaiah”, etc…you get the idea.

The big thing we need to see about Systematic Theology, is that it answers the question “what does the Bible ever and always teach about a particular subject?” which means that systematic theology is very relevant to the Church in any age and in any period. This means that we can draw life applications from studying theology and not merely storing up “head knowledge”.  This is knowledge that is meant to be applied and lived out be it in change of mind, attitude or practice(repentance). But systematic theology is also very practical. For instance, when someone asks, “hey, what does the Bible say about such and such…” your response doesn’t have to be “well let’s read the Bible and find out!” Instead of opening Genesis and working through the whole Bible, doing systematic theology is a shortened way of summarizing what the Bible says about what somebody might be asking about.  In a way, you probably already do systematics whenever anybody asks you about something from the Bible. The only difference between what most Christians do on the spot and what a course or book dealing with systematics might do differently is be more exhaustive and comprehensive and it will usually lay out the order of topics in a “systematized” way so that there is an order about them as well as address difficulties with a particular topic. But above all, systematic theology is to cause us to marvel as we see God and his ways revealed to us in Scripture.  Some things, therefore, may not be meant to draw out immediate “life application” but rather to bask in the wonder and be amazed at the glory of God.

Therefore, seeing that this is something that we already do so long as we are studying Scripture and coming to faithful conclusions from it, this approach to study is not something that should be intimidating or shoved aside. Rather, it should be embraced and made use of as ones arsenal for doing ministry.  The sad reality is that Christians who do not know what they believe and why they believe it, or who believe something but don’t know why, are the ones most susceptible to false gospels and idolatry. It is people who study the Bible only in parts and pieces and neglect the whole who are usually deceived or are the deceivers twisting Scripture according to their own wicked hearts.  This study is a call to delve deep in to the word. But more importantly, it is a study that is in obedience to the Great Commission of the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ who said,

“All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…”

It is no small thing that the Lord has commanded us to make disciples and teach. A disciple is a learner, one who is devoted to a teacher or a particular teaching. It is the will of Jesus Christ that his teaching be passed on through the apostles at first, then to others who have handed it down to this very day. How is discipling done? Through teaching. There is no magic formula, no secret to knowledge as it were, but simply teaching. This study is out of faithfulness to Christ and I hope that you will become more engaged disciples as we hear Jesus Christ speaking to us, His Church, through Scripture and all that He commanded.

In another place in Scripture, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews rebukes his audience for their shallowness in their Christian faith. In Chapter 5, as the author is getting ready to explain Melchizedek, he says,

“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

In this passage, the author shows that his readers were not recent converts at all. Rather, they were “seasoned veterans” but with nothing to show for their faith.  The author does not mean to say that these should be ordained elders or pastors or something of that capacity, but that they should at least be able to teach their faith and explain it when asked.  Perhaps these readers, like many today, think that theology and formal instruction in the Bible is a waste of time or is something for “smart people” or just a down right waste of time.  Some might say, “what difference does it make whether God is a Trinity or not?” In our age, “tolerance” is an idol and because it is, the particulars are being jettisoned in the name of tolerance. What difference does it make if the righteousness of Christ comes to me by imputation or impartation so long as “we all get along” right?  Or what about this excuse: “God want’s ‘childlike’ faith”? I can only say that “childlike” faith is not the same as “childish” faith.  The difference is that one is indifferent and ignorant of the Word of God and the other is not because it has to know it order to accept it like a child accepts the teachings of his father.  Richard Phillips comments this on this passage:

“Yet, we are living in a time when most church members are immensely ignorant of the Bible and its doctrines. Evangelicals heartily agree that the Bible is true, but they simply don’t take time to learn what it teaches. Recent surveys show that most professing Christians cannot, for instance, list half of the Ten Commandments, cite the names of the four Gospels, or articulate what is meant by the term ‘justification’.”

[i]

This epidemic is certainly true in our own context where people tend to think that such knowledge makes you “religious” and we would rather be “spiritual” looking for a feeling to let us know that we are in contact with the divine. Hence, the phrase “I’m spiritual but not religious” has been coined as is even on option on Facebook and Myspace for your religious preference! The writer of Hebrews doesn’t pull any punches with his audience. He basically tells them, “you don’t really know your faith!” These people were not able to articulate their faith. They hadn’t matured. Immature believers are easily led astray. There is a need in the Church among leaders and lay folk alike to use their minds to glorify God. Some recent works that bring this out include John Piper’s “Think”, Nancy Pearcey’s “Total Truth” and Alister McGrath’s “The Passionate Intellect”

Truth be told, theology bores a lot of Christians. But this is another way of saying “God, we are bored with you! We do not find you worthy enough to think deep thoughts about you or to meditate on your word or to see the implications for our lives in what we are to believe and how we are to live.” Now, the objection might come up, “I’m a simple person and I have a simple faith. I’m saved and that’s all I need!” But where in Scripture will you justify this kind of thinking? This would be like a husband arguing to his spouse after the marriage ceremony, “hey, we’re married already….I don’t need to try to get to know you anymore than I already have! It is enough that we made that one time commitment, there is no need to pursue you anymore!” How ridiculous is that? Christians who think like this, will find that they are of little use to the Church and to God. How will you evangelize others if you don’t know your faith? How will you explain to your Roman Catholic friend the difference between what they believe and what the Bible teaches about salvation?

God commands us to grow. He commands us to know Him. He commands us to know his word. This is not easy and it shouldn’t be. It is God that we are studying and we are not intended to study him to be able to fully comprehend him or his ways. Being infinite and us finite, there is a very real sense in which thoughts of him cannot and should not be fully grasped because we are not God. So if you don’t get something right away, pray and study God more. We are not intended to grasp him in one look at him but in ongoing relationship with him. This study will be in obedience and faithfulness and love to our Lord Jesus Christ who wants us to know him fully who gave everything for us. It will be challenging but studying God always is because he is so far and beyond us. The challenge is meant to cause growth in head, heart and holiness.

---

[i] Phillips, Richard D. , Hebrews, Reformed Expository Commentary, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 2006, pg. 177

Jesus is the true meaning of Christmas!!!

Jesus is the true miracle of Christmas!!!

By Moses Flores

(to hear this on audio click here )

Christmas is, by far, one of the most anticipated holidays in the entire world practically! It’s a time of family, a time of friends, a time of celebrating and giving and receiving gifts. It’s a time of consumerism and a time when everyone wants to get in the holiday cheer! Even Lady Gaga has decided to join in and sing her own Christmas song! Who can forget the experiences and the madness that make “Black Friday” one of the nation’s busiest shopping days. The deals are always something people look forward too. But for Christians, the true meaning of Christmas does not lie in these things. For Christians, Christmas is all about Jesus. As Christians, Jesus is our true message and the true meaning and miracle of Christmas. He is the gift of God to a lost, broken and dying world.

But what about Jesus? What is the message? What is all hoopla about “Hark! The herald angels sing” all about? Joy to the world? Why? What is the joy all about? Even for Christians it is easy to get lost in the idols of materialism and consumerism and lose the joy and true significance of Christmas which is more than you getting what you want! Its more than whether you have been naughty or nice, and all about grace given to people who have been naughty since the time of Adam.

I want to shed some light and restore our holiday cheer as we recall why Christmas is so significant to the world and to the Church especially. We will do this by broadly looking at Hebrews 2:10-18 and asking who Jesus is, what Jesus became and, lastly, why he became what he became. Here is our text:

“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again, ‘Behold, I and the children God has given me.’ Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

 

Who Jesus is

One of the keys to understanding the letter to the Hebrews is to understand that the author is attempting to demonstrate how Jesus and his ministry are “better” than the previously revealed Jewish religion which was used by God and mediated through angels and prophets and such. The mediator of the New Covenant is better because it does not come to us through servants but through a son, God’s own son. It is crucial in Hebrews that we are on the same page throughout the letter of who exactly the author teaches that Jesus is. Here in verse 10 he is referred to as “the founder of our salvation” and our “elder brother” as it were. Prior to this, the author reveals some very unique things about Jesus Christ.

In Chapter 1, the opening verses tell us seven important things  about Jesus. We read that he is 1) the heir of all things (v2) 2) the Creator of all things (v2) 3) the radiance of the glory of God and exact imprint of God’s nature(v3) 4) He uphold creation by his mere word (v3) 5) He made purification for sins (v3) 6) He sat down, signifying the completion and finality of his work, at the right hand of God the Father (v3) and lastly 7) his name is more excellent than that of angels.  In short, the writer posits a very high Christology compared to what we might run in to today. Some people think that Jesus was just a great man, a great teacher, a great moral example even. But the Bible clearly posits that Jesus Christ is nothing short of God! He is the second person of the Trinity; co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He existed from all eternity and all things exist by him and for him!! Everything, everything, EVERYTHING belongs to Jesus!!

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus was given a mission by the Father to “bring many sons to glory”. This echoes Jesus’ own teaching in John 6:37-39. Jesus was sent to be the “forerunner” or the “founder of our salvation”. The means by which this would be accomplished was through suffering as our text says.

But here is a problem. Remember what we just said about who Jesus is as God. If suffering is the appointment means through which salvation is to be accomplished, then how does an eternal person suffer? In his own essential being, God does not and cannot suffer. The Westminster Confession of faith mentions this by describing God as being without parts or passions.  Moreover, Jesus doesn’t deserve to suffer!

The truth is that we are the ones who deserve to suffer. We are the ones who are guilty of sin against God. We are the ones who have spurned his goodness and spit in his face as he has done nothing but give us good things. We have offended the very person who upholds all things, indeed the very fabric of our lives by his mere word. We deserve suffering. We deserve death. This is a very serious dilemma. Indeed, our salvation rest on how God will solve this!

What Jesus became

Solution of how an infinite and eternal being was made to suffer is found in the doctrine of the incarnation: the taking on of flesh by the infinite and eternal God. The eternal clothed in the finite! The author of Hebrews uses language in verses 14 and 17 that reveals the necessity of the son of God becoming a man:

“since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things…”

“Therefore, he had to be made his brothers in every respect…”

Some sincere Christians and seekers have asked the question: was there not any other way God could forgive our sins and save us? Why did God have to send his own son to become a man in order to die? Why the God man, is the way the questions was asked in the 12^th century by Anselm of Canterbury. These are important questions and our salvation is at stake depending on how we answer these and other related questions.

Throughout the history of the Church, different answers have been offered in how much of a man Jesus Christ became and some of these answers still live on today. Here are a few:

• Arianism: this view believes that Jesus was God’s first and finest creation, of the like substance (or “stuff”) of God, but not the same substance. So Jesus, essentially was like an angel who became a man; but not fully God and fully man. This doesn’t match the description of Hebrews in being the exact imprint of God’s nature. The big problem here with this Jesus is that there is no deity that he represents in himself that can also support his humanity. A finite being cannot bear the infinite and eternal weight of the wrath of God for our sins.

• Apollinarianism: In this view, Jesus did not have a human soul; he was just a human body inhabited by the eternal logos. So while this view of Jesus upholds his fully deity, it does not maintain his full humanity. That is, it fail to meet up with what Hebrews speaks about Christ having to be made like us “in every respect” which would include a human soul.

• Monothelitism: This is a complex view about Jesus’ humanity that claims that while Jesus was fully divine, his humanity did not possess a human will but only a divine one. It’s as if Jesus’ body was being controlled from headquarters in heaven. Again, this fail our description of Jesus in Hebrews being made like us “in every respect” including a human will. If Jesus did not take on a human will then he cannot faithfully represent us nor renew our own wills or save them in any way.

• Docetism: This is a view that denied the humanity of Christ and taught that Jesus only “appeared” to have a human body and thus, did not really suffer death. In a sense, Jesus is a phantom. Not only does this fail our description in Hebrews but I John 4:2,3 also teach against this particular view of the denial of the incarnation of the Son of God.

• Eutychianism:  In this view, Christ was neither fully God, nor fully man but a mixture of the natures into a third category of being. Sort of reminds me of the movie Underworld in which the character Michael is transformed into a half werewolf-half vampire species. He was neither completely one or the other, but entirely different. That is what this view teaches about Jesus. This view fail the descriptions of Hebrews and the entire Bible as Jesus is never classified into something “new”. Rather, he mediates God and Man and as such hold those two natures together though distinct they remain. Were they to turn to something new, then Jesus could not represent either God or man in the covenant but only those like him.

None of these views will ever suffice if we are to take our salvation seriously and the Bible seriously. Throughout the centuries, as the Church has struggled with this we have the privilege of reaping the fruit of their labors and we can have these maxims to govern our Christology: To the extent that Christ was not God, then to that extent his nature did not and does not represent our humanity to God; to the extent that Jesus was not human, then to that extent he did not and does not save our humanity. Rather, we need the fullness of God to save the fullness of our humanity!

This is an important teaching within Christianity as it reveals the heart of the Gospel: God becoming for us what we should have been before him. It is the condescension of God. It is God stooping down below his own dignity and becoming a creature. Philippians 2:5-11 speaks of this mentioning how Christ, though he was “the form of God” took upon himself “the form of a servant” which was to become a man. In Galatians 4:4 the Bible puts the same thought this way: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Jesus Christ is full God and fully man in every way, both natures together yet not mixed.

Why he became what he became

That Jesus might be our full savior and in every way are the very reasons Hebrews describes for Jesus taking upon himself human flesh. For instance, in verse 17 we read:

“Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God….”

Recall here the ministry of the high priest was to faithfully represent the people before God as he came and offered sacrifice in the Holy of Holies. The High Priest was to have his own sins atoned for so that he could be considered pure and holy before God lest he die in the presence of God behind the veil. Jesus had to be made like us in everyway to be our High Priest. But the sacrifice that he was going to offer wasn’t going to be a bull, or a goat. It was his own self! Verse 17 continues:

“…to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

The word “propitiation” is typically understood as a gift given to settle the wrath of another. However, scholars have noted that it is best to understand the word as “mercy seat” which is the bowl that stood over the Ark of the Covenant where the blood of the atoning sacrifice was placed. Jesus was made like us to die and present his own life on the mercy seat for us!!  Hebrews 2:14 says,

“…he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

Are you in slavery? Do you know someone who is in slavery? Bound to the shackles of their sin…ruining themselves…their lives…the lives of those around them. Enslaved to the same sin over and over and over; killing yourself spiritually and emotionally. This is why Jesus became a man. This is why we celebrate Christmas: because unto us a Savior was born!

This is the true meaning of Christmas: That Jesus Christ came to be the human being that we weren’t and could never be and through him alone will God accept any who come to him through Jesus as His own Son, and he will redeem and renew your humanity to like him. Jesus Christ will set your free from your addictions, from your sins, from your idolatry.

THAT is Christmas!!!

THAT is the Gospel!!!

THAT is God’s greatest gift…the gift of Himself in the giving of His own Son!!

Three Ways to live

3 ways to live

By Moses Flores

 

I have recently been listening to and reading a LOT of Tim Keller’s works. For those of you not familiar with Timothy J. Keller, shame on you! OK! I’m kidding.  He is, I think, one of the best gospel preachers of our generation and I think he has really stumbled on to gold in his presentation of the Gospel in his work “The Prodigal God” and it comes out in all his works.

            One of the things that Keller uses in all his preaching as a general framework of his Gospel presentation is that there are three ways to live: There is the way of independence or self-discovery; the way of morality and religion; and finally there is the Gospel way.

            In this short blog, I want to do my best to offer a brief summary of what Keller means by these three ways and how we, as Christians, can make use of these as we share the Gospel with friends and co-workers to help them understand what the Gospel is and is not. My goal is hopefully pass along his framework in to your thinking to help you share the Gospel with people in your own life.

The way of independence and self-discovery

            The first way is the way of self-discovery and independence.  Using the “prodigal son” from the Parable of the two lost sons, as Keller calls it, this type of lifestyle is a very obvious, “I want to live how I want to live with no conformity to any standards but what I make for myself!” type of life. It is very openly immoral, very openly wicked with no attempt to hide anything about it. It is what it is. From a “traditional” perspective this is a very “liberal” sort of life.  It might be a life lived immersed in sex, in drugs or in alcohol. It could be a life immersed in violence, often in trouble with the law.  It could be a life that simply lives for the pleasure of the moment and life is lived to get from moment to moment. Perhaps from weekend to weekend just to be able to “hit the clubs” and “let go” and live out life your way.

            In a sense, “salvation” in this kind of life is realized as one discovers themselves and finds happiness in living out this sort of openly immoral lifestyle.  Salvation is from “traditional morality,” in a sense, to a life of freedom. Life is about you about how much pleasure you can get, how much materials you can amass; how many sexual partners you can have; how much liquor you can hold down. In a sense, life is about breaking the rules.  In a sense, you are being “saved” from “traditionalism” and “moral conformity” which I will say more of in a moment.

Suffice it to say that this sort of lifestyle is very obvious and rebellious.  Most “Christians” don’t hesitate to call this way of life “sinful”. In summary: Salvation is FROM obedience.

 The way of Moral Conformity and Religion

            The way of moral conformity and/or religion is a life that seeks to save itself by adhering to the rule of morality and religion that the previous way of life breaks away from. This way of living says, “If you want to be saved then you must learn to follow these moral guidelines laid out by our religion or society.” And we see this expressed in EVERY form of religion. People will have “commandments” or “principles” or “laws” and “regulations” that must be strictly adhered to in order to be found worthy of heaven. Life is about how well you adhered to these rules whatever they may be. They could be very radical rules laid out by radical Muslims or even fanatical sects that promote hatred and demonizing all who are outside their religion.  But this way of living could also mask itself in Christianity as well. In fact, it can do it so well that this way of life can be mistakenly called Christian.

            In a sense, this is attempting to be saved by being good. In the parable of the Prodigal sons, Jesus points out to the Pharisees, represented by the older brother, that they are just as lost as the younger brother if not more so! How can this be you ask?

            You see, this type of lifestyle, moral conformity and religion, is simply a means of self service. How? The obedience and conformity is prompted by one’s own gain. In other words, it is deemed profitable to the conformist to conform.  The motivation for obedience is basically “what can I get out of this?” In the parable of the prodigal sons, the elder brother exhibits this attitude in that his obedience was prompted by what he would gain in his inheritance and not by love toward his father much less his younger brother.  When he was entreated by his father to come into the celebration feast, he boasted about his obedience as his pathway to receiving the good things from his father that his younger brother just received by sheer grace. He saids, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.” His attitude and motivation for obedience was to manipulate the father just to get the fathers things. And his medium of manipulation was obedience.

            In Summation: Salvation is THROUGH obedience.

The Gospel way to live

            Let me say something very clear. The Gospel is NONE of those. Now, obviously very few confuse the Gospel, or Christianity, as the way of self-discovery.  Rather, the Gospel tends to get confused with the way of moral conformity and religion. That is to say, most people tend to think that Christianity is simply a system of moral that when lived by will yield an exchange for eternal life. I was recently reading a book by a group of atheist in which they described Christianity in those exact terms to my disappointment.  No wonders other religions feel that they can “compete” with Christianity as they try to offer simply a better moral system. But as Keller says, the Gospel is none of these and neither is it a combination of them. It is something entirely different.

            In summation the Gospel is that the Almighty God of heaven and earth whom we have eternally offended by our sinfulness and continual breaking of his law has come down in the person of Jesus Christ, his one of a kind son, taking on the fullness of humanity while remaining fully God to fulfill the law of God for us and to bear the penalty of the law for us so that his merited righteousness could be given as a free gift through faith in Him. The work of Jesus Christ also merited for us the Holy Spirit of God to dwell in us and regenerate us so that we would have power in the newness of life to now be able to do the law, but not in futility to earn favor with God but because God has already shown us favor in Jesus Christ. In short, Jesus Christ was, is and does for us what we could not do, be or accomplish in our own fallen nature.  Salvation is a free gift. The law of God is now our friend because it does not condemn us but rather shows us the way to know God’s character and how to live a life that is pleasing to him. In short, the way of religion and even self-discovery is “do this and you will live” whereas the Gospel is “live so you can do this.” In one, we will always fall short of God’s standards but in the Gospel, God himself fulfills all his own requirements in Jesus.

            In Summation: Salvation is FOR obedience.

Which way are you living? Are you still trying to define your own existence by breaking away from the law of God? View God as some despotic ruler who doesn’t want anybody to have any fun that he isn’t in charge of? Or are you trying to use God to get what you want from him to where God is just an idol in your life and you are the real God telling God what he owes you because of your obedience and conformity to his will? Or are you living a life of thankful obedience through the law of God because Jesus Christ came down from heaven to become a man and live a perfectly sinless

The Quest for Happiness

The Quest for Happiness:

A look at what Psalm 1 says about Happiness

By Moses Flores

What is the one thing in the world that you think would make you happy? What do you do now that makes you happy?  These are questions that gets answered in many different ways. “If I could just hit the lottery I would be able to do everything that I always wanted to and have what I wanted to have, then I would be happy.” “If I can just land that dream job, then life would be peachy!” “Oh, if I could just find that special someone life would be much better!” Words like this are not unfamiliar in one’s lifetime. And yet, many people who have hit the lottery, or who have made much money through their success have reported that they are still not happy. Happiness still eludes them. We might hear happiness being tossed about in terms of morals and ethics. “If it makes you happy do it!” or “You have no right to impede another person’s happiness!” is a pretty popular statement in moral topics today.

Happiness is a very strong driving force in just about everyone’s life. Yet, happiness in life seems to be among the most elusive things. We have it as a goal but few seem to actually find it. Surprisingly, for the ones that do find it, we are naturally inclined to think, “How can you be ‘happy’ living like that?” Some people have given up on happiness altogether and think it is a mere illusion; a mirage in the desert that as you get closer and closer to it, it just vanishes. Some have become so exhausted in the quest for happiness that they have grown bitter to all life and wish that same bitterness on others.

The Bible posits happiness as a very real and very attainable thing. As we go through Psalm 1, let us first establish that the Bible says, “Blessed is the man….” The word for “blessed” is also translated as “happy”.  Happiness is possible. But why are we going to the Bible to learn about happiness? If we are designed by God and created by God, then it makes sense that God knows what will make us happy. In fact, God wants to and has told us where to find our happiness, which is precisely why we are looking at what the Bible says about happiness; So that we are no longer delusional about where to find it. How can we be the blessed person?

My points are simple 1) where you won’t find happiness 2) what a happy person is and does and, finally 3) what happiness looks like in real life.

Where you won’t find happiness

Psalm 1:1 reads,

“Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

Nor stands in the way of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

            In the path of life, we are all walking on a journey. Some say we are all writing our story, whatever your thing is, we are all on it. We all have a destination that we are aiming for and we are all looking to find happiness when we find that thing we are searching for at the end of the rainbow. As we walk the road of life, the quest for happiness is like a market place, a flea market or like a shopping mall with many things to offer us. There are people on the road with us and there are people who are trying to sell us products to find happiness.  Some places are good and some places are bad. Some people are good and some people are bad. The Bible very quickly tells us that happiness is not found “walking in the counsel of the wicked.” Let’s consider this first statement and be mindful of a progression that the author is revealing to us.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.” In our journey of life, we will be tempted, asked and forced even to consider that happiness will be found in certain avenues. This begins first as an intellectual endeavor, you consider counsel. You can imagine walking along a road and seeing different signs posted that say, “happiness: this way” or if you follow the market or mall analogy, all the businesses are advertising happiness in their products and they might have their sales men and women outside trying to get your attention. These are offering “counsel” if you will, making their sales pitch trying to give you advice in where you might find your happiness. “If you try this you’ll be happy….” (drugs, sex, gangs, alcohol, power, success, career, family, cars, religion, morality). “No! No! You got life all wrong man! Life is about…(insert your thing here)”. There is plenty of ideas out there so you get the point.

In terms of progress, this is still a pondering and considering stage in figuring out what makes you happy. Naturally, this happens early in life, even in the formative years of youth. One begins to experiment and consider different kinds of music to find out what music makes them happy. What kinds of clothing and what kinds of styles make them happy; what kind of movies, what kind of toothpaste, what kind of food, etc….What do I want to be when I grow up? Will drugs make me happy? Will a gang bring the happiness that a family that I have been missing out on hasn’t? Younger and younger, kids are dabbling with sex thinking that is how they will be happy or learn to make others happy through it. And it’s not just kids….its young adults that are still in this phase too; still learning and experimenting. Al Mohler, in an article, wrote about how young adults are prolonging adolescence. They want to “stay younger” longer. The world has come a long way and become so connected through travel and the internet especially. The world is increasingly becoming “multi-cultural”. There is just so much to do in life, so many options that it is almost paralyzing. The point being though, you are taking in counsel.

But notice the kind of people whose counsel will not bring happiness: “the wicked”. Like it or not, the world is not filled with “good” people…there are some who are classified as wicked or evil. Who are they? They are anyone who is opposed to life and worship in and through the true God as portrayed in the Bible. We are looking for happiness in things other than God, from people who hate God. In real life what this looks like is being attracted by the trinkets in life. We haven’t settled at this point but we there are many offers of various things…happiness is still not in sight here, but we are being offered it through the wrong things and by the wrong people. According to the Bible, the person who is walking down these paths searching for happiness in the “ways of the wicked” will not find it.

“Blessed is the man [who does not] stand in the way of sinners.” But then at some point, something might catch your attention.  It’s like walking in mall and looking into all the windows and just walking by and then all of a sudden you see something that really catches your interest and you stop. We find this same idea in the text which reads, “… stands in the way of sinners”. Note the progression in the text: walking to standing; from counsel to their way; from wicked to sinners. Now your intellectual considerations begin manifest themselves in behavior.  At this point, you’ve decided to commit to something as your way of happiness. At this point you have come to your “halt” and said, “I think this is finally it! My happiness in life is going to come from:

• Sex – I will be happy if I am having sex with whoever and whenever
• Partying and clubbing – I will be happy as I am out with my friends drinking and carousing at different clubs from weekend to weekend
• Gangs – I will be happy once I finally am accepted and loved by a pseudofamily and have the protection and security they offer me
• Drugs – I will be happy once I am high and toasted from drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroine, roaches, etc…
• Stealing – I will be happy as I rip people off in order to make more money for me
• Pornography – I will be happy when I engage in my pseudo sexual relationship with a person who will never reject me
• Career – I will be happy once I finally ‘establish’ myself as secure in life by working my way up the career ladder
• Relationships – I will be happy once I finally find “the one” who will always love me for me; once I have somebody to love I’ll be happy
• Children – I will be happy once I have my own kids who love me back; so I can join the elite “Soccer Mom club”
• Success and Achievement – I will be happy once I have made it in the world and the world knows who I am through my power and influence
• Power – I will be happy in life once I have and exert my dominion over others so that they are in submission to who I am and what I do
• Religion – I will be happy once I begin to follow and obey what my religion tells me to do
• Irreligion – I will be happy once I live completely free of any religious influence and see the world rid of religious influence
• Morality – I will be happy as I obey and follow a particular code of morality
• Immorality – I will be happy as live life by making up the rules as I go to suit my own needs and situations

You have finally found something that you are going to delve into. You have finally found your drink: its mojitos!(yes, that’s a joke!) You’ve decided what “the good life” is all about and you are giving it a shot. You are “standing in the way of sinners”.

The word used here for “way” is a word that has many different uses in the Bible. According to one Bible dictionary, it can refer to a “road, customary path, or course of travel.” However, figuratively it refers to “man’s course of conduct or character”; there is the “good way” or the “way of the righteous” as mentioned in Psalm 1:6 and the “way of the wicked”. The way of the righteous is really the way of Jesus who said, “I am the way….” in John 14:6 So to stand in the “way of the wicked” is to be on the customary path where sinners, rebels against God, those who willfully choose to defy their creator, those who seek the things of God but not the God of the things, are travelling.  Life has become about being identified with a particular political party and doing all that I can to promote their agenda and make sure that the “correct” people are in office. Life is all about going from high to high. Life is all about having as many sexual partners and sexual experiences as possible! Standing in the way of sinners…

The funny thing is that you might actually get a sense of happiness from these activities for a while. They are exciting! They are daring! They are new, there is the excitement of meeting new people and doing new things and sometimes we confuse this with happiness. But these things are so fleeting. This is not what the Bible means by happiness, as something based on external circumstances. These become old at some point. Sometimes it’s not even those things but us who get old! Maybe your way to happiness requires you to have financial resources that you can’t keep up with and so your happiness eludes you. Maybe your way to happiness requires you to be in a certain physical condition that you can’t keep up with and so there goes your happiness.  Maybe the happiness that you wanted to find in someone requires keeping up with a high maintenance personality that a lot of people just can’t do. Where is your happiness now? Well, you have to either start shopping all over again, and some hit their bottom quick enough in life to be able to do this. But others become so disillusioned about the passing pleasures of sin and the illusion of happiness that it promises so that they become hardened in their quest. They stop.

This leads to the next place that happiness is certainly not found in: sitting in the seat of scoffers. This is where the path to happiness literally stops. It comes to a halt altogether. After all the “walking” and “standing”, the quest has finally stopped. The final phase in our progression is “walking…standing…sitting in the seat of scoffers.”  Let’s consider sitting first.

Again, no more “walking in the counsel of the wicked.” You’re no longer searching for anything to make you happy. Perhaps you’ve “heard it all” “done it all” “seen it all” and you have come to the conclusion that there is no happiness in anything at all. No more “standing in the way of the wicked”.  It’s all old to you and pointless. There is no happiness so you just “sit”. But this isn’t a mere “I give up” sort of “throw your hands in the air” in frustration.  No, it’s a very hardened and rebellious sitting. It’s the sort of sitting that says, “Life sucks, It’s all pointless, there is no such thing as happiness or any meaning to life. FML!”

But this one is not content to just wallow in his or her own misery. Instead, they want to make sure that they take down whoever they can. So their seat is the “seat of scoffers”. A “scoffer” or “scorner” or a “mocker” is a term the Bible uses to describe “the man who is abusive, sarcastic, and the opposite of happy…one who is foolish….such a person refuses advice and suggestions from others.” Of all the categories of people described in the book of Proverbs, the “scoffer” is the one with the least hope. Look at a few things about the scoffer in Proverbs

• They delight in scoffing (1:22)
• Correcting a scoffer only leads to abuse (9:7)
• You shouldn’t reprove one because its pointless (9:8)
• They don’t listen (13:1)
• They vainly go after wisdom ( 14:6)
• They don’t take correction very well at all (15:12)
• Only a beating might convince a scoffer of correction (19:25-29)
• They only bring strife and if you get rid of them strife leaves too (22:10)
• They are an abomination to mankind (24:9)
• They like to stir controversy (29:8)

Essentially the “scoffer” is a person who is so dogmatic and unyielding in their arrogance and conclusions that they are sure to make it known to everyone. This is the person who has become so delusioned because of politics and the “world is going to hell in a hand basket.” It’s the atheist who goes around making fun of people who believe in God, Christians in particular for some reason really set them off. It’s the guy who tells you that all religion is a lie and there is no God and that life is just whatever you make of it and when you die that’s it. No pie in the sky bye and bye. It’s the person who is so delusioned that his marital life didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to be that they have given their life to drinking and mocking marriage. This sort of person is very hard hearted and unyielding in their view point. Surprisingly you get religious scoffers too. Even some “Christian scoffers.”  Religious scoffers are the ones who are disappointed in life because people either don’t do or see religion their way so they take the liberty of condemning everybody else who does not hold to their practices or their beliefs. They are the religious person who lives to put down ANYBODY who doesn’t see it their way. They are without hope at all to even begin to look for happiness. They are “happy” to basically say that there is no such things as happiness in life and you are a fool if you still think so and they will make it known to you without hesitation. Essentially, they want you to become a scoffer as well. That is the last thing left for them to have any sense of happiness, even if it is fleeting.

Blessed is the man who…

Having considered where and what kind of people will not bring blessedness, let’s now see what the Bible has to say about how to acquire happiness. As an observation, Tim Keller, in preaching on this text, notes that it is significant to see that happiness is not something that you can attain by going directly at it. That is, the text doesn’t say “blessed is the one who wants to be blessed” or “blessed is the one who goes after blessing.” Rather, as Keller notes, happiness is a byproduct of the kind of person you are and what you are doing. So who is the “blessed” person? “blessed is the man…[whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” There it is! That is the grand secret to true and lasting happiness.

First, note that happiness, and where to find it, is defined by God. Again, happiness is not something that we are free to define on our own. John Calvin said, “It is not left to every man to frame a system of religion according to his own judgment, but the standard of godliness is to be taken from the Word of God.” That is, for the Christian, we cannot tell someone “Well you do what makes you happy and I’ll do what makes me happy and we’ll both be happy!” This is incorrect. If you follow this path of thinking, the absurdity of it becomes apparent when one person’s happiness is to nullify another’s. You cannot make up your own happiness. Blessedness will come only in the manner in which God, who made us for blessedness, prescribes and an no other way.

Secondly, what is the “law of the LORD”?  Is this all the commands of do’s and don’ts that are listed in the Old Testament? No, not at all. Rather, this is a summative way of saying all teachings and instructions of the Lord. God’s ways, in general, would be the “law of the LORD”. So, not just the “do’s and don’ts” but everything else that God has revealed in Scripture to us. Even the narratives have something to say about the ways of God. So, before we think happiness is going to be found in memorizing and doing 613 Old Testament laws, this is not what the author has in mind. He is being much more broader. These ways of God are God’s grace to us because they reveal how we were created to live before him and, thus, find our happiness. Happiness is not found in the counsel of the wicked, in the way of sinners nor in the seat of scoffers: it’s found in the ways that God reveals. That is his “law”. All the other ways are ways that seem right and good but in the end only lead to death!

Third: Happiness is found in delighting in the ways of the LORD. This means, that religion for the sake of doing religion or as a perceived duty is still not the way to blessedness.  You see, some people will “try religion” as a way of becoming part of something that is larger than them in the same way they will try joining a bowling team or something else. They don’t do it because they like it, they do it because they have heard that others find their happiness, their sense of worth, and life’s meaning through that thing. But this does not mean that you will find happiness. Now, this is worth listening to because even Christianity can be perceived as a thing through which you will find your happiness. Religion, simply for the sake of religion still will not bring what you need in life. Christianity, wrongly perceived as a set of rules to live by or merely a different moral code, will not yield happiness and it sure will not yield salvation.  Religion played out this way is still actually according to the way of the wicked.  This is not true religion; it is dead works. Remember the story of the parable of the prodigal son? In that story, the most familiar character is the younger brother who spent his inheritance on prodigal living and prostitutes and eventually came back home only to be fully accepted by the father. But there is the older brother that often gets neglected. You see, in the story, the easy sinner to spot is the one who lived wrecklessly; the one whose sin was externally transparent. But the older brother, it turns out, is lost as well. His sin, is not so easy to spot. He “slaved” for the father but did not really want the Father himself; he was just buying his time through obedience so that he could get what was coming to him. No wonder when the younger brother comes back he’s furious because a portion of his rightful inheritance is being portioned again to a smaller amount in order to bring the younger brother back into the family. This parable was spoken to arouse the attention of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who considered themselves righteous. But Jesus actually redefines how we think of sin and shows that we can be just as lost through religion and morality as much as we can through irreligion and immorality. Happiness can evade both.

John Calvin made this comment:  “From his characterizing the godly as delighting in the law of the LORD, we may learn that forced or servile obedience is not at all acceptable to God, and that those only are worthy students of the law who come to it with a cheerful mind, and are so delighted with its instructions, as to account nothing more desirable or delicious than to make progress therein.” But how do we come to God’s law with this attitude when that law clearly reveals to us that we are sinners and that we fall short of it? I mean, it’s awful hard to find delight in the law of God as sinners so does that mean that happiness will always evade us? Well in a sense yes, and in a sense no. In the sense yes, it means that if we never come to that place where we can delight in the instruction of God, then yes, we are doomed to futility. Always searching, always seeking but never finding. What is our hope then?

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, tell us how we as sinners, can be a people who delight in the law of God. His message for our happiness in those words is just as radical for us now, as it was back then. In Matthew 5: 3 Jesus say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for there is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, to the hearers, this is backwards clearly. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? What does this mean? To keep it simple, it means that happiness begins when you realize that you do not have what it takes to obtain your own happiness. When you realize that you have nothing to offer, no means by which to obtain that which you want. It begins when you have come to the end of yourself and you realize that you – as a sinner – do not delight in God’s law and you are poor towards God.  This leads to Jesus saying “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” Jesus progresses from an intellectual recognition to a proper emotional response. You see, some people realize their lacking spirit and that is where they become scoffers. They just stop. But to the person who then mourns that the blessedness that they need the most from God will elude them always is partly regained through seeing our neediness from God. Without going through the whole of the Beatitudes, there is a progression of character here to finding our righteousness from God to becoming the kind of person who delights in God’s ways so much that they are willing to be persecuted for them.

In short, happiness will only begin to be realized when you come to realize that happiness is not so much about what you do but about what you are before God. If happiness is based solely on what you do then we are all at an end. Happiness is not something you find in externals. Rather, it is about what you are.  Blessed is the man…how delights in the law of the LORD and on his law he meditates day and night.” The wrong kind of person will always seek happiness is external things, things that aren’t meant to last, things that are temporal and fleeting which is why the “happiness” they do find is temporal and fleeting. Rather, true happiness comes from recognizing who you are before God and that we were created to find our ultimate happiness in, through and from him.  It is a constant seeking, or meditating, on God and his ways.

What does this kind of happy life look like?

            If happiness comes from, in and through God, what does that kind of life look like in real life? Is it the happy-go-lucky always upbeat kind of life? Is it always a life of continual laughter and smiling and always positive? I think we have a notion of “happiness” in our minds that might lend itself to these sorts of interpretations but I think Scripture is clear that such is not the case. As we continue in the Psalm to see what happiness looks like.  We read,

“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In that he does he prospers.”

            A tree planted by streams of water always has a continual flow of nourishment to it. The one who delights and meditates on God’s law has a continual life flow to them that come whatever seasons of life, be they good times or bad times, times of celebration or times of suffering, there is always life in the tree. The analogy of seasons is important because happiness is not about the absence of difficulty and suffering but rather a response to difficulty and suffering especially when they do come. While others may think that happiness is found in denying suffering, this is still attempting to find happiness based on performance to external standards of which no one can fully live up to.

One of the best examples of someone who lived out this kind of life in the midst of trial was Joseph.  He was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, and endured other hardships yet he was fruitful in all that he did so that he was elevated over Potiphar’s house and when tempted to find delight in the arms of an adulterous woman, Joseph delighted in God so much that he could not and was cast into prison. Even there, under those circumstances, Joseph prospered and made prison life a blessed time because God what with him. Let’s just down right be honest and say that life is tough sometimes and Christians are no exception. In fact, for Christians life often becomes tougher when you become a Christian because you are wanting to delight and meditate on God’s law in a world that is completely hostile and at enmity to the law of God (Romans 8:7-8). Joseph, in every season flourished because he came to see that God was the source of his happiness not his circumstances.

“But the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.” The wicked, those who are seeking happiness apart from God’s way will not stand in certain seasons. In stark contrast, they are not compared to trees, or a tree planted somewhere else, but rather like “chaff”. Chaff is usually what is left over from sifting wheat on a threshing floor. It’s pretty much useless and light enough to be blown away easily by the wind once it is separated from the wheat.

“Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish.” Because seeking your ultimate happiness from someplace other than God is not only futile, but sinful, wicked and rebellious, such a person cannot stand in the great judgment to come. You see, at the end of our lives many will try to stand on what they did in their lives; what they achieved; how well they followed the rules; how “good” of a person they were; in their self-expression. But the way of the wicked is also the way of religion and morality sought for the benefits they bring. But none of these ways will stand. The only one who will be left standing in the judgment of God is Jesus Christ who alone fully delighted and meditated on God’s law. It is through him alone that we can stand and be counted among the righteous when we say to God, “I want to find my happiness, my meaning in life, my ultimate in him who found it perfectly in you Father!” Only Jesus has happiness to dispense because he alone fully fulfilled this requirement for happiness and any happiness that will come to us will be found in, with and through Him as we live for, to and through Jesus.

This is the Gospel. That Jesus Christ did it for us. That he has fulfilled all the requirements that are needed in order to secure our blessedness, our happiness. Not only that, but he bore the on himself the sin that makes us so miserable in the first place. Jesus Christ took our place in fulfilling the requirement of the law, in being what we should have been and in getting what we should have deserved. All this at the cost of his life.  The Gospel teaches us to quit trying to find it yourself, in your own counsel or at the counsel of others. Get off the way that you are on while there is still hope to turn around and walk to Jesus.  Jesus is the way (John 14:6). All attempts to attain happiness that are not in, with and through Jesus are vain and futile and will only lead to through endless counsel, eventually down a way only to find a seat from which you will sit and scoff and mock and scorn at others, especially at God. That my friends, is a horrible image of what hell is like. It is a place where you are damned to never find your happiness because you wouldn’t find it in God.

“Blessed is the man,

Who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

Nor stands in the way of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of scoffers,

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

And on his law he meditates day and night.”

A Primer on Idolatry

What you need to know about Idols and Idolatry for today: a brief look at idolatry in the Bible and how you can recognize your own idols.

By: Moses Flores

*Be sure to check out the listed resources on the bottom for more information on this!!

Most Christians today don’t give much thought to idolatry. It seems more like idolatry was an Old Testament problem but today, we have moved beyond idolatry as we don’t bow down to statues made of wood, or gold and silver.  We seem to be “smart enough” to have moved beyond such religious practices. Or have we?  In the Bible, idolatry is a pervasive problem. In fact, theologians and commentators on the subject have asserted fairly and consistently that at the root of all our sin is a deep embedded idolatry and worship of ourselves at the very least and engagement with the demonic at worst.

Idolatry is not a thing of the past but a very real concern for today. If we are not aware of idols in our lives, in the Church and the idols that we might present as real faith and the way of salvation, we may be destroyed just like the idols we serve. I would like to briefly introduce this subject of idolatry and how it is relevant for us today as Christians and the Gospel. This is not going to be an exhaustive presentation but sort of a primer on idolatry. On the way I will make reference to some resources that are available including books, other blog articles and some sermons.

What is idolatry?

First things first, let’s define what we mean by idolatry. As a base definition, an idol is anything that is worshiped or served in the place of the one true God. The most obvious examples in the Bible is the reverence of images. But what does this idolatry look like in practice? Here’s a list of other definitions offered by various scholars and theologians:

• “Idolatry is having or inventing something in which one trusts in place of or alongside of the only true God, who has revealed himself in his word” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q95)
• “A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart…That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.” (Martin Luther, Larger Catechism).
• “Whatever your heart clings or relies on for ultimate security” (G. K. Beale, We Become what we worship)
• “Whatever claims the loyalty that belongs to God alone” (Alec Motyer, quoted in “We become what we worship”)
• “…a God-alternative, a counterfeit God” (Tim Keller, “counterfeit gods”)
• “Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God” (Keller)
• “Anything you seek to give you what only God can give you” (Keller)
• “A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living” (Keller)
• “an idol is whatever you look to and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’” (Keller)
• “An idol is anything in creation that man turns to worship rather than God” (Michael Williamson, Far as the Curse is Found)
• “a good thing turned into an ultimate thing” (Keller, sermon “The Gospel and Idolatry”, 2009 Gospel Coalition Conference)
• “Idolatry is to give that honor and worship to ‘the creature’ which is due to the Creator alone” (David Clarkson, “Soul idolatry excluded men out of heaven”)

This is a fairly broad list but essentially, we need to see that ANYTHING can be an idol. In Exodus 32, there is even the example of giving the true God, YHWH, an image and thus committing the sin of idolatry. Where does our idolatry stem from? This is important to know if we are to understand the cure for our idolatrous ways.

The first idolater and our own idolatrous ways

The very first person of the human race to set up an idol was Adam. Adam bought into the lie of the serpent in which he was told, “you shall be like God.” As we saw in the survey of definitions offered above, Adam sought to replace the worship ascribed to God through obedience by setting himself up as his own god to be obeyed. Adam’s sin infected the whole human race which came after him so much that every single one of us is infected with the sin of idolatry. Hence, as John Calvin said, the human heart is an “idol factory” that is ever and always producing idols be they false beliefs about God that create a false God or that set up other things as saviors.

Why are we prone to this sin? The reason is encoded in the very design by which we were given by God. The Bible says that we were created “in the image of God”. Scholars and theologians have gone back and forth for centuries about what exactly this image is, but at the very least it means that we were created to reflect God. We were created with, not merely the capacity but, the need to worship. In the fall, the object of worship was changed from the one true God to idols. Romans 1: 19-23 speaks of how we swapped God out of his rightful place of reverence and worship and began to worship things in creation. It reads,

“for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

            When the Scripture says they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God” for other images, this is to say that they set up idols in their lives to take the place of the true God. You see, man cannot stop worshiping. It is part of his design. Man is designed to worship. But if man is not worshiping God, then they are worshiping something else that God made.

While this is meant to function more as a primer on idolatry, it needs to be pointed out that we do not have the capacity to turn off our worship. Even the most crass atheist is still worshiping something in the place of God, be it their own independence, their anger at God for allowing some trauma in their life because they felt entitled to happiness, power, whatever it is…everybody is worshiping something. There is no way around it. You cannot turn this switch off.

Idolatry in the Bible

In the Bible idolatry can be something that is very open and very obvious to something that is very subtle and hidden from us. For instance, in the very beginnings of civilizations in the Bible, it was not uncommon for all the nations to have their own false gods, or idols that they worshipped. Egypt, the country that enslaved the Israelites for many years had their own idols that were served including Re the sun god, to different fertility gods and such. The surrounding nations around Israel, as they travelled to their promised land, were full of idols that tempted the people. What were these idols? They were images usually made of silver or gold, or wood. They were statues that were shaped and formed by men. One of Israel’s first big sins in the wilderness is recorded in Exodus 32 in which the Israelites asked Aaron, the high priest, to form for them an idol. Aaron formed for them a golden calf whom they called YHWH.

This actually introduces a different form of idolatry. You see, the idols of the nations were clearly refuted for the people of Israel in one sense seeing that God had delivered them from Egypt and they saw God’s judgments against the gods of Egypt in the plagues. However, the Israelites still carried over the false images of gods and wanted to put those images onto the true God, essentially creating a new god, or an idol. In essence, their idolatry was subtle because they referred to their idol as YHWH, the God who delivered them from Egypt, but they were guilty of assigning an image and character to God. In short, their worship was idolatrous because what they believed about God was wrong. If you haven’t heard it before, theology does matter. What you believe about God matters. For instance, if you believe that you are worshipping the one true God of Bible yet believe that, lets say, God is really a man like you and me, then you are believing in an idol. Let’s say that you claim to believe in the God of the Bible, but you believe that God is only to be submitted to and does not enter into personal relationship with his creatures, then you are believing in an idol. Let’s say that you say you believe in God but that he has designated many routes to be able to worship him other than Jesus Christ, then you are believing in an idol. Let’s say that you believe in a God who has no wrath and no place for hell, and yet you say you are Christian, you are really believing in an idol.

Now, before we think this is rather harsh to condemn such things as idolatry, we must remember that the essence of idolatry is forming images of God based on the imagination of man (cf. Acts 17:28). It is conceiving of God according to our own opinions and reason. The reason God has revealed himself and left a recorded record of it in Scripture is precisely so that we do not engage in idolatry, which is our natural inclination. Isn’t it a wonder why the first two commandments are prohibitions about having other gods (idols) or giving a false representation of God by creating an image according to the creatures. One of the problems with some theology today is that we think that God is just like us but “a better version” and so we take human qualities and “magnify them” and then say, “well that is what God is like!” For instance, in regards to how God knows the future it is not uncommon to hear some theologians teach that God does not know the future at all because, like us, God cannot know the decisions of “free creatures”; hence God “takes risks” every day. Clearly this is not the God that Isaiah proclaimed who knows the end from the beginning (cf. Isa. 46:9-11). In Psalm 50:21, as God is rebuking the wicked men who say they are part of God’s covenant but act wickedly God reveals to them their fundamental flaw by saying, “These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke  you and lay the charge before you.”

In the letter of I John, John says, “keep yourselves from idols (5:21). Why would John say this here? Because he has just finished talking about “antichrists” in his letter and about the true God. It is through believing in the correct object of faith that we keep ourselves from idols. What we believe about Jesus is absolutely crucial to the apostle John.

“Deep Idols”

One of the things that Tim Keller points out in his book “Counterfeit Gods” is that there is such a thing as “deep idols”. What he means is this: There are some sins that we see that cause apparent surface level idolatry but are really governed by much deeper idols. Take sex, for instance. Sex is what many people look to be their functional savior to provide some sort of relief from things in their life. But sex is not often engaged in simply because a person is worshipping, or revering sex.  For instance a person might be led to engage in sexual activity not because they love sex, but because they have a deeper idol of wanting to be accepted. Some people will engage in sexual activity as a way of gaining control over a relationship. This is not uncommon for people to give themselves sexually in order to “hook” a person into a committed relationship. Their wanting to be in control is the deep idol and sex is just a means of being in control of another person. Power is another reason why people might engage in sexual activities. Some rapist commit their crimes because it gives them a feeling of power over others; sex is just one way of getting that feeling but there will be other areas in their life that they wish to display and feel a sense of their own power.

Many times when we want to confront the sins of others we simply engage their surface idols and tell them to “stop” doing what they are doing, but if we fail to go deeper and see what is actually driving them they will never really change. Rather, we will simply ask them to change the way that they express their deeper idol. Perhaps in our own lives we find ourselves struggling with a particular sin and we keep trying to extinguish the fire of that sin by aiming at the flame rather than the base of the fire. In other words, we are misdiagnosed. You would be surprised at the things that people will do being controlled by the worship of their deep idols. For instance, being accepted by your peers is a good thing but when it becomes something you worship is it a wonder that kids will do anything to have friends? Is it a wonder they will experiment with drugs? Is it a wonder why they follow the bully and do what they do so they can be accepted? Understanding the nature of idolatry, and these deep idols can help to properly diagnose their need and how the Gospel can fulfill them rather than slaving to serve their idols to death!

Avoiding and Diagnosing Idolatry

This is not meant to be a full blown treatment of idolatry in the Bible. At end of this I have actually listed just a few resource that I have used to help understand and apply what the Bible has to say about idolatry into my daily life so as to avoid it. I think we need to ask the question: Can Christians engage in idolatry? I would submit to you that yes, Christians can hold on to idols that operate as their functional saviors at different moments in their life. Idols, if you recall, can be any good thing turned to an ultimate thing. It is possible, for instance, for Christians to turn a good thing of correct doctrine into an ultimate thing  to where they come to believe they are saved because of the correctness of their doctrine rather than because of what Jesus did for them. It is possible for a Christian to become so engaged in politics that they view being part of the “correct” political party as their savior and as a “test” of their orthodoxy. For single Christians it is easy for them to think “If I just find ‘the one’ then my life will have meaning and significance.” It’s also easy for a Christian to come to a point that they believe they are saved because of their moral conformity to God’s standards so that their lives of “righteousness” become the false standard by which all others are judged. If it was not possible for Christians to be still engaged in idolatry, then John’s warning for those in the Church to “keep themselves from idols” was severely misguided.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones defined an idol in this way:

“An idol is anything or anyone in my life that preoccupies the place in my life that should be preoccupied by God alone…anything that holds such a controlling position in my life that it moves, it arouses and attracts me so easily that I give my time, my attention and energy and money to effortlessly…whoever or whatever we give central value to in our lives…what you govern your life around…” (quoted in “Deep Idols” by Beau Hughes)

That is pretty searching. If we recall that idols are good things that God created turned into ultimate things then we have to be aware of ANYTHING in all of creation becoming an idol. Pastor Mark Driscoll offers some helpful tip own how we can avoid idolatry. He says, this:

• Be careful of making a good thing, such as marriage, sex, children, health, success, or financial stability, an ultimate thing or what Jesus called our “treasure”
• Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience.
• Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of the created people and things.
• And be careful not to worship a good thing as a good thing for that is a bad thing

David Powlison, a counselor with the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, offers these questions that you can ask yourself to find your idols.

1)      What do I worry about the most?

2)      What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?

3)      What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?

4)      What do I do to cope? What are my release valves? What do I do to feel better?

5)      What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about?

6)      What makes me feel the most self-worth? Of what am I the proudest? For what do I want to be known?

7)      What do I lead with in my conversations?

8)      Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?

9)      What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?

10)  What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?

11)  What is my hope for the future?

Feeling bad yet? Well that’s a good thing. Idolaters, in the Bible are usually classified as those who “have ears but cannot hear” and “have eyes but cannot see” or as “stiff necked” so if you are beginning to see where idolatry might be an issue in your life, that is a good thing and one of the essential steps in leaving your idols behind you. It is God alone who gives this sight. Always remember, if you are Christian, your ultimate salvation rests in Jesus Christ, in who he is and what he has done for you. This is the same hope that we have to offer those who are not Christians but who are looking to something else to be their savior. Jesus Christ, in the Gospel meets all our needs. Is it acceptance that is driving you? The Gospel teaches us that we don’t have to work or do crazy or sinful things to find acceptance because we can be accepted fully in Christ. Is it rejection? The Gospel teaches us that we can face rejection and not succumb to its despair because Jesus Christ faced the ultimate rejection so that we wouldn’t have to. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation my friend, even from idols!

Resources:

_“Know your idols” by Mark Driscoll  http://theresurgence.com/2011/04/25/know-your-idols

_“11 ways to find your idols” by Mike Anderson http://theresurgence.com/2011/04/10/11-ways-to-find-your-idols

_”What is idolatry” by Mark Driscoll http://theresurgence.com/2011/01/11/what-is-idolatry

_ “Counterfeit gods: the empty promises of money, sex, and power, and the only hope that matters” by Timothy Keller

_ “We Become what we Worship: A Biblical theology of idolatry” by G.K. Beale

_ “Soul Idolatry Excludes men from heaven” Sermon by David Clarkson http://www.gracegems.org/SERMONS/Clarkson_soul_idolatry.htm

_ “Deep Idols” sermon by Beau Hughes , podcast from “The Village Church” 3/6/2011  http://northway.thevillagechurch.net/resource_files/audio/201103061115DNWC21ASAAA_BeauHughes-DeepIdols.mp3

_ “The Grand Demythologizer: The Gospel and Idolatry” sermon by Tim Keller http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/video/The-Grand-Demythologizer-The-Gospel-and-Idolatry

_ “What you revere your resemble” sermon by G.K. Beale  http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/listen.php?file=http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-audio/beale_gk/beale-01_what_you_revere_you_resemble.mp3

Be Holy for I am Holy: God’s Holiness in Leviticus

“Be holy for I am holy”

The holiness of God in Leviticus

By Moses Flores

            I have written previously on, what I believe, are two of the three main themes of of the book of Leviticus that are important to be discerned as one reads it. One theme was the nature of sin in Leviticus and how if we misunderstand its seriousness, we will misunderstand the cure and the extent to which one must go in order to remedy it. The other theme was that of atonement. Atonement is God’s cure and God’s remedy for sin that comes through the death of another in the place of the sinners. God, in his infinite mercy and grace does not require from us our own death but is pleased to provide a substitutionary sacrifice. In Leviticus we see the death of various animals, but we are meant to see ultimately Jesus Christ, the lamb of God (John 1:29) who took upon himself the sins of the world to make atonement for God’s people that he has called to himself.  All the sacrifices, especially the one on the day of atonement, were all meant to point forward to a time when God would cleanse all the sin of Israel through the Messiah. Their religion was never meant to be an endless cycle of sacrificing animals; rather there was a point to it all. There would be a culminating sacrifice to end all sacrifices. Jesus was that sacrifice.

But now we come, finally, to the third theme: the holiness of God. It is the holiness of God that also illumines our understanding of sin, and the need for atonement. The holiness of God is a teaching that not only runs throughout Leviticus but throughout all of Scripture as well. Several times in Leviticus, God says, “be holy for I am holy” (11:44; 19:2; 20:7,26). What does it mean that God is holy? What implications does God’s holiness have for us? How can we be holy before God? These questions are what this message will seek to answer.

Understanding God’s holiness in the light of our sinfulness

There are some things in life that you cannot explain you just have to demonstrate. For instance, how do you explain the difference between hot and cold by mere words? It’s pretty impossible. You might try to talk about degree and Fahrenheit  and things like that, but in mere words it doesn’t make sense. So what do you do? You might explain cold with cold water, or ice or taking somebody to Alaska in their winter time. And you might explain hot with warm water, maybe a fire or just bring them to South Texas in the summer! In the same manner, understanding the holiness of God requires that we understanding our own sinfulness. Now, previously we have already talked about sin and its wickedness. But sin can often time be treated lightly. In fact, we sin so much we almost don’t make anything of it. We do it so freely, so naturally what’s the big deal? That is, until we run into a God who is holy, sin no longer can be taken so lightly. There is one account in Leviticus that brings out the seriousness of the holiness of God. It is the account of the death of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, the high priest. The account is found in chapter 10.  Let’s look a bit before to see our context. In Leviticus 9 we read,

On the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel and he said to Aaron, “Take for yourself a bull calf for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the Lord.  And say to the people of Israel, ‘Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both a year old without blemish, for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the Lord, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the Lord will appear to you.’”  And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of meeting, and all the congregation drew near and stood before the Lord.  And Moses said, “This is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.” Then Moses said to Aaron, “Draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and for the people, and bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them, as the Lord has commanded.” So Aaron drew near to the altar and killed the calf of the sin offering, which was for himself. And the sons of Aaron presented the blood to him, and he dipped his finger in the blood and put it on the horns of the altar and poured out the blood at the base of the altar….And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and when they came out they blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

Upon receiving all the various instructions for offering acceptable sacrifices to the LORD, Moses commands Aaron to come to God with their first sacrifice that the glory of the LORD may appear to them. As Aaron, with his sons assisting him, begin to go through the proper rituals of sacrifice, fire comes down from heaven and consumes the substitutionary offering in the place of Aaron and all the people that he represents before God. It is a joyous time for celebration as the people see that God is appeased through this sacrifice on their behalf. They are witness to the power of God but also faithfulness to his promises to be pleased with the sacrifices that he has ordained. It is in this joyous and awesome moment that Aaron’s son, Nadab and Abihu get a “wild hair” and attempt to offer their own sacrifice.

So picture the scene. People are shouting. People are falling on their faces in awe of God. There is excitement, maybe even a party like atmosphere and then we read:

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.  And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.  Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace.

From excitement and celebration the atmosphere is quickly changed to dread and terror. Shouts of praise have probably now turned to shouts of shock and horror. Aaron, the high priest who had just offered a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice to God is now watching the same fire that had just come down from God that consumed his sacrifice is now consuming his own sons. Absolute shock and awe. The response is the most interesting thing, because Moses does not offer any words of solace or comfort. There is no “hey brother, Romans 8:28, right?” No; instead Aaron is only left to ponder these words: “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified.” Other translations say, “I must be regarded as holy.”

What is holiness? Etymologically, something is holy when it is “set apart” from common use. It could be a time, a place or a thing. Like some of you guys have that “lucky shirt” that you make sure and set apart from all your other shirts. Ladies, it could be that time that your favorite show comes on TV and that time is distinguished especially from all other times in your life. But being holy also carries some moral attributes with it. In Leviticus, various laws are given and then we read statements like, “Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy…” Well how are we consecrated in Leviticus?  Through our actions, through our obedience to the law of God? Leviticus is a long description of what it means to be holy. But not only that, it describes perfectly the moral perfection of God. That is to say, that the laws of God in the Bible are not just “random rules” that God makes up so that we don’t have any fun in life. Rather, they are expressions of his own moral attributes; that is, they reveal the very character of God.

But the law that reveals what it means to be holy quickly reveals something else: that we are not holy. It tells us when we look into its mirror that the image reflected back from the law is far short and deformed of what God is. As a result, the holiness of God really begins to stand out in the light of our sinfulness. God’s moral purity is so awesome and so terrifying to us that if God were not somehow “restraining” his full presence from us, we would all be consumed even as Nadab and Abihu were. Encountering God’s holiness is always traumatic in the Bible. Always. It has either resulted in death, or near to it with a terrifying revelation of one’s own sinfulness. For instance, we have already seen the fire from God consume Nadab and Abihu. Their penalty for presuming to come close to a holy God with no regard for his holiness was death. This is not the last time that God will kill someone for such presumption. In 2 Samuel 6, we read of the account of Uzzah and the ark of God.

In this account, David has just been anointed king of Israel and after a campaign against the Philistines, the ark of God, which was taken captive by the Philistines was recovered and David wanted to bring it back to Israel. As they are bring the ark of God on oxen, and not carrying in the prescribed manner in the law, we read this account:

“And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error and he died there beside the ark of God.” (6:6-7)

            It’s interesting that this account also happens at a time of joyful celebration and it is interrupted by the death of Uzzah. What was Uzzah’s error? It was a disregard for the holiness of God and not being aware of his own sinfulness before such awesome holiness. You see, Uzzah supposed that if the ark of God would have fallen on the floor that it would have been somehow defiled. But in reaching out his own hand to steady the ark, he supposed that his own touch was less defiling than the ground. Uzzah, had no regard for the holiness of God. He presumed that his touch was ok. He didn’t think his own character was worthy of death before God. So disregarding the word of God, presuming on the acceptability of his own holiness, his own righteousness, he reached out and was struck down. This is a truly terrifying God. The Bible records that “David was afraid of the LORD that day” (v9). The man after God’s own heart was suddenly terrified of God. He was reminded of God’s holiness at Uzzah’s expense. Indeed, David could have been fearing for his own life being that he was the one who probably issued the command to put the ark on a cart, rather than carry it according to the prescribed manner of the law. Perhaps God’s holiness would find him out also.

Another account, though less tragic encounter with the holiness of God is with the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet in Israel. Some traditions say that he was a very eloquent speaker in the royal courts, being himself a member of the royal family. Yet Isaiah encounters God in the temple one day and is nearly destroyed. In Isaiah 6:1-5 we read:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!” 

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.  And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

            Isaiah ran into the last person that he ever thought he would run into at the temple, God himself and he was completely terrified! The English Standard Version portrays Isaiah as saying “I am lost”; other versions say “undone” (NKJV), “ruined” (NASB, NIV).  John Calvin, in commenting on this verse says that Isaiah was “so terrified by seeing God, that he expected immediate destruction.” But notice what it is that magnifies the holiness of God for him: “I am a man of unclean lips.” Suddenly, being aware of his own sinfulness in the presence of God, this eloquent speaker has declared his own mouth to be unclean before a holy God. Perhaps Isaiah had previously prophesied to the people at a distance, thinking “I’m not as bad as these people and that is why they need to repent.” But now, in the presence of the God that he spoke for, he realizes that his lips are just as unclean as the people that he has been preaching to up to this point! God’s holiness is traumatic on him for he realizes that he is nothing short of deserving to be consumed before God.

One other example from the New Testament is with the apostle Peter. In Luke 5, after preaching to a rather large crowd, Jesus gets into Simon Peter’s boat and asked Peter to take him out and cast his nets out. Peter, being the outspoken apostle that the was, replies, “Look, Jesus…we were just out all night and we didn’t catch anything! And you want us to go out again? Get real!” Reluctantly, Peter gives in and they cast their nets out and catch a load of fish so big that their nets are tearing just to haul in the oversized load! It’s a miracle! But when Peter sees this, he doesn’t start to celebrate. He doesn’t jump up and down thinking about all the extra income this will bring, the financial support that he will be able to have from this, or that he will provide for his family. No. His sinfulness comes to mind. He says to Jesus, “depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man” (5:8). You would think, “Geez! Peter, it’s just fish bro! take a chill pill!” But Peter is not concerned with the fish. Notice his words to Jesus: he calls him Lord. He is recognizing the very presence of God with Jesus and this is sufficient to bring to light Peter’s own sinfulness before God and he wants Jesus to depart because he knows, like other Jews that to see God was to die. In Jesus, the holiness of God is present and overwhelming for Peter. God’s holiness is traumatic for sinners because it means our own death is well deserved and sure in the presence of such purity and light the shines into our dark hearts and illumines every crevice, every nook and cranny where sin is hidden.

The implications of a holy God

All of these other examples of God’s holiness help us to understand, in Leviticus, what it means to say that God is holy. Michael Horton helps us to understand what God’s holiness is. He says,

“God is majestic, glorious, beyond reproach. In a certain sense, holiness characterize all of God’s attributes.”

            That is to say, that all that God is and does is holy. His knowledge is not like our knowledge but it is holy. That is God doesn’t know things the way we know things, he knows them in a way that only God knows that is “different” than our ways. God’s wisdom is not like our wisdom. God’s love is not like our love – feeble, fleeting, unstable at times – but is holy. His justice is holy as well. It is not tempered by an outburst of emotional energy but is perfectly administered. He is holy, holy, holy. As such, Horton continues,

“God is qualitatively distinct from us. Beyond this ontological distinction, however, holiness typically refers in Scripture to God’s ethical purity, which is especially evident against the backdrop of human sinfulness.”

            We have already seen our sinfulness especially as it stands out in the light of God’s holiness. But now, we are not called to be stay sinful. Leviticus 11:44 gives us the big implication of the holiness of God: “Be holy, for I am holy.” The people of God who are called by a holy God to a holy God are called to be a holy people. The covenant community of Israel was called out to be a distinct and pure people unto God. They were not to follow the ways of the nations around them and be “just another idolatrous nation in the world” as it were. They were to be different in everything that they did so that they could reflect the glory of God to the nations. Hence, the giving of the was meant to inform Israel of what it means to have a relationship with God.

In a very similar way, we all do this if we want to have long lasting and meaningful relationships, especially in a marriage. When we meet someone and we get to know them and we begin to realize that their friendship is worth pursuing, and we get to know them, we get to learn what they like and what they don’t like. In a sense, we learn their “law” as we learn their character and personality. We change, in a sense to be pleasing to them. This is a good thing, especially for men who can be rather impulsive and make selfish decisions. But within a relationship, everything they do, every decision they make is filtered through the implications of what that choice will do to the relationship. Some men who may have been hotheads and fighters in their young days over any old thing, when they are married and with children know that they can’t do that anymore or else they might find themselves separated from their wife and children through jail or divorce.  God’s law, when He reveals it is not much different. God’s wants us to know what he is like, what pleases him, what displeases him FOR THE SAKE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP TO HIM. God’s law, God’s holiness, is not meant to be a tedious list of do’s and don’t that make us unwilling slaves to his service. Hence, the holiness of God is also meant to characterize the relationship that God has within the covenant community that he calls to himself. So this is the first implication of God’s holiness in Leviticus: that we are to be holy as well.

But very quickly, in the call to be holy, we are confronted with another implication and a hard reality: That we are NOT holy. In fact, the other two major themes of sin and atonement remind us that the holiness that God requires is something that we lack. It is something that we cannot produce at all because we are sinful by nature to the very core of our being that nothing pure can come from an unclean source. In fact, much of Leviticus is about the remedy for our sinfulness, our uncleanness, our unholiness. The biggest ritual is the day of atonement, which is a once a year ritual that involves the ceremonial presentation of a sin offering in the place of all Israel that is slaughtered and killed before the Lord to show what our sinfulness deserves in the light of God’s holiness. As such, God’s holiness threatens us to the very core of our being. We run from it. We try to escape it as much as we can and drown it out by more and more sin, even the sin of lying to ourselves thinking we can escape it. This is why instead of following God’s law as our standard, we begin to make lower standards. We follow religions that are merely about ritual and ceremony and that will not peek into our hearts. We will follow some sort of moral code for all practical purposes so long as it does not challenge the core of our being. This is what the Pharisees did. They knew they couldn’t stand before God’s laws so they made other laws in which they thought they could protect themselves from breaking God’s laws. But in actuality, those laws were easier because they didn’t require to examine your heart. You see, it is much easier to sit and speculate “well who is my neighbor?” than actually doing it. We can get all technical and be like, “well let’s see? Who really is my neighbor? I mean, I can only have two right? The people to the left of me and the people to the right of me and they don’t ever ask for much, they keep to themselves, but I would like to help them when I can.” Or “well my neighbor is a different religion than me, so I don’t think they technically count as my ‘neighbor’.” And on and on we go making up technicalities that are just “religious” ways of excusing our inability to actually keep God’s law, to be holy.

Do you see the problem? Our relationship with God requires that we be holy because he is holy. Without holiness, we cannot relate to God. In fact, Hebrews 12:14 is clear that without holiness no one will see the Lord. But we run from it. The problem is not that we don’t know how to be holy for God’s law is clearly revealed fully in Scripture and apart from that, the general knowledge of God’s law is implanted into our hearts by our very nature since we bear God’s image. The problem is more that we don’t want to be holy in God’s way. We would rather redefine holiness in our own terms. Hence, we make up our idols and we might even call our idols “God” and “Jesus” but they are not the holy ones described in the Bible. Hence, when we will finally be confronted with the thrice holy God, how can any of us stand? How can sinners stand before a holy God?

Leviticus does not leave us in a bleak situation, for we are reminded in Leviticus 20:8 that our holiness is not dependend on what we do, or how well we conform to God’s law ultimately. Rather, God tells us “I am the LORD who sanctifies you”.

How can sinners stand before a holy God?

The book of Leviticus is really an intriguing book. In one respect, the book prescribes for us how we are to live as God’s covenant people. For the people of Israel, these were the rule and regulations that were going to set them apart from the nations so that they could relate to their holy God.  The book reveals the heart of the character of the righteousness of God.  It reveals God’s will and how to stay “on his good side” as it were. Yet, the book poses our greatest problem, which is that we are sinners.  Even a cursory reading of Leviticus is likely to reveal our sins to us and in our hearts.  Some modern readers may read the sins of sexual orientation and think, “I didn’t know that was wrong” or may even rise up in anger against the words.  Yet at the same time, Leviticus is not meant to condemn but to push the story of God’s redemption forward.

God knows that we are unholy, especially after these laws have just been revealed. In fact, it is easy to be overwhelmed by our sins and our guilt before God’s holiness. But God prescribes for sinners how to holy before him.  It is through sacrifice that we will find our holiness before God. It is in relying on a substitutionary offering that is designated and chosen by God that we will find our holiness to stand before God. Hence, the holiness that God require from us to be able to stand before him is a holiness that God himself provides.

The sacrifices offered in Leviticus had the purpose of “atonement” or “consecrating”, which is to make holy. The priest, before they could enter the Most Holy Place, would have to be “consecrated” and atone for his sin through the sacrifice of an animal just to be holy for a few moments to be able to do their work. But it’s important to see that God is the one who provided this provision. The sacrificial system of the Israelites was not of their own making; it was given to them by God. God himself provides the holiness that the Israelites are lacking and need to be able to approach him in worship. So long as we come God’s way, we are able to be considered holy on the basis of another. It is when we try to approach a holy God our own way, with our own worship, with our own “holiness” that we may find ourselves consumed as Nadab and Abihu were.

While the priest had to offer sacrifices over and over again just to approach God, God’s greatest sacrifice was being pointed to through these repetitive sacrifices. One day, there would be an ultimate sacrifice that would put an end to the temporary holiness of animal sacrifices and bring a true and lasting holiness, with true and lasting atonement and true and lasting forgiveness from God. Listen to the author of Hebrews as he expound the priestly ministry of Jesus Christ:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.  Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins?  But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law),  then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second.  And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

In saying that the law was a “shadow” it is telling us that the sacrifices required by the law pointed to a greater reality beyond themselves. Because sacrifices were continually offered, these shadows and types only pointed to their insufficiency for lasting forgiveness. The one who they pointed to was Jesus Christ. It is through his bloody sacrifice of himself that “we have been sanctified”, that is, made holy, “once and for all.” It is Jesus Christ alone who gives us the holiness that we need to stand before God. I Corinthians 1:31 tell us also that Jesus “became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” All that we needed from to be saved from our sins, God himself, in Jesus Christ is for us!!!

My friends, this is the Gospel. The very thing that God requires from us God freely and gracious provides for us in Christ Jesus. The Gospel is not asking you to adopt to a new moral code, or some sort of ethics or some sort of conduct changing program. The Gospel is the good news that you don’t have to waste your life trying to please God with your own efforts, you don’t have to run from God thinking that your sins are so great that there is no way you can make it up to him; The Gospel tells us that it is done. The gospel is about a finished work. It’s about what God has done for you, not what you have to do for God. You can’t work for this. You can’t earn it. Nothing you do will cause God to favor you. God is please with the finished work of Jesus Christ. He is pleased with the sacrifice that he has prescribed and provided, not those that we try to bring of our own accord; He is not pleased with our “strange fire” even as God was not pleased with Nadab and Abihu’s. Their testimony serves as a stern warning to all who would attempt to say that they can be pleasing to God outside of God’s atonement. Jesus is the only way. Hebrews 10: 26-31 tells us that outside of Christ, there is no other acceptable sacrifice and the only thing one can expect, should they try to bring their own sacrifice to God is a fearful expectation of Judgment. Only with Jesus Christ alone can we be holy before God and stand in the presence of a holy God.

God’s holiness is a terrifying thing. It is meant to be in many ways, lest we forget who God is and who we are in relation to Him. God is a most pure being. He is pure light. Unapproachable light. Religion tells us that we can approach and come to a holy God on the basis of our own works, our own righteousness, our own perceived goodness. But the book of Leviticus is a stern reminder through the presentation of the law that none of is can escape sin. All of us are guilty of sin. Again, I don’t think anybody can read through all the various laws, especially the moral ones in Leviticus and say, “well, I’m glad I have never done any of those!” Rather, we stand condemned. We need atonement. But not just any atonement, we need those the one that God prescribes. Sometimes we want to offer our own “sacrifice” and say things like “God, if you’ll save me I’ll be a better person!” “God, I will give up internet pornography if you’ll just get me out of this bind that I’m in!” “Lord, if you spare my life I will dedicate everything that I have to you!” and we attempt to cut deals with God as if God were at a loss somehow, or as if we could somehow better God by what we have to offer him. A holy God is not taken by these things. His holiness requires that he destroys sin. That is why he is a consuming fire and revealed himself as such to Nadab and Abihu. When we presume our own holiness before this God he has been known to kill people. This is a humbling reality. WE DO NOT HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE HOLY BEFORE SUCH A GOD! The same book that wounds us also heals us. Our remedy is found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice that all others pointed to. It is in him alone that we are holy. It is in Christ that we are “saints” or “holy ones”. Not because we are holy in ourselves, but because Jesus gives us his holiness to stand before God. This is a Jesus you can come to. This is a Jesus who freely gives what cost him everything.

The Tower of Babel: God came down

The tower of Babel: God comes down

by: Moses Flores

Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.  And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.  And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”  And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.  And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”  So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.  Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

 

I always liked to think that if ever there was a period of time when Conan the Barbarian existed, it had to have been slightly after the flood. In the movie, it was a period when people were coming into their own in many ways. Technology was beginning to flourish in metallurgy. Remember you had to know the “riddle of steel” in order to pass Crom’s test!! But interestingly enough, much of settings in the civilizations there revolved around cities and a tower. The cities were places of evil and immorality. Any pleasure that one wanted could be found there from exotic food and drink to sexual pleasures galore. The Bible is not in disagreement with much of this assessment of the sin that can happen in cities. It seems like bringing more sinners together to do more things inevitably leads to more and more wickedness. We can recall the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that were all united in their sexual pleasures even to the point of the men wanting to rape the two guests of Lot. In Judges, the concubine of a priest is maliciously and viciously raped and ravaged by an entire city. The collective efforts of sinners does not fair well.

In Genesis 11, we see such a city being built along with a tower in its midst that was said to take them to the heavens. God, however, has a remedy for the plot of these people that will not only bring God’s judgment upon them but will also reveal his grace to them. I would like to share several things from this “mini-Gospel” encounter which, in these few short verses, reveals the entire Gospel drama. First, we will see man’s united efforts against God. Then, God’s united response to man. And finally, we will how this whole drama is reveals the Gospel and Jesus Christ.

Man united against God

Let’s begin with some background on these verses and see where we are at in redemptive history. This story happens after the fall of man in the garden, where Adam’s sin plunged the entire human race into sin which ruined the whole nature of man.  All of man’s faculties –heart, mind, soul and strength – was infected with sin. Theologians have referred to this teaching as “Original Sin”, not because it is the first sin, but because it is the origin of all sin in all of humanity. God, however, promised that the “seed of the woman” would come to destroy the serpent and his seed. As time went on, humanity revealed their sinfulness more and more beginning with the first murder in human history, which was also the first case of fratricide, committed by Cain against his brother Abel.  Cain was exiled from his family and he went and built his own city whom he named after his son, Enoch. In that city, they prospered in entertainment, making musical instruments.  We seem to have the same obsession with entertainment today.  Hope in the savior seemed bleak as men became more and more corrupt until finally God said that he had enough and decided to wipe out everyone on the face of the earth through a worldwide flood. That is, all except Noah and his family, who were eight in total. But the seed of sin was not dealt with in wiping out the whole world. Shortly after the reappearance of dry land, Noah finds himself drunk and naked with his son Ham, mocking his father’s nakedness. Ham is cursed while Shem and Japheth, Noah’s two other sons, receive the blessings of Noah. With no definite time period stated, the descendants of these sons of Noah find themselves all together which is where we are at in the text:

“now the whole earth had one language and the same words…”

Language is important. I live in a multi-language area and if you walk into some businesses and try to ask for certain services, you can quickly find yourself being misunderstood or ordering the wrong thing! Language helps to facilitate communication. It unites people in ways that we often overlook. The world is connected through some common languages. English seems to be a language to know in order to be connected. Nations get along because they have representatives that are able to communicate with each other. Cultures also play a part here. Each culture has its own idioms and such that also help to communicate ideas that are easily misunderstood by other cultures. But here in this society in Genesis 11, there is still one language and they have the same words which makes unity a lot easier. The Bible goes on to say:

“And as a people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.”

            Some scholars suggest that the area in view here is a fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, around modern day Iraq and Iran, in the land that would one day become Babylon. They had migrated eastward into this area that is also believed to be the original location of the garden of Eden. Interestingly enough, we already see man trying to find his way back to the garden, only the text goes on to say they don’t want a garden. They don’t want God’s paradise. Instead, look what we see them saying:

“And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

            These travellers, have finally decided to build a city for themselves. Now, is there anything inherently sinful about a city? Not at all! Instead of waiting for the promises “seed of the woman” and being pilgrims and sojourners in this world, they are ready to build for themselves a city, they are ready to settle themselves permanently in this fallen and corrupt world and do it through a city, a city of man that will make a name for themselves. They have given up on God’s promises.

We shouldn’t miss what these people are doing. The problem with this city is its foundation. It is not built upon God. Rather, it is a city that is intended to “make a name” for man, for the creatures of God. There is so much irony here that we shouldn’t overlook.  The text reveals the pride and utter rebellion of man against God, as well as man’s attempts to do his best in order to exalt himself. We should note first the language that they use: “Let us make…Let us build…Let us make…” Again, this language is familiar from the Creation account when God makes his crowning creation of man. In Genesis 1:26 God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion…over all the earth…”  We also see that in creation, all of God – that is, the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit – are united for mankind and endow on him all the covenant responsibilities of being steward of the creation of God. Man was in charge of God’s creation and was to reflect God’s glory off of themselves back to God. But now, look where we are at: instead of reflecting glory back to God, mankind is attempting to absorb all that glory in their own crowning achievements and creations: a city and a tower. But notice in the height of their arrogance, they begin by using language as if they were God himself. “Let us make…” They are following the lie of serpent thinking they will be like God. Man has now put himself in the place of God. In creation, the entire Trinity was united for man exalting him above all other creatures and creation. But now, all of humanity is united against God in attempting to make a name for themselves.

Their united goal is to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” This is no insignificant detail as they are seeking exaltation to the place where God was believed to dwell. They are not satisfied with mere city dwelling but want to go up in to the heavens. The speech itself is hyperbolic, but their intentions are laid out in the language. These men want to build their best and longest lasting work that will make a name for themselves. You have to ask how do we try to make a name for ourselves? It’s funny, how man actually attempt to play religion here and get themselves to the heavens by going up, by ascending. Is this not the truth about all manmade religions? That we seek to exalt ourselves by who we are and what we do? When you sit and think about man made religions, they are all about your own achievements and your ability to create your own righteousness. Perhaps it is in following some sort of moral path, or living by a certain code. Perhaps it’s through acquiring the right status in society. Whatever it is, it is an idol that we ultimate erect to be our ultimate in life, to find our significance, our salvation, to fill what only God can fill in our lives. Again, there is some irony that is about to come out, but think of these men and all the labor that that it will take to make the bricks and to build the city and then to build the tower. The higher the tower goes, the more work and effort it will take to get the bricks and mortar up higher.

There is a certain level of futility here. Mankind will work and work and work to “reach the heavens” under their own power and under their own strength. We will try to be successful in life thinking that success in business, acquiring power, wealth, riches, etc…are the way to demonstrate to God our worth. These things can be idols in our lives. The demons behind these idols are cruel task masters essentially watching us work to death only to come to realize that “our righteousness is filthy rags” before God.

God’s united efforts toward man

            As united as man was in their efforts of building their city to make a name for themselves, God was more united in the exaltation of His name and his glory because this is the most beneficial and most loving thing God can do for us: reveal himself.  And so the irony reveals itself in the next verse, as man is united against God, God is united in his efforts toward man as well.:

“And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.”

            Once man had finally finished their tower and their city, the irony is that their work did not carry them up to where they thought it would take them. Their intentions were to “make a name for themselves”. It’s as if they wanted to get God’s attention with their work and exalt themselves so God would see their works and be like, “Wow! Look at all that you all have done! Surely you are now worthy of my attention and my favor!”. Yet, God doesn’t even notice their work. Their tower did not reach up to heaven. Instead of the tower coming up to God’s dwelling, the text gives the impression that God was just going about his own business and just happened to “come down” and see their work.

My friends, do not be deceived. Exalting yourself and attempting to gain God’s favor based on who you are and what you have accomplished will NOT gain you anything with God. In the New Testament, we need not go further than the ministry of Jesus to see that his greatest enemies were the ones that considered themselves the most religious: the Pharisees.  Idolatry is something that is very real today. I’m not talking necessarily about carving out a statue, but putting something in God’s place and wielding God’s authority in your life directing your every thought and actions. Money, romance, children, success, power, sex, and much more can all be personal idols. In the culture we can see things like human reasoning and philosophy, even science functioning as idols. Family or individualism even. Politics. There are even religious idols like morality and ethics; your own righteousness and pride. Truth can even be an idol to where you ostracize and bully others who don’t see “the truth” as you do. Even a person’s gifts can be their idols to where they think that God loves them because of how they are serving God through them. None of these things are why God loves anybody!

This text in Genesis is like a summarized, or condensed view, of our fallen condition. Even though this happened perhaps a few thousand years ago, human nature has not changed. The truth of it is that same fallen nature that was passed on from Adam to his children through Noah and his children that is here at work in the building of this city of man and the tower of Babel is the exact same nature that human beings still possess today. We should not look upon these people acting out against God as “them” and think that “we” are somehow better, or more superior because of where we are at now. The truth is that in this account, we all have to reckon with the fact that we too find far more comforts in the world and it’s easier to just “settle” here and build our city and our tower.  I John 2:16 warns us about the temptations of the world “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride in possessions.” Satan’s temptations in the wilderness were also temptations for Jesus to establish himself temporally rather than look to God’s kingdom, to the city of God. Jesus was tempted with nutritional needs to satisfy hunger, with an immediate kingdom and instant gratification and with security against all harms. These same temptations come to us still and in many forms. Our nature is so inclined to them that often it doesn’t take much to be persuaded.

But God will not have this for his creatures. He will not leave them to ruin and corruption. Hence, God came down and said,

“Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

            If you do not or have never lived in a geographical area with various language groups represented, you are missing out on all the fun! I personally grew up where Spanish was the dominant language and you needed to know it if you wanted to eat all the best tasting foods and get all the inside jokes. Having a common language helps to facilitate communication, helps to get things done, helps to avoid misunderstandings and encourages fellowship and relationships. Because of a common language like English today, many countries all around the world do business and commerce with each other. People can communicate with others half way around the world. In short, common language can unite people in goals and purposes. It makes things so much easier to get done when you can say something and the other person knows what you are talking about and understands.

So here the people are declared to be united in their purposes because of their common language. Perhaps we can see that language is a lot more powerful than we are willing to admit; the ability to communicate goes a long way. The problem is not that they have one language, but what they are united in doing that their language is simply a vehicle for. They are united in their efforts of idolatry against God. They are united in the means to exalt themselves and their works, which is language. From the text it seems that this city and tower may have been the first of many city/tower combinations that would have been proposed to have been built in various other places. Or perhaps the schemes of man had far more sinful things to conceive of. Either way, God’s creation is running astray in their sinfulness. They are like a runaway train with no breaks headed toward the cliff of God’s judgment. So long as man wants to steer themselves that way, they will run headlong into that cliff and perish.

When the text says, “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” we should not think that God is concerned that mankind in their unity is somehow able to out power God. Rather, we should understand that God is saying that if mankind is left in this state, then all the sinfulness they propose will come to pass, but it is not God’s intentions to leave man in their fallen and idolatrous estate. Recall that God has promised in Genesis 3:16 that the seed of the woman would provide a savior who would crush the head of the serpent. There is a sense in which Satan is altogether behind the scenes here helping mankind along in their sinfulness to prevent this seed from coming to destroy him. Satan has been marked out for death and he only knows it will come through humans but he doesn’t know who so he simply does what he can to corrupt all the more the race of mankind. Hence, in order to prevent the utter ruin of the human race God comes down and confuses their language.

You can almost picture it: one minute everybody is just going about their normal business, lifting heavy stones, laying mortar, maybe even some singing while they work and then then the next thing you know some guy says, “pasame el martillo”(Spanish for ‘pass me the hammer’) and  this blank look just comes across your face. He keeps repeating the phrase looking at you just asking for a hammer, a fairly simple set of instructions and you can’t do it because you don’t know what he is saying. Imagine a whole city-wide panic and people will then scatter to find someone who can understand them. Construction has to cease. All activity comes to a sudden halt. All life comes to a sudden halt. Everything stops. Panic probably breaks out as people scramble trying to find somebody, anybody who will understand anything that is coming out of their mouth. This is the form that God’s judgment takes here.

Isn’t it interesting that we tend to think of the judgment of God as only “hell fire and brimstone”, but this is not always the case. In Romans 1, the “wrath of God” is described as God’s “handing over”, his “giving up” the people to their own desires. It was not fire from heaven at all. Here in Genesis, the judgment of God comes in the form of foreign tongues. This same judgment is described in the covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28:49 in which God describes the nation that he will use to punish Israel as a “nation whose language you do not know.” Some scholars have interpreted the Gospel proclamation in “unknown tongues” in Acts 2 as God’s further judgment against Israel for rejecting and crucifying their Messiah. Instead of the Jews speaking forth the glories of God in their own language, it was now given to the language of other nations. Here at Babel, the effect of the judgment of God is that the people are scattered and separated from each other.  No longer able to communicate in a unified way, people are forced out, forced to seek new places to live and gather together with those they can understand. So the text says,

“So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”

God’s judgment reveals his grace as well

            God’s judgment here was not final. That is, it was not to make an end of the peoples. Yes, it was a real judgment from God against the futility of their idolatry and their thinking they can ascend to the heavens with their own works, with their own efforts. God cannot be reached that way at all. This is an important point in the Bible. True religion is not us going up, but God coming down because God is completely other from us. In our best works, our best moral and religious efforts, God still has to stoop down to even look to see what we are up to! Our works will merit, not God’s favor, but God’s wrath and judgment.

This text is rather interesting, however, because God’s judgment is also God’s grace. How so you say? Well just think about it: if God had let mankind stay united in their efforts to build their city and their tower, God could have left mankind to ruin themselves and damn themselves to a life of utter futility. You and I have experienced and continue to experience this futility in life anytime we try to build our lives on something other than God. Just think about it…perhaps it was putting all your hope in landing that one guy or that one girl only to be disappointed time after time to where your salvation becomes finding “the one”. Or maybe your salvation in life, your sole purpose for living is wrapped up in your status in work or in the society. Maybe politics is your idol that you look to in order to make the world right. If we can just elect the right person, and get everybody to see it “the right way” then the world will be a better place we might say. Yet those of us who live and have lived here have constantly faced God’s judgment as God takes away these things from us and they fail us. Our futility is revealed. Sex doesn’t work. Alcohol doesn’t work. Power doesn’t work. Drugs don’t work. And when we get tired of the “same old sins” we vainly attempt new ways to do the same them. You’ve seen it…it’s not enough to just drink till your drunk. We’ve invented drinking games to make getting drunk “funner” because the old way isn’t cutting it. If committing adultery wasn’t enough, now people find more ways to be more cunning about it, or different ways of having sex. Some people just get tired of sex the “normal way” and the Bible talks about men and women who leave the natural use for each other and engage in homosexual activities, even things like beastiality. In our day, pedophilia is a real issue that didn’t start that way but began as simple lust that starts a fire in a person’s heart and is never satisfied. The same goes with making money. Most people dream of hitting the lottery and how “happy” they would be if they just won one. But for those who have won the lottery, life didn’t get better; it just gets worse. Famous movies stars who were very approachable people before all the money are now among the most inapproachable. They have to isolate themselves and are now enslaved to working more and more for more money to support their new lifestyles. While I generally don’t believe the tabloids, there is some truth to how broken the lives of the rich and famous really are. God does come down and he confuses and confounds our lives that are not built on Him.

But the truth of the matter is that God’s coming down is really an act of grace. Again, God could have let all humanity perish at Babel. The world today could have been a lot different, not as diverse in language and culture. But God came down and in a rather odd way, “saved” the people from utter ruin. Instead of being united in sin, they were dispersed. Notice the text: “They left off building the city.” The city of man came to a halt. Man’s ruin in sin is ruined for the time being. But this is not the last time that God’s judgment would also reveal his grace. This time would not be the last time that God would come down either. In fact, God’s greatest condescension, His greatest judgment and greatest mercy was revealed in one man, Jesus Christ, the son of God.

The account of the tower of Babel is an incredible picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In it we see the ruin of mankind in sin as rebellion against God and attempting to exalt themselves to the heavens. In response, God comes down for judgment. The Gospel teaches us that in Christ, God himself is the one who came down. In Christ, God stooped so low to take on our own humanity, being born to human parents, who grew up living a perfectly righteous life only to face, so undeservingly, the full measure of the wrath of God through death on a cross. That is how God has come down to us. This display of God’s wrath and fury upon his own Son led Jesus to cry out, “my God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!” In Jesus’ cross, God’s wrath and judgment become the channel of God’s mercy and grace toward us. You see, if God had not come down in Jesus Christ to take his own wrath, it would have come at us full speed ahead! But at the cross, Jesus’ righteous life gets in the way of that wrath, bears it and Jesus survives it! Jesus lives and rises from the dead after three days! Jesus alone has conquered sin, death and fully taken God’s wrath so that those who shield themselves in his Cross through faith may so unite themselves to Christ that his life will become their life. The life that Jesus lived may be counted as your very own as your own life was counted as his. The Bible says that on the Cross , Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us that we might become the very righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). In Christ, God comes down in both wrath and grace.

But our story is not finished. It is not enough that Jesus takes upon himself the wrath of God and gives us his righteousness. No. Just as man was building a city where they could be unified in their sin, so God himself is building us a city in which His people can be unified in love, holiness and devotion to God and each other. This is the true city of God that our hearts truly yearn for. A city in which there is no futility because it is not built by man, but by God! Abraham was looking for this city.  Hebrews 11:10 tells us that Abraham was looking for a city. But not a city built by man and for man, but a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God! Man cannot build this city at all. Religion, in all its moral efforts at utopias cannot make this city happen. Rather, God himself must build it. And so in Revelation 21:2 we read, “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” This city is way different than that of Babel. It is a holy city and it comes down. It is not a city dedicated to and built upon the idols of man, but rather a city from heaven. Again, notice that theme that true religion is God comeing down to us; it is not us ascending to Him. True religion begins with God and comes from God. This is the city that our hearts really long for; It is the only place that we will find rest.

What city will you settle for? Will you continue to build your own city with your own tower to try to reach heaven and make a name for yourself? Will you continue to build your life upon your idols, upon your sin and rebellion? Or will you rather be a sojourner in this world, forsaking its pleasures and lusts and idols to head, by faith and ,through faith, head to the city of God! Will you follow Jesus, the one who already paved the way for us as our trailblazer?  The Bible lays out two cities. One requires all your efforts and all of your might to build it and the other is a free gift of God that came through the work of his Son Jesus Christ. Jesus purchased all peoples of all tribes and all languages that we created at Babel to fill his city! You can take the city of man at the beginning of the Bible or faithfully travel to the city at the end of the Bible.

Gleanings from Hebrews 2:1

Gleanings from Hebrews

Hebrews 2:1

“Lest we drift away”

By Moses Flores

The letter to the Hebrews does not read like a letter at all. In fact, many scholars tend to think it was a “sermon” intended to be read to the congregation for whom it was intended.  Hebrews 13:22 marks this letter as a “word of exhortation” or a word of “encouragement”. It is not addressed to a particular Church, nor does it bear the marks of the opening of a letter. Hence, the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews may come across as very intense right from the beginning. It’s almost like being thrown into a theology course! There are lots of overwhelming thoughts that get unpacked through the first statements of Hebrews 1 as we have already seen, and in a very real sense, entire volumes have and could further be written about all that has been mentioned in the text, but we must move on to the point that our author of Hebrews wants to make from all that he has said. Because repetition is a good way to learn, I know it helps me personally so let’s review briefly what the author has said about Jesus.

• Jesus is God’s fullest and final revelation of Himself (1:1-2)
• Jesus is the appointed heir of all things (1:2)
• The universe was made through Jesus (1:2)
• Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (1:3)
• Jesus uphold all things by his very word (1:3)
• Jesus alone made purification for sins (1:3)
• Jesus now sits at the right hand of God the Father (1:3)
• Jesus’ name is superior to angels (1:4)

Because….

• No angel shares the unique relationship to God as a Son (1:5)
• No angel is to be worshipped (1:6)
• Angels are servants, but Jesus is an heir (1:7)
• No angel has ever ruled from the throne of God (1:8-9)
• No Angel is eternal in nature or called YHWH (1:10-12)
• No angel has ever been asked by the Father to sit at God’s right hand (1:14)
• Angels are just servants; but Christ is a Son (1:14).

But now, in chapter 2 our author is coming to his main point about why he has been so focused on who exactly Jesus Christ is. He says,

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”

There are three things I would like to share from this text: 1) that we need to pay very close attention to the Gospel 2) we may drift away from the Gospel and 3) how we can not drift away.

Pay attention

There are some things in life that we can get away with without paying much attention to. Recently “some prince” and “some woman” got married and the whole world paid much attention to their wedding, noting the dress of the bride and even the bride’s sister’s dress. As you can see, I did not pay much attention to this event! There are many events like it, that while important, in some respects, do not immediately affect the course of your life or the world. But there are some things that immediately should grab our attention. For instance, a weather warning of some sort should cause an immediate response of either wardrobe or taking cover in a shelter of some sort in case of a tornado. Driving on the road and suddenly seeing police lights ahead should signal to us to slow down and be suddenly aware of what is around us. Some things are so serious that we can die from them. If you don’t pay attention to labels on medicines or prescriptions they can be harmful or even fatal. If you don’t pay attention to your surroundings taking a walk at night, you could get jumped, mugged, beaten, raped or worse. There are some things that we need to pay attention to. The same is true spiritually when it comes to what God has revealed about himself and about redemption.

As was argued earlier in Hebrews 1, God had revealed himself through prophets and angels and their ministry was valid. Hebrews 1:1 tells us that the same God in the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament, but the medium of revelation is different; it is grander in Christ but not less true just because it came through the prophets or through angels. But because of the dignity of whom the Gospel comes through in these last days, the message carries a “greater weight” as it were because of the dignity of the messenger. In the Old Testament, the Gospel was revealed through the prophets and angels. But now in Christ, it is God’s Son that reveals directly from God the Father. In Christ, God Himself in the flesh, God condescended, God come down in human form having taken on human flesh, has revealed the way of redemption and accomplished it Himself. All the qualities of the person and work accomplished by Jesus have been listed in Hebrews 1 and now our author tells us, “Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard…” In context, we are told to pay much more attention because of the dignity of the one now having spoken for God.

Many have speculated on the intended audience of the letter to the Hebrews. Some have suggested that they were Gentiles who were being drawn into the Jewish religion by Judaizers after having become Christians. This theory pretty much equates the scandals of the Galatians to this audience. However, this seems highly unlikely because the arguments of Hebrews would make no sense to those of Gentile background. More than likely, our audience is of Hebrew, or Jewish, origin and they were converted out of the Jewish religion to Christ. Hence, they would be familiar with the first redemptive revelation of God through prophets and angels and the opening words of the letter and would be familiar with the various ministries of the priesthood and the temple and their central significance in the Jewish religion. Hence, as followers of the Old Testament, they had indeed “paid attention” to the message delivered by angels but now because the God of the angels has sent his son to speak to them it becomes much more imperative that they pay even more attention.

You see, the Gospel is not just another “program” or just another covenant administration or dispensation in the plan of God; it was and is the focus of the plan of God! What God did in, with and through Christ is not ordinary in God’s redemptive work, it WAS the redemptive work.  What all the angels and the prophets were pointing to what Christ! Jesus said in John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” All that had been written by the prophets and all that came through angels recorded in the Holy Writings was about Jesus. They all bore witness to Jesus. To not see Jesus in the Old Testament is to misread the text at a very fundamental level! Likewise in Luke 24:27, as Jesus is walking with the disciples on the road to Emmaus as their hearts are sad because of the death of Jesus, who is at this point hidden from their eyes, the Bible says that … beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures  the things concerning himself.” Jesus is and always has been at the center of God’s plan of redemption. From Genesis to the last prophet of the Old Testament, John the Baptist, it has always been about Jesus. Now how much more, that Jesus has come, that Jesus has fulfilled all the Scriptures, that Jesus has actually made purification for sins, that he has sat down at the right hand of the father having been made Lord and Christ, how much more should we pay attention and take heed to the things to which he speaks of?  Jesus is no mere prophet, or an angel. He is God come down to us!

Therefore, pay attention. Pay close attention. Pay closer attention than you have ever paid before. Pay more attention to this than anything else in your life. The Gospel is turning point of salvation for anybody who hears it, for those who have heard it and for those who will hear it. Literally, souls hang in the balance as it were when the Gospel comes to them. It is as if all heaven hushes in order to hear the response to the Gospel message of what God has done in Jesus Christ. The Gospel will always be the turning point, the dividing line, the hinge upon which the door of true religion swings as John Calvin once said.

This exhortation to pay attention marks the first of several “warning passages” to the readers. It is significant that this warning is being delivered to professing believers. Many people misapply Hebrews and its warnings as if they are directed only to unbelievers and want to tell them not to “neglect so great a salvation” (2:4), but this is not the proper context of the letter. It is not written to unbelievers but to believers who are already professing and practicing the Christian faith.  This warning, this exhortation is for Christians. So pay very close attention!

Lest we drift away

But why do Christians need to pay attention? I mean, we have been saved right? Jesus did all the work didn’t he? I raised my hand at the revival meeting, I prayed that prayer just like I was told, I filled out all the information of the pledge card, I even went to buy my own Bible and everything!  Right? It’s finished, isn’t it? I was baptized when I was an infant. Why I was raised to be Christian! I’m a Calvinist! I’m Reformed, I tell you!!! But you…yes, YOU – “must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest YOU drift away.”

To be sure, the doctrine of justification by faith alone teaches that with our act of saving faith we are forever justified, that is counted righteous before God, we have our sins forgiven, we are lovingly adopted into God’s family and no one or no thing in all creation can change that verdict (See Romans 8:32-39).  When God saves us, his judgment is all that counts. This is at the very heart of the Gospel that we are saved truly and finally because of God’s verdict, not because of our ability to pay back a sin debt that we can never do. But what should we make of this business of Christians “drifting away”?

One answer might be to say that it is possible for Christians to lose their salvation altogether. That is, that they can completely “ship wreck” their faith. In light of what has been said about Christ already as having  made purification for sins, it seems hardly unlikely however, that there is sin that Jesus did not purify that can completely undo the work that is based on his person. The other answer is that the person was never saved in the first place, but only gave an appearance of salvation. I believe this second answer to be more in line with the Biblical view of things and I think Hebrews will go on to demonstrate this and will ultimately make the point that true believers will persevere in the faith.

In the meantime, we have to own the fact that the Holy Spirit is telling Christians through Scripture here that they can indeed “drift away”. If you remember the movie “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks, he created a character out of a volleyball that he names Wilson. Wilson becomes his best friend while Tom Hanks is stranded on a remote island for some number of years. When Tom Hanks is finally leaving the island and finds himself out at sea, he loses Wilson. But the way he lost Wilson was not like he just one day disappeared.  Instead, Wilson began to slowly “drift away” from the raft and before you know it Wilson was too far to be saved. While Wilson was held fast to the raft he was secure, but when he was free from it, he began slowly to be overwhelmed by the waves of the sea and lost. It was an emotional scene in the movie. Christians can also “drift away” in the same manner. Little by little if we give in to different temptations in our lives, which we will explore in a moment, can slowly but surely “drift away”.

Several things can cause people to fall away from their Christian profession. I will mention only two and build off those. The first one is tribulation or persecution. Jesus mentions this in the parable of the sower. He said, “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away” (Matt. 13:20-21). These are what our listeners appear to be experiencing as Hebrews later reveals that though they are suffering they have not yet suffered unto death. Suffering and persecution can take many forms. What usually happens is that people come to the table for salvation thinking, “I’m going to become a Christian and life is going to become so much easier for me because now I’m on Jesus’ side and life is gonna be grand!” This is wrong! Jesus never ever gave the impression that life with him was easy. Some of the toughest statements about following Jesus come from Jesus himself. Listen to what Jesus had to say about following him in Matthew 10:34-38

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Jesus is no joke! Following him is not for the faint of heart! Listen to him again in Luke 9:57-62:

“As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Yet another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to those at my house.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”

The Christian life is not an easy one. It is much easier to be a pagan or even an atheist. Life seems easier theoretically and even practically. The problem of evil is “solved” for some in just denying God’s existence or just positing a God who has no control over his creation. It’s easy. Some people whenever they want something they just take it. Life, it seems, was meant for their pleasure and to be at their service. But Christianity actually complicates things. Christianity tends to bring more suffering into our lives.

Perhaps our audience of Hebrews was being tempted to go back to their old ways. While they were suffering persecution, they were suffering anything out of the ordinary. Remember this letter is written for encouragement, not a rebuke. The point of pointing all this out, is really to persevere and the author of the Hebrews is demonstrating why we can persevere and how we are to persevere by reminding us of the finality of the work of Jesus in so many ways. Previously we have seen already that all redemptive revelation is climaxed in Christ. There is nothing left for God to say when it comes to redemption AT ALL. Despite “Latter-Day” revelation from angels and other “prophets”, Hebrews is very clear that no such revelation is need for the Son has come.

Another way that we can slowly start to “drift away” from Christianity is through worldliness. That is, that we get caught up with the things of this world, with its passions and its desires. Jesus, again, speaking from the parable of the sower said, “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Matt. 13:22).  Again, many people come to religion and Christianity especially thinking somehow they can use God and use religion to help get ahead in this world. In America especially, it is very easy for religion to be able to sold or marketed. People make money off of religious trinkets, not because they want to spread the faith, but because there is money to be made. If that product fails, these people or companies will just find another product to make so that they can make money to support the lifestyle they want. There are many preachers and teachers in America who teach what is called the “Prosperity Gospel” which says that God wants you to be rich and be blessed with material possessions and are proof of his blessings and salvation in your life. This is not the Gospel at all. This is not the radical call to discipleship that Jesus called people to. This is just another way of playing religion to satisfy one’s own sinful and selfish desires.

The world also calls us away through habits of the flesh. Let’s just come out and say that sexual sin is a HUGE temptation for any and everybody now a days. No one, and I mean no one, myself included, is exempt from these temptations. Sex is a very powerful thing. I once heard a sermon in which a preacher recalled how a group of friends that he once knew as strong in the Lord with convictions about certain moral practices that were once unwavering and wouldn’t budge for anything. That is, up until the point that they started having sex themselves and before you know it they were neglecting their duties to the word and had fallen by the wayside. You can only think of David and the many unlawful wives he took against God’s law; or Solomon and the near one thousand wives and concubines that tore his heart away from God.

What usually happens when we engage in sexual sin is that we have to start lowering our standards of sin which right away changes the nature of the Gospel. If sin isn’t as bad as God says it is, then neither is the remedy that He prescribes for it. We begin to have to “play religion” as it were and we will start to tell ourselves how we will “make up” for the sin. We may engage in more “evangelical activities” in order to quiet our conscience; we might decide to “do more” but anything to not confront our sin. We’ll play religion before we have to give up our sin. And before you know it, we are caught up in the world doing everything to protect our sexual sin be it adulterous relationships to pornography. We begin to neglect and, hence, drift away from true faith in order to return to our old religion of works hoping that our “religious busy-ness” will cover our sins and be enough to get to heaven. We begin to believe the old lies again that “I’m a good person” and “I’m not as bad as that guy, therefore God will surely let me into heaven.” Pay much more attention….

The bottom line is that we begin to look to other things to bring us our ultimate happiness, to bring ultimate meaning, to bring us salvation. We look to idols to save us. We may turn our job into an idol, we may turn our health, our beauty, our relationships, our sins, even our religion into an idol. Pastor Tim Keller defines an idol as any good thing from God that you look to for ultimate meaning in life. This is one of many definitions he offers, but the short of it is that it is putting something in the place of God, in the place of our savior that is not God himself. The funny thing is that idols are good things that God gives but in our sinfulness we confuse the gifts with the Giver(for more on this see “Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller). The world offers all these things. John describes all that is in the world as “the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions” (I John 2:16). When we take our eyes of God, off of Jesus Christ, we by nature direct our worship and our attention to other things. We are not neutral. We don’t have a “religious pause button” where we can just remain neutral when it comes to God, go off and sin, and then press “play” and pick up where we left off. When we neglect what he provides, that can only mean we are directing our worship to idols. My friends, pay much more attention. Pay much more attention than you ever have before.

How can I pay attention and what am I supposed to pay more attention to?

In the flow of the argument we must remember that in all of chapter 1 are the premises that lead to the authors conclusion here in Hebrews 2:1. The author begins with the word “therefore” which, in logic, is a conclusion indicator meaning that premises which have been offered previously to lead to this point. The point is “pay much more attention”.  We have already seen that “much more” attention is required on the account of the dignity of the one who has now spoken, but  now we ask to what do I pay attention to?  The author says, “to what you have heard.” Well, what have these “heard”?  In the context, it would seem that we should pay more attention to the premises that have been argued and follow in line with those kinds of thoughts. Recall the premises that were restated at the beginning:

• Jesus is God’s fullest and final revelation of Himself (1:1-2)
• Jesus is the appointed heir of all things (1:2)
• The universe was made through Jesus (1:2)
• Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (1:3)
• Jesus uphold all things by his very word (1:3)
• Jesus alone made purification for sins (1:3)
• Jesus now sits at the right hand of God the Father (1:3)
• Jesus’ name is superior to angels (1:4)

Because….

• No angel shares the unique relationship to God as a Son (1:5)
• No angel is to be worshipped (1:6)
• Angels are servants, but Jesus is an heir (1:7)
• No angel has ever ruled from the throne of God (1:8-9)
• No Angel is eternal in nature or called YHWH (1:10-12)
• No angel has ever been asked by the Father to sit at God’s right hand (1:14)
• Angels are just servants; but Christ is a Son (1:14).

We are to pay attention to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Our author, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, begins right away by taking our thoughts up to heaven to Jesus Christ. Our author has fairly well summed up who exactly Jesus Christ is and what he has done in all of creation and the work of redemption. In an attempt to sum up shortly who and what Jesus has done, we see that Jesus is the focus of all of God’s work; all things were created for him, in him and by him. He is the radiance of the glory of God, very God of very God! His word is supreme; He governs, rules, guides and upholds all things. His most important work was to make purification for our sins which involved him living a perfectly sinless life, laying down his own life as a sin offering thus making atonement, or satisfaction, for our sins. This task involved being viciously crucified by Roman soldiers and enduring the full penalty of the wrath of God against sin that we all deserved. In accomplishing this task, with no sin that death could hold him in the grave, Jesus Christ was resurrected to life and now sits at the right hand of God the Father where he waits to come back and judge the world. Jesus Christ is supreme!!!

It’s interesting, but the book of Hebrews is actually an exposition of these thoughts revealed in chapter 1, but in particular his work of the purification for sins. That is, the high point of Hebrews is the portrayal of Jesus’ sacrifice that he offered of himself as High Priest for his people.  Hebrews is not the only book that prescribes raising our thoughts upward and to where Christ is as a way of persevering against the temptations to leave Christ. In Colossians 3, Paul tells us,

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:1-3)

            The message we should never forget, to keep it short is the Gospel. One of the problems with many “Church folk” is that we begin with basic Gospel message and then we want to move on from that “basic message”. We begin to think, “oh, there has to be more to it than this!” and are not satisfied with knowing that “it is finished” in Christ and we want to start “doing” to contribute to our salvation.  The Gospel becomes a “stepping stone”, as it were, to use to attempt to achieve our own righteousness. But the Gospel is not like this; it is not something we believe “one time” and then move on. No, it is something that we are to be constantly believing. We don’t believe the Gospel message once and then stop to move away to “higher” things. The Galatians made this mistake of wanting to “move on” and hence move away from the Gospel. Their remedy was not to re-think their systematic theology, or to re-evaluate their discipleship program. Rather, Paul called them back to the Gospel that they had initially believed! When we step away from the Gospel, we take our first steps away salvation as it were. We can never think that we are too “spiritual” or too knowledgeable about God and Christ that we step away from the Gospel, which Paul calls the “power of God unto salvation.”

We need to take this to heart because in some faith communities, there is a tendency to want to develop more knowledge about theology, or fascination with end-times, or how to gain the blessings of God through certain acts of faith, etc….but all these are NOT the Gospel. Once we fall into these traps, we turn from the Gospel to a “works righteousness” and we begin to believe that we are acceptable to God because of what we are doing or what we have achieved. This is how Christian “Pharisees” are created. These are Christians who have forgotten about grace and have turned to “doing” in order find their acceptance. If this goes far enough, a person can be lead to abandon the Christian faith entirely thinking “it’s too hard to be a Christian” because they are believing that being a Christian is about what you “do” rather than what you “are” in Christ.  That is, they find themselves condemned by the law all over again and are overwhelmed with its demands.

It is absolutely CRUCIAL that we pay much more attention to “what we have heard”. What “we have heard” – this is past tense. The call is to pay attention to the previous message of salvation. The text does not say to “move on” to “higher things”….just remember what you have heard, and pay close attention to the Gospel, to Jesus Christ! There is no secret to staying saved. There is no special course or special knowledge, just the Gospel. The simple Gospel message is sufficient. In I Corinthians 15:1, Paul reminds this wayward Church “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel which I preached to you…” This message was the fountain and foundation of their hope! When your faith is in crisis, remember the Gospel. Preach it to yourself. Sing the Gospel in hymns and other songs. Always remember the Gospel.

The letter to the Hebrews was written to encourage these Christians who were suffering under tribulations and persecutions of various sorts. The letter was written to help them remember all that Christ is and all he has done in the Gospel. In the Old Testament, the people of God had a hard time remembering their simple deliverance from Egypt by God. Their forgetfulness led them into their idolatrous ways.  Jesus said, “The one who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).  True saving faith is not something we do one time. It is not something accomplished in the raising of the hand, walking down the aisle in an altar call, filling out a card with information, or even showing up to Church a few times a year, professing right doctrine at times, etc…true saving faith is something that we exercise every single day of our Christian lives. If we are not believing the Gospel everyday then we are believing in something else for our salvation in between and we are in danger of “drifting away” every so slowly, steadily and surely. “Pay much more attention to what you have heard”. Remember what God has done for you in Jesus Christ so that you don’t have to try to do it yourself.  Remember who Jesus is so that no matter what circumstance you are facing, no matter what threatens your faith, Jesus is able to overcome them all because he is the Creator and sustainer of all things. Amen.

Gleanings in Hebrews 1:5-14

Gleanings From Hebrews

The Supremacy of Christ: Jesus is what Angels are not

Hebrews 1:5-14

By Moses Flores

 

A couple of decades ago, a movie called “Twins” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito came out in theaters. The movie was about twin brothers who had been engineered in a laboratory and were separated at birth. Julius, the character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger was very muscular, intelligent, well mannered man. He was engineered from the genes of athletes and scientist, essentially creating a “perfect” human being. Vince, the character played by Danny De Vito, on the other hand, is short, fat, balding, a womanizer, and just your basic run of the mill scumball. He was nothing that Julius was, and Julius was everything that he wasn’t. Julius was clearly the better “manufactured” one of the bunch. There was quite the contrast between Julius and Vincent.

In our last study, we learned seven things about Jesus Christ that make him much greater than the prophets of old. We learned that he is revealed to us as God’s son, and not a mere servant as the prophets were. He is the heir of all things, the creator of the universe, the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, he sustains the universe by the word of his power, he made purifications for sin, is seated at the right hand of God and his has inherited a name that is greater than angels. The name that Jesus inherits is that of “Son” as our context demonstrates in Hebrews 1:1-14. The title “son” is what is being focused upon. Our text in this particular study takes us further into why Jesus Christ, the son, is better than angels still. Not to demean angels, but as we will see, compared to Jesus Christ, just as Julius was everything the Vincent were not, so Jesus Christ is everything that the angels are not either.

As we approach this text, I realize that much could be said about many of the particular quotations and their implications, but it is not my intention to delve too deeply lest we miss the overall argument and intention of the author. Perhaps later, after the bigger picture is painted, we can revisit some of these texts in greater detail, but it is my intention to paint with broad strokes over these quotations about what the son is that the angels are not. Without hesitation, let us delve into the text!

No Angel is God’s Son

The author of Hebrews begins his reasoning on why Jesus has become much more superior to angels by first quoting from Psalm 2:7 and then from 2 Samuel 7:14. The author introduces the verses in such a way to make it emphatic that these words were never spoken to angels. He says:

For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,

today I have begotten you”?

Or again,

“I will be to him a father,

and he shall be to me a son”? (v5)

The first passage from Psalm 2:7, we have already briefly mentioned in our last study on the supremacy of Christ over the revelators of the past, the prophets. The Psalm speaks of the coronation of the King of Israel in that the King is designated as “God’s son” by way of covenant relationship.  The emphasis lies in the unique relationship between God and his anointed one. The author of Hebrews is emphasizing the sonship of the king of Israel to demonstrate that these were not merely spoken to the earthly kings, who would rule for a time and then pass away, but they were spoken by God ultimately to His Righteous One and the relationship they share, namely as that of a father and son. “You are my Son”, God says.

The second passage from 2 Samuel 7:14 is in the context of God speaking to David and promising that David’s heir, will be “a son” to God and God will be to him “a father.” In its original context, 2 Samuel 7:13 promises to “establish the throne of his kingdom forever and ever.” So, while these promises were immediately fulfilled in King Solomon, David’s son, they did not find their ultimate fulfillment there because Solomon’s kingdom was not established “forever and ever.” Solomon died. When he did, his sons split the kingdom and eventually his descendants led Israel and Judah into idolatry and exile.  Rather, these promises were to be fulfilled in David’s greater son, Jesus Christ, the son of God.

Jesus Christ uniquely fulfills these covenant promises of Sonship from the Old Testament. There is much New Testament evidence to support this as well. For instance, at his baptism, as the Spirit descended upon Christ, the Father spoke from heaven saying, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17 cf. Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). Also at the transfiguration on the Mount, the Father also said, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him” (Matt. 17:5 cf. Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35). No angel has ever been referred to as God’s Son in these ways in Scripture. No angel can uniquely call God “my father” as Christ can. Hence, our author demonstrates here that the relationship that Jesus has with the Father far exceeds that of angels.

No Angel is to be worshipped

And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,

“Let all God’s angels worship him.”(v6)

When this text says, “the firstborn” we are not to think of Christ as the “first born” in physical terms or as if there was a time when the son did not exist. Rather, the concept of “firstborn” is one that designates primacy of the rights and privileges that are associated with being the heir, which is designated to the firstborn.  In Colossians 1:15 we see the same title applied to Christ when it says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” In Psalm 89:27 we see this title of “firstborn” is a “title of honour expressing priority of rank” (O Brien, pg. 69).

The text that the author of Hebrews quotes from is a bit problematic for some. He quotes from the Septuagint (Greek version) of Deuteronomy 32:43 and Psalm 97:7. In the Hebrew text, those verses read “Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods” and “worship him all you gods!” In both instances, however, the Hebrew texts call for worship to be ascribed to the one true God. The author of Hebrews applies those texts to Jesus Christ that even the angels were commanded to worship Jesus Christ, something that is to be ascribed to God alone and every angel would certainly know this!

The role of angels in the presence of God is worship. In various places in Scriptures when the throne room of heaven is opened we see angels worshipping. In Isaiah 6, the glory of God (Jesus Christ according to John 12:37-42!) is revealed to Isaiah and angels surround the throne and sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” The same image is revealed in Revelation 4:8 where the four living creatures, “day and night they never cease to say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” Angels do not receive worship. In Colossians 2:18 “angel worship” was being used a false means of spirituality to deceive those who had believed in the Gospel. In Revelation 7:11 see the again that the “all the angel were standing” and then they “fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God…” In Revelation 22:8-9, John says,

“I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, ‘you must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.’”

God himself, in commanding the angels to ascribe worship that is due only to God, to be given by the angels to the Son is God’s demonstration of the superiority of Christ over them. No angel is to be worshipped but worship from even angels is due to the Son of God, how much more ours! No angel is worshipped but the son is worthy of it!

Angels are servants; Christ is an heir

Here, now, the author begins to reveal the nature of what angels are in relation to God. Of the nature of angels versus the nature of Christ as we have previously seen, the author of Hebrews says this:

Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,

and his ministers a flame of fire.”

The quotation is from Psalm 104:4. In context, the Psalm praises God as the creator and how he has made creation. Angels, his messengers, are part of the created order for God “makes” them. They are not creators. They are not self-sustaining beings. They are not autonomous beings who do their own will, but they are “ministers”, or “messengers”. They serve the sovereign God, and hence they are also servants of the Son, Jesus Christ. Based on the previous texts, angels, as part of creation, are upheld by the word of the power of Jesus Christ.

Clearly the nature of angels, in their created nature and in their office, as messengers and ministers of God does not come anywhere near the level of dignity that the Son has. In speaking of angels now in contrast to the Son, our author is purposefully bring us down in language. Whereas the ideas of Sonship and worship are meant to invoke our highest thoughts of Jesus, the language of being “made” and “ministering” are meant to bring us low to show the difference, that one might be exalted over the other!. The angels, our author reminds us, are mere servants; Christ is an heir.  Angels are created; the Son is Creator. The angels are messenger; the Son is the message.

No Angel is God

The author of Hebrews is now ready to develop the case against angels even further. To contrast the ministry of angels as messengers and ministers, he quotes Psalm 45:6,7 to say:

But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

Whereas the angels are ministers in the court of God, the Son is said to possess the throne. In the context of the deliverance of the Psalm, it was spoken to the king of Israel who functioned as God in exercise rule and authority over the people of God for God. F.F. Bruce said, “this is not the only place in the Old Testament where a king, especially of the Davidic line, is addressed in language which could only be described as the characteristic hyperbole of oriental court style if interpreted solely of the individual so addressed” (Bruce, pg. 60). In other words, the king’s authority was from God and exerted through the king. Another instance where a mortal is said to be “God” is in Exodus 7:1 in which God says to Moses, “See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh…” Not that Moses, became God, but that the authority of Moses was vested by God Himself that Moses was functioning as God to Pharaoh. That is the idea here. Jesus is the King. Jesus is the one being served by angels. And his kingdom is not a temporary one. It is one that goes on “forever and ever.”

Twice the Son is referred to as “God”. Jesus, as David’s greater son and the Messiah in whom all these Davidic promises would find their fulfillment, alone is able to fulfill this. Jesus’ rule is according to “uprightness” because Jesus loves righteousness. Jesus hates wickedness.  The Kings of Israel and Judah did not fulfill these by a long shot. A verse like this would have left something to be desired in the kings of old. Even the most righteous appearing of the kings of the line of David, even David himself had blatant sins that brought disasters and national crisis on their kingdoms and ultimately judgment and exile. Jesus, alone, lived a fully righteous life without sin.

No angel has had the privilege of ruling from the throne of God. The one angel that did try to ascend to the throne of God was cast down. Angels are servants, but the Son rules from the throne of God and through the throne of Israel, through the lineage of David. No angel is called “God” the way that the Son is.

No Angel is Eternal

Again the author continues to contrast the nature and ministry of angels with the function and nature of the Son, adding to his superior dignity over that of angels. This time he quotes from Psalm 102:25-27

And,

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,

and the heavens are the work of your hands;

they will perish, but you remain;

they will all wear out like a garment,

like a robe you will roll them up,

like a garment they will be changed.

But you are the same,

and your years will have no end.”

A few thoughts come out that need mentioning.

First, the creatorship of the Son. The son is here being praised for “laying the foundation of the earth in the beginning.” Of course, the phrase “in the beginning” is meant to take us back to the very first words of the Bible. All that exists is the “work of his hands”.  Again, only one being is the Creator and that is God.

Second, note the author’s application of eternity and immutability to Jesus Christ.  Of the created world, he says, “They will all perish…they will wear out like a garment…they will be changed.” But of the Son he says, “…but you remain…you are the same and your years will have no end.” Only one being is eternal and unchangeable and that is God.

Finally, worth noting is that the title “Lord” here in the Septuagint (Greek OT) is the equivalent of the Hebrew name, YHWH; God’s most sacred name. It was the covenant name by which God was to be known and revered for all generations. Jesus Christ, is here being classified with and identified as YHWH God of the Old Testament. The audience, being Hebrews themselves, would know the significance of this name being applied to Jesus. The author is essentially identifying the Son, Jesus, as the God whom they have been in covenant with since their existence as a people.

These last 2 reasons are very strong evidence in the New Testament for the doctrine of the fully Deity of Jesus Christ as well as the doctrine of the Trinity which teaches that Jesus Christ is one of three co-equal and co-eternal persons within the one substance that is God.

No angels created the earth. No angel laid the foundation of the world. Angels change. Some angels even fell with Satan demonstrating they are not simply robots programmed to not change. But Jesus, the Son, he remains the same. Indeed the author of Hebrews will later use this idea to talk about Jesus Christ’s faithfulness in trials (Hebrews 13:8)

No Angel has permanence at God’s side

By now, the supremacy and superiority of the Son has surely been demonstrated, but our author still has more to say about the Son. He quotes Psalm 110:1 which says,

And to which of the angels has he ever said,

“Sit at my right hand

until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?

This is not the first time that this particular passage has been used and applied to Jesus Christ. In fact, Jesus Christ himself used it to demonstrate that David was referring to someone greater than David’s offspring. That is, how can the Messiah be merely the offspring of David, when David here calls him “Lord”? The Messianic King is greater than David. Jesus’ audience was silenced when Jesus asked them about this text. In Acts 2:34, Peter quotes the verse to demonstrate the exalted status of the resurrected Christ who is now “both Lord and Christ”.

To sit at the “right hand” was a position of honor, privilege and power. It is no light thing for God to give this status to anybody, but our author see’s it given not merely to the Lord’s anointed kings in the Old Testament, but ultimately it was given to the true heir of the throne, King Jesus. The kings of old were merely poor figures of faith pointing to one who would truly be exalted by God to God’s right hand. It is Jesus alone that receives this privileged position. No angel occupies this place of honor. No angel sits that the right hand of the Majesty on High.

Angels are just servants

After taking us to the heights of the nature and exalted status of the Jesus Christ, the Son and heir, our author again makes a sharp contrast that we may better grasp the supremacy and superiority of Jesus Christ, the fullest and final revelation from God concerning his redemptive purposes over that of angels. Our author just seems to “drop us” low after taking us to the very throne of God and now he takes us back to the kitchen, it seems where the servants prepare meals and serve the king. The author says,

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

Indeed what a huge contrast! Angels are not privileged to bear the title, “son”, “heir of all things”, they do not receive worship, they do not rule from the throne of God while God makes their enemies a footstool, they did not make the world and everything in it, they have not been exalted by God. Rather, they have been and remain right where they have always been: “ministering spirits”.

They serve God. They do it for “our sake” as it were, for those of us who are to inherit salvation. They do it for God’s elect. Angels do not have an indiscriminate ministry to where they freely go and help or do whatever they want in God’s world. No. They are on duty; they are on assignment from God to serve those whom God has designated to inherit eternal life. They are simply servants.

Jesus Christ is God’s unique, one of a kind Son. The Greek word often translated as “only begotten” should more properly be translated as “one of a kind”. Jesus is God’s unique Son. No angel bears the honor and the dignity of the Son, Jesus Christ. But more than that, no angel has undergone the humiliation that Jesus Christ did either. No angel left their heavenly abode in order to become a man, in order to take on human flesh in order to give their life as a sacrifice for our sins. No angel left eternity to come down to the finite. It was no angel who lived a perfectly righteous life and it was no angel who died on the cross a most cruel and horrific death, suffering not only at the hands of his executioners and the taunts and shame from his accusers and the crowds, but also the very wrath and displeasure of His own father as He who knew no sin became sin. That was the Son.

Coming back full circle, our author of the letter to the Hebrews has gone much out of his way to demonstrate the supremacy and superiority of Jesus Christ, the Son, to angels. His message versus their message comes with more dignity because of the office he occupies. Jesus stepped down from the very throne of God to come give the message of His Father of eternal life. He didn’t send servants, he came Himself.  This is the glory of Gospel of Jesus Christ. All other religions propose that you work your way to heaven, that you follow a list or moral behaviors and hope your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds. But not Christianity.  No, in the Gospel we see a King who came down to do for his people what they were not able to do for themselves. We see a Son, who is the inheritor of all things.  Jesus Christ invites us to be co-heirs with him.

I personally find that amazing that all the Christ earned in his obedience his will freely give to all those whom come to him in faith believing that He is who he says he is and that he did what he said he would do. O the depths and the riches of the grace of God in the Gospel of His Son!

While Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito are quite the contrast in the movie Twins in regards to their physical stature and mental capabilities, that contrast pales in comparison to the power, privilege, honor, dignity and nature of the Son of God with the servants of God, the angels. Jesus Christ stands far above, over and beyond any angel. Jesus, as we will see, speaks much better things. Won’t you listen to his call today? Won’t you believe what the Son has to say from the Father? Do not be like the wicked servants who killed the Son of the tenant in order to try to obtain his inheritance (Matt. 22:33-44).  The Gospel is free grace and God did not spare to speak it to us in his best messenger, His own Son, the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Amen.

Bibliography

O. Brien, Peter T., The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Letter to the Hebrews, Eerdman’s Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2010.

Bruce, F.F., The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Epistle to the Hebrews (Revised), Eerdman’s Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1990

Ellingworth, Paul, The New International Greek Testament Commentary:  The Epistle to the Hebrews, Eerdman’s Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1993

Pink, A. W. , An Exposition of Hebrews, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2006

Gleanings from Hebrews: The Supremacy of the Son, Hebrews 1:2-4

The Supremacy of the Son: What’s so great about Jesus?

Hebrews 1:2-4

By Moses Flores

 

Growing up, my dad was a well-known plumber. People respected his work. They counted on him. He was good at what he did. I got to work with my dad growing up. I got to learn, what at that time was, the family business, being that his dad was a plumber as well. I was a third generation plumber….or was going to be. As people got to see me working with my dad, helping him out, getting tools, and slowly and eventually being able to do certain tasks on my own, it was not uncommon for some people to think that I was the heir of “H. Flores Plumbing”.  At one point I was able to go out and do calls on my own and I even ran the business on my own for a short period of time before taking a teaching position.  My dad never treated me like the other workers. I was not just an employee to my dad I was his son, and as such I had a lot more dignity to him than his workers. I held a higher status in his business. At some point the workers recognized this and were able to work under me just as if they were working under my dad. I was my dad’s Son.

A lot of businesses, especially family owned businesses, are that way. In ancient times, kingdoms functioned in this way as well as King’s passed kingdoms on to their sons. For the patriarchs in the Bible, having a son was important as a means of passing on the name of one’s family or their heritage. In some cultures, “eternal life” was seen as passing one’s life through their sons. This is why having a son was so important in the Bible. The Son was the heir. And so the Son, especially the oldest, the firstborn, in ancient cultures, possessed a certain dignity to them. They were, for all practical purposes going to be the same as their father. Our author of the letter to the Hebrews has recently introduced us to the revelation of God coming through “a son” in verses 1 and 2. In times past God spoke through prophets, but now God speaks through a Son. The words of the son carry much more dignity, though not necessarily less authority, than those of servants or mere messengers. The words of a Son would be considered so direct as if it was the Father himself speaking without mediator. Previously, communication was marked out by God using different ways and different messengers speaking to only a select few, but now God is speaking in a better way, to all Christians, through the Son. The Son is better.

Our text moves us now to consider why the Son is better. It should be recalled that the Greek text does not have the personal pronoun “his” in front of Son, but should be translated as “a Son” in demonstration of the dignity of the status or position. What is the dignity of the Son of God? What makes the Son of God, Jesus Christ, so important and so much better than the “many times” and the “many ways” in which God spoke? Hebrews 1:2-4 offer us 7 reasons why Jesus Christ is better than the old ways. Let’s read our text as a whole and then dissect the seven ways in which Christ, the Son, is supreme.

“but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

Individually, let’s distinguish these seven things and then examine them. They are:

1)      Jesus is the heir of all things

2)      Jesus made the universe

3)      Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of God’s nature

4)      Jesus uphold all things by His powerful word

5)      Jesus made purification for sins

6)      Jesus now sits at the right hand of God the Father

7)      Jesus’ name is superior to angels

Jesus Christ is the heir of all things

An heir is someone who inherits the possessions of someone, most commonly their parents. We can think of a prince who will one day become the king. We can think of the child of a millionaire who will one day have all that was his parents’ fortune including the home, the business and the family name. The language of the Son as heir of all things is reminiscent from Psalm 2:

Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain?

The Kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed saying,

‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’

 

He who sits in the heavens laughs;

The LORD holds them in derision.

Then he will speak to them in his wrath,

And terrify them in his fury, saying

‘’As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’

 

I will tell of the decree:

The LORD said to me, You are my Son;

Today I have begotten you.

Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends

of the Earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron

And dash them pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”

While the psalm mentioned above was used to refer to the installation of the king of Israel and his status before God, as the Lord’s anointed to rule God’s people, the author of the psalm is clearly pointing beyond himself. He is ultimately point to the one who would come through the lineage of David, David’s true heir to the throne of Israel, and God’s true appointed King of Israel, Jesus Christ. The coronation of the King is a time of celebration. It is a public event. Much like the installation of a new president, a change in king brings change of administration. In pagan nations, Kings were thought to be so associated with Deity that they were considered sons of the gods themselves, or even gods incarnate. For Israel, the kings were God’s son by covenant. It was the king’s charge to rule with the authority of God in order to experience the blessings of the covenant; disobedience would bring the curses.  No one could simply make themselves king, God had to confer this office upon them. They had to be anointed to the position. Jesus Christ, through his obedience, suffering and death has been exalted by God which God demonstrated in the Resurrection. In Acts. 2:36, as Peter is delivering his Pentecost sermon, he declares, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”  Notice our text concurs that it was God the Father who appointed Jesus, the Son, to be the heir. Jesus did not give himself the honor.  Also worth noting is the word “Christ” is not a name, but a title that means, “anointed one”. Jesus is God’s anointed one to be king.

It is important that we see what God is now doing for the Son in these seven descriptions of the supremacy of Christ. These are God’s reasons why the Son is supreme over the old revelators. The text says, “he,” that is God the Father, “appointed [the Son] heir of all things.” Jesus himself said In Matthew 28:18-20, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…” Jesus did not usurp God the Fathers authority but submitted to it. Philippians 2:5-11 reveals how Christ did not use his status as God to take anything, but rather, through humility, he took on the form of a servant, which is to say, he became a human being, a man, and he obeyed his Father, even unto death! “Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” Jesus Christ is the heir of God. God the Father has glorified the Son in this appointment. It is not man’s doing, but God’s.

So now, what does God own? We ask this question to determine what is it that is God’s that is going to be the Son’s. Our text says that Christ is appointed “heir of all things”. The Bible says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psa. 50:10). In Haggai he says that all the silver is his, and all the gold (Hag. 2:8). Indeed, the “Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” according to Psalm 24:1. All these things and more are God’s and they will all be passed to Christ. Therefore, as we will see, we cannot shun what the Son has to say. We’ll develop that more later. Suffice it to say, Jesus is better than the prophets of old, because they are not the heirs of God, they were just his servants. The word of the Son is more supreme in dignity than theirs because of the dignity of the one speaking.

Jesus made the universe

The second thing we note about the supremacy of Christ over the prophets is that it was through the Son “through whom also he created the world.” The prophets, as important and great as they were in the history of redemption in speaking the Word of God and being God’s mouth piece, Jesus, as the Word of God (John 1:1) has a history that precedes theirs. It was through Jesus Christ that God created the universe!! John 1:2-3 says, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Colossians 1:16 echoes the same thought in saying, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him.” The prophets may have announced God’s redemption, but Christ was the very word of God through which the entire universe was made! Jesus Christ was the redemption of God! Surely Christ is more supreme than the revelation of the prophets! God has used and has been using Christ in more significant ways from the beginning of creation, and not just to announce redemption. Again, it is God who is described as using Christ, and hence glorifying Christ, over the old ways in saying that the world was created through him. Christ is supreme because the entire universe was made through him.

Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature

The first few descriptions about Jesus Christ reveal the Fathers exaltation and glorification of Jesus Christ to an exalted status. This next description tells us more about what Jesus is in relation to the Father. Here we see that Jesus Christ, the Son, is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” In thinking of Jesus as the Son of God, we are not left to be able to think that Jesus is somehow less than God the Father, but our author is now telling us so much more about the relationship between God and Jesus.

He says, first, that “he is the radiance of the glory of God.” In I John 1:5, the Bible says that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” If God is light, Jesus Christ is the “radiance” of that light. That is to say, that just as light radiates from a source, Jesus is that light from God. Without pressing that analogy to far, Jesus as the “radiance of the glory of God” demonstrates that the source of light is invisible until it emits that radiance. In regards to God the Father, Jesus Christ is the one who perfectly radiates God the Father. As John Calvin said, “…the glory of the Father is invisible until it shines forth in Christ” (Calvin on Hebrews 1:3). Just as light and its source are inseparable, but distinguishable, so Jesus Christ is essentially declared to be God in this statement. In John 14:8-9, one of Jesus’ disciples says, “show us the Father”. This is asking for the ultimate; “I want to see the God whom no man has seen! Show us!” and Jesus replies, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” To make a stronger connection, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12) and John testifies further: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:5). Make no mistake, our author is saying, and agreeing with other testimony of the New Testament, that Jesus Christ is himself God along with God the Father.

The author of Hebrews expresses this same thought in another, even more forceful way in saying that Jesus is “the exact imprint of his nature”. Some translations say, “exact representation” here or even “stamp” (RSV). The idea is that were you to take a stamp that has a design on it and impress it on something, what is formed is the “exact representation” of that stamp. For example, the image on a coin is impressed by a stamp. The image on a coin is the exact image from the stamp from which it came.

Notice what Jesus is the exact image of: the nature of God. The Greek word used here is “hupostasis”, which is a technical word that describes the “nature” or “substance” of something. In other words, the “nature of God” is like the “Godness of God”. That is, what makes God to be God, Jesus Christ is the “exact imprint”, the “exact representation” of that. Jesus perfectly, completely and in every way has, is, and shows us the very nature of what God is like. No wonders Jesus could say, “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11 uses as similar idea in saying that Jesus was “the form of God”, which is another strong way of saying that Jesus bears himself the very nature of God.  No prophet, though they spoke the Word of God, was the God of the Word that was spoken. Jesus, therefore, by his very nature is uniquely qualified to be God’s self revelation to us!

Jesus upholds the universe by His word

As God, the power of Christ is unlimited! The Bible here states that he “upholds the universe by the word of his power”. In ancient Greek thought, the Greek god Atlas sustained the weight of the world on his shoulders. Perhaps you know the image that I have in mind of a man kneeling, or in a lunge position, struggling as he bears the burden of the weight of the world on his back. In those images, the god Atlas is struggling to do this. But look at Christ: he is doing what Atlas is said to do as a burden by his mere word! His sustaining is active; hence, Christ is continually involved in this activity. He is not like the god of the Deist who “winds up” creation and leaves it running on its own. Jesus Christ is intimately involved with all that goes on in the Universe.

Commentators have generally agreed that the word translated as “uphold” has more significance than mere sustaining. For instance, Peter O Brien, in his commentary on this passage says,

“The immediate context, however, suggests the additional nuance of the Son’s ‘carrying’ all things to their appointed end or goal. The notion of direction or purpose seems to be included…the language implies a ‘bearing’ that includes movement and progress towards an objective.” (O’ Brien, pg. 57)

What this passage is saying is that Christ is intimately involved in the providential governance of all things that happen in the universe. Nothing happens that Christ does not somehow bring to pass or allows to happen. This is a role that is solely God’s and Christ fulfills this. All this is done by the “power of his word”. Jesus Christ is no mere prophet, but exceeds them all in the power of his word over the power of the words of the prophets. Colossians 1:17 states this same thing this way: “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Jesus made purification for sins

As God and the sustainer and providential governor of all things, Jesus Christ has secured the salvation and redemption of His people by having “made purification for sin.” Sin is our problem. Sin is what keeps us away from God. Sin is what condemns us to God’s eternal wrath. The greatest question that all religions of the world attempt to answer is how we can atone for our sins and thus be admitted into heaven. Religions answer this in different ways in their specifics, but ultimately they require that it is us who somehow make atonement for our sins through our own obedience or through making sacrifices to appease God. But Christianity differs from them all in that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the heir of God, the Creator and sustainer of the universe, the one who is himself God, is said to have made the purification for sins that we needed in order to secure OUR redemption, not his own. This work is described here as something that is completed. It is not something that is ongoing, as if Christ is constantly making purification, but, as our author will later state, Jesus has done this “once for all” (cf. Hebrews 9:26; 10:10,12). A. W. Pink , I think, rightly notes that

“the putting away of the sins of His people was an even greater and grander work than the making of the worlds or the upholding of all things by His mighty power. His sacrifice for sins has brought greater glory to the Godhead and greater blessings to the redeemed than have His works of creation and providence.” (Pink, pg. 38)

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is this in its essence: Jesus Christ, very God of very God, became a man and lived a righteous life, without sin at all, gave His own life as the perfect sacrifice on the Cross so that he would bear the penalty for sin that we so rightly deserved. He “became sin” for us that we might become the righteousness of God. Hence, the defilement that sin brings, that rendered us impure and unable to approach God in true worship has been removed through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus alone has done this. Hebrews discusses this in greater detail later, suffice it to say that the audience would have known that the many sacrifices that they offered never removed completely the stain of sin on them. The laws of OT regarding purification require constant sacrifice for any defilement that is brought about by sin, or touching things that are unclean.  There was so much death in the OT, that it should have been clear that those sacrifices were not the one that could or would take away sin finally.  Jesus Christ was the one sacrifice that all those other sacrifices pointed to that would ultimately and finally take away sins for all time.

No prophet or priest has ever been able to offer a sacrifice for sins that would have cleansed the people of God. The supremacy of Christ truly begins to stand out even more as we see the progression of the description of what God has done for Christ, who Christ is, and now what Christ has done for us. Christ is supreme over the old ways.

Jesus is now sitting at the right hand of God the Father

As was mentioned earlier, the work of making purification for sins is completed. He “made” it once. The proof of this is that Jesus Christ now sits at the right hand of God the Father. Two things need to be mentioned here: the sitting and where he sits.

First: the sitting. What is so significant about this? We sit all the time. You are probably sitting as you are reading this. You sit down when you’re tired. You sit when you drive, when ride an airplane, etc…What is so significant about sitting? In the Old Testament, the work of the priest was never done. Of significance, in the description of the furniture in the tabernacle and the temple, is that there are no seats. Why?  Because the priests never rested from their work in there. There were always sacrifices to be offered. A quick survey of Leviticus reveals the multitude of sacrifices that needed to be brought before the priest for the multitude of sins that the people would commit. Hebrews 10:11 tells us that “every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” The priest stands, almost laboring in futility offering sacrifice after sacrifice and none of them taking away sin. I almost wonder if this is what the priest felt like who heard Martin Luther’s confessions at one time; Luther would make confession, do his penance and then return again, sometimes immediately it was said to make more confession for sins and do more penance in an attempt to atone for his sins. Over and over and over, with nothing removing his sins from his conscience once and for all until Luther discovered the work of Christ. Jesus’ work is finished and hence he can sit down and rest, as it were. He is a priest like no other.

But note that he sits “at the right hand of the Majesty on High.” The name “Majesty on High” is a way of addressing God without saying his name which was considered most holy to Jews. The “right hand” was a position of honor. No doubt, the author of Hebrews is alluding to Psalm 110:1 which says, “The LORD says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Peter used this verse, as I have already mentioned to declare to the Jews at Pentecost that Jesus has been made “Lord and Christ” in Acts 2:32-36. This position of honor, the Jews new was a great one and the one whom God honors as the King. Jesus uses this verse to demonstrate that the Messiah was one who was greater than David for he spoke to “his Lord” and not of himself. Jesus, in a sense, is being honored now, condescending to make purification for sins and presenting himself as the sacrifice for sins, back to his place.

No previous revelator of God has been thus exalted. No prophet ever gave up what God the Son gave up. We are miserable creatures, but Christ is God the Creator who became a Creature. God stooped down to us, he came to us, he suffered with us and ultimately for us at the Cross.  For his obedience that led him to suffering, Jesus Christ is honored by God back to his rightful place after stepping down from his position of honor and authority, and veiling that in human flesh. The concept is alluded to in Philippians 2:5-11 in the humiliation of Christ, who is God in nature, yet he became a man and died a death on the Cross. “Therefore, God has highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name”

Jesus’ name is superior to Angels

Hebrews here says, that “having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” The name is that of “the Son” as I think the context demonstrates, and the next series of argument as to why Christ greater than angels will argue by using the title, “son” over against theirs.  Why does our author go out of his way to say this? Why talk about angels? Recall Hebrews 1:1-2 which spoke about God speaking to our fathers “by the prophets.” The prophets were men chosen by God to hear and speak the word of God. They were anointed by God’s spirit, but still these messengers were nothing more than men. Angels, however, were so majestic and sometimes awesome in their appearance that in the Bible men were often tempted to worship them (Col. 2:18; Rev. 19:9-10).  Angels were more supreme in what they spoke because they dwelt in the presence of God himself. Recall in Luke 1:26 in which the angel Gabriel was “sent from God”. In the book of Daniel, Gabriel also appears several times to the prophet to help him understand the visions that he receives from God (Dan. 8:15-17; 9:20-23). The angel Gabriel exclaimed that he “stands before the presence of God” as Zechariah challenged the authority of the revelation given by God through him. Angels, because of their appearance and where they come from, seemed to demand immediate authority and obedience to what was spoken. The words of the prophets often fell on deaf ears and hard hearts, but the words of angels were accepted pretty much without question.

But now, Jesus is declared to have put an end to their revelatory ministry as his name is more exalted than theirs. Their service for revealing God and his will is no longer required for they can do it no better than Jesus, who is the very radiance of God’s glory that the angels dwelt in, and the exact imprint of the nature of God. There is no need for the service of the angels of God when the God of the angels has come to speak for himself in His Son.

To conclude these seven things about the supremacy and the superiority of Jesus Christ, we have to say that he is better in every way than the old speakers for God. Jesus Christ has been designated by God as the heir of all things, and was the instrument by which God made all that is. He is himself God in nature and hence is supremely qualified to reveal God perfectly in ways that the prophets, who were sinful men still, could not perfectly do.  As God Himself, Jesus Christ sustains, governs and guides all of creation to an appointed end that has included his coming into his own creation to make purification for sins once and for all. His work is so final and so complete that He, as a high priest, is able to sit down from his work; something this Jewish audience would have considered to be a remarkable thing because it was unheard of in their experience with temple worship. This Jesus, having offered a better sacrifice and obtaining a better and eternal redemption than the old ways is not simply sitting, but the place that his sits is at the exalted right hand of God the Father as he waits until his enemies are made a footstool. He is exalted so that his name is above all names, and lest we think that Christ is just another “angel”, our author makes it clear that the Son’s name is even above that of angels.

Jesus is better. Jesus is supreme. Jesus is superior to all the ways that you have been trying to hear from God about how to be saved, and what must you do to have eternal life. Jesus Christ, the son of God, has spoken. It is futile to still think that we can find our answers in men today, in false prophets who profess to be speaking from God apart from Christ. Men may speak of religious advice, or of different philosophies of life on how best to live, but the final answers for all these things have been spoken through the Son of the God of all the universe, his heir, Jesus Christ. Success won’t save you. Money can’t answer your questions about life. Drugs are not the way out; Sex is not where ultimate pleasure is found. Jesus is the answer. He is the answer to all of life’s questions. As we close this study, let us go back to Psalm 2 and the coronation of God’s King, and David’s greater son Jesus Christ. The last few verses of that Psalm read,

“Now therefore, O Kings, be wise; be warned,

O Rulers of the earth.

Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.

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

For his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”

“Kiss the Son.” The son is God’s appointed heir and the one to whom we owe absolute allegiance to. In order to be on God’s side, we must embrace his Son, his appointed heir as our sovereign. We must submit to the loving and righteous rule of the Son, to whom the whole world belongs.

I didn’t end up becoming the heir of my father’s plumbing business but I still am the heir of many other things from him. I went on to become a teacher. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has inherited all that was made through him and for him. “Kiss the Son” by believing in Him and his work for you. Make your peace with God the Father through the one whom he has appointed heir of all things. Make your peace with the one who has made purification for sins and waits till all his enemies are made his footstool. Don’t be his enemy. Be his friend. Don’t be his enemy, be his servant. Don’t be his enemy, be a co-heir with him! “Blessed are ALL who take refuge in him.” Amen.