A Concrete God (Hebrews 1.1-3)
My godfather’s name was Bill. He was a single man almost all of his life, and then in his seventies he met a woman named Nancy. He met Nancy, of all places, online. They chatted on Facebook for months. They had long conversations, but it was always through chat. (They lived far away from each other, and couldn’t afford all the long-distance phone calls.) After almost a year of chatting online, Bill and Nancy decided to get married.
They had never met in person, but they felt they had known each other for years. The first time they met was the day before their wedding.
I got the opportunity to see them both a couple of times before Bill died a few years ago. It was strange for me, because I had always only known him as a single man. But he was happier than I had ever seen him, now that he had found Nancy. I was asking about their experience, seeing each other for the first time in person, getting to know one another in person, and said it must have been strange.
But both of them agreed that it was exactly as they had expected, only better. They already knew enough about one another to know they loved each other and wanted to be together. And everything they saw when they finally met only confirmed and deepened that love, and made it even more real.
Now here’s why I’m saying this. I just spent the last three weeks in the U.S. And already, when I landed in the States three weeks ago, people had already put up Christmas decorations. My parents already had a Christmas tree in their living room. A lot of people expect a lot of things this time of year, and it’s easy to get distracted with the decorations and the gifts and the meals, especially if Christmas was a big deal in your home when you were young, like it was in my home.
But the real reason we celebrate this whole season isn’t because of all of these things, no matter how fun they may be. We celebrate this season because of the dynamic we saw between Bill and Nancy.
In the Old Testament, at least to a certain extent, we see God in the abstract. He made himself known through his laws, through the miraculous things he did, through his people, and through the prophets who spoke for him.
But no one ever got to see God himself. Even Moses only got the briefest glimpse of him, and even then, only in part.
And for the longest time, it seemed like that would be the way it would always be. The prophets had promised that a day would come when God would send the Messiah, this warrior-like figure who would conquer sin and free his people. But even then, no one quite understood what that would look like. They waited for hundreds of years for the arrival of this Messiah, but when he finally came, most of them didn’t recognize him, because he’s not at all what they expected.
But that fact—the unexpected nature of who Christ is—does not change this simple reality: Christ is how God has revealed himself. Not just his law, not just his will—himself. God is no longer abstract. He is concrete—visible and tangible and present.
So for this Advent season, that’s all we’re going to be seeing. We’re going to be looking at the first three chapters of the letters to the Hebrews. In these chapters, the author goes into great detail about this one main idea: in Christ, God has made himself fully known.
Context
Before we get started though, let’s give ourselves some context for what we’ll be seeing.
The book of Hebrews is sort of unusual. We don’t know exactly who the author is (I’m partial to Paul, but several people think it’s Apollos or Barnabas); it was finally decided it should be in the canon of the Bible because it is perfectly coherent with the other books. What makes it even more interesting is its structure: it’s structured more like a sermon than a letter, so a lot of people consider it a “sermonic letter”—a sermon that was written down and then sent out in letter form.
As far as the first audience goes, the traditional title “to the Hebrews” lets us know only that the original recipients were Jewish Christians. (Which makes perfect sense as you read the letter, because it is constantly drawing from the Old Testament; everything we just saw in the book of Exodus will be extremely helpful here.)
So let’s just read the text together—we’ll just be in the first three verses of chapter 1 today—and this will serve as a brief introduction to what we’ll be seeing these coming weeks.
Then and Now (v. 1-2a)
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…
There is a lot to see here. First of all, we need to see that the author is intentionally making several distinctions.
First, there’s a distinction of time. It begins with “Long ago, at many times and in many ways”. But in v. 2, he says, “but in these last days”. Jewish Christians grew up with a profound attachment to the past, to their history. The author wants them to know that God’s revelation is not just a thing of the past; it is present, it is actual, it is here.
Second, there’s a distinction of to whom God is making his revelation known. V. 1: Long ago, God spoke to our fathers (our ancestors). But in v. 2: In these last days, he has spoken TO US. The Jewish Christians revered their ancestors—it’s easy to believe God would have spoken to them, because they were these incredible, outsized figures. But no, the author says—God hasn’t only spoken to them; he’s spoken to us.
Third, there’s a distinction of through whom this revelation has come. V. 1: God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. (In biblical thought, whenever you talked about “the prophets,” you weren’t just talking about the prophets mentioned in the stories, but the actual authors of all of the Old Testament books.) The prophets were God’s spokesmen, his ambassadors to the world, making known God’s will and God’s Word.
But now, he says in v. 2, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.
We don’t ever see Christ’s name in this passage, but it will become clear later on that Jesus Christ is the “Son” the author is referring to. A long time ago, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But now, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.
So there are a couple of questions that immediately spring to mind. The first is simple: Did God change his plans? He spoke for centuries through the prophets, then the prophets went silent for four hundred years. So it’s easy to assume that God’s revelation is finished, it’s all done. And if God was going to speak again, it would be reasonable to assume that he would do so through more prophets, since he had spoken through the prophets in the past.
So did God change his plan? If we keep reading, we’ll see that no, the Son isn’t a change of plan. Rather, he is the fulfillment of everything the prophets were pointing to.
Now this may have been a bit disconcerting for Jewish Christians. I just got back from a three-week trip to the U.S. for fundraising. We planned that trip, and the events that we did there, for several weeks. And I won’t lie, when I finally got there, and arrived at these events that were the culmination of these plans, it was a little nerve-wracking. What if it doesn’t succeed the way we hoped it would? What if the right people don’t hear the message we’re trying to send? What if the right people don’t respond? When you talk about the culmination of a plan, it can be scary, because if the plan doesn’t succeed…what’s left?
So the second question the author implicitly asks—the question he’ll spend the rest of this letter answering—is a simple one. If God spoke to our fathers in the past through the prophets, and now he’s spoken to us by the Son… How is the Son better? How is Jesus Christ better than everything that came before him? How is he better than the prophets? than angels? than Moses?
That is what we see in the following verses.
The Son: Revelation of God (v. 2-3)
V. 2 again:
…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. 3 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…
So let’s just work our way through this real quickly. What does the author say about the Son, by way of introduction?
First, he says that he is “the Son”. Whose Son? Well, he is God’s Son. That isn’t to suggest that God was there before the Son, or that he made the Son. This is tricky, and we won’t go into great detail, but this is the way the Bible talks about God: that there is one God, who has always existed in three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. The Son, the second person of the Trinity, became a human being and lived as a man named Jesus at the beginning of the first century A.D. He lived a perfect, sinless life, died and was raised again, and is now seated at the right hand of God. That’s who we’re talking about when we talk about the Son.
Second, the Son was appointed by God to be “the heir of all things.” When we think of an “heir,” we don’t usually think of someone who’s inheriting something small. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning that someone would be the heir of 30€ in a checking account and a mountain of debt. If you say, “He’s the heir of his father’s media empire,” that means something different.
The Son, we see, is “the heir of all things.” Not a few things, not even a vast fortune—ALL THINGS. Things in heaven and things on earth. Every corner of creation, every person, place or thing that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist… All of it belongs to him.
And that makes sense, because we see thirdly that the Son is the agent of the creation of all things: through [him God] also created the world. You remember, back in Genesis 1, when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light? When God said, “Let there be light,” the Son is the one who flipped the switch. When God said, Let there be animals and plants and mountains and rivers and stars and, finally, people, Christ is the one who made those things.
Next, we see in v. 3 that he is “the radiance of the glory of God.” The glory of God is everything that God is, all of his attributes, made visible. It’s often metaphorically described as light.
It’s a little hard to picture this, but we can see it if we read the gospels. Jesus looked like an ordinary man, he talked like other men do. He learned a trade, he had skin and hair, in every respect he looked and sounded like us. And yet, during his ministry, what do we see? People gravitated toward him—even those who didn’t like him. They couldn’t help but be drawn to him. When they looked at him—not necessarily what he looked like, but what he was like—they could immediately tell that he was different from other men.
Why? Because, as we see next, the Son is “the exact imprint of [God’s] nature”. All of God’s character, all of his attributes, everything God is, was perfectly represented in Christ. People were drawn to Christ because he showed them what God was like. God’s nature was perfectly displayed in this man’s actions, in his words, in his character.
Now here’s where it gets crazy. Up until now we could say that what the author has said about Christ is relegated to the past. These are the things people saw when they looked at Jesus during his earthly ministry. But now we start to see Christ as he is now.
The author tells us that he “upholds the universe by the word of his power”. Think about this for a minute. Everybody, put your hand on your heart; do it until you can feel your heartbeat. (And if you can’t feel your heartbeat, we do have medical professionals here who can help.) Take a minute.
Now think about this. Every time your heart takes a beat, it’s because the Son is telling your heart to take a beat. Every time you take a breath, it’s because the Son is telling your lungs to keep breathing. Every time the wind blows, every time the sun rises and sets, every time a wave lands on the short, every time a bird manages to stay in the sky, it is because the Son is upholding all of those things by his powerful word. If he chose to do so, with a single word he could cause all of creation to stop. To just not be anymore.
Remember when Paul talked about rejoicing in the Lord always, about giving thanks in every circumstance? We just celebrated Thanksgiving together as a church. Some of you may feel like you don’t have a lot to be thankful for. But if your heart is still beating, if your lungs are still breathing, it is because Christ is making it happen. We always have reason to be thankful. We always have reasons to rejoice.
Next, we see that the Son made purification for sins. If you were paying attention during our series on Exodus, you know what this means. Humanity has rebelled against God; every individual person alive has rebelled against God. Humanity is totally and completely infected by sin. Our sin means that we can’t live with God; but the fact that we were created in his image means we can’t live without him either.
So God gave the Israelites a system of purification, a means of paying for the sin they’ve committed, at least for a little while. The priest would figuratively place their sin on an animal, and they would sacrifice the animal, who would essentially receive the punishment for that sin.
The problem, of course, is that for every sin that is paid for, there’s a whole lot more waiting just around the corner, so they had to offer those sacrifices again, and again, and again.
But the Son “made purification for sins” once and for all. He took all of the sin of all of God’s people throughout all history on himself, and he was crucified, and on the cross he absorbed all of God’s wrath against our sin. He acted as our priest, and our sacrifice—something no other human being was ever able to do. Only a perfectly sinless man could be the sacrifice for sinful people, and only God himself could absorb God’s wrath against sin. That is what the Son did.
And consequently, lastly, “he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”. This means two things. First of all, it means that his purification for sin actually worked. The work of salvation has been completed, and there is nothing else for him to do to save his people—the work is done. And secondly, it means that since he has taken care of sin, the Son has now taken his rightful place, the place of supreme authority over all things.
Now obviously, that is a lot to digest in just two short verses.
1. Christ owns everything (even if we can’t see it yet).
2. Christ is at the origin of everything.
3. Christ is a perfect picture of God’s attributes.
4. Christ is a perfect picture of God’s character.
5. Christ keeps every molecule in movement.
6. Christ paid for the sins of his people, and thus:
7. Christ took up his throne to reign.
That is God, in a nutshell. When God wanted to fully reveal himself, he did it through his Son, who did all these things, and who continues to do these things and be this Savior.
If this is who God is, then we see so many of our common ideas about God have to be thrown out the window.
Like the idea that there are some parts of the world that didn’t come from him. The idea of a randomly generating universe is off the table if Christ is the perfect image of God.
Also the idea that you can see God’s attributes or character any other way. You can see some of God’s character by looking at creation, but you cannot go into the mountains and commune with nature and meet God in the process. You can go out there and get a hint of God, the way you can walk by a bakery and get a whiff of the bread that’s baking inside. But you cannot fully know God without knowing Christ.
Also the idea that there is anything in this world outside of his control. Christ upholds all things by the word of his power. A lot of things happen in this world that we do not understand; but nothing takes place outside of Christ’s sovereign will.
Also the idea that when he died, Christ made salvation possible for us, but that in order to be really saved, we need to be the ones to make it happen. There is a lot for us to do once we have been forgiven and saved of our sin, absolutely. But none of those things make us saved. We obey God’s commands not to be saved, but because we are saved. Christ has made purification for our sins, and we cannot add to that purification one bit. It is finished.
And finally, the idea that there are parts of the world or our lives that are “God’s territory”, and other parts that are ours. “God, you can have my Sundays and my social life, but my finances and my sexuality… I’m going to hang on to those.” It doesn’t work that way. Christ owns everything. God owns everything. Christ reigns over everything. There is no area of this world or of our lives over which he does not get to have his say.
Conclusion
This is our God.
But I’m not naïve; I’ve been doing this for a while now, so I know that some of you have already checked out on me. I know that some of you are listening to everything I’m saying and hearing it as if it’s just a story.
Don’t think I’m judging you for that; I completely understand. Sometimes I have a hard time thinking otherwise too. It can feel as if things have changed a bit since the author of Hebrews wrote this book. It can feel like God is once again abstract to us, because we weren’t there when these things happened, we don’t see Christ today.
But guess what? The people who read this letter for the first time… Chances are none of them had actually seen Christ in the flesh either. Maybe a few of the older ones did, but most of them had never seen him.
So what God does it say that Christ is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature, if none of us actually get to see him?
It’s a good question, and we find the answer in the fact that these things were written down for us. The author of this letter, and of all the other letters, and the gospels, and the book of Acts, wrote these things down, and believed they were enough.
We often say how much we would have loved to be with Christ like the disciples were. But this is a truth we may have a hard time believing: we see him better today than they did back then.
The disciples saw aspects of Jesus we don’t get to see, of course. They saw him when he was relaxed, they saw him laugh, they heard what his voice sounds like. But the opposite is also true. The disciples didn’t get to see all of Jesus that we see.
They weren’t with him twenty-four hours a day. And even when they were, they were were definitely moments when they were looking away, or thinking of something else, or simply misunderstanding what they were seeing.
But in the Bible, we have statements of intent. We have every vital moment recorded. We have descriptions of Christ’s feelings and attitudes and desires—things the disciples would only have been privy to if he had told them (which he didn’t always).
Do you remember what Jesus told his disciples in John 16.7? He told them it was better for them that he go away, because if he goes away, the Holy Spirit will come and live in and with God’s people. The Spirit takes these words that he inspired and anchors them in our hearts in a way that not even a physically present Christ could do.
This sounds complicated, but it’s very easy to understand. Think of the person you know best in the world—your wife, your husband, your brother or sister, your best friend. No matter how close you are to that person, you are still limited in your knowledge of them. You’re not with them every second of every day. You don’t get to read their thoughts; you don’t always know exactly how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking at every second. By definition, you’re outside of them.
Christ’s being not physically present means that his Holy Spirit is permanently present with us and in us. And that means that we have a 24/7 interpreter of Christ living inside of us. Every time we pick up the Bible and read these words about Christ inspired by the Spirit, we see Christ better than his disciples ever did. In the Holy Spirit-inspired descriptions of Christ we find in the Bible—in his words, acts and character, recorded for us—we have as clear a picture of him as we need.
In Christ as he is described for us in this book, we see God.
Now this is always important for us to know, but it can be particularly important at this time of year, because you walk outside, and you see Christmas lights. You walk in front of Printemps or Galéries Lafayette and you see the windows with all of the animations. We’re going to pick up a Christmas tree and decorate the apartment this week. If you have kids, the kids are going to be enamored with the decorations and the presents and the fun of it all. Family dinners, church events—even if Christmas is a hard time for you, there are so many distractions at this time of year.
But the center of our faith, the center of our very existence, is the truth that God has revealed himself to humanity, and he has done it in Christ. In Christ, we see God. In Christ, we can know God. In Christ, we can be united to God.
So before we even get into the swing of this season, that is what we need to keep in our minds. The truth we celebrate at Christmas is the truth we celebrate every day of every year of our lives, the truth we will celebrate for the rest of eternity.
In Christ, we see God.
