Participants: James Rafferty, Ty Gibson
Series Code: BOTB
Program Code: BOTB00002B
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00:01 Hi friends and welcome back to our continuing study
00:03 Books Of the Book. 00:04 The book of Hebrews Chapter 1. 00:06 We are picking up where we left off, the theme 00:08 "Something Better". 00:09 It's incredible, James, that we have noted that Paul 00:13 makes this colossal declaration that Jesus Christ, 00:17 Who is God in the flesh, purged our sins by Himself. 00:24 That's right and what is this I mean, this is quite a 00:26 statement, what is it mean that He did this 00:27 all totally by Himself? 00:30 There is a lot of gospel here. 00:32 Paul is leaping right into it. 00:33 What he is basically saying, the word purged means 00:36 to cleanse or to do. 00:37 It is very similar to the terminology that Paul uses 00:41 in Ephesians 5, were he talks about washing with water. 00:45 It kind of like washing clothes. 00:47 Apparently there is a lot of gospel in doing laundry. 00:51 He did them, we were dirty, we were sinful, 00:55 and He cleansed us. 00:56 But the point I think that you are directing us to 00:59 here "by Himself" in other words, we didn't do it. 01:02 We didn't help Him, we didn't. add to this salvation, 01:06 it's a gift from God, He did it by Himself. 01:08 He's the only one that could do it, 01:10 angels couldn't do it. 01:11 Man couldn't do it. 01:12 God had to do it. 01:13 Therefore, it is paramount that Paul establishes Christ 01:18 as God, before he establishes Him as a man. 01:21 This is such an important point, it distinguishes the 01:25 biblical revelation of God from all pagan religions, 01:30 from all of the various religions in the world, 01:33 because the God that we encounter in Scripture is 01:36 making a self-sacrifice for our salvation. 01:41 So Paul says, please understand that Jesus 01:45 is better than angels. 01:47 I mean, just imagine for one moment, what if 01:50 hypothetically, God were to say, the human race has sinned. 01:53 I need to venture on a salvation plan. 01:57 So I'm going to sacrifice an angel, or 10 angels, 02:02 or all angels. 02:04 I think the Angels would volunteer! 02:05 Yeah, and I mean their selfless in their own natures, 02:08 you know their governed by Gods love. 02:10 But think about this, if God were to give all the 02:12 angels of heaven as a sacrifice for our sin, God would have 02:16 come short of giving Himself for our sins. 02:20 It wouldn't work. 02:21 The only way that humanity could be saved is for 02:25 us to encounter God displaying His love for us, 02:30 In giving His life for our sins. 02:32 That's all that will turn our hearts back to Him 02:35 away from rebellion. 02:36 That is the point on a relational level. 02:38 The point is, it is God that is doing this. 02:41 Another point that is really important is in relationship 02:44 to this, God is the only One who actually can do it, 02:47 because the satisfaction for sin is death. 02:50 Consequence of sin is death. 02:52 In some way, we will see here more fully developed, 02:55 God is the only One, love is the only thing that 02:58 can survive that consequence. 03:00 That can take that penalty upon itself. 03:02 The person who could do that and survive the 03:05 consequence of that. 03:06 Yeah, pass right through death, gain victory over it and 03:09 emerge in resurrection life to give that resurrection 03:13 life, by virtue of His love to us. 03:15 Pure, unadulterated holy love, cannot be held 03:18 captive by death. 03:20 James, we mentioned briefly this idea of the biblical 03:26 revelation of God being distinct from all other 03:29 religious ideas in history. 03:30 There is a three party view of the atonement, 03:34 what happened at the cross. 03:35 And the two party view of what happened at the cross. 03:38 The three party view is common to all religions, and 03:41 it simply says that at the cross we encountered three 03:44 parties, God, who is the offended party. 03:46 Then we encounter the sinner, who one who has done 03:49 the offending, and then we encounter a third-party 03:52 sacrifice that God vents His wrath on 03:56 or makes a sacrifice. 03:57 Okay, that is one view, the other view says, No! 04:01 What we actually encounter at the cross is a two party, 04:05 atonement and that is God and the sinner and the One 04:10 who is making the sacrifice. 04:11 The one hanging on the cross is not a third-party 04:14 sacrifice, but none other than God Himself. 04:16 Absolutely! 04:18 Making the sacrifice. 04:19 And that distinguishes Christianity from all 04:20 other religions friends. 04:21 That makes Christianity what it is the good news 04:25 about who God is. 04:26 God is not one who requires sacrifice, like other pagan 04:30 deities, from us or from some third-party. 04:33 God is the One who Himself, gives sacrifice. 04:35 In other words God takes the responsibility for our sin. 04:38 God is the One that purges our sins by Himself. 04:41 God is the One that makes the sacrifice. 04:43 This is a picture in Hebrews 1 of a better God. 04:46 Another part of Paul's logic here, that is just really 04:49 powerful, it said in these first four verses, 04:52 the apostle Paul draws a direct link between 04:57 creation and salvation. 04:59 In other words, the only one who could save us 05:03 is the Creator, because there is a sense in which, 05:06 James, that salvation is an act of re-creation. 05:12 I mean think about this, in Psalms 51, yes, in Psalms 51. 05:18 I was thinking that David sins, he said, with Bathsheba, 05:22 he committed the act of murder in order to take this 05:25 woman into an adulterous affair. 05:27 He was conscious-smitten and David comes to the Lord, 05:31 in Psalms 51, and he prays a prayer of repentance. 05:35 It is very interesting in this prayer of repentance, 05:37 how he marries together creation language 05:40 and salvation language. 05:41 He says "create in me a clean heart Oh God, and renew a 05:46 right spirit within me", that's verse 10. 05:47 And then in verse 12, he says, "restore unto me the 05:51 joy of your salvation. " 05:52 So in one breath he says, God create me a new God save me. 05:58 Creation and salvation are accomplished 06:00 by the same power. 06:01 1 Corinthians 5:17, "if anyone is in Christ, 06:04 he is a new creation is a new creature in Jesus Christ. " 06:07 My absolute favorite creation redemption verse, James, 06:10 is in Ephesians Chapter 2, where we are told, 06:14 in verse 8, "for by grace you have been saved 06:17 through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the 06:19 gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. " 06:22 And then verse 10, "for we are his workmanship. " 06:26 Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has 06:30 for-ordained that we should walk in them. 06:32 Very clearly, Paul says verse 8, we are saved by grace. 06:36 Verse 10, how are we saved, God created humanity all 06:40 over again in His image in the person of Jesus Christ. 06:43 So he invites us to enter into that whole new humanity. 06:47 This is why it is vital and Paul picks up this theme very 06:50 clearly in Chapter 1 is vital for us to understand that 06:53 Jesus Christ is God. 06:55 Now, I just want to give an outline of this Ty, 06:57 for viewers and our listeners. 06:58 In Hebrews Chapter 1 verse 2, Jesus is the One who 07:02 made the worlds. 07:03 In Hebrews Chapter 1, verse 3, Jesus is the 07:06 brightness of God's glory, the express image of His 07:08 Person and He upholds all things by the word of His power. 07:11 In Hebrews Chapter 1, verse 4, He is made much better 07:14 there is our theme again, than the angels. 07:16 In Hebrews 1 verse 5, Jesus is the Son of God. 07:19 In Hebrews 1: 6, let the angels worship Jesus. 07:22 In Hebrews 1:8, God calls Jesus God, 07:25 the Father calls Jesus, God. 07:27 In Hebrews 1 verse 10, God calls Lord and Maker 07:31 of heaven and earth. 07:32 In Hebrews 1 versus 11 and 12 God describes 07:34 Jesus as eternal. 07:35 And in verse 13, God calls Jesus, to sit down at 07:39 His right hand were no angel, at any time can sit. 07:41 Yeah, it is just amazing to think about this James. 07:44 We have here in Hebrews 1. 07:46 You can see it in the quote marks, in most versions, 07:49 that the Father is addressing Jesus. 07:53 And the Father says to Jesus, You are God. 07:58 You are the Creator of heaven and earth. 08:01 The father says you are the Lord of heaven and earth 08:04 and the Father says to all the angelic host, 08:06 bow down and worship Jesus. 08:10 This is God, Jesus is none other than God in the flesh. 08:14 And so this truth comes home to the heart now. 08:17 This is where it is amazing. 08:19 In fact, there was a hymn written 08:23 by Charles Wesley and it was called, "Can It Be?" 08:26 This was the name of the hymn and in this hymn 08:28 there are a couple of lines in the go like this "amazing love, 08:31 how can it be, that thou my God should die for me?" 08:37 Wow! that's powerful, as my daughter Leah would say it's 08:40 Fantabulous! 08:42 Good, good Leah, that's great. 08:44 But some have been afraid of such a thought. 08:46 The idea that God can die. 08:50 I mean, it's not really in the biblical, the Bible 08:53 there is no verse actually says that God died. 08:55 How do we understand that God can die for me? 09:00 How can we understand that God died? 09:01 This is what Paul picks up as we move into 09:04 Hebrews Chapter 2. 09:05 How is it that God becomes mortal and is able to 09:09 to die for the sins of the world? 09:10 This is the rational, and the logic for the incarnation. 09:14 I mean, we began with the premise that the person we're 09:18 dealing with in Jesus Christ is none other than the God 09:21 of the Universe, the Creator of the second member 09:23 of the triune Godhead. 09:25 Because were trying to prove that because 09:28 He's become a man, He still is God, He still remains God. 09:30 Yeah, Paul moves us through this idea, he established in 09:34 Chapter 1, Jesus is God. 09:37 And then we're left with the question, Wait a minute, 09:39 wait a minute, you mean this person that we are dealing 09:42 with, this human were dealing with is God. 09:45 And Paul says exactly, that's the point. 09:47 The only way that this plan of salvation could work, 09:51 the only way God can pull this off, would be to step 09:54 from His position as the God of the universe and 09:58 condescend into our humanity so that He could experience 10:02 our temptations and resist them, and finally resist 10:06 to the point of death. 10:08 Absolutely, because in other words, 10:09 God has to become mortal. 10:11 Somehow He has to divest Himself of His immortality. 10:15 And I want to say the divest in the sense of allow 10:18 that to be enshrouded with mortality. 10:20 Allow that to be hidden in the mortal human body that 10:23 is subject to death in order for Him to justly take the 10:26 consequences of our sins. 10:28 He has to do that in the form, not of an angel, 10:30 but some other created being, He has to become 10:31 part of the corporate body of humanity. 10:34 Here's the thing, when we are encountering Jesus, 10:37 we are encountering, as we said earlier, a revelation, 10:41 not only of Jesus as God but of the 10:44 father's heart as well. 10:45 When Jesus came to this world, one of the most 10:47 incredible things He said was in 10:49 John Chapter 16. Verse 27. 10:51 When He said the Father Himself loves you. 10:56 A favorite author of ours has put forth a 11:00 hypothetical situation in order to drive this point home. 11:03 And this author says, hypothetically, "what if the 11:08 roles were reversed and the Father had been the one to 11:13 condescend into humanity in the incarnation?" 11:16 And what if it was the Father that took on human flesh, 11:20 and the question is asked by this author, she says, 11:24 "What will you, what would we have witnessed?" 11:26 The answer is, we would have witnessed exactly the same thing 11:30 because there is no dichotomy between the character 11:33 of a Father and His love for us and the character of 11:36 the Son and the, Holy Spirit for that matter, 11:38 and their love for us. 11:40 We would've witnessed exactly the same thing. 11:42 Jesus did not come here to persuade us, to persuade God 11:45 to love us, to persuade us, He came here to reveal the 11:48 love that God has in His heart for us. 11:50 "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. " 11:54 It's a powerful truth. 11:55 So the love precedes the giving. 11:56 He loves us, therefore, He gives the Son. 11:59 He doesn't come to a new position of loving us because 12:04 of the sacrifice the Son. 12:05 And this is a vital truth, this is a vital truth friends 12:08 for us to understand. 12:09 That God loves us so He gives. 12:11 Love motivates God to give, and when Christ came to this earth, 12:15 Christ reveals to us, what is in the heart of the Father. 12:18 You need to know that, we need to know that in order for 12:21 us to be reconciled in this relationship. 12:23 We need to know that God's love is never changed for us. 12:25 God's love has never changed for you. 12:27 It is the same unchanging down through time. 12:30 Down through the history of the human race, 12:32 His love remains the same. 12:33 The mountaintop of Scripture, James, repeated 12:39 over and over again. 12:40 It's like a series of mountains. 12:41 You are going along through Scripture and you are 12:43 encountering over and over again, this escalating idea 12:47 that God is love and God loves you and God loves me with a 12:53 depth of love and a passion of love that knows no bounds. 12:56 Even to the point where God Himself was willing, more than 13:02 willing, eager to die for you and me. 13:04 And this is going to be a continuing theme that we are 13:06 going to be touching on as we move through the book of 13:08 Hebrews because it is the basis of Hebrews. 13:11 So stay with us continue to study this book with us. 13:14 We look forward to learn more about this. 13:16 God bless! |
Revised 2014-12-17