And so God does not want us, as the writer of Hebrews, did not want his audience to trust the instincts, our instincts, or our feelings, or our intellect, our ability to study and deduce and to reason.
It's not enough. There's got to be something above those things. Something has to bring those things in order, and that is the Scripture. And if you say, well that's not so, then you follow the pattern of all the cults, all the false religions of the world. Today I begotten you, he continues in verse 5. This is in his role as incarnate Messiah, and if you miss that, then you start getting shadows and confused about why does the Bible seem to refer to Jesus as less than, equal with God in some sections, and then other sections has him write equal with God, and we discussed this last session. One reason, the main reason is, the Bible is presenting the Messiah, who we know to be Jesus, in his role as Messiah, in his humanity, but it never loses sight also of his eternal deity. He was God the Son long before he came through a virgin and became the Jesus who walked in Nazareth. There's a bunch more to him. There's more to Jesus Christ than the Jesus who walked the earth.
And aren't we glad that is so? And so the only uncreated one, straight from the Father, not made, but made visible. You see the distinction? Christ is God made visible. Philip, if I've been with you so long, you've not known that he who has seen me has seen the Father? Put those words in the mouth of anybody else you've got blasphemy. Mary couldn't say that. None of the angels could ever say that.
Paul could not say that. Only, only this begotten Son, and as God, Jesus himself, well let me put it this way, as man, in the role of Messiah, he worshipped and adhered to his Father in heaven, but as God, he is worshipped. We understand that when he became human, he laid aside his sovereignty, or else he would never have allowed them to crucify him, but he never laid aside his deity. He was always God. And so as a man, he worshipped the Father publicly and privately, and he grew out in this humanity, his role as Messiah, into his sense of deity right before our eyes. And so in the latter days, toward the crucifixion, we have him making it clearer and clearer to us through the scripture. And so God does not want us, as the writer of Hebrews, did not want his audience to trust the instincts, our instincts, or our feelings, or our intellect, our ability to study and deduce and to reason.
That's not enough. There's got to be something above those things. Something has to bring those things in order, and that is the scripture. And if you say, well that's not so, then you follow the pattern of all the cults, all the false religions of the world.
They just insist upon what they believe. Well someone told me, I have no spiritual feature to back it up, to support it. Peter said we've got prophecy, we can support it. Again, you just look over at Israel, and it is prophecy fulfilled right in front of your eyes.
No one else has these things, and that's not the only one we have. And so we believe because God has declared these things in his word. Paul, when he was preaching, looking to make converts to Jesus Christ, he says, as it is also written in the second Psalm, you are my son today, I begotten you. And so there it is being used elsewhere the same way, to point to Christ, to get the folks to understand that God came in human form, his humanity, his role as Messiah, but he is God Almighty, the son. He says again at the bottom of verse 5, and again, I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. This exclusive relationship is already, he's quoting second Samuel 14, I will be his father and he shall be to me a son.
As I mentioned, the writer is not saying to this audience, I'm going to just reason with you with proofs that are too big to refute. He is doing that, but what he is saying is, and they come from Scripture, and that is our authority. And you either yield to the authority of Scripture or you fall under the judgment in your heart.
Nowadays, you know, we're going to stumble. We don't agree with the things we do wrong, that's what also determines that we are Christians. We hate the wrong that we do because we love the Christ who saved us. The world can have other motives for hating their wrongs.
It's not the same thing. We are again to maintain this degree of distinction, that's where the word Christian comes from. We're like Christ, we're separated. The Jews were hated before us for being distinct. They're hated to this day for being distinct in their worship and their adherence to their understanding of the Scripture. In verse 6, but when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all the angels of God worship him. We're clearly told that he is to be worshiped. Worship is not to be extended to any created being. How do you reconcile this with the first commandment? Thou shall have no other gods before me. Clearly he is a god, not a god, as I mentioned, not three different gods, but clearly he is God the Son, or otherwise he could not be worshiped. The firstborn here, and so this again is where we often get to, why is he firstborn?
If he's God, God is eternal. It's not firstborn in the order of coming into this world, but it's prominence, it's rank, it's title. He is above all, there's none higher. In his humanity, there's none higher. In his deity, you don't even have to say it. We already understand it. It's not an order of time. It is not a start. It is a distinction.
That is what he is saying. He is before the angels and everybody else. Christ was not the first to be born on earth, evidently. Adam was not the first to be born on earth.
He was created out of the clay, and Eve came from his side, and then there were children after them, Cain and Abel and many others. So he is superior, he is sovereign. John, John's gospel chapter 7, Jesus is praying to the Father. And now, oh Father, glorify me together with yourself.
Who can say that? What human being, what angel can say, glorify me with God? But Christ said it. He says, with the glory I had with you before the world was. You see, there's more to him than when he first came.
We have to be fiercely clear on these things. I love this kind of scripture. We talk about we want to meet Christ, introduce somebody. Well, who is he? Who do men say that I am? He asked his disciples.
Some say this, some say that. Peter said, you are the Christ, and the Christ is the Son of God. Wait till we start opening up all the Yahweh sections of the Old Testament applied to Yahweh to Jesus.
How do you do that unless he is worthy? He says here in verse 6, he says, God the Father, let all the angels of God worship him. The wise men worshiped him. The lepers, when they were cleansed, worshiped him. The disciples worshiped him. Even in the book of Revelation, we see them in heaven, the 24 elders bowing down and worshiping the Lamb Jesus Christ.
This quote, let all the angels of God worship him. In the Old Testament, it is assigned to Yahweh or Jehovah. Yahweh is likely the closer to the proper pronunciation than Jehovah.
But it's now part of our understanding and so many articles have written that way. It's not wrong to say Jehovah. But anyway, here it is applied in the New Testament to Jesus Christ. How do you do that? How can you take an Old Testament verse that is talking about Yahweh and apply it to you?
You can't. You say, Pastor, you're driving this home. Well, I opened up with the pile driver.
I warned you. Because there should not be a Christian on earth that does not understand this. That's what an essential doctrine is.
There's no margin here. It is an all or nothing. And the consequences are severe if you reject.
That's why it's essential. It has everything to do with the damning of a soul. If you want to say, I think Jesus wore black sandals and not brown sandals, that won't damn your soul.
Make you look a little doofy, but that won't damn you. But if you say, yeah, he was God the Son, but you can also pray to someone else. Now you are running into serious problems and it doesn't matter if I say these things if I don't bring them out.
We'll get to them as we move forward. He says, let all the angels worship him. Deuteronomy 32, 43. Now the writer, as we opened up, we said the writer quotes exclusively from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
And that is where these quotes are coming from. That means if you take your English Bible, which does not quote the Greek translated Hebrew but quotes the Hebrew from Hebrew to English, you're going to see some differences. There's leeway in the verses and the translation of words.
For instance, one translator may use the word messenger. Another may use the literal word angel. Angel means messenger.
The context lets us know if he's from the spiritual realm or the physical realm most of the time. So quoting from the Septuagint, Deuteronomy 32, 43 as he is, he says, let all the angels of God worship him. If you turn in your English Bibles to that translated from the Hebrew, it will still say, have the same meaning, but it will say it a little differently. Let all the fake gods, those who bow down before the true God.
Psalm 97, also from the Septuagint, worship him, all ye angels. And so there is the writer's authority for making these statements. Again, the single verse that crushes the Watchtower teachings on Christ. You should accept absolutely nothing from their doctrine. You know, I have one of their bogus Bibles. It's the BB translation, bogus Bible. And they have the audacity to change words without Greek scholarship. They just don't like the word, so they find another word. They go to a thesaurus and they put that in. Of course, that's editing scripture.
And it was a time when I would go to it and look and say, let me see the damage they've done. Well, now I don't care. Who do you say Christ is? And if you get it wrong, I don't care why you think that unless I'm going to have an opportunity to dismantle it.
As I hopefully am doing some of that this morning. This is not boastful. This is, what, should you be bashful about this? Should we be timid in spirit? We should be fierce as a lion when it comes to stating the truths that we embrace.
We're not apologizing. We're delivering the message. And the message says, take it or leave it. What should it say?
Please? Unfortunately, many think it does. You know, if you say something too authoritative from the pulpit, some people get offended.
And then they go and complain about pencil neck politicians who bow to everything and without having any convictions. Let that not be us, but let's get back to what we're talking about. Once Jesus is acknowledged as God, and this is what the writer to the Hebrews is trying to get them to understand from their scriptures, once they acknowledge that he is God, they cannot possibly then go back to the ways of the Old Testament in their presentation of worship. And it's the same for us.
Once you get that Christ is who he says he is, you can't go back, not without doing serious violation to your own personal integrity, your own heart. Verse seven, and of the angels, he says, who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire. So what we have here is a distinction. We have a distinction of the son in verse six, where he says the angels worship him. Then he gets to verse seven, he says, but the angels, on the other hand, they're not worshiped, they're sent out to serve.
They're not the same. And looking again at verse seven, he's quoting Psalm 103 again. I'll take this one not from the Septuagint, but from our Bibles, it's close enough. Bless Yahweh, you his angels, who excel in strength, who do his word, heeding the voice of his word.
We're supposed to do that too. We should have a little bit more zest in our step, because the angels aren't saved by the blood of the Lamb, we are. Christ did not die for the angels, he died for us. And if they're going to serve him, we must want to serve him too. In all fairness, we've got more junk in the way though.
We've got all sorts of booby traps. It all flaws that the angels that are in heaven don't have. The fallen angels, they in another category. Anyway, angels assisted in the giving of the law to Moses. The Bible makes that clear.
Doesn't give us the details, doesn't have to. That is in Acts chapter seven, verse 53, and again in Galatians 3 19, it's elsewhere, but that's two is enough, and the strength of two witnesses, there you are. They also assisted in the proclamation of the resurrection.
We know that from the gospel story, angel perched upon the stone. Who you looking for? Almost comical. He's not here. He's risen. He's not dead. He's alive. You see the angels delivering Peter from jail, for example.
Peter thinking it a dream till he finally wakes up outside the prison. In the book of Revelation, they are extremely active. And so where are you going with this? Well, our verse says, who makes his angel spirits, and his minister is a flame of fire. His angels are servants.
They are fervent in their service. That's why they are ministers of fire. So the point is, again, the angels are made, but the son is eternal. The angels are made.
He makes them, but the son has it all in himself. As the next verse declares, verse eight, but to the son is that disjunctive that separates and joins again. He says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. The son is addressed as God by the father. Now, again, in the Old Testament, this is Yahweh being assigned to Jesus Christ. It is saying Yahweh is Jesus Christ. That's how the Jew would have received this when this is read in the church. So, again, these quotations are taken out of their Old Testament context, implied to Jesus Christ and none other.
It is startling. Psalm 45, verse six and seven. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companions.
That is the connection. In fact, that whole psalm has a progression from man to God in the humanity of Christ and his deity coming into visibility. And so here he says, again, your throne, O God, is forever. So God calls Jesus God.
According to this verse, there's no way around it, unless you just want to flat out lie and be in denial. Thomas called Jesus God. Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God.
It's not an exclamation alone. He did not say, oh, Lord. He called him.
He was declaring it. He's addressing Jesus Christ. You are my Lord.
You are my God. Paul called. Well, John, we'll take John first. John called Jesus God first. John Chapter one, not first John, but John's Gospel, Chapter one, verses one and fourteen. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Verse fourteen. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. Before you run off and feel sorry for people who reject us from the scripture, understand it is their choice. When they stand before a holy God, he's going, why didn't you get it?
How could you have missed it? Others got it. What's your problem? Well, I listen to the watchtower or I listen to this one. You should have listened to the son. You should have listened to the word. You should have listened to my people who pointed it out. But when you were confronted with the truth, instead of submitting to it, you went back to the laboratory in your mind to try to figure out ways to make it not so because you didn't like it.
Did not conform to your idea wherever you may have gotten it from. We see the news media does this all the time. They don't like a truth. They spin it instead of saying, you know, huh, that's right.
Maybe I, maybe I should rethink this. They don't do that. They go back and say, oh, now come up with this line to chase it, chase it away. To make the truth not look like the truth. They teach kids how to debate this way. You can pick any side, doesn't matter. It's no absolute.
You just have to be more clever than the other one. Paul called Jesus God. Titus chapter two, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
That's, that is not a separation. It's not great God. Oh, in addition, Jesus Christ is our God who is our Savior Jesus Christ.
That is how it reads in English ended Greek. Titus three, verse four, when the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared. Who is God our Savior? When did it appear? Well, Jesus, he is God our Savior. When did he appear? In Bethlehem.
And the innocent children died because of it. It is that God counted it that important. Romans chapter nine, verse five, of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is overall the eternally blessed God forever. And so when you have people that say, oh, yeah, well, what about this verse?
Where is it? What about this verse? You have to understand, is it speaking about him in his role as Messiah?
Is it making that distinction for you? Because it speaks of him in both ways, under the authority of the Father as Messiah and total deity in his eternal role that he had before he came to earth. And so I don't know how one can be a Christian and deny the deity of Christ. To do so clearly indicates that they don't know him. They might know of him. They may know things that has been said in Scripture or by others. But if they don't get that, they don't know. The leaders of this group are the Unitarians, the Jehovah Witnesses, the Mormons, the Oneness Pentecostals, Islam. Islam acknowledges Jesus Christ's existence, but they do not accept him as who he says he is. Well, where do they get anything else that comes from the script?
Where could they possibly have gotten it? And so they opt to downsize him, and that comes with an eternal price. All these insist that the Bible does not say what it says. And this denial is, as I mentioned, soul-damning, and here we go, John's Gospel, chapter 8, verse 24. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. What do you mean I believe that I am he? Not just a messenger. You won't go to hell for saying to someone, well, I don't think you're a messenger from the king, unless it is in the fulfillment of Scripture and the one that you are denying his claims, which he claimed to be God.
And then all of a sudden it is very serious. 1 John, chapter 2, verse 23. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father.
It is not talking about historically. There were people there saying, yeah, we know Christ existed. But the Gnostics, whom 1 John is also written against, that's the first heresy that really came at the church, to refute that they're denying that he is God the Son. And so he says about them, whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
And then Luke, chapter 12. But he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. That means after this life.
Very serious. To have, again, spiritual fellowship with those who deny what the Bible says about Christ is to put you in a bad spot. John's Gospel, chapter 3, verse 36. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. And he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. Now, when he says they shall not see life, those people are still alive. So he's not talking about this life.
He's talking about the next life. The wrath of God looming over their head. They have something to say about that. They can escape the wrath if they will submit. That's our role as Christians to bring before. When we bring the Gospel, we bring who Jesus is. He is Savior, but before he is Savior, and even if he's not Savior, he is Lord. He is Lord God Almighty. He doesn't need to be my Savior to do that. But I sure love that he is my Savior.
And if he weren't Lord, he couldn't save me. So, he continues, a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. This is Christ as ruler, uncorrupted sovereign ruler. Again, when he came as Messiah, he had no scepter. He allowed them to crucify him. That was according to the humanity, to be crucified no more.
He will not again put his sovereignty on hold. Jeremiah writes about him in 500 years before his birth. In those days, Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. This is the name by which she will be called the Lord Our Righteousness, Yahweh Tzidkenu.
That's because Christ will be reigning from Jerusalem. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com, or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-02 08:46:33 / 2023-07-02 08:56:16 / 10