In a very real way, the tragedy of modern worship is that we have become like the Samaritans — we worship what they do not know. The grief of our era is that the Church has fallen into the worship of a tiny Christ. And a good portion of our remedy is to be found in the book of Hebrews.
“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they”
(Heb.1:1-4).
We must come to see and know the supremacy of Christ, and the way we come to see and know this is through worshipping Him. Our duty as Christians is to bear the name of Christ, and to lift it up. This glorious book of Hebrews will instruct us in how we may best do this — the supremacy of Christ is a central theme of this epistle, a fact clearly demonstrated in the preamble.
How did God deal with us in “times past?” From the time of Adam to the Christ, God was not silent. Through the prophets, He spoke to us in different times, and in different ways. But whether through dreams or visions, all preparation was looking forward to the Christ. Abraham rejoiced to the see the day of Christ because that was the direction he was looking. We rejoice that the day of Christ has come, and we look to Him as well. Abraham believed God (vertically) and so he looked forward in history. We believe God (vertically) and so we look back in history to the advent of Christ, and as a consequence, we look up in faith, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father.
So we now have a final word. Christ has been spoken by God in these last days. Christ is, in a very important sense, God’s last Word. After Christ, to expect a return to the “various times and various ways” of the old covenant is to disparage the glory of Christ.
We see that Christ was appointed by GOd to be the heir of all things. When Christ sent out His apostles to disciple the nations, it was based upon this inheritance, already established. He owns it all already. Understanding this makes a great difference in preaching — are we begging or declaring? We are commissioned to declare to the world an accomplished fact. Christ is King. This is not a campaign to get everyone to vote for Him so that He might become president at some future date. This is a word spoken from heaven. All authority in heaven and on earth is in the palm of Jesus Christ. This means His inheritance includes Saudi Arabia, Israel, Canada, the United States, China, and Argentina. It all belongs to Him — He bought it with His blood. Why would He not take it?
Not only does Jesus possess all nations by right of redemption (which He certainly does), He also possesses them by right of creation. Christ is the Creator of all things. Although the Incarnation begins in history, the Eternal Word did not begin in history. He is not part of creation; rather, He is the Creator. The Eternal Word, the one who spoke the universe into existence from nothing, became Jesus, a man from Nazareth.
This Jesus, this man from God, this son of God, the Son of God, is the radiant glory of God Himself. The one who has seen Christ has seen the Father, and the one who has seen Christ by faith has seen the Father by faith. Christ is to the Father, what light beams are to a light source. He streams from the Father eternally. The Father is the Light Source, and the Son is the Light Shining. And there never was a time when the Light was “off.” How could there be? When headlights are over the crest of the hill, you can still see the “lume” of the light before you see the headlights themselves. When sailors are making landfall at night, they look for a lighthouse, still over the horizon. And before they see that lighthouse, they see the “lume” of the light from it. The Greek word for that kind of lume is the word used to describe Jesus here. Jesus is the effulgence of the glory of God.
Not only was the Word of God the agent of the creation of all things, He is is also the agent who sustains all things today. Without Him, everything around us would “vaporize” into nothingness. He did not create us and walk away. He created us and sustains us. He created the world and sustains it. He created countless galaxies and sustains them. And if He stopped sustaining, the material universe would go poof.
But the facts of creation and providence — so evident around us — do not bring us to acknowledge God. As my father put it, the facts of “intelligent design” are a gross understatement. And yet men stare at the glory around them, blind to This is because of sin, and so Christ stoops from His creational glory, and adopts an even greater glory, a redemptive glory, a glory that was flogged and nailed to a piece of wood. Christ is the Savior of the world, the Redeemer of His people, and He was born to die. The Incarnation was not a self-contained miracle, and still less was it just to enable us to tell a sentimental story about a baby in a manger. His Incarnation was teleological — Christ came to do the will of the Father, and that will was for Him to die for all the sins of all His people. His birth had a purpose, and that purpose was to give Him a body which was capable of dying.
Because of His victory over the grave, Christ is now seated at the right hand of His Father, not for rest, but for rule. He is to reign from there until His enemies are made His footstool. Heaven must receive Him, must hold Him, until all is subdued in His name through the preaching of the gospel. And then He will return, and destroy the last remaining enemy, which is death.
From all this, we see how much greater than the angels Christ is. He is no created Christ. He is no tiny Christ. He is not just an arch-archangel. An undue exaltation of angels was an easy mistake for the first-century Jews to make (and many of them did make it). An important purpose of this first chapter of Hebrews is to show the supremacy of Christ over angels, because some of that superstitious reverence for angels had begun to creep into the Church. But our Lord’s name is far above all angels, all principalities and powers. His name is a most excellent name, for unto us a child is born. His name is to be adored forever, for unto us a Son is given. His name shall be honored by all who love true authority, for the government shall be upon His shoulder. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of all Peace. His name shall be blessed from the river to the end of the earth precisely because of the increase of His government and peace there will never be an end. His name shall be Jesus, the son of David, for He will sit upon the throne of His father David until the consummation of all things. His name will be called royal and majestic for He will order His kingdom, and establish it with judgment and justice forever. This, the prophet Isaiah promised us, will be accomplished by the zeal of the Lord of hosts Himself. And we now, living on the other side of this staggering fulfillment, can rest in the fact that the zeal of the Lord of hosts has already performed it.