God’s Most Eloquent Message
Text: Hebrews 1:1-4
Did you ever read the advertising copy or fine print about certain automobile tires? Would it ring a bell to suggest that these tires were manufactured for extra durability from the most advanced polymers? Advanced polymers—a mixture of compounds of different weights in chemistry, compounds derived from different pigments in medicine, and different parts of an organic series in botany. Not a bad word!
Of course, you’re wondering why I’m starting off a message about God’s Most Clear, Convincing, and Eloquent Message with an English word that we would almost never use in conversation. We’d be much more likely to say, “I bought new rain tires or snow tires, yesterday!” than to say, “I picked up some of those new radials made from advanced polymers.” But I do so for a reason. The first word of this morning’s text as it appears in the Greek New Testament is pronounced: “poh-lee-meh-ROHS.” It is the word from which we get “polymer” and it literally means, “in many parts.” Some translations, including the King James Version, emphasize “various times” as a way of getting to the heart of this word and, as Paul Harvey might say, “That’s part of the story.” God has revealed Himself at many different points along the historical timeline. But as Mr. Harvey would surely say, “The REST of the story…” is that each TIME God revealed Himself, it added an additional part or component to our understanding of Who God is and What God wants. With that in mind, I hope you’ll follow along in your own preferred English translation as I read from my fresh encounter with Greek text:
1) In many components and in many (different) styles, God spoke to our fathers by means of the prophets.
2) In these last days, He has spoken to US by means of His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, and [in fact] through whom He made the [past, present, and future] realities [see later on the discussion of the word translated worlds]
3) Who is the luminance of His glory and the exact representation of His concrete reality [usually translated “substance”],
the One who holds [the weight of ] all things by means of the command of His power,
the One who [after He] had accomplished the cleansing [root idea is “catharizing”] of sins,
seated Himself at the right hand of the Majesty [of God] within the highest [that is, “heavenly sphere”]
4) Having become so qualitatively better than the angels through the qualitatively more excellent Name He inherited.
[Pray] So, why did God use “various times” or a variety of components, parts, or ingredients to unveil His purpose of salvation to humankind—little by little? I believe the English word with which we began this exploration, “polymer,” can help us. We all understand that the world is made of up of atomic particles which are more or less stable or unstable. Sometimes they have some extra positive components to their core. Sometimes, they have some extra negative components orbiting around the nucleus. Sometimes, they are perfectly balanced. What we often see in chemistry is that when those negatively unstable molecules latch onto to those that are positively unbalanced, they tend to bind together and form a tighter bond than if they had already been balanced in the first place. The advantage of a polymer, then, is a tighter bond.
I believe the advantage of God revealing Himself part-by-part is similar to how we humans tend to learn better where there is a logical sequence. We may not be able to understand chemistry as elementary school children, but we can learn about the ions in salt by mixing salt into water, watching it dissolve, and tasting the now salty water. Later, when we get to high school chemistry, we start writing out a formula to show why this reaction takes place. But the third grader mixing hot salt water to soothe a sore throat isn’t ready for a detailed formula. He or she just needs enough information to meet the present need.
If God had revealed Himself totally to humankind from the beginning as God did in Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t have gotten it. We simply couldn’t have comprehended all of the complexity of God. Frankly, we still can’t understand the full complexity of God. That’s why it’s mystery. But it’s mystery with a solution and that solution will be found in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Do you disagree? I hope not. Think about Adam and Eve in the Garden. They walked with God on a daily basis, but they still didn’t get it. They wanted more or they wanted to be in control or they misunderstood God’s intent. I don’t care how you word it, they missed the point. He spoke to Noah such that the hero preached and constructed an ark with the potential to save all who would believe, but even Noah didn’t get it—getting so drunk (presumably as part of a religious ceremony) that he caused a curse to reverberate through his family because of his pride and irresponsibility. God CAME DOWN to investigate the Tower of Babel—a lesson to all humanity that we cannot reach God by our own efforts (much less transcend God’s purposes by our own insights). God ate dinner with Abraham and later, debated with the patriarch. Abraham obviously didn’t understand all that was going on, but it was enough to keep him going. God wrestled with Jacob, giving the patriarch something to remember him by that we wouldn’t want (a limp). God showed Moses that He could indwell His creation without consuming it when our Lord called Moses at the burning bush. But Moses allowed himself to be consumed by anger when he struck the rock. We could speak of God’s revelation in clouds by day and pillars of fire by night. We can remember God’s feet and legs being visible to the elders of Israel as He stood on lapis lazuli streets. We could cite God flying upward in the fire of sacrifice for Samson’s father, Manoah. We must remember God’s shattering of Elijah’s certainty when the prophet was confronted by the “still, small voice” or the “sound of crushed silence.” We could cite the glory in the temple experienced by Isaiah, the wheeled throne observed by Ezekiel, or the whirlwind where God transformed Job’s theology. None of these were God’s ultimate Revelation but all of these, even when misunderstood, pointed toward it.
God also spoke in many different styles. The Greek word is pronounced “poh-lee-TROH-pohs.” It contains the prefix for “many” and the root from which we get the English word, “trope.” Now, that word for “figures of speech” isn’t used very much anymore, but we can easily understand that God chose to reveal Himself through stories, poems, riddles, prayers, commands, judgments, visions, promises, contracts, fables, sermons, and even proverbs to communicate His will. In a lot of different ways, God revealed His ultimate reality to those who would listen.
But it wasn’t enough. Those commands, contractual ideas, and promises intended to keep God’s people in right relationship became legalistic and traditional chains that bound individuals to their preconceptions about God or their personal compromises with regard to God rather than to a relationship with the Living Lord. These visions and fables (I’m thinking particularly of the fable where the trees want a king, here) became curiosities instead of road signs that helped people get to God’s person. These poems and proverbs became historical artifacts or traditional sayings rather than pointers to the Person who created and sustains the world.
So, God gave us good news. In these last days…in the “eschaton” is what the Greek says, in the ultimate and final effort to clarify God’s plan of salvation, God didn’t give humanity a variety of approaches and a variety of styles. God gave us ONE WAY to salvation. God gave us His Son! And now, the writer of Hebrews clarifies the importance of this by giving us SEVEN (the divine three for He who caused, He who sustains, and He who always will be as well as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit PLUS the created four for four directions, four living creatures, four rivers running out of Eden, etc. OR God and Creation in right relationship—7) ways of understanding this most eloquent message.
1) He is the heir of ALL (v. 2);
2) He created all conceivable realities (v. 2);
3) He shines forth God’s illumination from the center of the Godhead (v. 3);
4) He is the very prototype of God’s essential reality (v. 3);
5) He bears the weight of creation on His shoulders by means of His powerful commands (v. 3);
6) He has accomplished the [potential] cleansing of sins (v. 3); and
7) He has taken a seat of authority at the right hand of Majesty (v. 3).
As a result of seeing all these aspects of our Lord, we now understand why we can’t simply settle for mere supernatural manifestations or God’s occasional messengers (angels). We see in verse 4 how Jesus has INHERITED the more excellent, qualitatively distinctive NAME. Notice how the Holy Spirit inspired this section to start with an assertion and then, conclude with the same root? HEIR moves to INHERITED. And that gets extra exciting when we think about ourselves as believers being JOINT-heirs, co-inheritors with Christ Jesus. By starting with HEIR and moving to INHERITED, the Holy Spirit essentially gift wraps the importance of Jesus’ saving work within those concepts.
So, if we’re going to celebrate the Advent/Christmas season properly or perhaps, metaphorically, unwrap God’s great Christmas present to us this morning, maybe we should zero in on some of these sayings. Verse 2 tells us that God appointed Him as heir of ALL. I think we’ve all wished, at one time or another, that we had amassed tremendous wealth or built something magnificent so that we could say to our offspring, “All this will be yours someday.” Being able to say that and mean it would add both a sense of joy and a sense of meaningful accomplishment to our lives. But how would this apply to a Son who is already God, already sharing in the experience of the Trinity?
God’s will is that all humanity, in particular, would respond to God in such a way that a heavenly harmony is created between God’s purpose and humanity’s free choice. Before the creation, God as Father, Son, and Spirit decided that the victory conditions, the win, the best thing possible would be for the Son not to count the status quo of the Trinity as something to be selfishly held onto or grasped tightly (Philippians 2) but to empty Himself and become a human as well as being God. Then, any who would respond positively to the Son’s saving work would become the fruits of victory. The “ALL” of Hebrews 1:2 here and the “all this” of our very human illustration just shared would be US. WE are the valuable legacy that all-knowing, all-powerful God chose for Himself!
This isn’t a situation where the Father is more powerful than the Son and Holy Spirit in a divine hierarchy. This isn’t Odin/Wotan as king of the gods sending Thor down to earth on a fact-finding mission or an impossible quest. This is the Father who is God, the Son who is God, and the Holy Spirit who is God agreeing together in their Person expressed in three ways that Jesus would differentiate Himself enough (as Philippians says, “empty Himself”) to take the form and essential being of a human, be in all points tempted as a human being, experience the challenge of existence and death as a human, but constantly do it without sin and with some consciousness of participation in the Person of God. I don’t know how this works, but I know it’s true.
Here’s a major distinction between Jesus and me. As a MERE human, I have no choice as to who I am genetically, who I am socially, and who I am geographically. As far as my power goes, before I was born as a human, I had no choice as to when, where, to whom I would be born. For my part, I could have just as easily been born to starving Muslim parents in Indonesia or to a Yoruba chief in an African village as to have been born to a bi-vocational pastor’s family in California. For my part, I could have easily been born female or mentally challenged as to be this overweight, Caucasian male with an advanced degree that I am. But Jesus, as Creator of the universe, could choose where and when He would be born and to whom. He could have chosen to be born a literal King. He could have chosen to be born in the family of a high priest of Israel. He could have avoided all of the misunderstanding and suffering that He went through, but He CHOSE this way for OUR sake. The Creator of ALL chose us as the REWARD, the legacy, the treasure of His creation.
Now, some of you are wondering why I translated that phrase as confessing Jesus Christ as Creator of all past, present, and future realities instead of merely opting for worlds as most of the English translations do. The Greek noun so often translated as “worlds” can also mean “ages.” It is pronounced “eye-OH-nahs” or “ee-OH-nahs” and is the word from which we get the word “eon,” a significant period of time. I believe the New Testament deliberately uses this word because it can mean both “worlds” and “ages.” It reflects our Lord as not merely the Creator of all the worlds in the universe who might have created a clockwork universe and let it go its own way, but also the Lord of all “ages.” He is the God over History as well as Nature. He doesn’t just build it and let it go. He is beyond Space and Time such that He can infuse Space and Time with eternal meaning. He is beyond Space and Time such that He is not bound by them and doesn’t want us to put all of our eggs in the spatio-temporal basket. You want to experience the most significant, meaningful existence possible both in and beyond physical/temporal limitations, you must trust in the Son of God.
Okay, He is heir and He is Creator. What next? He is the luminance of the divine glory.
Luminance is both radiated and reflected light. One of the problems with light is that the further it gets from its source, the more contaminated, reflected, refracted, and potentially diffuse it becomes. That’s why some lights need reflectors and/or lenses to enhance and focus the way the light is “thrown” and why some lights, like fiber optics, need repeaters along the path to keep up the intensity of power needed to keep the lights glowing.
The Bible tells us that God is light. It also tells us that no one can see God directly and live. Yes, Jacob saw God as the night visitor with which he wrestled. Yes, Moses saw God after the bulk of God’s glorious presence had passed by. Yes, Abraham debated God as though God were a man. Regardless, no one has seen the fullness of God and lived.
But Jesus is the divine luminance. I used to have a telescope that I could use to observe stars and the moon. I could point that telescope at a point in the sky and it would magnify the light source of those distant stars (or that reflective surface of the moon) so that I could see them more impressively. IF, however, I wanted to look at the light source of the closest star to earth—the sun, it would have been very dangerous to look at it with an ordinary lens. So, the telescope manufacturer had created a special tinted lens that would enable you to look at the sun without having eye damage. As the divine luminance, Jesus contains the uncontaminated glory/reality/power of God. As God become human without losing His Godhood, Jesus provides a lens by which it is safe to view the purpose, power, and provision of God without being damaged, blinded, or destroyed. If you want the Light of God shown on a subject, you must start with Jesus as the Light of the World.
And I know my interpretation must not be far off because the very next descriptor is that of being the very imprint or prototype of God’s essential reality. The word used in the Greek here is pronounced “kah-rahk-TEER” (sometimes “kah-rahk-TAYR”) and it is the word from which we get “character.” In the original Greek usage, it meant an imprint or reproduction of what something or someone looked like. The image of an emperor or king was imprinted on coins to show by what authority the money had been minted and the stamp, die, or press that enabled the image to appear in the metal was the “character.” I remember working in a tool and die shop when I was in college. Aluminum in a roll would reel through these giant machines and great pneumatic engines would thrust a die down into the unformed metal—cutting, shaping, and bending the raw metal into the washers, gaskets, louvers, and grills we made for aircraft. Yes, even this guy in front of you was allowed to work the little punch press machine that made washers used in the Apollo space program. And yes, before you smart-alecks make a comment about what a crummy mechanic I am, they MIGHT have gone on the Apollo 11. But it was amazing! These machines would force the impress down upon the metal and out would come a product conformed to the design.
Now, bear with me. Character could also refer to a tooled prototype that served as a model for the Greek and Roman craftsman to build or sculpt something. By measuring their work against the character, the prototype, the essential design, they were able to build an accurate construction. In the same way, it is only as we open our lives up to the influence of the PERSON of Jesus Christ that we are able to conceive of what God wants from us. He is the prototype of what God wants a person to be, the metric against which we are measured. So, when we fail, we are able to let our Creator (Jeremiah’s potter) as we know God in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit keep shaving off the problems to make us conform to the prototype, the character of Jesus.
But we can’t follow the prototype alone. We can’t manage the transformation needed to be what God wants us to be by ourselves. We need the pneumatic force of God’s Presence in the Holy Spirit to conform us to God’s Will. And when we allow that to happen, we actually begin to take on the shape of “sons” of God who are becoming and acting more according to the character of the Son of God.
Next, we see that Jesus Christ is the One who bears up ALL things. He’s the One who holds it all together. When I realized that the root verb had the concept of bearing up all things, I couldn’t help but think of the classical imagery of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. From there, I couldn’t help but think of the weight of the world as being on God’s shoulders. Too often, we forget that God has an interest in, an investment in, a personal involvement with this world. When we find that the Son of God is the glue that holds everything together, the atomic covalent bond, what the Greeks called ousia or “essence,” we realize that we can take anything about which we’re concerned to God who created and sustains all things.
As we get to the sixth descriptor of our Lord, we recognize that the verb used is the one from which we get the clinical term “catharize.” To catharize something is to cleanse it with water, to purify it, to disinfect it. So, even if we reasoned backward from our English understanding, we’d know that our Lord came to purge us, disinfect us, clean us up from sin. BUT, it’s even more significant than that. If we were to read the Greek translation of Leviticus 16:30, we’d see that the high priest offered a sacrifice to cleanse the people from sin on the day of atonement and that the translator used this same verb to describe that cleansing from sin.
The difference as the Letter to the Hebrews goes on to say is that the high priest had to keep on offering sacrifices of animals, but Jesus the Christ offered Himself upon the figurative altar of the cross, once and for all. It doesn’t have to be repeated; just accepted.
Seventh, we see Jesus Christ seated on the right hand of Majesty. Majesty is a way of indicating God without having to use God’s name. To say that the Son of God is now seated on the right hand of God is to say that the Son shares with the Father and with the Holy Spirit in God’s Authority to judge the world. Those who do not accept this Son are doomed to the punishment of this Three-in-One tribunal where the greatest possible witness against them is the very One who not only revealed God’s will but makes it realistic to conform to it.
And now, in verse 4, we see the first use of the word “better” in Hebrews. The word is used 13 times in the book and, each time, it demonstrates God’s superior plan in the new covenant. Here, Jesus’ message is better than the limited messages of the angels. Hebrews 6:9 expresses a relationship and victory better than the experiences of those who failed to persevere. In Hebrews 7:7, Melchizedek is considered better than Abraham, so by extension, Jesus as a priest like unto Melchizedek is better than the levitical priesthood. In 7:19, the hope of the new priesthood is better than the law. In 7:22, Jesus’ covenant is better than the old covenant. In 8:6, Jesus is mediator of a new covenant better than the old covenant that, also in 8:6, provides better promises than the old covenant. Hebrews 9:23 indicates that Jesus’ blood provided a better ritual purification in heaven than that of the Levites and their animal sacrifices below. In 10:34, the possession of believers is better than the Old Testament land of promise. The same is found in 11:16 where the heavenly country is better than a literal Israel. In 11:35, we read the obvious note that the resurrection from the dead is better than the persecution we endure on earth and that God’s people have always endured. 11:40 promises that God has better things for those who persevere. Finally, 12:24 tells us that the message of Jesus’ blood is better than the message shouted from the ground by Abel’s blood.
We have a BETTER opportunity to be welcomed by, embraced by, disciplined by, trained by, and loved by God because of the new covenant found in Jesus. And that’s the significance of this section. Jesus inherited that excellent NAME. Philippians 2 tells us that He was given the Name above every Name. And that means the name that the Hebrews didn’t even pronounce for fear of making it common—God whom they knew personally. And now, through Jesus, ALL of us have a chance to know God personally and to know God BETTER than any of the faithful in the old covenant could know God.
God spoke in many components and with many styles to those before Jesus. However, God has now spoken the most eloquent message in human history. That message was spoken through the life and teaching of Jesus, the Son of God who became one of us. And that message was delivered directly to us. Now, I know what I’m going to do about it. What about you?
