christmas2007
WHO IS THE CHRIST OF CHRISTMAS? Hebrews 1:2-3
INTRODUCTION: In December 1903, the Wright brothers Orville and Wilbur telegraphed their sister Catherine that they had flown 120 feet and would be home for Christmas. She told the editor of the local paper and he said that was great that they would be home for Christmas. He completely missed the point by not acknowledging that they had flown. How many people over the Christmas holidays miss the point of Christmas? Many of the TV shows and commercials say it is a time of festivities, parties, Santa Claus, gifts and being with family and friends. Most people miss the real meaning of Christmas and even Christians can get caught up in all the things that people associate with Christmas and miss the point. But this morning I want to share with you the real meaning of Christmas by examining the Christ of Christmas.
Scripture has a lot to say about Christmas. There is the prophecy of the coming Messiah in the Old Testament, beginning in the first book of the Bible right after the Fall (Gen. 3:15). Moses speaks of a great prophet one day. The prophets predicted the entrance of the Messiah from His virgin birth to His place of birth in Bethlehem. Isaiah foretold of His sufferings for the sins of humanity. And there were even those prophecies of His Second Coming and ruling and reigning.
So the Old Testament predicted the coming of the Messiah. In the gospels, you read of the historical event of Christ’s coming into the world and the supernatural things that were associated with His birth. The gospels tell of the angel speaking to Joseph and Mary about the birth. The gospels tell of the angel who appeared to the shepherds and the magi who came to visit this King. The gospels even give the genealogy of Christ to prove His humanity. So the Old Testament predicted the coming of the Messiah and the gospels reveal the birth of the Messiah.
Yet, it is the letters of the New Testament that reveal the significance of his birth. In other words, they described the deity of the Messiah. They instruct us on why He came and what he accomplished. You can read about it in the letters of Paul and Peter, but it is the letter of Hebrews that I want to focus on this morning.
In order for us to understand our passage this morning, I need to give you a brief summary of who this book was written to. It was written to three categories of Jews: 1)Jews who were convinced that Christ is the messiah and accepted Him in salvation; 2)Jews who were intellectually convinced but have not accepted Him as Messiah; 3)Jews who were unconvinced that he was the Messiah at all.
So the writer of Hebrews was writing to these Jews to convince them that Christ was better than everyone and everything in the Old Testament. He was better than Moses, Aaron, and Melchizedek, the prophets or angels. He had a greater covenant than the covenant of the Old Testament. In comparison, He was greater than anyone or anything offered in the Old Testament. Therefore, the writer of Hebrews was trying to convince his readers to accept Christ. So this letter informs us of the greatness of Christ and why Christmas is so important to us. I hope and pray we are convinced of this message this morning before we leave.
So turn with me to the first chapter of Hebrews and let me read the first three verses, this morning.
PREPARATION FOR THE CHRIST
God has spoken to humanity through various means in order to communicate His truths and reveal Himself to us. For example, God has spoken through dreams, parables, types and symbols. He used narrative, poetry, law, doctrine, warnings, encouragement, moral and ethical means to provide His truth. First, God spoke through the prophets to men. 1 Peter 1:20-21 says, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” His revelation of Himself and salvation of man begins in Genesis 3:15 (the promised seed) to the final judgment on the ungodly in Malachi 4.
So over a period of 1500 years, God spoke in 39 different books of the Old Testament to communicate His truth. The amazing thing to me is that God spoke. Folks, we live in the natural world and there is nothing we can know of the supernatural world unless God communicates to us. It is interesting to see so many religions who try to discover these truths for themselves, but they are unsuccessful. We would know nothing of God unless He communicated to us.
Sure God has given us general revelation with the creation of the world and our conscience. We can learn a lot from these two elements, but we cannot know God specifically without Him telling us. So it is through special revelation that is the written word which sheds light on the attributes and mysteries of God. In other word, God reveals Himself to us so that we can know Him and respond to Him.
This revelation of God throughout the Old Testament is progressive. He revealed more and more of Himself to the people over a period of time. We know more today, than those in the time of the writing of Scripture because there is no more Scripture left to be written. Therefore, the Scripture is complete and sufficient to answer any need we might have in life. So God prepared the way for the Messiah by communicating to the fathers (Jews) about the coming Messiah.
PRESENCE OF THE CHRIST
But it is in these last days these truths are revealed in Christ. What are the last days? That is a term that refers to the Messianic period. The last days began when the Lord Jesus came. There's a long period of last days. We're still in it 2,000 years later. John said, "My little children, it is the last time." The New Testament says, "He has appeared once in the end of the age." The last time, the end of the age, the last days began when the Messiah came. It was the last days of revelation, for the canon, the testament, the text was completed then. It was the last time God spoke until He utters His voice again in His Kingdom.
Yet in these last days God has spoken to us in His Son. It is the Son that reveals the Father. What the writer of Hebrews does for us is put the identity of God in a human analogy - the Father/Son relationship. We know that no Son is an exact reflection of their Father, but Christ is. This Christmas many people want to make Christ a good teacher, a moral man, a prophet, a fake, a criminal, a phantom, or a political revolutionary, but that is not the Christ of Scripture as we will study this morning. Some will say He was the highest form of humanity or a spark of divinity fanned into flame to reach his full potential and that same potential lies within us or a higher source.
There's an interesting note that I just make to those of you who look at the text perhaps more closely. It says in the Greek, "He has spoken unto us by Sonness." The word "His" isn't there. By Sonness. In other words, the article is absent. In the past He spoke by prophetness, or He spoke through prophets. Now He speaks through Sonness. And the emphasis then is not so much on the person of the Son as the quality of being a Son.
In other words, being a Son is better than being a prophet. He is stressing the quality or the nature of the term. He has elevated the quality of His spokesman. And that fits into the text of Hebrews because the whole book of Hebrews, basically, compares Christ with everything else.In this passage, we will notice four ways in which Christ has revealed God to us.
PREEMINENCE OF THE CHRIST
I. CHRIST REVEALS GOD’S PERSON - (1:3a)
The writer says Christ is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature. The word radiance means “to emit light or splendor, to shine from.” Christ represents the manifestation of God. In other words, the Son is the shining forth of God’s glory and the likeness of the Father. Just as the sun was never without and cannot be separated from its brightness, so God was never without and cannot be separated from Christ. John 1:1, 14 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . and we beheld the glory of the only begotten from the Father.” There has never been a time when Christ has not been the radiance of God’s glory. Yet, the brightness of the sun is not the sun, so the Son of God is personally distinct from that of the Father, even though the divinity is essentially one with the Father.
Without looking at Jesus we would never be able to see and enjoy God’s light. John 1:4-5 speaks of Jesus as having life and is the eternal light who overpowers darkness. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”(Jn. 8:12). With Christ being the radiance of God’s light, we do not have to walk in darkness, because without Christ all there is is darkness. What darkness? The darkness of loneliness, failure in living a life to please God, separation from God, disease of the soul, death. Despite Jesus coming and being a light to expel the darkness in us and in our world, there are still those who do not want the light of life in their lives. They would rather walk in the darkness.
For those of us who do want the light that Christ has provided, what a wonderful thing to ponder this Christmas. That the radiance of God’s glory desires to live in our hearts and gives us the privilege of knowing God personally. This light gives us purpose, meaning, happiness, joy, fellowship, everything for all eternity.
Also, Christ is an exact representation of His nature. The word exact representation gives us our English word character. The word means to carve, an engraving tool, impression itself(something engraven, cut in or stamped a character, letter, mark, sign). The impression is an exact representation of the object whose image it bore. Jesus is the express image or essence of God. “For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells” (Col. 2:9).
II. CHRIST REVEALS GOD’S POWER - (1:2-3b)
Since Jesus is the Son of God, it makes sense that He is the heir of all things that God possesses. This will all come to light when Satan, sin, and death receive their ultimate defeat. The Psalms (2:6-9) and the prophet Isaiah predicted this event (9:6-7). Mt. 28:18 says that He had been given all authority. Jn. 3:35 state that the Father has given all things into the Son’s hand (13:3, 16:15, 17:2). 1 Cor. 15:25-7 says all things will be subjected under Him. In other words, God eternally predestined the Son to be the possessor and sovereign of all things.
Yet, one of the great truths of Scriptures is that not only is Christ heir of all things, but the Bible says that believers are joint heirs with Him. “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children with Christ, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ . . .”(Rom. 8:16-17). The marvelous reality of Christ’s inheritance is that it belongs to Christians as well.
The writers of Scripture goes to great pains to prove that Christ is the creator of the world. The people of the early church were convinced that the man who dwelt among them was the same person who created the ages. John 1:3 states “All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” The writer of Hebrews says that Christ created more than just the world, but the ages (which included all the laws and purposes which guide the creation and government of the universe in Him).
Consider the vastness of the universe. If you could somehow put 1.2 million earths inside the sun, you would have room left for 4.3 million moons. The sun is 865,000 miles in diameter and is 93 million miles from the earth. Our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is 5 times larger than our sun. the moon is only 211,463 miles away, and you could walk to it in 27 years. A ray of light travels at 186 thousand miles per second, so a beam of light would reach the moon in only 1 ½ seconds. If we could travel at the speed, it would take 2 minutes and 18 seconds to reach Venus, 4 ½ minutes to reach Mercury, 1 hour and 11 seconds to reach Saturn, and so on. To reach Pluto, 2.7 billion miles from earth, would take nearly 4 hours. Having got that far, we would, we would still be well inside our own solar system. The North Star is 400 trillion miles away, but is still nearby in relation even to known space. The star Betelgeuse is 880 quadrillion miles (880 followed by fifteen zeroes) from us. It has a diameter of 250 million miles, which is greater than that of the earth’s orbit. The maker of all this is Christ.
Also, His power is demonstrated by His administration. He is not only the heir of all things and has made all things, but He holds them all together. The Greek word for uphold means to bring, carry, to bear, to have in charge, to direct, govern. The idea of the word in this text is one of continuous action. Christ not only sustains the weight of the universe, but maintains its coherence and carries on its development.
Consider what instant destruction would happen if the earth’s rotation slowed down just a little. The sun has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If it were any closer to us we would burn up; if it were any farther away we would freeze. Our globe is tilted on an exact angle of 23 degrees, providing us with four seasons. If it were not so tilted, vapors from the oceans would move north and south and develop into monstrous continents of ice. If the moon did not retain its exact distance from the earth the ocean tides would inundate the land completely, twice a day. After the first flooding, of course, the others would not matter as far as we would be concerned. If the ocean floors were merely a few feet deeper than they are, the carbon dioxide and oxygen balance of the earth’s atmosphere would be completely upset, and no animal or plant life could exist. If the atmosphere did not remain at its present density, but thinned out even a little, many of the meteors which now harmlessly burn up when they hit the atmosphere would constantly bombard us. We would have to live underground or in meteor-proof buildings. Our world would be total chaos if Christ did not sustain it, just like a life without Christ.
III. CHRIST REVEALS GOD’S PARDON - (1:3c)
The purification of sin has been an age long quest for people who have sin in their lives. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. Many people attempt this through good works and self-effort, yet the Bible says that this is futile because only the blood of Christ can cleanse one from all sin (1 Jn. 1:7). The writer of Hebrews argues this case in Hebrews 9:12-4, 26.
The idea of purging means to cleanse. The only way to be cleansed is to accept the penalty Christ paid for our sins. To try to meet the demands yourself is to pay the penalty of death because the Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and that there is none righteous. Yet, in light of this truth there are many who still reject this idea.
IV. CHRIST REVEALS GOD’S PERMANENT PROVISION - (1:3d)
This phrase indicates the provision Christ offers as a result of His work. You want to know something interesting? In the temple and in the tabernacle, there were no seats. You read the description of the tabernacle, you read the description of the temple, there were no seats nowhere. Why? Because a priest never finished and so he never sat down. Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice by the millions and they never sat down because it never ever was a finished work. Jesus made one sacrifice and when it was finished He sat down. He sat down. It was over. There was nothing more to do. He finished and sat down. Hebrews 10:12, what a great verse, "But this man...that is Christ...after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God."
The benefits of His sitting down are: it is a sign of honor or dignity. (Phil 2:10-11) “that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” It is a sign of authority(ruling). 1 Peter3:22 says that angels and authorities and powers are subject to Him because he sits at the right hand of the Father. He sat down as ruler. It is a sign of rest, the work of salvation has been done. It is a sign of intercession. In Romans 8:34 He is making intercession for us.
CONCLUSION: Christ in these verses is seen as Prophet, the final spokesman for God; Priest, the atoning and interceding; and King, the controller and sustainer of the universe who is seated on His throne.
Someone has said that Jesus Christ came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman. He put on humanity that we might put on divinity. He became Son of Man that we might become sons of God. He was born contrary to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, was reared in obscurity, and only once crossed the boundary of the land in which He was born—and that in His childhood. He had no wealth or influence and had neither training nor education in the world’s schools. His relatives were inconspicuous and uninfluencial. In infancy He startled a king. In boyhood He puzzled the learned doctors. In manhood He ruled the course of nature. He walked upon the billows and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His services. He never wrote a book and yet all the libraries of the world could not hold the books about Him. He never wrote a song, yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all songwritiers together. He never founded a college, yet all the schools together cannot boast of as many students as He has. He never practiced medicine and yet He has healed more broken hearts than all the doctors have healed broken bodies. This is Jesus Christ is the star of astronomy, the rock of geology, the lion and the lamb of zoology, the harmonizer of all discords, and the healer of all diseases. Throughout history great men have come and gone, yet He lives on. Herod could not kill Him. Satan could not seduce Him. Death could not destroy Him and the grave could not hold Him.
What does this mean for us? Everything! To reject Him means to spend eternity in hell, but to receive Him means eternity in heaven. There are no other choices.