PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,
“You are my Son;
today I
have become your Father”?
Or again,
“I will be his Father,
and he will
be my Son”?
6 And again,
when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.”
7 In
speaking of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels spirits,
and his
servants flames of fire.”
8 But about
the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, will last for
ever and ever;
a scepter
of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated
wickedness;
therefore
God, your God, has set you above your companions
by
anointing you with the oil of joy.”
10 He also
says,
“In the beginning, Lord, you laid
the foundations of the earth,
and the
heavens are the work of your hands.
11 They will perish, but you remain;
they will
all wear out like a garment.
12 You will roll them up like a robe;
like a
garment they will be changed.
But you remain the same,
and your
years will never end.”
13 To which
of the angels did God ever say,
“Sit at my right hand
until I
make your enemies
a footstool
for your feet”?
14 Are not
all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Hebrews
1:5-14, NIV)
REFLECTIONS:
Whether it's been Christmas or a birthday celebration, it
doesn't matter. Just about any time we've given a gift to our kids, we've gone
through the mildly irritating but mostly humorous experience of watching them find
more enjoyment in playing with the box and wrapping paper than with the gift itself.
They'll take a perfectly good gift that we spent perfectly good money on, and
toss it off to the side in order to play with the box and the tissue paper and
the wrapping paper. Sheesh! As a way of saving myself some money and
frustration, I've just about decided to make their next birthday present an old
refrigerator box, or something similar. From what I've been told, this is a
common experience among parents. Many times, so it seems, children are more
interested in the frivolous stuff rather than the real present. A similar thing
was at work in the life of the early church.
The letter of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians. For
many of these Jewish believers, life was a struggle. Lots of their family
members and friends and neighbors had refused to believe in Jesus. In fact,
they considered him a false teacher and regarded Jewish Christians as dangerously
misguided and disloyal to all that God had said to their forefathers. All sorts
of pressure and persecution was put on these Jewish Christians in an attempt to
make them go back to where they'd been before, to abandon this newfangled
movement centered around Jesus and to take up again a position of living under
God's law, the law given through Moses. The law was a magnificent thing, said
the Jewish community. Why would you want anything else? After all, the law
wasn't just given by God, though that would be important enough. The law was
given to Moses (a Jewish hero) by (wait for it…) angels!
The entire letter of Hebrews is an argument designed to show
these Jewish Christians that you can't go back to an earlier stage of God's
purposes, but must instead go forwards, must press on eagerly from within the
new stage to the one that is yet to come. And because the Jews highlighted the
importance of the law coming to Moses through angels, the writer of this
glorious letter begins with a demonstration (from the Jewish Scriptures
themselves) that the Messiah was always intended by God to be superior to
angels, and hence (as we discover in chapters 2 and 3) superior to the law that
they brought.
The law wasn't fixed for all time, as many Jews thought then
and still think today. The law was part of God's preparation, part of the
brilliant and beautiful wrapping in which the ultimate present—God's gift of
his own Son—would be contained. This is where the letter is warning against
playing with the wrapping instead of with the present itself.
The author of Hebrews wants to say three particularly
important things about the way in which the Messiah is superior to angels. He
begins by pointing out that God himself calls the Messiah his “Son”—a term
never given to the angels. Then, in verse 6 the writer quotes Psalm 97:7 to
show that God intends the angels to worship the Son. He then quotes three more
passages about the Messiah, contrasting him with the angels who, according to
Psalm 104:4 quoted in verse 7, are servants of God rather than living
embodiments of him.
First, in verses 8-9, the writer quotes Psalm 45:6-7. This
is a breathtaking passage, primarily because it addresses the king (the whole
psalm is about the king) as if he can be called "God." It speaks of
the king, in this godlike way, as exercising a sovereign rule through which
uprightness, justice, and the rule of the true law are put into effect in the
world. One of the great things about God's future purposes throughout the Bible
is that God longs for real justice. We who, through our newspapers and
televisions and talk radio and blogs, are all too aware that injustice and
wickedness flourish all over the place could do worse than reflect on this
promise. Indeed, God's aim of forgiving the sins of his people is all part of
the larger aim, to create a world in which evil has at last no place. And the
point of Psalm 45, as Hebrews quotes it here, is that all of this is to happen,
not through the angels, but through the true anointed king, the Messiah. That
is, through Jesus. All injustice and
wrong doing will come to an end in and through the work of King Jesus.
The second highlighted passage comes from Psalm 102:25-27
and picks up on the "for ever and ever" in the previous quotation.
There is coming a time, says Psalm 102, when the present world will be rolled
up like a scroll, and new heavens and a new earth will take their place. God's
preparatory purposes through the law and the prophets have reached their climax
in the Messiah. And the Messiah himself will be the one who will see God's plan
of salvation and justice through to the ultimate "new age"—the
"age to come"—the time of renewed heavens and earth. The Messiah is
the same, yesterday and today and for ever more (Hebrews 13:8). The angels were
preparing the way, but he is the One whose life and saving rule will last to
all eternity.
The third and final highlighted passage comes from Psalm
110, one of the passages which was widely used in early Christianity to
interpret the meaning of Jesus' messiahship. This psalm speaks of the
enthronement of God's true king at God's right hand, and of the sovereign rule
which he will exercise until everything that thwarts his purpose of justice and
salvation will be defeated. Once again, nothing like this is ever said about
angels. As the writer concludes in verse 14, they are simply servants with a job
to do within God's purposes. Once you see who the Son really is, and the role
he was always intended to play in God's plan, you won't want to go back to
anyone or anything less.
Most likely, very few (if any) readers today will be tempted
to abandon Christianity in favor of some form of Judaism. But many today,
including many faithful churchgoing believers, seem dissatisfied with what they
have, and are eager to expand their spiritual horizons (as they might see it)
to include such things as angels, saints, "codes," dates, signs of
the time, and other interesting distractions. Let the letter of Hebrews serve
as a warning, and an encouragement. May we never start playing with the
wrapping instead of the true present. It is absolutely essential that we pay
close attention to who Jesus really is—to the role he played, and still plays,
in God's plan; and to the life of worship and service to which he, and he
alone, is worthy of receiving.
POINT OF ACTION:
Throughout this first chapter of Hebrews, the writer
demonstrates again and again that spiritual creatures and spiritual experiences
are subordinate to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. These things cannot be
substituted for him. Making spiritual experiences your primary objective is
like being in love with marriage instead of your spouse. A good marriage
results from loving and serving your spouse. Similarly, a healthy spiritual
life results from worshiping and glorifying Jesus Christ. Being in love with
spiritual experience is not the same as loving and serving Christ and can even
eclipse Christ. (Paul Babb and David Norris highlighted this danger in their
devotionals last week, too.)
As we seek to practice the discipline of worship, we must
always be aware of the danger worshiping the discipline instead of Christ. Have
you found yourself worshiping for worship's sake rather than for God's? Are
there some ways you are prone to lose your focus on Jesus, and instead focus on
things such as the style of music or Bible translations? Are there some ways
that you have been distracted by a quest for new or deeper or more ecstatic
spiritual experiences? Are there some ways that you have perhaps focused too
much attention on things such as angels or signs of the end times or the Greek
translation of words? All of these things are good in and of themselves, but
too much attention on them can lead us to lose our focus on Jesus. Ask God to
help you keep your focus on Christ alone.
WHO AM I?
I am Tres Sansom, and I apologize for being long-winded yet
again. But, I just couldn't help myself. Hebrews is one of my favorite New
Testament letters (along with Luke and Colossians). NT Wright's commentary was
filled with so many interesting tidbits that I couldn't help but incorporate
them into today's devo. We aren't really sure who wrote Hebrews (the best
guesses are Barnabus, Apollos, or Paul); but, one thing's for sure—the author
was masterful at highlighting the uniqueness and magnificence and beauty of
Jesus. I think that's why I love this letter so much. Jesus is highlighted and
shown to be worthy of all our worship and praise.
No comments:
Post a Comment