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The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Thank you, sir, Mr. Chairman, in the first place, for those very kindly words and the warmth and sincerity of your welcome. It is nothing but a delight for me to be with you here, particularly on this auspicious occasion, and to be allowed to share in your particular joy as you enter on this new phase in the life of your particular assembly. A time at which there will be welling in your hearts memories of the triumphs of the grace of God over the long years that you have served him elsewhere.
And now welling in your hearts, I hear as well, by the grace and living power of God's spirit, an exhilaration of heart as you sense the potential for working for the Lord here in this new premises. Must also be very gratifying to those who used to serve the Lord here to find that this lovely building has not succumbed to being a secondhand work- furniture, a store room, or even worse, some supermarket or something. But here the same name of the same Lord shall be proclaimed by his grace in the years until he comes.
You have asked me, uh, to come among you, therefore, on this auspicious occasion. I have come like the Queen of Sheba, from a far country, and I can honestly confess that the half was not told me. In fact, I fear all sorts of wrong information was fed to me, whether deliberately or not, I cannot tell. I shall not tell you where it was told me, but not all those many miles from here when I first arrived, I was told to be prepared for glaciers and frost and snow, if not polar bears.
And I find, uh, that the opposite is true. I'm sure also that, like the Queen of Sheba, when I have had time to talk with you and to share in your spiritual devotion and have learned the wisdom that God has put in your hearts by his grace and spirit. I shall return to my distant land, God willing, a wiser man than I was before. Now, on this occasion, you have suggested that I lead you in your meditation upon the epistle to the Hebrews, and that I gladly do.
And this afternoon we come to the first of the chapters that are written for us there in that epistle. It is one of the three great glorious statements of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let us pick up our Bibles and turn to the Hebrews and read chapter one together. Now, if I should appear to you to be reading a different translation, I probably am. You'll see. I'm old in the tooth, as you see, have mercy upon me, you of the younger generation.
And I am reading now from the English Revised Version of eighteen eighty one. Pardon my simplicity. Notice as we go that this chapter that is to s- declare to us again the deity of our Lord begins with four verses of a statement of the historic facts of the case. God, having of old times spoken unto the fathers in the prophets, by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.
Who being the effulgence of his glory and the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, having become by so much better than the angels, as he hath inherited a more excellent name than they. The first 4 verses containing the straightforward statement of the historic facts, vindicated by our Lord's resurrection and his ascension to the right hand of God.
Now, in the rest of the chapter, he will turn our attention to the Old Testament, to its corroborative evidence, as it will tell us that the Messiah that was to come should be none other than a divine Son of God. We shall notice the pattern in which these things are done. We begin with a reference to the angels, verse uh five: For unto which of the angels said he at any time? So the reference to the angels. That is now followed by three quotations from the Old Testament.
First, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And then another quotation, this time from Second Samuel chapter seven, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And then the third of the quotations, and when he again bringeth, well, that is how it should read, when he again bringeth, meaning when he brings for the second time, when he again bringeth in the first bo- born into the world, he says, let all the angels of God worship him.
So reference to the angels, and then three quotations from the Old Testament. Now another reference to the angels, it will be followed by two quotations. Verse seven: And of the angels, he says, who make as his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire. Out of the sun, he says, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
That is the first of these two quotations. Now the second comes from Psalm one hundred and two: And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou continuest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a mantle shalt thou roll them up as a garment, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. Then another reference to angels, this time will be followed by just one Old Testament quotation.
But of which of the angels has he said at any time, sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of my- thy feet? Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation? Now when I contemplated your gracious invitation that I should lead you in a study of the Epistle to the Hebrews, I fell to thinking that there could be, possibly could be, no more appropriate topic for us to consider on this auspicious occasion of this new stage in the life of this church.
No more appropriate topic than the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. His deity is, after all, the very foundation of the church, is it not? We remember in these moments how our Lord inquired of his apostles. Who do do men say that I am? He asked. They replied, did Niger or Moses or the prophet or what have you? And turning to them, he put this all important and penetrating question. And who do you say that I am?
The words come echoing down the centuries to us as we sit here on the threshold of this new stage of this church's life. On the Lord Jesus himself and his own very lips. Who do you say that I am? Peter, speaking for the rest, replied without hesitation or uncertainty, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Forthwith, our Lord pronounced upon him a special blessedness. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, said he, but my Father which is in heaven.
Thou art Peter. Upon this rock, that is the rock of Peter's confession of the deity of Christ, I will build my church. Oh, may God use the words of our blessed Lord as they are mediated to us through scripture this very afternoon, that we might respond to him likewise without reserve, without shadow of a compromise, and say to him and say to the world, we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
For it is the foundation of the church. It is also, if you will listen to your brother John the Apostle, the secret of overcoming the world. Who is he that overcometh the world, says John, save the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. We need to grasp that. John does not say, who is he that overcometh the world except the one who has had his sins forgiven? That is good. But you see, if Jesus isn't the Son of God, your sins aren't forgiven to start with, and never will be.
No, the secret of overcoming the world is a vigorous, living, lively, uncompromised belief that Jesus is the Son of God. The world offers us at least three different faces. It has, from time to time, an exceedingly attractive face, putting before us all the lovely things of life, such as, uh, elicit in our us a desire of the eyes for beautifully attractive things, and the desire of the flesh for things to satisfy our appetite, and in consequence, the pride of life, rejoicing, if not positively boasting, in the lovely things of life.
But then the world, through its ruler, his satanic majesty, takes those very lovely things, uses them, if we are not careful, to draw our hearts away from the God who gave them. That is worldliness. There will be more people at last in hell. For following the lovely things of life, rather than the evil things of life. They allow the god of this world, the prince of darkness himself, to take the lovely things, use them, draw people's hearts away from God and away from the Savior.
Oh, what a defeat it is. If the world could use its blandishments and lovely things to draw our hearts away from him who is the Son of God, who is the maker and heir of everything. What a disaster to have the things and not have him. The world has an ugly face to give. Marvel not if the world hates you, said our Lord, for it hated me before it hated you. Persecution is the ex- exception for the Christian church.
Sorry, per- peace is the exception for the Christian church. Persecution is the norm. We've had peace so long, haven't we? We may not always have it. Perhaps the day will come when we, distinct from our brothers in other countries, will be called upon to suffer for the Lord. But you see, if Jesus is not the Son of God, you would be a fool to suffer anything for him. If Jesus is the Son of God, you would be a fool to refuse to suffer for him.
Or suppose for his sake you lost everything you had, including life itself. What have you lost, in fact, if you have him? We do well, therefore, this afternoon to reaffirm our faith and to proclaim it aloud. Our faith uncompromising and sure in the deity of the Lord Jesus. It wasn't just an interest in cold theology that made the writer of this epistle pen this first chapter.
Lying behind it was a tremendous pastoral concern for the people to whom he was writing. They were Jews, Hebrews. They had, some time past, professed to trust the Lord Jesus. And in their early days and their first love, they had endured persecution and bitter anguish for his sake. Now, their faith was beginning to wobble very seriously. Why it was beginning to be undermined, why it was wavering, we shall have to consider on another occasion.
Let us remember not to be harsh and critical in our judgment of them. Who knows what we should do if we were brought under similar persecution. I had, for some months, a year or two ago, in my home, a senior Christian worker from Romania. Some mornings he sat across the breakfast table from me. Occasionally he would open up on what they went through in those days under communism. He was first interrogated when he was a boy of eleven, snatched from his home and held for three days without his parents' knowledge where he was, and interrogated.
And other times since. He said, you know, the older men used to tell us, younger men, when you are taken in and charged, or even then in prison, you must, in your heart, give up everything you've got, your wife included. He said, if you don't, they'll get you. They'll come along one day with a letter and show it to you. It will be in your wife's handwriting, exact. Signed by your wife, for all appearances, in which she tells you that she's fed up with being alone like this, and if you don't renounce this Christianity business, she's going to leave you and seek another husband.
In that moment, he said, you must be prepared in your heart to say, well, my dear, it breaks my heart, but you go. You'll no way of knowing whether the letter is genuine or not. And if you haven't said goodbye in your heart, the secret place will have you. Yes. These people had been under persecution. Their faith was wobbling. There was more than a little possibility that some of them would be returning to the Judaism now from which they had left, which they had left.
That would involve, as the writer later points out in dark and somber terms, they would tread underfoot the Son of God. Terms, of course, are very carefully chosen. Not stumble over the Son of God. There were many in our Lord's day who did that. When they first met his claims, ignorant, unilluminated by God's Holy Spirit, and they heard his claims, they found it scandalous. They couldn't take them in. It offended them.
They stumbled. They did it in ignorance. Now these po- people who received this letter could no longer claim ignorance. They had been illumined by God's Holy Spirit. Now for them to go back to Judaism would involve not an accident, accidental stumbling over Christ, but a deliberate trampling underfoot. You can't tramp something underfoot without knowing it. It's a deliberate action.
Trampling underfoot, not simply Jesus, but the Son of God that is denying his deity. And that in turn would logically lead to something next. If Jesus is the Son of God, then his blood, it was and is of infinite worth. But if Jesus was not the Son of God, then his blood was ordinary, common blood, and worthless for the sake of our salvation. The danger was that having denied the deity of Christ deliberately, they would take the next logical step inevitably and count the blood of the covenant common blood, and the new covenant therefore not the pa- not worth the paper it was written on.
It would follow the third result, that they would do despite to the Spirit of grace. The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in the name of Christ, demonstration of the grace of God beyond all possible human compensation and imagination. There were creatures that had taken God's own son and murdered him on a cross. God's response was it, was to send the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. And coming to those very same people say, I realize you did it in ignorance, and now in the name of the, of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is offering you forgiveness.
And not only forgiveness for your past sins, with a command, now try to do better than you did before, you're given one more chance, but if you fail this time, it will be the end. Not that. Forgiveness, justification through the death and blood of Christ, free, gratis, and for nothing, and the assurance from God that there shall never be any condemnation to them that are in Christ. The danger was that these people, having once professed to believe his Christhood and his deity, would now, under pressure, give up faith in his deity, come to count his blood as common and worthless, then throw back in the face of God the grace that the Holy Spirit offered them in the name of Jesus.
That was no mere theoretic contest. Question of belief and faith in the deity of Christ goes to the very heart of our being, to the greatest and fullest and final decision of our eternal destiny. It wasn't only, was it, these ancient Hebrews of the first century that, uh, wobbled in their faith in the deity of Christ and needed to have it restored. They... and you're nowhere near so old as I am, but, uh, even some of you have lived through a century that has in some sense been unique in the whole history of Christendom.
The Middle Ages saw Christendom plunged into the darkest of idolatries and abominations. Even in those days, they maintained faith in the deity of Christ. We have lived to see a day when theologians calling themselves Christians and part of the professing Christian church have explicitly denied, and do still deny, the deity of Christ. In the early nineteen eighties, there appeared a book in Britain, I hope it didn't appear here.
It was entitled The Myth of God Incarnate. Professor Morris Wild, professor of theology in the University of Oxford, was its editor and contributes his account. He gave it out as his opinion that the doctrine of the incarnation was a nonsense. How could God and man subsist in the same person? Said he, no satisfactory explanation of it has ever been given. It's about time we jumped to it. Moreover, he said, you'll see, we have now, uh, discerned that scientifically it is impossible for God to intervene in the affairs of this earth.
And therefore the incarnation cannot be proved. Because if the incarnation is true, it is the biggest intervention in earth that ever has taken place. Well, quite so. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in flesh. And the word by whom the universe was created was in the world, the world was made by him. The learned professor had accumulated a number of university dons and preachers and theologians, all who contributed chapters supporting this main view, the doctrine of the deity of Christ and his incarnation was no longer tenable.
Towards the end, one theologian, professor of, uh, New Testament at the University of Bristol, confessed in the article he wrote that he didn't want to write it, but had been, uh, pressed by the others to write an article to this book. The reason I didn't want to write it, said he, was this. Many of the contributors to this volume have said we don't, we can't, we will not believe in the incarnation. Well, what then are these stories in the Bible of the incarnation? And they have said these are myths, expressing in mythical language that Jesus Christ is someone special.
Though when they came to explain what they meant by special, they none of them agreed anyway. He said, I couldn't write such a thing. For not only is Jesus not the Son of God, but he wasn't special anyway. He said, if you collect from the gospels all the things that are said of Christ, you could pack them all in one week. How could you possibly say on the evidence of one week that somebody was crippled? And he, professor of New Testament. How many thousands of students in theological departments have been trained in that kind of thinking and gone out to preach who?
No wonder sometimes the voice of the gospel is muted. Good though social concerns are. Sometimes one fears that sections of Christendom turn to social things because in their heart of hearts they've lost faith in the fundamental basis of the gospel, which is the deity of Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is well, therefore, on this occasion, that in our hearts we confirm it yet again and state it without shadow of reserve.
We believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. How then will this writer strengthen, restore the faith of the people to whom he was writing? They were Jews, of course. And one of the many arguments that would be leveled against them by their friends after they got converted, is that in believing that Jesus is the Son of God, they had gone off into blasphemous idolatry. I can imagine a young convert, can't you, coming home to mama and papa and, uh, eventually plucking up the courage to tell them that he has, um, become a follower of Jesus.
I was sitting at lunch just the other week with a Jewish friend of mine. He looks after my pennies and sixpences for me, and uh, do say, uh, he had invited a whole table full of men to lunch, knowing them to be believers. He wanted to discuss these things. And his opening question to me, I've known him for many years and I've had many questions, how can you Jews say that we're special? You would imagine the kind of conversation that followed. When he said at last, but you see how different. If any of us Jews, Orthodox Jews, were to tell our parents we'd been converted to Christ, they would hold a funeral service over us and regard us as dead.
When he married a, a, a, a... Now I don't know how to describe that. He was a Presbyterian. Marry him. He converted to Judaism. When I proposed to marry her, my mother got the rabbis round and the Jewish lawyers round, in the hope that they would stop me from this mad step. Now, you can imagine an ancient young man or woman going home and telling mama or papa they had, uh, joined the Christian. How could you do such a thing?
You say Jesus is God, don't you? Well, that's what we believe, mum. Yes. What are you thinking of? I mean, you've heard it from children. Every day we have pronounced a Shema in your presence. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. I've heard thou shall have no other gods but me. What are you doing? Going off to this quaint, silly heresy of a sect that says Jesus is God. We must answer their objection. And that would involve, as we saw in our reading, two major steps in the argument.
One, the great facts, and then the corroborating evidence from the Old Testament. The facts, let's go over them briefly. God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in Son, as in the person of his Son, if you like. And he's making the point to start with that we Christians don't worship two gods. It is the same God. We believe in one God. The God who spoke in different times and different amounts to the Father through the Prophet.
It is that same God that has spoken. The God is more complex than you have typically thought. He's not simply a monolithic block. God is a triunity. He has spoken in the person of his Son. I want to say that to my Jewish friends when I get talking to them, you know. They say, well, say what you like. I, uh, uh, was an old pagan, you know, I'm a gentile. Mm-hmm. Not even circumcised. Uh, I believe in God nowadays, and let me tell you, I say to my Jewish friends, I don't believe just in any old God, you know.
I don't worship Mars or Jupiter, nor even Venus like some do nowadays. It... I worship the God of Abraham. I believe with all my heart that God is one. There are not two gods. There's not even one main God and one lesser God. There is one God. Hear it from Holy Scripture, the New Testament itself. There is one God. That same God who spoke through the prophets. Notice the term, the prophets, looked at as a group. All the prophets, Samuel and Isaiah and Ezek- uh, uh, uh, and Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and so forth.
They form the group through whom, as through human vessels, God spoke. To be distinguished from them, however, not one of them in a category by himself, is the Son of God. God spoke in time past through these agents. Now he speaks in one who is Son of God, equal with God. Of him John says, does he not, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. When I speak, I often have to reflect on it afterwards.
Well, that wasn't really me, really. Came out funny, you know. The words weren't the right words, really, and I missed the point, and the emotions went all over the place. That wasn't really me. When God speaks, his words are him. Yes. The word is God. Absolutely. God speaks. It's the same God speaking, speaking in the person of Son of God, who is one with the Father, who is himself God, equal with the Father.
He's spoken, uh, unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom all he made all the world. Agent in creation. But they're not just an agent. Men could nowadays get a computer to do all sorts of things. Computer would be their tool, their agent. When God made the world through his dear Son, his Son was the outshining of the glory of God. And not just, I say outshining, because a mirror can reflect a light without being the light. Christ was not merely the expression, the shining out of the very light of God.
Christ was and is the very image of God's essential nature. This is the preacher, he's defining what the Christians claim. Let me say in passing to us who are evangelists and personal workers, this is a good place to begin, not with arguments, but with facts. State what it is that God claims. State what it is that the Savior claims. And then point out how his claim was vindicated. Upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.
Here is the true apostolic witness. God has vindicated his son by raising him from the dead and setting him at his own right hand in glory. It was that witness that the Holy Spirit came down from heaven on the day of Pentecost to give. And if we will faithfully proclaim the fact, we can rely upon the Holy Spirit who bring conviction in people's hearts that these facts are true. Sometimes we are tempted to feel that if only we had some independent witness we could call on, it would corroborate the evidence, you see.
But actually, there's no independent witness to God, is there? Think that one out. Ultimately, God does not receive testimony from men. If you're thinking of independent testimony. Suppose you get home to heaven, I hope you will one day, ma'am. And when you arrive in heaven, you look around to the vast multitudes and see the shining angels and things, and you say to yourself, I wonder which one around here is God. Let's have to go and ask somebody, will you? Who would you go to? And you go to somebody and say, now, is that God? And they say, uh, well, uh, yes, yeah, it is.
You go to another person, you say, I'd like a little independent witness. That would be stupid, wouldn't it? God, by definition, must be self-evident. There's not a creature in the universe that's independent of God in that ultimate sense. Satan himself is a creature. Granted, he's gone perverse, but you'll get nowhere in the universe, anywhere, to get somebody who is an independent witness of God. Ultimately, we do well to let God speak the very text of his revelation in time, and let the Holy Spirit convict people's hearts of its truth.
That said, however, because the man is writing to Jews, he knows, uh, their difficulty. They have the Old Testament that proclaimed that the Lord our God is one Lord. How can the Messiah be God in time? How can they believe that consistent with their Old Testament? Now the argument goes, well, look at the Old Testament again, and when it talks of the coming Messiah, please notice that not in one place, but in several, the Old Testament indicates when the Messiah comes, he will prove to be divine.
He will prove to be Son of God. And I can imagine, can't you, when Papa and Mama have called in the rabbi, uh, uh, to work on this new convert and show him how stupid he or she has been. So the rabbi will pull his rabbinic beard and say, my dear, how can you be so stupid? You say Jesus is the Son of God. Well, in the Old Testament, if only you knew it, you ignoramus. Uh, the angels are called sons of God, aren't they? Doesn't mean that they are divine. If Job, for instance, came to pass, the sons of God came to present themselves before God.
They were the angels. You see, your ignorant teachers have foisted a nonsense on you. They said that the, uh, the Messiah is called Son of God in the Old Testament. They don't realize that the angels are called sons of God. That doesn't mean that either of them are, are equal with God. How will you answer that one? Well, he's wise enough not to answer them by trying to split hairs over the meanings of Hebrew words. He got a much more direct answer. He said, yeah, that's true, of course, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Angels as a group are from time to time in Holy Scripture described and addressed as sons of God.
But, verse five: to which of the angels, to which particular angel did he ever say, thou art my son? We'll search from Genesis one to the end of Malachi, you'll not find one angel whom it was individually said, thou art my son. And the argument is the same when he comes to the last quotation, is it not? In verse, uh, thirteen, But of which of the angels has he said at any time, sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet?
Can you imagine it? When the angels fly to do God's bidding, and they return, even the greatest and the mightiest of them. They don't come in and say, now, Lord, uh, a bit tired having done that job, so push over a little bit and let's sit down on your throne. No, they don't indeed. Which angel did ever God say, come and sit down anyway? They don't sit. Not angels, not in the presence of God and cross their legs or something. Angels stand in the presence of God, waiting their next order. You suppose Almighty God would say to an angel, come and sit here for a moment, and I'll put a footstool under your feet to make you a bit more comfortable.
Not God. He doesn't serve them, they serve him. There is one whom God addresses the word recorded in Psalm one hundred and ten verse one. As David puts it, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. This is no mere angel. Why did David call him Lord? Because Messiah is infinitely greater than David. He's God's own son, equal with God.
God has hidden him sit on the very throne of God. One day he, uh, God will put his enemies as the footstool of his feet. And in these quotations, case would have been made with almost, if almost he had said nothing more than just one of them. Look at verse eight, quotation from Psalm forty five. But of the Son, he says, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. Here is God addressing Messiah and calling him God.
