Monday 22nd
Hebrews 1:1-4
NIV (v2) – ‘but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.’
ESV (v2) – ‘but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.’
It is going to be difficult to go through this book too quickly, for if I were to limit a day or two to each chapter, we would miss out on so much. In this first chapter alone, we discover so much about the Lord Jesus Christ. The writer commences in verse 1 to remind the readers that in the past God had spoken to mankind, many times and in many ways. My memory always goes back to the King James Version, ‘God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.’ God has always been a speaking God, we know he spoke and creation took place, and since then he has continued to speak to mankind, he speaks through what he has created, he speaks through his action and dealings with mankind, he speaks through his written word, our Scripture, and as we have seen in this first verse he has spoken in many varied ways through the prophets, in particular to the children of Israel, for in verse one it says ‘spoke to our fathers’, therefore we can draw a conclusion that initially this epistle was written to a Jewish community, and thus perhaps the reason why there is so much mention through the epistle of the sacrificial system.
How did God speak through the prophets ‘at sundry times and in divers manners’? Well our answer comes in the record we have in the Old Testament of the different men who God raised up to be his spokespeople, who he would use as channels to speak to the children of Israel, we can easily recall the names of so many of them as we have the books named after them, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel etc, and Moses who doesn’t have a specific book named after himself but is considered the author of the first five, and we have the divers ways in which God spoke through them, for example, Daniel was used as a prophet to speak God’s word by revealing what the dreams of an individual meant, Daniel 2, Ezekiel was used as a prophet by having what we consider to be strange visions or pictures that revealed the word of God to the people, for example the whirling wheels in Ezekiel 1 or the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37, and Hosea had to marry a whore to bring the word of God to his people! Hosea 1. But when we get to the epistle before us today, the writer says, that is how God spoke in times past, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, it doesn’t mean that God has stopped speaking in other ways, neither does it mean that we can forget or ignore what he has spoken in the Old Testament, but what it does mean is that in speaking through his Son he has brought about a new era or a new dispensation, and the good news is that the way he spoke in the past dealt with only the nation of Israel, but this the latest and the last way in which he will speak is to the whole world. He still speaks through creation, he still speaks through his word, he can still speak through the prophetic, but more importantly he has spoken through his Son and is still speaking through his Son.
There is an important verse in Mathews gospel, which we find during the time when Jesus went up to the mountain and was transfigured in the presence of Peter, James and John, and Moses and Elijah appeared before them, It is the words that God spoke at that moment which are so important, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ (Matthew 17:5) Note the words ‘listen to him.’
There are many voices that clamour for our attention, but the most important voice we should be listening out for is the voice of Jesus. Now, for us it means that we need to pay attention to what Jesus has said, what he taught, for everything that he preached whether in parables, sermons, instructions etc is God speaking through his Son in these last days to the world, but perhaps of even more importance, if I can put it this way, is that God has spoken through his Son at the Cross. Now of course these opening verses open up another important subject which I have already jumped the gun and answered in my thoughts so far, and it is this, ‘who is the Son that God has chosen to speak through?’ And it as we go through this epistle, we discover it is Jesus. It is not until we get to chapter 2:9 that we read the name Jesus, but in running towards that verse the writer tells us so much about ‘the Son’ who he is etc. which we will discover as we continue