Green Baggins

Here is my evening sermon for today. I didn’t have time to read for my Matthew series. So I wrote a sermon on a passage for which I had already done my reading (I had a funeral and two days of jury duty this week, so time was thin).

Hebrews 1:1-4

When the preacher’s car broke down on a country road, he walked to a nearby roadhouse to use the phone. After calling for a tow truck, he spotted his old friend, Frank, drunk and shabbily dressed at the bar. “What happened to you, Frank?” asked the good reverend. “You used to be rich.” Frank told a sad tale of bad investments that had led to his downfall. “Go home,” the preacher said. “Open your Bible at random, stick your finger on the page and there will be God’s answer.” Some time later, the preacher bumped into Frank, who was wearing a Gucci suit, sporting a Rolex watch and had just stepped our of a Mercedes. “Frank.” said the preacher, “I am glad to see things really turned around for you.” “Yes, preacher, and I owe it all to you,” said Frank. “I opened my Bible, put my finger down on the page and there was the answer — Chapter 11.”

The question for us is this: how has God spoken to us? Does He speak to us in some haphazard manner as the preacher told Frank to do? Does God speak to us in dreams or visions? Does God speak to us by prophets? Or does God speak to us in Jesus Christ? That is what our passage is about today.

The passage here means to set up a series of contrasts. The first contrast is one of timing. The text says “In the past,” and then in the beginning of verse 2 it says “in these last days.” The answer to how God has spoken to us depends greatly on what time it is. If you were living in OT times, then you would have had a great many different ways of receiving God’s revelation. There were dreams, and visions, prophets who acted out God’s message in drama, and other ways. But in the NT times, the “last days,” there is only way of revelation, and that is Jesus Christ.

Notice that the phrase “these last days” refers to the here and now. It is not the case that the last days refers mostly to the few days immediately before Christ comes back. Normally, we talk about those last days using the word “eschatology.” That comes from the Greek word “eschatos,” which means “last.” But that very word “eschatos” is used here to describe the days in which we now live. Here and now is what is called “these last days.” So the study of the last things, normally called “eschatology” should also include the study of the days in which we now live. We are living in the last days. Christ could come back at any time. We are always to regard the time in which we now live as the last days. That was true for the writer of Hebrews, writing two thousand years ago! So that is the first contrast: the contrast of time.

The second contrast is the recipients of God’s revelation. In the old days, God spoke to our forefathers. But in these last days, God has spoken to us. Isn’t it marvelous that we live in the time period of the New Testament? We have so much more than the people of the OT time period had. They had Moses and the prophets. That was sufficient for salvation in those days. But now we have so much more clarity. Not only do we have the NT, which explicitly tells us about Christ, but also the NT helps us understand our OT better. Now we can reread the OT and see that Christ was there all along. Isn’t it great to be part of the NT family of God? How often have you thanked God that you live on this side of the cross of Christ? How often have you thanked God for this now completed book? Thanking God for the Bible, of course, is not enough. One must read it, too. By reading, I mean more than just reading, I mean studying it. Ask questions of this Book. It will answer, I assure you. God may use a tool, such as a dictionary or a commentary in order to answer your question. But if you keep on asking God what He is saying, He will answer. It is not presumption to ask questions of Scripture. After all, many people ask God questions in the Bible. God does not shoo them away as if they were impious. No, He answers them. He may not answer them in the way that they expect. But it is not a sin to ask questions, even hard questions.

We say that the Bible is clear. That means that what is necessary to know about salvation is clear. You don’t have to have a degree in theology in order to understand what Scripture says about salvation. That much is clear. You just need to read it for yourself to find out that fact. However, not everything in Scripture is clear. There are many things that are difficult to understand. No one has ever understood everything that there is to know about Scripture. Scripture has infinite depths of riches for us to mine. One could spend a thousand lifetimes in pursuit of knowledge of Scripture, and never come to the end of it. But that should encourage us to study it more, not less. There are many people out there who think that since they have read it once, they don’t have to read it again. Those are very foolish people. The Bible is never done with us as Christians. It is God who speaks to us. We will never know all there is to know, but we are encouraged to try. We should be students, and we should revel in it! That is the greatest benefit of living in the NT era: we have the entire Word of God, all in one place, and in our own language. There are still many people out there who do not have this book in their language. That number of people is becoming less and less. The Bible exists in many more than a thousand languages today. That is well past the half-way point. However, there are still many people who cannot read it. We who are thankful for having the Bible in our language should make sure that we are helping people to get it in their language. To restate the second contrast here then, the forefathers, as opposed to us.

The third contrast is the means of revelation. In the old days, God revealed Himself through various means. There were dreams, prophecies, visions, acts, dramas, interpretation of dreams, and others. But in these last days, there is only one way of knowing about God: that is through Jesus Christ. In the old days, there were prophets. Now there is one Prophet. Deuteronomy 18 says this: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers- it is to him you shall listen- ¹⁶ just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹ And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. ²⁰ But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’- ²² when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” Whatever comes true. Everything in the Bible has either come true, or will come true. You can know then that this is the Word of God. The OT tells us about Jesus Christ, and then came Jesus Christ! Psalm 22 even tells us how Jesus was to die, and that is exactly how He died. In Matthew, there have been already many times that we have seen how Matthew points to the OT Scriptures to say, “This was to fulfill what was spoken through the Scriptures.” The Word comes true, and therefore we should believe it. It comes true especially since Jesus, the great Prophet, told us about it. He is the Prophet to Whom we should listen. That is the third contrast: the contrast between the means used in the old days, and Jesus, the One to Whom they all pointed.

So, in sum, we have seen that there are three contrasts: between the old days and these last days; between the forefathers and us; and between the various means used in the old days and Jesus Christ.

What ultimate difference does this make? Well, some of the practical implications have been spelled out already in terms of Bible study and Bible translation. But the most important thing is still to be said: we must believe in what Jesus tells us. That is simple, but it is far-reaching. If God were to take human shape and appear on your doorstep, what would be your reaction? Would you leave Him on your doorstep, or would you invite Him into your house? Let’s put it another way. Suppose the President of the United States wanted to come to your house. What would be your reaction? Would you leave the house in a mess? Would you cook TV dinners? No, you wouldn’t. Instead, you would carefully clean your house, and everything else you possess. You would put on your very best behavior, and you would cook a feast of your very best dishes. But how do we treat God’s Word? We leave it out of our lives! It has very little influence on how we make our decisions every day. It has very little influence on our big decisions either. Instead, we see it as a sort of insurance policy to guard us in case of death or bereavement. Of course, it is a wonderful help in such times. But the meat of what the Word is telling us has to do with our everyday lives. It has to do with how we treat God and how we treat our neighbor. It has to do with our inward life and our outward life. It has to do with our checkbook and with our spiritual life. It has everything to say about marriage and child-rearing. It tells us about wisdom with words and wisdom in our thoughts. There is no area of life about which this Book is silent. Are you listening?