He Upholds The Universe

What this episode covers

What is the area of your life that you feel you MUST control? How devastated are you when things don’t go according to your plan? Parents feel this pressure to protect every aspect of the life of their children to the point that their lives literally revolve around them. Fathers feel the the need to provide for their families to the point that their lives revolve around work. Single men and women get so preoccupied with finding a spouse that they lose sight of so many opportunities unique to their station in life. My own sense of pressure from placing the success or failure of this church upon my own shoulders. The culture was challenging the light of the gospel, so the author of Hebrews is enhancing their view of the Son. He has explained the glory and nature of God, but now he points to his role as the Sustainer of the world. Since we cannot see the Son, we mistakenly assume that he is uninvolved in the minutiae of our daily lives. We think it’s primarily our responsibility to make things happen. And by sheer force of will, we attempt to secure the future we have planned for ourselves. The Son’s physical absence does not diminish his interest in us nor our dependence upon him. Read Heb 1:1-4. The Son Sustains God’s World There are two primary uses for this word “upholding.” The more common function is to take it in the sense of sustaining. It refers to carrying or bearing up something. But the word can also have the sense of carrying things forward or moving them along. This would refer to the idea of God ruling over all matters. The Westminster Divine’s referenced this verse to define “God’s works of providence” as a “powerful preserving” of all his creatures (WSC 11). With this latter sense in mind, John Owen points to the throne of God in Ezek 1:15-21 as a helpful illustration. The wheels bear up the throne of God, they turn in all directions, and their rims were covered in eyes all around. It is a picture of God accomplishing all his holy will. He orders all things according to his sovereign will. F.F. Bruce puts it well: The Epistle to the Hebrews A. God’s Final Revelation in His Son (1:1–4) He upholds the universe not like Atlas supporting a dead weight on his shoulders, but as one who carries all things forward on their appointed course. But, to whom is the author of Hebrews applying this language? Who sustains and governs God’s perfect plan? It is none other than the Son. Any Jew who attended synagogue for a time would have known that God preserves the universe (Neh 9:6). God alone knows all things. Isaiah describes this omniscient Creator in Isaiah 40:12-26. God knows the precise measurements of everything he created. He did not consult anyone when he established the boundaries of the water and the height of the mountains. God is the Holy One who cannot be compared to anyone. In the author’s first description of the Son, he called him the “heir of all things.” The ESV obscures how the author comes back around to that same phrase. The Son is literally said to sustain “all things.” Like all of his other descriptors, this one also identifies the divine nature of the Son. Jesus was continually pointing out things in the world that would illustrate his message. Throughout the gospel narratives you find Jesus describing the physical world his disciples were inhabiting. For just one example, he comforted his anxious listeners by telling them to consider the way in which God clothed the lilies of the field (Mt 6:28-29). From a human perspective, Jesus understood a great deal about the world in which he inhabited because he knew its origin. And the same power by which the world was created, the Son continues to wield as he sustains the world, namely by his word. The world remains and history continues because the Son speaks. No amount of opposition or persecution can thwart the Son’s mission. Paul says, “In him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Peter says that “the same word”

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