I think Ted has done a fine job of telling us it's nothing more than to say Jesus is better. Jesus is superior. Christ is most excellent. And that's quite the first four verses really do.
But it's just the opening salvo. It's just the beginning shot. And from those four verses, you could almost say from there, you will find all the rest of those verses strung out through and extrapolated and expounded upon through the rest of this book. I'll give you a short summary of that in just a moment.
But I'd like to read for you just what we'll focus on this evening, chapter one of Hebrews and verses three B and four. Because Ted has preached through the first part of verse three, where Christ is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And now we come to three B, beginning with word after. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
So here's the recap of Hebrews, if you will have it. And we're going to expand. We're going to open up a little bit. We're going to unpack just a little bit verses three B and four.
Now let me give you that overview. God has spoken by his son. And this son is superior to all persons, heavenly beings, institutions, rituals, and previous means of revelation or supposed means of redemption. That's the big idea in verses one through four here and throughout the book of Hebrews.
Christ is superior to the angels in chapters one and two. He's superior to Moses in chapter three. He's superior to Joshua in chapters three and four. He's superior to Aaron in chapter five.
He's superior to Abraham in chapter six, superior to Melchizedek in chapter seven, superior to the Old Covenant in chapter eight, to the Tabernacle in chapter nine, to the High Priest in chapter 10, to the Hope of the Promised in chapter 11, and to the Kingdom in chapter 12, and to the city to come in chapter 13. He's superior to all. Some of those are consequences of his great work and of his person, but he's superior to all. He himself is above all.
The son then is our great superlative, surpassing all others, because in him we have the fullness and finality of God's redemption and revelation. In fact, you can find in the first four verses Christ as prophet, priest, and king. He's the prophet in those first three verses, but then he becomes, we switch to thinking of his priestly office here, where we began our reading tonight after making purification for sins, and then his superiority over angels and him sitting at the right hand of the majesty on high speaks to his kingship, so he is superior because he is the ultimate prophet, priest, and king. Tonight, sermon then, I would like for us to break this up, open it up, with just three thoughts on Christ.
His work, his declaration, and his reputation, his work, his declaration, and his reputation. I don't know how it came across my desk, or came to my attention this week, but I read an article, I wrote it down, words were worked, this is the title of it. Now this article appears on beliefnet.com. I hadn't gone there much, I think I'd heard of it, maybe interacted with it somewhere.
It's mostly, broadly evangelical, not necessarily recommending it, though you may want to look it over yourself after I give you the title of this article. So it intends to be, or at least sets itself forward to be, this website as Christian. But let me know if you can find any problems with the title. Now I'll kind of set you up to suspect if he is right, but I don't think it would trip any of you up.
Jesus did not die on the cross for our sins, written by a Megan Bale. So, what was he, why did he follow through with that? Why did he die on the cross? This is why we read and preach through the scriptures carefully and plainly, so that we would not be misled by things like this.
How do you even make that mistake? Now ultimately, she went on simply to say, and this is not something even new. She's probably heard it somewhere in a class she cooked, I don't know. But she went on to say, but wasn't for purification of sins, Christ did not die to cleanse us or give us his righteousness.
He died to give us an example of love and sacrifice. It's not even remarkable. We can find bunches of examples like that throughout history. No, we preach Christ crucified for our sins and in our place to wash us clean.
Now why do we preach like that? Where do we come up with that? From words like this, after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Now it's written almost so matter of factly that we don't even take it in our grip by it or stunned by the sound of it.
So after making purification for sins, he sat down. We should be amazed by just the language of it. There was a man who was paralyzed and his friends were told in the account of it, at least in Matthew, maybe in the other synoptic gospels, but he's let down through the roof of a house because his friends want to see the Lord Jesus healing. And Christ says to him, son, your sins are forgiven you.
And it shocks some of those who hear. What do they say? Well, who can forgive sins? But God, oh, and this is some of what should happen to us mentally, I would say, as we read this.
But he's made purification for sins. This is no small task. And yet it's sat down as though this is just what he did. Well, we should ask that same question.
Then this must be God, who else must he be if he can make purification for sins. So I dug into the wording a little bit. Now I've forgotten most of the Greek that I studied and the little bit that I learned in college. I was a kind of a bee student in Greek anyway, so that's I passed.
But I still remember enough of it that I could get into the weeds just a little. And so I did with this word purification. Now we get that same word in our English language catharsis, or that experience was cathartic, cleansing, purifying. It's the same word that we use.
That's the Greek word from which we derive our word. And purification is a good translation, no question on the translation of the word. But the way it's framed here, and as we compare that to other passages, particularly to the other writings, and especially in chapters 9 and 10 here in Hebrews, this purification is not, he makes purification for his sins and everybody else's. Now from other passages we know that Christ was sinless, but we want all scripture to match and to fit.
We know it does. We just want to make sure we understand that it does. And it does here as well. It's a reference to the person doing the action, making purification as doing it for someone else, the sins of another group or of another person.
It's an outward facing action. This is not making purification for his own sins and everyone else's. It's purification for those who are the recipients of it and not for the one taking the action or doing the purifying. It's a bit like, and it's a reference really to the day of atonement.
Yes, the high priest did have to make purification for his own sins because of course he was sinful. But on a day of atonement, he was making atonement for purification for the sins of the people. That's what the day of atonement was for. And this is Christ doing the last and final, real and true day of atonement, the final high priest to make the final sacrifice by his own blood and he offers his own.
So we won't spend any more time on this particularly other than to say the writer opens up this concept of purification through the blood of Christ and his cross, opens this up a little bit more in chapters 9 and 10. So I'll let Ted get to that rather than try to unpack all of that here for you now. But let me read to you two selections out of chapter 9 and 1 out of 10. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctified for the purification of the flesh, in other words, making someone ceremonially clean, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
So this is a purification of conscience. It's a complete and full cleansing later in chapter 9. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
In chapter 10, therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. The Lord Jesus, making purification for sins, cleanses us all the way from top to bottom and inside out and we're clean. You can't do any more scrubbing.
We're washed clean. And I don't know if I can think of any better news than that. He did such a good job of this. And it doesn't have to be done again.
That's his work. Then he makes a declaration, but not by saying something, by doing something once more or maybe doing nothing at all. He sat down. That's a pretty clear declaration.
Now let me say this to you just a little bit differently. I spent six years in college. And there were times when we all sat and filled out our paperwork and filled out the exam. Final exam didn't matter.
You can fill it out. You can still get your desk. And then you're supposed to go turn it in. The teacher's just sitting there because you've got to get it done in the class hour.
The teacher's sitting at the front of the room and you just stand up and you turn it in. And you know the smartest guy in the class was the only class I've already stood up and they turned it in. But you stand up, walk up, turn it in, and you sit down. Now half of the time, I wasn't very sure about my sitting down.
I didn't know if I was going to have to get back up later to receive a great item I didn't want. But that's only one component of finishing a work. There are two pieces of it here in this passage. Yes, he sat down.
He knew his work was complete. But where did he sit? At the right hand of the Majesty on High. So that's the other part of the declaration.
His work is received. He doesn't stand up again. He has full acceptance from God the Father, Almighty, the Majesty on High, who says sit here. There are two pieces of this work and both are done.
He knows he's done and the Father declares he's done. So it's an absolute and complete work on all parts. There wasn't something that God the Father required of the Son to wash away sins, which the Father, which the Son thought he had done and then sat down and the Father says no, there's something yet more. When he sat down, he had fulfilled entirely and completely all the will of the Father to accomplish our purification.
It was done. That was his declaration. He declared it over. And then we think of his reputation.
So we looked at his work of purification and his declaration regarding that work that's complete. And clearly, his reputation, he lived up to his name is a way to reflect on this or to see this. He had become or having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. What we're saying here, or what the scripture is saying, is that what he had done, the name that or he had become as much superior to the angels as the name that he had inherited.
So what he had done had fit his name or his reputation. He lived up to his reputation as the Savior, as the rescuer. If somebody said to me, Dan, you're the greatest real estate broker ever. That would be a nice compliment.
I don't even think I'd believe it. I'd like to think I'm good. I'd like to think I'm excellent. But I wouldn't live up to that name.
I just really couldn't. But he has a name he had inherited and is greater than the angels and having made purification for sins he sat down and what he has done matches his name. Savior, rescuer, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, take all the names and he lives up to them all. His work, his person matched his name, matched his reputation.
But if you'll allow me, I want to take a little diversion here because I can understand that we would talk about Christ being greater than Moses, greater than Melchizedek, greater than Aaron. I understand that we name people. But why is the writer of Hebrews talking about Christ greater than angels? What's the, why?
What are we to make of that? Or why make something out of Christ greater than angels? So I looked up the word angel. It just, I just had the yes, the version on my computer.
There are 281 references to angels. And I don't think that's all of them. Some of it's the angel of the Lord, some of it's ministering angels and so on and so forth. And I think the scripture is more full of that than I stopped to reflect on until this got to my curiosity.
So let me read you some things that I have discovered. And I think that helps us understand the greatness of Christ. In scripture, and I don't think this is a comprehensive list, angels appeared to Hagar. Lot.
That surprised me. But then I remember, yeah, sure enough, a lot. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Balaam, remember the guy riding the donkey? Got his foot crushed against the rock and that made it even matter.
The whole story is fascinating. You got to go read it again. Gideon, King David. Elijah.
Daniel. He even said there was an angel in that land with me. That's his testimony. We know that Gabriel appeared to Daniel.
We learned that later. There was an angelic appearance to the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace. Shadrach, Meshach, and then they go. I mean, even Nebuchadnezzar saw that.
Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and others. I haven't named a law. That's 14. That doesn't mean, I mean, we're talking about a few thousand years.
That's not like a where angel appearances every other day. Just because you haven't seen one or I have, it doesn't mean very much. Probably, all the angels actually have names. We have a reason to suspect that.
Since we do know two by name, there's one angel named Gabriel and one named Michael. That's the only two that we have names for. Gabriel is mentioned once with Daniel and then he also makes the announcement of Jesus to be born to Mary, makes that announcement to Mary. He makes the announcement to Zechariah regarding John the baptizer.
Michael is called an archangel suggesting to us that angels actually operate in hierarchies. We're told there are so many of them, you can't number them. Thousands and thousands. Some of them worship God continually.
That's the seraphim. I don't know what category of angel that is. We're not told. We're not supposed to get overly fascinated with angels, but if we're going to talk about Christ being greater than angels, who are the angels?
What do they do? So there's a hierarchy since there's an archangel and that's Michael and he evidently oversees armies. He goes to battle with Satan in Revelation 12. So we read about Michael in Jude verse 9, Revelation 12 and Daniel 10 and Daniel 21.
That's Michael taking from Wayne Grudem, a good commentator. He writes, angels are called mighty ones who do his word in Psalm 103. They're called powers in Ephesians 1. They're called dominions and authorities in Colossians 1.
They are certainly greater in might and power than humans. Second Peter teaches that and also Matthew 28. Angels use their power to battle against Satan's demonic forces in Daniel 10 in Revelation 12 and 20. During our earthly lives, we're a little lower than the angels.
Hebrews chapter 2 verse 7 says that. But as powerful as angels are, when Jesus returns, followers of Christ will be raised higher than them, 1 Corinthians chapter 6. So angels are in fact real mighty beings who serve God continually, have done it for centuries, have ministered to the saints, led sometimes spiritual wars. So it's not insignificant that Christ is superior to the angels.
They would stun us as they have others in the past where we'd see one. We'd probably have to get out of our minds the idea that we need to wear. I don't know. I mean, they're talking about the angels who cover their bases with their wings.
That doesn't mean they all have that. Whatever the case may be, whatever we are to know about angels and there's much more here to know, Christ is greater. In excellence, in radiance, in glory, in work, in person, Christ exceeds the angels in every way in his work, proclamations, in his glory, in brightness, in his position, in his person, in all that he is and does, Christ is greater than the angels. Christ, our Lord Jesus, deserves your worship and mine.
And this is the theme we'll find through the rest of Hebrews. And in fact, all of eternity. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we magnify you and we worship your Son for His excellence.
We worship Him for His superiority in His work, in His declarations, in all that He is and what He does. May He be praised. We ask that you send us home tonight with our hearts full and of Christ, particularly most grateful. We pray in His name.
Amen.