I'll show you a picture here and see if you recognize any of the people here anybody recognize any person in that photo Yep, so I think I heard Billy Graham. So this is Billy Graham on the far right and This is in 1940. So this is a super young Billy Graham right here and good chance that you don't recognize anybody else in this photograph I don't know who the guy in the middle is But I know the person on the left and his name is Charles Templeton now that might not mean much to you But when this photograph was taken in the early 1940s, Charles Templeton and Billy Graham were two of the up-and-coming evangelists in the world and in fact at this time Charles Templeton was considered the more dynamic and more talented evangelist Charles Templeton was already at this point filling stadiums around the world with 70 to 80,000 people who came to hear him speak now. He and Billy Graham were friends They were partners in ministry.
They traveled and rheummed together and yet Charles Templeton was considered the one who would become the greater of the two then Something in Charles Templeton began to crack Doubts crept into him that he couldn't resolve and there grew questions that he was unable to answer and In 1957 he publicly walked away from his Christian faith in 1996 He wrote a book that he entitled farewell to God now in 1971 somewhere between these two moments Fascinatingly Charles Templeton wrote a book and it was a book where he took all of the gospel the four gospels and Put them together chronologically with the life of Jesus the title of the book was simply Jesus Even though he walked away from his Christian faith. He still had this amazing admiration for Jesus In fact, he couldn't stay away from him Now years later a journalist by name of Lee Strobel Got in touch with Charles Templeton at this point Charles Templeton was in his 80s And he sat he asked if he could interview him Charles Templeton agreed They sat down and talked for a very long time about Doubt about faith about the Bible and then Lee Strobel Says that he turned the subject to Jesus and when he did something tangible happened in Charles Templeton His face softened his body language pulled back and he said and I quote everything good I know everything decent. I know everything pure I know I learned from Jesus and they choked up a little bit and tears filled his eyes And he said he was the greatest human being who ever lived I Miss him a man who spent decades Walking away from his faith who wrote a book called farewell to God at the end of his life had tears running down his face Because he could not find within himself the ability to say goodbye to Jesus So what is it about Jesus that won't let go? Even when you're trying to leave Well, the writer of Hebrews really addresses that in the book of Hebrews chapter 1 verse 1 to 4 I want to read for you and says this long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets and now in these final days He has spoken to us through his son God promised everything to the Sun as an inheritance and through the Sun he created the universe the Sun radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command When he had cleansed us from our sins He sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven This shows that the Sun is far greater than the angels just as the name God gave him is greater than their names But we begin a new series today and we are going to be working our way through this Bible book of Hebrews It's not a book that we typically spend a lot of time in and so I'm really excited about us walking through this book Now this book Hebrews is written to people who were wondering if following Jesus was worth it They're living in a day where to follow Jesus exacted a real cost from you It was the time of persecution and they're seriously wondering is it worth it?
We're tired is it worth it to follow Jesus? and so the writers answers not an argument the writers answer is to paint a portrait of Jesus and Essentially the writer of Hebrew says look at who Jesus is That's our goal for our series that we're going to be in here for a couple of months to help us to from the book of Hebrews get this picture of Jesus and fall in love with him or fall in love with him again because the Christian faith is about Jesus and When we really will look at who Jesus is and examine his life This is what happens we fall in love with him and all you have to do is ask Charles Templeton So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna kick off this series by looking at these first four verses that we just read and And I want to try to address this question What does Hebrews teach us here in these first four verses about the God who speaks? Okay, so let's get started number one. Here's the first thing that we learned in these verses God has always been speaking God has always been speaking No, I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but I don't know if there's any more profound and important statement that we can make Then this God is the God who speaks Now we take a lot of things for granted and that may be one of those that we take for granted We know why is that important?
Well God is not some impersonal force out there Somewhere wherever God is who created the universe and set it in motion and watches from a distance The Bible says that God is the God who speaks in fact This is what the Bible is the Bible is God's revelation of himself to mankind and Over and over through the cover of the Bible. We get this very important message God speaks He spoke the world into existence in the beginning God said He called Abraham by name. He wrestled with Jacob He shows up to Moses and speaks through a burning bush the entire Old Testament is really about not humanity search for God but God's pursuit of humankind Now what happens in the Old Testament? What's the story about the fact that over and over and over and over and over and over Mankind rebels against the voice of God and yet God keeps showing up God keeps pursuing God keeps speaking and The point is that God does not leave us Hopelessly trying to figure out who he is and why we're here and what life is about and how we should live the life That we've been blessed with he has revealed all of that in the pages of scripture because he's the God who speaks Now it's interesting here in these first four verses the the author Specifically says that Jesus is greater than angels and Jesus is greater than prophets.
Let's talk about that for a second So angels, why would he say Jesus is greater than angels? Well, remember when we look at this passage, it's all about the fact that God speaks So what is an angel? Well, we tend to think of angels as these cuddly creatures and we decorate our houses and you know with them And you know they have wings and they're white and translucent. This is not at all what the Bible says about angels What is an angel?
Well, simply put an angel is a messenger an angel brings a message from God and in in fact whenever you see angels appear in the scripture They are generally Fearsome creatures The first message that you almost always hear from an angel is don't be afraid It's okay Well, why is that the message of the angel because they're fearsome and people are afraid of them now? They always come they show up at important moments the announcement of the birth of Jesus They show up at these critical junctures bringing a message from God of clarity about something important Now, what are prophets? Well, prophets are Old Testament People that God called and essentially this is the message of the prophets thus saith the Lord and They come bringing the message of God something clear and definite that God is communicating to people Now, maybe the greatest of Old Testament prophets is Moses and here's what happened with Moses He's out one day ordinary day doing shepherd stuff what shepherds do and he sees Often the distance a bush that catches on fire not necessarily Super surprising in you know the desert region where he's shepherding sheep Except he keeps looking and it keeps burning and burning and burning Typically, it's gonna burn up. It's gonna eat all of that fuel and it's going to go out But not this one it keeps burning And so he walks over and he gets closer and closer to check it out And when he gets near to this burning bush it speaks to him and God is speaking through this burning bush now God has a very specific message to Moses and that is I want you to go to the Pharaoh And I want you to tell him let my people go Now Moses is first response for us is interesting.
He says well, hey If I go to talk to Pharaoh and say God says he's gonna want to know your name What is your name? Names were super important in Hebrew Understanding that represented who a person was now. Here's what's fascinating God told Moses his name freely and Without reservation and here is what the name was that he gave a Hebrew word. That means I am that I am No, it was a first of all a simple statement that God is the God who reveals himself God is the God who speaks and I am that I am is God saying every other thing exists Because of something else I Exist because I am I have no beginning.
I have no dependence on anything I simply am no origin no explanation I am that I am and so it was an extraordinary moment this Interaction between Moses and God and yet even in this extraordinary moment. What did Moses get a voice? He gets a burning bush. He gets a name.
He hears from God, but he does not see God So here's what the writer of Hebrews is saying to us the prophets were real the angels were real the burning bush Was real but they were all just a partial picture of who God is They were pointing to something else the angels were pointing to Jesus the prophets were pointing toward Jesus Moses saw heard the voice but he did not see the face of God now Here's the second thing that this writer of Hebrews wants us to see first God's always been speaking He's the God who speaks and number two God was speaking even in the silence Now I want to pause here for a second talk about this. We're not gonna spend long here, but I want to say this because Some of you may be thinking okay, so Why did God wait so long to give us Jesus? If Jesus is the perfect revelation of who God is why did God wait so long and so I want to answer that question for you I don't know It's a great question and I don't know and there is a lot about God's timing in the world that is a mystery and I don't have all the answers and no one does to why but the book of Galatians chapter 4 verse 4 gives us a bit of a hint Towards why God waited so long let's read that Galatians chapter 4 verse 4 it says but when the right time came God sent his son born of a woman subject to the law now There apparently was a right time and I don't know all of the implications to why this was the right time But I know this that I've got to trust God's timing and there was a right time now We know that there are certain things that help us understand why this was the right time For example the Roman Empire for the first time in human history the Roman Empire had built roads that connected much of Europe and Asia and Allowed for the first time ever in the history of humankind the ability for people to move amongst this vast area of Europe and Asia We know that for the first time in human history there had grown a common language Transferred by the Roman Empire the Greek language on which it allowed there to be communication among many different people groups We know that the Jewish people had been scattered throughout much of the known world And they took their scriptures with them and there were groups of people there that allowed a core group of people from which this new Message this new covenant could expand the infrastructure that allowed the good news of God to spread Existed for the first time in human history and that very much very well might be a part of why this was the right time for God to send his son, but For you and for me, it's not so much about theology as it is personal now What do I mean by that? This is one of the things that all of us grapple with when it appears feels as if God is silent Why isn't God answering my prayer?
Why is God silent in this situation? Why hasn't healing come for me or for my loved one? these have Been questions that have eaten at the heart and soul of people for as long as men and women have been on this earth And so I think a part of what we learn from this is simply to trust God's timing and that even in the silence God is Speaking because even in these thousands of years that led up to Jesus This is what we learn in the Old Testament God was speaking Sometimes it's hard for us to hear or understand or to see with a larger perspective of what God is doing, but God is not silent When it feels silent God is speaking and so we trust him So God speaks even in the silence and then this is the third thing that I want us to see What does it say about the God who speaks what says God speaks fully in Jesus now? This is the writer of Hebrews point here God spoke through the prophets God spoke through angels but God fully speaks Through Jesus now, let's look at this verse in Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2 and verse 3 So again the writer says and now in these final days He has spoken to us through his son the son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God Let's still look at this Greek word For character knows it says expresses the very character of God now I use some I try to talk about some Greek words occasionally And I want to show you the Greek word.
That's it right there. That's the Greek characters And what we do then is we take those Greek letters and we transliterate them those we take our our English characters And this is how that looks and in the Greek that's pronounced on character character Now you can see really clearly there that our English word for character Comes directly from that Greek word right there And so there are a lot of English words that we use That are pulled straight from the Greek language. This is one of those now We know what character means right in the English language character is who you are I mean the real you not the one that you try to portray to people not image not reputation the real you That's your character Hopefully integrity says that the real me is the one that people see and that's what we strive for That's why as a follow Jesus we want but character is the real you underneath Now that comes out of this Greek concept of character So the character the word character in the Greek it actually was a seal and it was a seal that you could dip into wax And then you put an imprint on something they would often do this for official letters They would seal the letter and then press this This seal on it this wax seal on it that was an exact duplicate of the official seal and That's what the character is. It's an exact representation of the original now look at how powerful that is What it means Jesus is the invisible imprint excuse me the visible imprint of the invisible God He makes the unseen fully seen now in John chapter 8 Jesus is having a conversation with some religious leaders some arrogant religious leaders and At the end here's what Jesus says to them before Abraham was I am Now for us that sounds kind of like he got his subject and verbs mixed up there before Abraham was I am But actually he knew exactly what he was saying not only that those dudes knew exactly what he was saying Because you know what they did they've been down and picked up rocks and were ready to kill Jesus Because they knew what he was saying he was referring to himself with the name that God gave himself and revealed to Moses Jesus is saying I am That I am I'm God I'm God in the flesh now Here's the point that the Hebrew writer is making the God of the burning bush in the carpenter from Nazareth or one in the same person Moses heard the voice of God we can see the face of God now Here's what Charles Templeton understood and struggled with all of his life.
You want to know who God is? Read the book of Matthew read the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5 chapter 6 and chapter 7 and See how much the things that Jesus said change the world and how much of what we recognize is good and Pure and true is based on the words that Jesus taught in those three chapters You want to know what God is like read the book of Matthew and see about Jesus's patience and his authority and the love that would not quit You want to know what God is like read the book of Mark and Look at the brilliance of Jesus the way he answered questions by people who challenged him watch how he heals people Witness how he controls nature and you'll see what God is like in motion you want to know how powerful God is read the book of Luke and Watch the humble strength of Jesus at work in real life Watch how Jesus made the outsider in the poor in the forgotten the one that he shows up for Want proof that Jesus was God will read the book of John John tells us right in the first chapter. This is why I'm writing this book. I'm gonna give you seven Ways that demonstrate that Jesus was God look at the picture the portrait that John paints of Jesus and You'll find the Jesus that haunted Charles Templeton all of his life Because you find in him everything good and pure and right Now in Exodus chapter 33 Moses the same Moses who heard God's voice in the burning bush asked God if he could see him and God said you can't see me because if you did you would die But he loved Moses and he said here's what I'll do I'm gonna hide you in the cleft of this rock and I'm gonna pass by and I'm gonna let you see my back and And Moses got a glimpse of God's back now.
That's a beautiful story because We don't have to see God's back We don't have to just hear his voice. We can see his face and the four books of the gospel Matthew mark Luke and John are the picture of God's face Everything you want to know about who God is what he cares about what he's like how he responds to stress and pressure How he deals with power how he loves how he cries for the broken-hearted So right there in those four simple books and when we read them will fall in love with the person of Jesus Because you can't help but do that if you read it and you truly embrace The picture of what's painted you'll be convinced that that was no ordinary man that was God The strobele who interviewed Charles Templeton was himself in atheist until he embarked on a study of the New Testament And when he discovered the true picture of who Jesus was He said this truly was God and he converted to become a follower of Jesus And now is one of the great spokesmen for the gospel in our world today This is our goal for the series that we can paint a portrait of Jesus that can help us to fall in love with Jesus Or maybe to fall in love with Jesus again, let's pray Father I pray that you help us as we come out of Easter to be able to examine who Jesus was and fall in love with him and Commit our life to knowing him loving him and striving every day to be more like him And so help us this week to do that and give us the strength of your spirit to help us with it before it's in Jesus name We pray amen