THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
In our program last week we saw
that God has spoken very beautifully and powerfully in His Son, that is, in the
giving of His Son to be born for us sinners in the manger of
And, last week, we were called by the apostle
in Hebrews
1:1-3 to hear the Word that God has spoken, the marvelous Word that He has
spoken in His Son in the incarnation, when the eternal Son was made flesh, the
wonderful Word that God has spoken to us in the birth of Jesus Christ. For in that birth, God has spoken powerfully
of His eternal love, as the apostle Paul says in Galatians
2:20, “The Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Today we want to
continue looking into this fascinating first chapter of the book of Hebrews, where
we see the excellency of Jesus Christ, or the
supremacy of God’s Son, the majesty and the glory of Jesus Christ, whom angels,
the purest created beings that we know, worship. There is enough for us in the manger of
The thinking of the
Hebrews, that is, the converted Jewish Christians, had evidently gone haywire
concerning angels. Something was askew
in their minds. Perhaps they were thinking
that Jesus was an angel. That something
was wrong in their thinking is seen by how much space the apostle Paul gives to
setting things straight in chapter 1:4-2:9.
There he is getting the thinking straight on who Jesus Christ is and
also the relation He has to angels. He
is talking there about how angels worship God the Son.
Who are
angels? The angels here in this passage,
we are told, have two purposes. They
were made, first of all, to glorify Jesus Christ. Secondly, they were made to serve you and
me. They lift up our eyes to the majesty
of Jesus Christ. They magnify Him for
who He is. They point us in the right
direction. They show the amazing grace
and glory that God is revealing in His Son Jesus Christ. But angels, secondly, have a ministry, a ministry
to us Christians who live in the twenty-first century and who are heirs of
salvation by God’s grace. They are given
to reveal to us the sufficiency of Jesus and to minister unto us.
Now, in verse 6 of Hebrews
1 we read the following: “And again,
when he (that is, God) bringeth in the first begotten
into the world, he saith, And
let all the angels of God worship him.”
And they did. Luke
2:13, 14 tells us that there was suddenly, with the angel who had appeared
to the shepherds, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest.” The
apostle Paul in Hebrews
1:6 is quoting from Psalm
97:7, where we read, “worship him, all ye gods,” that is, all ye
angels. And, throughout the whole
chapter of Hebrews
1 the apostle Paul is quoting from the Psalms, the book that the Hebrew
Christians would know the best. And he
is quoting from the book of Psalms to show how excellent is Jesus Christ. “All ye angels,” record the Psalms, “all ye
angels, ye innumerable company of angels, ye myriad of
angels, worship Him, God the Son.”
And they did. On the night in which Jesus Christ was born
in
We need to follow
carefully what the apostle Paul is saying if we are to grasp that the angels
worshiped Jesus in
Then we have verse
4: “Being made (that is, Christ) so much
better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent
name than they.” So Jesus Christ is so much
better than the angels. How is He
better? The answer is: so much better as He hath obtained an
inheritance, having been given a name more excellent than they.
Now, what does that
mean? In the Old Testament, when a king
was enthroned, an acclamation was given by a prophet that now he was actually
taking up his throne and his inheritance (which had been his by birth). When Jesus Christ had triumphed over sin and
Satan and ascended, God made an acclamation:
“You are My Son, above the kings of earth enthroned.” And so the apostle says in Hebrews
1:5, “For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son,
this day have I begotten thee? And
again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?”
To which of the
angels did God say, “Thou art My Son”?
Jesus is so much better than the angels in that He is declared to be
God’s Son, heir of all the
There is a great
gulf between Jesus and the angels. The
angels worship Him as the victorious Son of God, as the Son of God who is
exalted and who is the conqueror.
Already in the manger, when He is within the arms of the virgin Mary, already then the angels saw Him as the One
riding forth as the champion of God, powered by God’s love, motivated by God’s
grace to engage in the battle against our sin and to obtain the eternal
victory. And therefore, when God brought
Jesus into the world, He said, “Let all the angels of God worship Him as My
victorious Son.”
This is very
important. There is a huge issue in the
world today. Do you worship Him, Jesus,
as the victorious Son of God, clothed in majesty and honor? This is the test whether or not we are the
Christian church. This is what separates
Christianity from Judaism and from Islam and from the cults. These all say that Jesus is not God the Son,
Jesus is not to be worshiped. They
belittle Jesus. Are you a
Christian? Are we the Christian church? Then we bow in worship with the angels before
Jesus Christ as the only One worthy of worship, the
only Savior, the only One exalted, the only One who is the conqueror of
sin. There is no other conqueror of sin
and therefore there is no other worthy of honor, worship, and glory than Jesus
Christ.
Is your faith
real? Do you worship Him? Do you stand in awe before Him? Are you filled with trembling at His
majesty? Do you feel within your heart
the impulse of His grace that you must obey, serve, and honor Him in all that
you do? He is God’s victorious Son.
The angels worship
Him. They worship Him as the enthroned
God. That is what the apostle Paul
brings out in the verses that are following here in Hebrews
1. That is very important because
there would be lurking in us the question:
I thought we were to worship God only.
Jesus said to Satan when he tempted Him:
“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him
only shalt thou serve.” The apostle Paul knows that. So he goes on to say to us that Jesus is God.
We read in Hebrews
1:7, “And of the angels he (God) saith, Who maketh his angels spirits
(winds), and his ministers (angels) a flame of fire.” He has made His angels to go about in power
and flaming fire of holiness and purity.
But, verse 8, in contrast: “unto
the Son he (God) saith, Thy throne, O God (God calls
His Son O God), is for ever and ever.”
There the apostle is quoting from Psalm
45:6, 7. That is staggering. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever…therefore
God, even thy God, hath blessed thee,” says the apostle. In other words, Paul is quoting from the
Psalms to show very clearly that Jesus, who came in the manger, is God. He is God of gods. God says to Him, “Thou art God.”
Yes, the angels
then see Him as the victorious Son of God upon the throne. But they see Him as God. Do you worship Jesus as God? The beautiful mystery of the Trinity is that
Jesus, God’s Son, is God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Jesus is God in the flesh. And the angels worship Him as God in the
flesh. Do you know Jesus Christ? Do you know that He is God? Do you obey Him as God? Or is Jesus Christ merely an idea, a notion,
a name? Do you swear by His name? Do you use the words “Jesus Christ”? Do you take God’s name in vain?
The angels worship
Him as the enthroned God. They worship
His, says the apostle as he goes on to quote more of the Old Testament
Scriptures in verses 10-12 of Hebrews
1, they worship Him as the creator of the universe. All that can be said of God as the creator of
the universe can be said of Jesus. They
worship Him as the preserver of all things right now (v. 3). Jesus Christ upholds all things by the word
of His power.
The book of Hebrews
has a most exalted view of Jesus. He is
God’s Son. He is the victor over
sin. He is the enthroned God. Our minds whirl. Our minds swim in all of the majesty. He is God of gods, true God, second person of
the Trinity. He is enthroned, He is the
creator, He is now made flesh for us. He is born of a virgin to do for us what we
could not do. He is the Lord of the
cross. He is not an angel. He is not merely a man. He is not God-like. He is not the best man ever. He is my God and my Savior and my
Redeemer.
Do you have an
appropriate sense of reverence and awe for Jesus Christ? Or do you belittle Him by neglecting Him?
The psalmist says
in Psalm
2: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way.” Jesus Christ is the treasure, Savior
God. He is the only joy. He is the only true master. You are to think upon Him and you are to keep
close to Him in fellowship throughout every day. He is the One worthy
of adoration, trust, praise, and glory.
When you hear a
comedian, perhaps a comedian who wants to make people laugh, tell a joke, and
he says to the audience that as a little boy, when he grew up, he thought his
name was Jesus Christ because his father would say, “Jesus Christ, where have
you been?”—when you hear that, do you think that is funny? Do you get drawn in by that? Do you listen? That kind of “funny” destroys the
universe. The trivialization of Jesus
Christ is the horrible sin that will bring the destruction of this world. The world is going to come to ruin by
trifling with God’s Son, with His infinite holiness, and infinite honor,
majesty, and glory as the one and only Savior to be worshiped, trusted,
honored, and obeyed.
How great is Jesus
Christ to you? He is creator, He is
God. He is victor. He upholds all things at this very moment. He is the One who has purified us from all of
our sins through a perfect offering upon the cross. He is almighty God. Bow down and worship.
Do you have a
passion for the supremacy of God in Jesus Christ His Son? Or when you read the Bible, do you flip over
the pages and go away soon after you have read the Bible and love what the
world loves? Are you saturated with His
glory and power?
And do we want so
to live that when others see us called by His name,
they too might honor and magnify Him as God and Savior?
The point of the
passage of Hebrews
1, as I have said now a couple of times, is that
Jesus Christ is no angel. He is not
merely a great man. He is God. The victorious Son of God. The enthroned God. And angels do His bidding.
The apostle says,
“Are they not ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who are the
heirs of salvation?” Angels worship
Jesus Christ by doing Jesus’ will. And
Jesus sends them forth, says the apostle, for you, child of God. You are the target. There is one Lord Jesus Christ. There is one victor. He is God.
He is to be worshiped. There are
myriads of angels, and He sends them forth as His servants to minister unto you
and me who are the heirs of gracious salvation.
Angels surround us,
according to the Scriptures. They are
sent to minister to us. The apostle Paul
refers to this only briefly in I
Corinthians 11:10, when he speaks of how worship services should be
conducted with reverence. He says this
must be the case because of angels.
Every Sunday, when the church worships, angels are present. They are present throughout our lives. Jesus said that the angels of God behold the
little ones who trust in Him. The
psalmist said in Psalm
91 that He hath given His angels charge concerning us. Elisha the prophet
said to his servant, “There are more with us than there be
with them.” Children, angels watch you
sing in church. They observe the church
services. Maybe they contend with
demons. Angels are hushed when the Word
is read. They rejoice over the tears of
repentance caused by God’s gracious work.
They are ashamed whenever there is indifference to the majesty of Jesus
Christ.
And angels, then,
as I said earlier, point us in the right direction. They were there when God the Son came into
the world in
Angels that night
worshiped Him. And they continue to do
so. Angels lead the way. All hail the power of Jesus’ name; O magnify Him; glory to the Son of David; Hosanna to the Son
of David. All angels bow down before His
majesty. Son of God,
conqueror.
And, child of God,
redeemed by His precious blood, saved by His irresistible grace, child of God,
why should the angels outdo you? Oh, let
us praise Him!
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy precious Word and we pray that Thou wilt now bind it to our hearts
and souls. In Jesus’
name, Amen.
Last Modified: 12-04-2007