God Speaks

God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom he has appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

Before we can grasp why Jesus is better, we must understand the God who created all things and chose to speak.

Beginning a New Series in Hebrews

We're beginning a new series here at Cross Connection called Jesus is Better as we step into the New Testament book of Hebrews. Before we do, we have to backtrack a little and consider some things from the Old Testament.

For years we've been working chronologically through the New Testament. After Pastor Pat Kinney and I team-taught through Luke, I continued into Acts when he handed off the church in 2008. Acts took us from late 2008 until about mid-2014 because it is the history book of the early church, and along its timeline several New Testament letters were written. So during Acts we also studied James, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans. After Acts we continued through Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude. Now the next book in our chronology is Hebrews.

Hebrews is one of the longer books of the New Testament and a theologically deep one. Before we jump into the text, it will be helpful this week and next to give some background, because Hebrews has a great deal to do with the Old Testament.

What Is the Old Testament?

The Bible is a book of books—66 books written by 40 authors over 1,500 years on three continents in three languages, divided into two sections. The Old Testament is the first 39 books, two-thirds of the Bible; the New Testament is the last 27 books. Because we, like many churches, spend the bulk of our time in the New Testament, it's easy to forget that it is only a third of the whole.

To understand Hebrews you must have at least some grasp of those 39 Old Testament books. This letter was written primarily to people who were Hebrew—Jewish in heritage, now Christians who had come out of the Jewish tradition. Much of what is spoken of in these 13 chapters refers back to the Old Testament. There are at least 99 references to the Old Testament in Hebrews, drawing from 21 of the 39 Old Testament books—about every third verse. If you've never read the Old Testament, things will come up that will go over your head.

So I encourage you, as I do every year, to read through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Many publishers now make reader editions that remove the verse and chapter numbers so you can read it like a book. Some of you took the challenge starting January 1. I commend you and want to champion you, because right about February and March, when you reach Exodus and Leviticus, the speed bump comes. If you make it through First Chronicles around May, you'll be on the downhill run. Keep reading. The building blocks of our faith are found in those first 39 books.

Old Covenant and New Covenant

Why do we have an Old Testament and a New Testament? The word testament could also be translated covenant. There is an Old Covenant and a New Covenant. When Jesus came, He spoke of this New Covenant the night before He died. As He shared the Passover with His disciples, He broke bread—"this is my body which is broken for you"—and then took the cup, saying:

For this is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:28)

What is a covenant? Biblically, it is the way God is able to have a relationship with you and me. During the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, God interacted with the children of Israel through a covenant that had to do primarily—as Leviticus describes—with animal sacrifice. The reason we cannot connect with God is our sinful failure; humanity has transgressed His commandment, and that separation must be dealt with. Under the Old Covenant, the way to deal with that divide was through the shedding of blood. It sounds gruesome, yet for thousands of years Israel came before God with sacrifices in order to worship Him.

But there was always still the problem of sin, because the sacrificial system could not overcome sin's power. We needed One who could. That is what Jesus did. His blood is the blood of the new covenant, shed for the removal of sin—not merely the covering of sin under the Old Covenant, but its complete removal in the new.

This idea was not new with Jesus. About 500 years earlier, God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah:

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt... But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:31–33)

The first covenant was established under Moses at Mount Sinai after Israel came out of Egypt. Jeremiah announces a new one—not like the one made at Sinai—written on the heart. Then we fast-forward to the Gospels, where Jesus lifts the cup and says, this is symbolic of my blood, shed for the remission of sins. He is establishing the new covenant Jeremiah spoke of.

Point one: Jesus came to fulfill the old covenant and to establish a new covenant. He did not simply come to abolish the old as if something were wrong with it—God established it. Israel broke it, but Jesus fulfilled it by living the perfect life the covenant required, and now He brings a better, new covenant.

Jesus Is Better

The first 39 books deal with the old covenant; the last 27 deal with the new. Jesus established a new relationship whereby sinful, failing humanity can come before a holy God, because in the new covenant He deals completely with sin.

Here is the interesting thing about Hebrews: the Christians of that day were being tempted and drawn away from the simplicity of Jesus—that He is enough, that what He did on the cross is sufficient. Already in the early church, people were saying, "We need more than just that." The author answers, "No, that is enough." That is the heart of this book. Jesus is better—better than the old covenant, better than angels, prophets, priests, kings, presidents; better than any religious sacrifice, ritual, or pilgrimage you could undertake.

That message matters for us in the 21st century too. Many things vie for our attention and devotion. Even I, as a pastor, need to be reminded regularly that Jesus is better than all the ideas and philosophies of man, and that He is the only one we ultimately need.

In the Beginning, God

The author opens, "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets." Notice that the very first word of this book is God. Hebrews begins with God—a reminder that everything begins with God.

So does the whole Bible. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." That is the worldview of the person who believes the Bible: God is. And not only that God is, but that God was before everything that exists. Everything we see—even what we cannot see because it is too small or too far away—God created, which means He pre-existed it all.

The question always comes: where did He come from? The biblical worldview is that He was, He is, and He always will be. Who created God? No one—He always was. People say that's far out, and I understand. He is bigger than us. If I could comprehend God, He wouldn't be God; I would be. Our fallen nature wants to make us God—and that is not new; read Genesis 3.

Point two: God is, and was, and created all things. Some may think that's only Christianity 101. Yes, but it is the first basic proposition of Scripture, and an essential truth. If you don't grasp that God is, God was, and He created everything, it will be very hard to understand Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and everything that follows.

God Speaks by Revelation

Hebrews 1:1 continues: "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke." Many in our culture might grant that there is a Creator—over 80% of Americans acknowledge there is probably a God—but for many He is far away, uninterested, disengaged. The author of Hebrews says, not so. God not only creates; He speaks.

This was clear from the very first chapter of the Bible. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Genesis 1 records God speaking and speaking and speaking. When God speaks into the environment we live in, we call that revelation. God is independent of creation. He does not need it; He exists apart from the "box" of the heavens and the earth. Everything in our universe is in that box He spoke into existence, and He is outside it.

We have instruments that look farther into the cosmos every day, and the Hubble Space Telescope has shown us astonishing images of galaxies at the edge of the universe, which scientists tell us keeps expanding. To us that's a very big box; to God, not so much—because He is outside it. If He wants to speak into the box, He must do so by revelation, in a special way that to us sounds far out, magical, miraculous. We live in a naturalistic-minded world that dismisses such things.

The Engineer Behind the Box

In 1974, engineers in Albuquerque, New Mexico created something amazing: the first microcomputer, the Altair 8800—a little gray-and-blue box with lights and switches. But it was completely useless, because it had no language by which anyone could tell it what to do. Its picture appeared in Popular Electronics in early 1975, and two young men in Boston wrote to the company asking, "Are you interested in buying a BASIC language for your microcomputer?" It was signed Paul Allen and Bill Gates. They went out to New Mexico and started a company called Microsoft, and wrote the first BASIC language to tell the box their will.

But notice: they did not require the box to figure out their language. They had to speak in the language of the box to tell it what to do. That seems magical—"Hey Siri" talks back to me, which is straight freaky—or is it? Maybe it's just amazing engineering. Maybe there's an amazing engineer behind it.

If I told you a big bang happened and this table just appeared, you'd say that's stupid—because even a simple table requires an engineer, a mind with intelligence and resources. Yet your eyeball is just a bit more complex than that table, and many people say it just happened. That is a big leap of faith. It takes more faith to believe that God is not than that He is. The Engineer who created everything must speak in a way we can understand, just as those engineers spoke in the computer's language.

Point three: the Creator God speaks to His creation by revelation. How? "At various times and in various ways"—through three forms of revelation.

General Revelation: Creation and Conscience

The first is general revelation. King David wrote in Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day they speak, and night unto night they reveal knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.

Wherever you live, whatever you speak, you have access to general revelation. The apostle Paul echoes this in Romans 1:

The wrath of God will be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness... because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

General revelation is God shouting to us through creation. Everything we see declares that God is—even down to the most "simple" life forms, which are far more complex than we admit. Science 150 years ago thought such things were simple; now we see the staggering complexity of DNA, an incredibly scripted, coded language. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, wrote a book called The Language of God. He helped decode the human genome and believes in God, because the heavens declare His glory and that DNA is language.

From general revelation we learn three things: God is, God is smart, and God is powerful. The two primary modes of this revelation are creation and conscience. Every human being has been hardwired with a kind of firmware—a conscience—written upon our hearts by the moral law-giver, so that we are without excuse. Point four: creation and conscience give us a general revelation of God.

Special Revelation: The Prophets

Second, there is special revelation, best seen in Exodus 3. Moses, a shepherd, is walking the desert—a place that looks a lot like East County, San Diego—when he sees a bush on fire that is not consumed. As he draws near, something even more miraculous happens:

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush... "I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, "I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt... So I have come down to deliver them... Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people out of Egypt."

In special revelation God reveals both who He is—"I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"—and His will—"I want to deliver My people, so I am sending you." This is like the engineers speaking in the computer's language to tell it what to do. God speaks in a language that can be understood, through prophets.

Point five: the Old Testament is the account of God's special revelation. Those first 39 books record God speaking to and through a people—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, Elijah, Obadiah, Habakkuk—revealing who He is and what He wants to do, because God has a plan and a purpose we could not know unless we heard His voice.

Personal Revelation: Jesus

The third form is personal revelation. Hebrews 1 says God "has in these last days spoken to us by His son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the worlds." John writes:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through Him... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Personal revelation is greater than general and more powerful than special, because in it God comes in bodily form and reveals Himself. The mode of this revelation is Jesus, the Word, the Son, who reveals the glory of who God is in personal, magnificent form. Hebrews 1:3 says Jesus is "the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His person." Through this revelation we learn what God is actually like, beholding His glory and majesty in Christ. Point six: the New Testament is the account of God's personal revelation.

Why We Need to Know Jesus

If I happen upon this fountain pen, I know by general observation it didn't make itself—someone engineered it with thought and resources, using the principle of capillary action to bring ink to the tip. I can even read "Lammy" on the side, so maybe that's the maker's name. But I still don't really know what the maker is like. Is he kind to his wife? Does he like ice cream? I can't know until I'm introduced and get to know him.

That's what Jesus came to do—to introduce us to God. When people look at this world and see suffering, hunger, death, and pain, they conclude that if there is a God, He must be mean and angry. You can come to wrong conclusions about God by looking only at what's around you. General revelation is not enough. Even special revelation is limited—read Ezekiel and you'll find some strange things and wonder what he was trying to tell you. Special revelation is limited. But Jesus is better.

This world needs the personal revelation of Jesus more than ever, because there are so many wrong-headed ideas about God and so much misunderstanding about why we are here. But God has something to say about that in the person of Jesus Christ. If you want to know God, the best place to start is with Jesus. Get to know Him—because Jesus said, "If you have seen Me, you've seen the Father."

Closing Prayer

Lord, I am absolutely convinced that the world we live in today needs to know about You—how good You are, and how You are better than prophets and priests and kings and angels and all other things. But Lord, first, we who trust and believe the things of the Bible need to be convinced that You are better. So remind us again, as we prepare to study through this book, that You are better—better than any other thing that could distract us, better than anything we could put our trust or hope in. Help us, Lord, to find our hope and trust only in You. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.