Christ - the excellence of His Name

For the Lord’s Day:  the 5^th of January 2002

 

Hebrews: 1: 4

 

“Having become as much superior to angels

as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

 

Introduction:  Even as people have considered the glories of the created order, they have been tempted to worship that which was seen or known.  Hence the general revelation of nature has not been sufficient to bring people to salvation.  We have only to consider the pagan reveling in their natural worship of idols made from wood and stone.  Today, we have only to consider the growing pantheism of the "fur right" or animal rights activists to appreciate that mankind can still put the created order above the Creator.  So we should not be surprised at the simple declaration of the writer to the Hebrews in the first few verses that "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets  The Greek words here testify to a width and depth of content contained in the Old Testament.  The emphasis is upon many decrees and different ways.  God spoke through dreams, visions, ordinances, through angels and in the law and prophets.

 

None of these Old Testament revelations contained the whole unadulterated and complete truth.  They remained fragmentary, occasional and progressive.  A final word of authority was necessary.  And to that Word above all words, the revelations of the prophets looked forward.  In verses two and three our author tells us that God's final revelation came to us through His Son.  It is the excellence of this Son that is celebrated in the fourth verse today.

 

That Name above all names, the Logos, our Christ.  His greatness is illustrated through His relationship to the created order, to God and to mankind.

 

 

Development:  This writer to the Hebrew people knew their thoughts well.  The early reference and comparison to angelic beings in this first chapter may confuse us.  But it is known that the Jews of the New Testament era had a fully developed Angelology which had developed over time to almost rival the saint watchers of the Roman Church from the Middle Ages down to the Vatican II era.  You see, the Jews had an idea that there was an angel for each blade of grass.  It went much further than that.  In modern times, some of our New Agers celebrate their relationship with some form of "spirit guides".  I even know a person who believes in some personal mystical Indian spirit that protects his person from harm.

 

Now I do not want to undercut the teachings of the Scriptures that there are Angels who serve our Lord and protect His Church.  Certainly the images of the popular fiction This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti are well worth the reading.  However, let us be careful to remember that they are fiction nevertheless.  Yes, we affirm that there are angels and they have some purpose to serve those who will inherit salvation.

 

But let us consider their primary work to be in the Spiritual realm where they battle the demonic forces of darkness.  The best way I can explain it is to illustrate their role in a military analogy.  The analogy I would use would be the relationship between air power and ground forces in the first conflict named “Desert Storm.”  Very many forces were gathered over the months between invasion and storm.  Our lightly armed airborne troopers saw themselves as little more than speed bumps in the way of Saddam's once powerful Armored Brigades.  Weeks went by before our own tankers arrived and disappeared into the Desert in the same afternoon.  Airpower began assembling almost at once.

 

When the moment for decisive action came in the middle of January, it was airpower that stormed across the border first.  The pilots took control of the air and grounded Saddam's own Air Force.  Only after a month of that air storm did the ground forces begin to circle and move in for the kill.  We are still applauding the minimal casualties from that conflict.

 

This is the image by which we should understand the spiritual role of God's angels.  Yes, we are the grunts on the ground just as Infantrymen see themselves.  In the spiritual realm God's Angels like our airpower are overwatching our struggles for the Kingdom of our Lord.  They go before us in a very real spiritual way, clearing out demons and protecting God's elect.  But there is another image that we ought to consider as well.

 

If you have ever been to Disney World you were no doubt impressed with the structures and all of the fascinating activities.  But did you know that the underneath it all there is an underground which makes it all possible.  The tunnels and the people who work there make the fantasy world possible.  In the same way perhaps, God's Angels in a spiritual overworld may very well have something to do with to the workings of the created order.

 

But, perhaps we speculate too much.  We do know from Scripture that the Angels have in times past been used by God to communicate His will and word to men.  Much of Daniel and Revelation came by Angelic messenger.  We also know that Joseph and Mary, Philip and Cornelius the centurion were guided specifically by Angels.

 

In addition Angels have ministered to the physical needs of God's elect from Hagar to Elijah and our Lord Jesus Christ.  Finally, Scripture teaches us that the angels also protect and deliver God's people from certain troubles and not only that they strengthen and encourage the elect; they assist in answering prayer, and attend the righteous dead.  This much we can say on the basis of Scripture.  We must view angels as primarily servants and messengers of God to accomplish God's purposes.  Beyond that we ought not to speculate. 

 

In fact, the whole point of the remainder of Chapter One is to downplay the importance of Angels in comparison to the glory that is in Christ.  Remember, the angelic order and the general revelation evident in nature, were not sufficient to accomplish God's eternal purpose.  And so through the writer of Hebrews we are told that our Christ is far superior to the angels.  Our writer quotes seven Old Testament passages, which we will consider carefully in the weeks ahead to make his point and concludes in verse fourteen the focus which must be ours as well: "Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?"

 

Application:  So far this morning, we have spoken in generalities to bring us back up to speed from a five week suspension in our series to celebrate the fundamentals of the first Advent.  Now, let us in the detailed spirit of this series focus upon the meaning and implications of the fourth verse in Chapter One of this glorious book entitled Hebrews.  “Having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

 

In the mythology of Tolkien, there were seven spirited messengers sent to Middle Earth, whose purpose was to move the history of that “age” towards the goal designed by the Creator.  One of the seven, Sauron: of course, was corrupted to support an evil agent of destruction.  Another, a central figure in the Lord of the Rings cycle: Gandalf is more “Christlike” in that he sacrifices himself for the good of his followers and is resurrected to carry forward the grand design.

 

Unlike C.S. Lewis with his lionized Aslon who symbolizes the real Christ of human history – Tolkien chooses not to confuse the reality of human history with his purposeful mythology.  He leaves the final truth apart, yet still weaves a fascinating tale of the ongoing conflict between good and evil to encourage us all to seek our own knowledge of the final purpose of the Creator and the individual part He has planned and called each of us to fulfill.  Tolkien well understands that he is but only a small part of the real story and the useful purpose of his message is to give credence to the grand principle of the existence of good and evil and the fact that every creature on God’s green earth is caught up in that grand drama which Shakespeare described according to his vocational calling:  “All the world’s a stage”

 

Some years ago, when my students were studying Middle Earth, one of the young ladies was so intrigued that she asked where Middle Earth fit into the history of the world:  “Was it before or after Adam and Eve?”

 

Many of the students laughed, but I carefully explained that this was only a well told story that paralleled the real story in some aspects to help us appreciate the realities faced by Adam and Eve and all of their descendants afterward.  The is a real danger of some people being caught up too seriously in the mythical nonsense of Tolkien, just as there exists a somewhat slightly stronger danger in the world view which espouses Harry Potter’s alternative magic.

 

In a similar way, the ongoing and historic interest in angelology has its own apparent dangers; otherwise we would not have such a strident comparison in the verses here and later in Hebrews and perhaps some strange doctrines of angel-worship possibly introduced among the Colossian Christians.  Hebrews 13: 9 admonishes us all: “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.”

 

Both Tolkien and Lewis were Christian enough to have desired that their fantasies would never have interfered with the Divine Report concerning Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  So you see, there are always grand stories and national mythologies to compete with the real story revealed in and only through Jesus Christ!

 

There are perhaps between two and five lessons we can learn from this exquisite fourth verse of Hebrews:  “Having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

 

F.F. Bruce instructs us that “here [Christ’s] superiority to angels is asserted, and elaborated by the following chain of Old Testament quotations, for two specific reasons:

 

1.        that the final message of God, communicated by the Son, is safeguarded by even more majestic sanctions than those which attended the law, communicated by angels.

2.        that the new world over which the Son is to reign as Mediator far surpasses the old world in which various nations were assigned to angels for administration.”

 

This New Administration of and by Christ is part and parcel of the new Christianity which must of necessity replace the hidebound ethnic culture so prevalent in and under the Old Administration as it was once understood by the Jewish people and glamorized by their institutions.

 

Whereas the fallen human mind is likely to think and believe that every national religion has a final place and purpose with some equality – the revelation evident in Christ is that there truly is but one religion that leads to heaven and every lesser messenger.  Whether that national messenger be Moses alone, John the Baptist alone or even the cults of Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius or the even the multitude of Greco-Roman, Animist or Hindu spirits – these are all overturned in favor of the sole administration of the very Son of God: who must be recognized as superior to every spiritual messenger, angelic, prophetic of much the less!

 

John Owen details five observations, of which four are worth detailing this morning:

 

1.        The Lord Jesus Christ, the revealer of God’s will in the Gospel, is exalted above, preferred before, made more excellent and glorious than the angels themselves.

3.        God gives names to signify their state and condition.

4.        [Christ’s] name was not given to him by man, or assumed by himself, but ascribed to him by God himself.

5.        [Christ] inherited [his name], as his particular possession forever.”

 

Owen concludes with this thought:  “Now he was made heir of everything in that all things were made by him; so the Father committed to him, as mediator, a special power over all things.”

 

On these last points I would like to observe that behind almost every name given to humans, there is some history in meaning.  Native American names, being less ancient and mostly transliterated into English are the best contemporary evidence for a very ancient practice indeed.  There are of course books where you can look up your own name.  One of my former students once wondered what the ancient roots of her name were.  I looked up the Germanic sources and shared her nomenclature:  “Red flower of the woods”, which described her exactly.

 

“He who saves” is “The Messiah”: so would we translate the Name above all Names:  Jesus Christ.  In the reality and power of that Name – there is no equal on earth or even in the heavens excepting the Father alone!  And elsewhere in the revelations of the New Covenant we are informed that “no one comes to the Father except through [Him] alone!”  May we like the apostle who penned these mighty words to the Hebrew people agree in substance as well as in spirit.  Amen.

 

11 August 1991

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PREACHING RESOURCES

 

Bruce, F.F. The Epistle to the Hebrews.

Buchanan, George Wesley.  The Anchor bible: To the Hebrews.

Dickason, C.F.   Angels: Elect and Evil.

Graham, Billy.   Angels Angels Angels Angels: God's Secret Agents.

Hendriksen, William.  The Bible on the Life Hereafter.

Hewitt, Thomas.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Epistle to the Hebrews.

Owen, John:  Commentary on Book of Hebrews.

Richards, H.M.S.  Angels - Secret Agents of God and Satan.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.

http://www.tulip.org/tac/heb020.htm

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe go to:  http://www.tulip.org/trf-list/