What Are You Prepared To Do?

The Christian church has two sacraments that are given in the Bible and are foundational to its structure and existence; baptism and communion.  Of the two, only communion is commanded to be observed repeatedly by Christians.  Some churches observe this practice, which is also called the Lord’s Table, on a weekly basis.  Others do it annually or quarterly.  Any of those approaches is acceptable on the basis of holding to the letter of the biblical instructions.  The reason is that the Scriptures are silent on exactly how often Christians should observe communion.  1 Corinthians 11:26 merely says “For as often” as you do it.  It does not specify how often.  That decision is left up to the discretion of the individual church.  But regardless of how often communion is practiced, the undoubtable conclusion is that it is a custom that Christians are well acquainted with, having participated in it often. 

So when it comes to the task of preparing something to speak on about communion an interesting challenge to human wisdom presents itself.  As followers of Christ there should be an automatic interest in that which concerns Him and so a congregation should bring a high level of interest to the proceedings.  But beyond that what can one say that has not been said?  How can that which is so familiar be made fresh and exciting?  In answer to this very human concern a marvelous truth is made clear from Scripture.  1 Corinthians 1:18 tells the tale: For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  The reality is this.  It is not the job of the preacher to make the Bible, or communion, or baptism, or any other facet of the Christian experience exciting.  The Spirit of God, residing in the hearts of believers, is quite capable of taking care of that on His own thank you very much!

That being said, I firmly believe that it is the job of the preacher to work diligently to present the gospel clearly and concisely and understandably.  If all Christians are charged with managing well those gifts that God has blessed them with, and if some are gifted to be preachers and teachers, then it is incumbent upon them to strive to be the best preacher or teacher they possibly can.  It is with this attitude that I approach the topic of communion.  My heartfelt desire is to consider what the Scriptures say about this sacrament and if possible present it in a way that would pierce through the carnality of hearts and minds in this affluent American culture we are both blessed and cursed with.

So, let’s begin by examining first the “what” of communion, or “what is it exactly that we are instructed to do?”  1 Corinthians 11:23-26 is particularly instructive here: For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.  The procedure is actually rather simple to follow.  We are to emulate or copy what Jesus did at the Passover meal with His disciples. 

He first took some bread, offered thanks to God His Father for it, and then shared it with the others (evidenced in the passage by the phrase “He broke it” which indicated that the bread was divided into portions for the purpose of shared consumption).  But then the Lord did something remarkable and new.  He attached symbolism to the usual task of eating a piece of bread by describing the bread itself as a representation of His body, which He knew was about to be broken and consumed just as bread is.  In this way Jesus elevated the breaking of bread, in the context of communion, from the mundane to the extraordinary.

After finishing the food Jesus turned His attention to drink.  The Scripture says that He attached symbolism to the unremarkable act of drinking a cup of wine in the same way He did the eating of bread.  In this case, rather than picturing His broken body, the liquid refers to His blood.  This blood, which in just a few hours was to run so freely and profusely all over the Lord’s body, is the basis of a Christian’s salvation.  This is so because it is the blood of a sacrifice that all the way back to the Mosaic Covenant given upon Mount Sinai confers a sentence of acquittal upon the guilty person who is standing before the judgment seat of God.

So by using His broken body and His shed blood as the symbols of communion Jesus was essentially telling us to commemorate both the physical act that He performed in subjecting Himself to torture and death as well as the grounds of our redemption in the matter of His blood which covers our sins.

It is this idea of commemoration that I want to turn our attention to now.  Having established clearly the guidelines of the Lord’s Table, I want to consider the “why” of communion, or “why are we instructed to keep this custom?”  Jesus said it this way: do this in remembrance of Me.  According to our Lord the point of communion is to recollect upon His work on the cross.  But what should that look like in actual practice?  I think that for most of us the word remember carries with it a mental image of thoughts alone.  When we say we are remembering a loved one who has passed away what we mean is that we are thinking about them.  Perhaps at the most we visit their grave and leave flowers.  Very rarely would we go any further than that in this act of remembrance.  If we attempt to remember a lesson that we learned in a classroom, again the image is that of thinking, perhaps strenuously depending on the difficulty of the topic or the time lapse between the present and when it was learned.

In contrast to this definition of remembrance, I want to suggest that what Jesus was calling for in the sacrament of communion is far deeper and more profound than what we would usually call remembrance.  To illustrate this I will use the Apostle John’s account of the last supper that Paul was describing in 1^st Corinthians.  But first let’s get some context.  All four of the Gospels contain an account of this evening when communion was instituted.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all describe it in almost the exact same way.  For the sake of brevity I will use only Matthew’s account in Matthew 26:26-28: While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.  For reference the parallel passages can be found in Mark 14:22-24 and Luke 22:14-20.  They all sound very similar to Paul’s description in Corinthians.  But when we come to John’s gospel the evening is presented to us drastically different than the others.  John doesn’t mention the bread and cup.  Nor does he record the Lord giving the symbolism of body and blood.  In fact, the only mention of eating even found in John are a few offhand references in chapter 13 such as “during supper”, “got up from supper”, and the dipping of the morsel which is found at the end of the chapter.

Instead of the meal John focuses his attention on another aspect of that momentous evening; that of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.  John 13:4-5 tells the tale: Jesus…got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.  Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.  Try to picture if you can the astonishment and probably dismay on the faces of the twelve men with Jesus.  Here was their Lord and master, their rabbi, whom they had followed zealously for three years.  Here was the man they believed to be the Messiah and the Son of God.  Here was the one worthy in their minds of all worship and praise.  And what was He doing?  He was performing a menial task that one of the servants would typically have done.  He was doing something that clearly none of them were willing to do for each other, judging by the fact that their feet were still dirty even after supper had begun.  This was the guilt trip of all guilt trips, done almost without a word.

And the question begs answering.  Why would John the Apostle take such a hugely different direction in recounting this meal than any of his contemporaries had done?  What was the point he was trying to emphasize here?  Consider the following.  First, John states in chapter 20 verses 30 and 31 the reason his gospel was written: Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.  This tells us that every element of the work of Christ that John records for us was selected for the express purpose of demonstrating the deity of Jesus.  At each segment of the life of Christ that John put onto paper he contemplated how that particular incident or teaching or miracle could best demonstrate the Messiahship of Jesus.  Secondly, understand that the Gospel of John was written after all the others had been completed.  Some scholars suggest 30 to 40 years afterward, although it may have been as little as 10 years; we really don’t know for sure.  But what we do know is that John put his thoughts on paper while the other three gospels were already in circulation.

What does this mean?  I think it means the following.  When it came time for John to write down what happened the night of Jesus’s betrayal, I think he looked at what had already been written.  I think the Holy Spirit through him desired to shed light on a different aspect of that night.  I think there was a component of the evening meal that was still left to be revealed.  And I think John wrote his account in such a drastically different fashion to fulfill that goal.  What was the goal, or the point, that was being made?  Jesus Himself tells us starting in verse 12 of John chapter 13: So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.  The point of John’s version of the last supper was to demonstrate the work of Christ in a vivid and tangible way, just as he probably remembered it.  Further, he wanted it to spur us to attempt to emulate that example of our Lord just as He had commanded the twelve that very evening.

This is a principle that includes communion and then propagates itself out to every corner of our Christian lives.  As believers we are called to an active rather than a passive remembrance.  We are to be doers of the Word and not merely hearers, as James says in James 1:22-24.  It is completely insufficient for our remembrance of Jesus to be an intellectual activity confined to the insides of our heads.  James goes on to say that if this type of “hearing only” behavior is what defines you then you are like someone who looks at their face in a mirror, turns around, and immediately forgets what they look like.  I’m going to be blunt.  James is saying that if you hear but don’t do then you are an imbecile or an idiot.

Consider a husband on his wedding anniversary.  Do you suppose his wife would be satisfied if he goes all day long without saying or doing anything about what should be one of the best days of his life, and then as they are getting ready for bed he tells her that he thought all day long about their wedding and remembered it in great detail?  Of course she wouldn’t be satisfied.  It is not enough to talk about remembrance in the context of a wedding anniversary.  There must be an act to qualify and authenticate the remembrance.

Going back to James and the topic of Christian living, he says in chapter 2 verses 14 to 17: What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?  If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.  What I am suggesting is that this observance of communion is designed to encourage us to solemnly think about the sacrifice of Christ and the blood He shed for us.  But the purpose of this thoughtfulness is to drive us to actively do that which will serve to give evidence of our remembrance of Him.

So the question I am laying before you is this.  What are you prepared to do?  What are you prepared to do to demonstrate your faith in the Lord Jesus?  What are you prepared to do to proclaim His greatness to a watching and dying world?  What you are prepared to do to prove your remembrance of His broken body and spilt blood?

Recently I was one of the people blessed with the opportunity to help pack up the belongings of a missionary couple that our church is sending to the mission field.  For over three years I have known what they were planning to do.  I have known intellectually that they were going to be leaving the United States and everything they had known, traveling to a foreign country, and beginning a new life there in full time ministry for the sake of the Gospel.  But as I stood there slinging boxes and lifting furniture, watching as an entire lifetimes worth of memories disappeared inside a 40 foot shipping container, the reality of what they were doing crashed in on me in a way that it hadn’t before.  They are giving up everything they’re familiar with, separating themselves from friends and family, limiting their opportunities to visit their grand-children, and venturing off into the unknown, all for the purpose of bringing glory to Christ.  The enormity of this decision landed on me with a tremendous impact.  And it forced me to ask of myself the same question that I am now asking you.  Again, what are you prepared to do for the sake of Christ and the remembrance of His sacrifice on your behalf?

Part of me wants to end with that question, because I am convinced it is a terribly important issue to resolve for each of us.  But I feel I would be remiss if I left this topic without presenting the dire warning given in Scripture for those who are to take part in communion, either in the immediate future or a bit further off.  This is what I am calling the “how” of communion, or “how are we as individuals to approach the Lord’s Table?”  Allow me to bring this full circle and go back to our original passage in 1^st Corinthians, starting now in verse 27: Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.  Before you approach a communion table and partake of bread and drink be sure you are blameless before God.  I do not mean perfect and sinless.  It means that the sin you are guilty of has been confessed and turned from in a demonstration of genuine repentance.  This is a very grave matter.  Paul says that if you fail to take this issue of repentance seriously and then partake of communion you are not only guilty of the body and blood of the Lord but you eat and drink judgment to yourself.  Do not trifle with God.

But this admonition does not mean we are excused from participating in communion either.  Notice the instruction for a man to “examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat.”  Honestly this dove tails perfectly with what has already been said about the active rather than passive mode of behavior expected of a Christian.  It is not ok to hang back and stay seated, or skip a communion service altogether because of an acknowledgement of unrepentant sin.  Rather, what is commanded is to purge the sin from one’s life and then proceed to observe communion without hesitation.  We are to be doers of the Word, not merely hearers.  So I will ask the question one last time; what are you prepared to do?

Who Is This God-Man?

As I begin to write there is fear in my heart.  Not the sort of fear that results in debilitating terror.  Rather, I have a cautious trepidation in my mind as I contemplate the enormity of the task before me: to answer a question about one of the most serious, important, and necessary topics that exists in all of reality.  The question can be stated multiple ways.  I have chosen to phrase it as follows: Who is this God-Man?  More on that particular title in a moment.  But for now suffice to say that the issue is simply to inquire about who Jesus of Nazareth really is.  Or more specifically, what He really did, is doing, and will do.  This isn’t so much about the person of Jesus as it is about the work of Jesus.  A strong argument could be made that it is impossible to separate the person from the work in the case of Christ.  But for the purpose of categorization and to help you understand where I’m headed I’m going to focus on His work.

As to the fear I am feeling, it stems from a realization of just how weighty the subject matter is.  Granted, any theological discourse based on the Bible is terribly serious.  And for that matter, since I believe firmly that Christ is the central topic of the entire Bible it could be accurately argued that any Bible teaching is about Him in the end.  But I feel a certain extra level of gravitas when it comes to dealing directly and unambiguously with the specifics of the work of God in the person of Jesus Christ.  This cautious nervousness of mine is tempered by excitement.  In the latter years of my life I have become enamored of opportunities to share with others about the reality of the God who created them.  So on the one hand I am eager to unpack the text of the Scriptures and the thoughts in my head being fueled by them.  But on the other I am fearful about misrepresenting the most important person in all of history.

The date is December 27^th as I sit here.  Christmas was just two days ago.  Undoubtedly, if a Christian has attended a church worth its salt during the month of December they have probably heard sermons about Jesus.  Typically during the Christmas season these messages revolve more around His birth than His ministry.  But hopefully the gospel was presented during those preaching opportunities.  And one cannot preach the gospel without discussing Christ’s work.  So I think it is entirely possible that a reader may come to this article having already had a multi course meal of Christology in the recent past.  So why then am I choosing to embark on this topic now?  Why not wait six months?  There are three principle reasons for my decision:

1. This is the topic that I believe God has burdened my soul with at this time.  It sprang out of nowhere in my mind several weeks ago.  And from the humble beginnings of just the germ of an idea it has blossomed into full flower to such an extent that, again, I am to a certain degree burning with the desire to share with you what is on my my heart.  I believe it would be foolish of me to ignore such clear signals from the Holy Spirit.
2. If one is going to choose a biblical topic to run the risk of over emphasizing, Jesus is most certainly the topic of choice.  First of all, I don’t actually believe it’s even possible to over emphasize Christ.  He is the basis of our entire belief system and He is the climax of the entire Bible.  His character and ministry are of such profound importance that we dare not take Him for granted.  And that is exactly what we as human beings tend to do with all things; take them for granted.  If we expressed heartfelt appreciation to God for sending His son and thanks to Jesus for submitting to the Father’s will every single day of our lives it would be insufficient to pay for the massive debt of gratitude we owe.  Furthermore, this topic of Jesus, no matter what angle it is approached from, is the only method of salvation available to mankind.  If there is even the possibility that someone will read this who does not know the Lord Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, and through reading about Him the Holy Spirit might come and pierce that person’s heart with truth, then I think I should take the chance.
3. As I mentioned above, I am going to be tackling this question from perhaps a slightly different angle than what most Christmas sermons are probably composed of.  Rather than looking at the circumstances of Jesus’s birth or even the details of His death, I am going to explore His roles as revealed in the Bible.  So I feel that to do so now, at this time, will be sufficiently different from what you may have heard or read recently.

Hebrews is a fascinating book in the New Testament.  Scholars are unable to come to a definitive conclusion about who the author is.  Suggestions as varied as Paul, Apollos, Philip, Aquila, and even Clement of Rome have been suggested over the centuries.  But the vocabulary, style, and literary features do not clearly support any potential claimant.  Authorial ownership aside, my fascination with the book stems from the fact that it is nothing less than a tour de force manifesto of the person and work of Christ.  From start to finish this book seeks to exalt the name of Jesus by explaining Him in exhaustive detail.  As such, for one seeking to answer the question that is the title of this piece, namely “Who is this God-Man?” Hebrews makes for a wonderful source to turn to.  Perhaps not surprisingly for a book that is all about the Son of God it opens in chapter one, verses one to three with a masterful summary statement of His work:

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.  He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.  When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Before I proceed to unpack these verses I need to make the following qualification that is implied by the title I have chosen.  I am basing my conclusions upon the premise that Jesus of Nazareth, the real historical figure who lived and worked in Judea and Galilee in the first decades of the first century, was and is at the same time both fully God and fully man.  He is the God-man.  I am starting from this assumption for the sake of time but both aspects will also be explored as we move through our Hebrews passage.  As such I am not going to spend a significant portion of time establishing this baseline.  However, I will take just a few moments to provide some biblical basis for such a claim before we get started.  Colossians 2:9 provides a wonderful little inclusive summary statement that clearly identifies Jesus as both God and man simultaneously: For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.  This single sentence should honestly be sufficient to lay debate on this issue to rest.  Paul could not be any clearer.  He is saying that in the person of Christ is the entirety of Godhood.  God literally wrapped or clothed Himself in flesh, as John 1:14 puts it.

And lest anyone make the heretical claim that Jesus was not a real man but rather some sort of physical shell for God to inhabit, consider the following.  In the Old Testament a curious phrase can be found: son of man.  It first appears in the book of Ezekiel, where God refers to the ancient prophet as a son of man 93 times.  What does the Lord mean when He uses such an odd address?  He just means that Ezekiel is a man of course.  He is the son of a man, so therefore he is a man himself.  The phrase occurs again in Daniel 7:13-14.  Daniel is given a prophetic vision of the future.  Let’s listen to the prophet speak: “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.  And to Him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”  Unlike the Ezekiel usage, here the title “son of man” is clearly referring to God Himself as He comes with glory and power and the entire world is put under subjection to His rule and authority.  Now then, with those two uses of the same phrase in the Old Testament, it is remarkably informative that this title, “son of man”, was Jesus’s favorite description of Himself.  In fact, the four gospels record Jesus referring to Himself as the Son of Man some 88 times in total.  What was the point He was making with this odd title?  He was doing nothing less than clarifying that in Him the fullness of Deity resided in a real, physical, human body who was both the Son of God and the Son of man simultaneously.  How is that even possible?  I don’t have a clue.  And neither did the early church.  In fact, they spent three centuries debating this very topic.  And in the end they simply had to, in effect, throw up their hands and simply affirm that both aspects of Christ’s character are present.  Both aspects are real.  Both aspects are full and complete, without either overshadowing the other.

With that lengthy preamble out of the way, let’s get back to our text for today and dive right into it.  The first function that we see Christ fulfilling in Hebrews 1:1-3 is that of a prophet.  When we hear that word perhaps what comes most readily to mind is the foretelling of future events.  And to be sure, that can sometimes be part or all of the message a prophet brings.  But when the subject matter is that of a prophet of God the Bible itself provides a much more accurate definition.  In Exodus 7:1-2 God tells Moses the following: “See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.  You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land.”  Through this special relationship of Moses and Aaron we can see that a prophet is simply one who speaks on behalf of another.  Or one who relays the messages of another.  In Jeremiah 1:5-7 God commissions Jeremiah as His prophet and He ups the ante for this biblical notion of the office of prophet: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.  And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”  Then I said, “Alas, Lord God!  Behold, I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth.”  But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am a youth, because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak.’”  This then is the Bible’s definition of what it means to be a prophet: one who speaks all that he is directly commanded to speak by God.

So how does the author of Hebrews depict Christ in this role?  He begins by laying out a pattern of communication that God has employed throughout history in an effort to reveal Himself to mankind.  This pattern is composed of two elements: many portions and many ways.  Many portions, or many times as some translations render it, is a reference to the sporadic and fragmented manner in which man has received a picture of their God progressively, over a period of hundreds or even thousands of years.  God explained His faithfulness to Abraham.  He revealed His majesty through David.  He incorporated Himself into the political arena in the life of Isaiah.  He took Jeremiah through horrors unimaginable to demonstrate His providence.  He used the circumstances of Daniel’s life to show His presence everywhere on the globe.  He commanded Ezekiel to engage in bizarre behavior worthy of ridicule to pierce the consciences of His people.  The list could go on and on.  But the point is that God’s revelation of Himself had been sort of piecemeal in the past.  Further, His discourse with His creations took all kinds of different forms or ways: spiritual songs, civic judgments, ethical politics, dire warnings, strong leadership, and strange object lessons to name a few.

Now then, having established this pattern of past practice for God, the text suddenly changes gears to a new paradigm, a new mode of operation.  In complete contrast to all of those different, varied, and fragmented messages now God is speaking to humanity through one single medium.  Only one unique source is now the mouthpiece of God to all of creation.  There is a single unifying voice that now takes all of those disparate elements from the past and weaves them all together into a unified whole that is clear and consistent and absolutely singular; God’s Son, Jesus Christ!

This is all well and good, but at this point our author has a problem.  He still has not grappled with the problem of Christ’s deity.  After all, just because God is now communicating exclusively through one person doesn’t necessarily prove that He is God.  And so the author and God through him outlines four characteristics of Christ that uniquely identify Him as God in the flesh and therefore the ultimate prophet who speaks all the words of God with all of His authority and without any possibility of error or distortion:

• He is the heir of all things – “Whom He appointed heir of all things.”  What does this phrase mean?  What exactly has Christ inherited?  There are two aspects to this; one material and one spiritual.  First of all, son-ship implies an inheritance.  In the culture of that day an only son would have been guaranteed all that his father owned.  So in the case of God and Christ, what God owns is nothing less than all of creation.  Therefore what Christ is due as God’s Son is nothing less than all of creation.  The second aspect of Christ’s inheritance is spiritual.  Philippians 2:9-11 gives us the following insight: For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  What is it that Jesus inherited spiritually?  Nothing less than the full and immeasurable glory of God.  Everything that exists has been placed in subjection to Him.
• He is the maker of all things – The text says “through whom also He made the world.” The Father planned and ordained the creation of the universe.  But the Son is the person of the God-head who did the actual work of creation.  Colossians 1:16 parallels this description from Hebrews and expands upon it, leaving no stone unturned in its depiction of Christ creating all that exists: For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him.
• He is the fullness of God’s nature – Here in Hebrews 1:3 we find one of the most definitive descriptions of the deity of Christ.  The only reason I didn’t use it earlier was because I knew we would be coming to it now: And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.  All of the infinite majesty, glory, and power possessed eternally by God is distilled into and contained within Jesus.  Again, going back to our Jewish example, think about what it means that if and when you have an opportunity to gaze upon Jesus you are looking directly at the face of God.  Irenaeus puts it this way in his best known work “Against Heresies”: “for the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son the visible of the Father”.  The thought should take our breath away.
• He is the sustainer of all things – Hebrews phrases it this way: and upholds all things by the word of His power.  Colossians 1:17 expands just slightly on that description and makes it clear that his power is by no means limited to a spoken word.  Rather, it is bound up intrinsically in the essence of who Christ is: and in Him all things hold together.  Every moment of time that passes, every breath you take, every thought that passes through your mind; all are held up and actuated by the word (God’s spoken word refers to the application of His limitless power; this is seen in the creation account of Genesis) of Christ’s power.  Now let’s follow that out logically for a moment.  This means that as Jesus hung dying on the cross, in the most intense agony possible to experience, encompassing both the physical pain His body was enduring and the spiritual torture of bearing the full brunt of His father’s wrath, He was literally sustaining all of creation at every moment of His dying process.

I want you to imagine with me for a moment.  Pretend, if you will, that you are a Jew in the first century.  Let’s be even more specific.  You are a shepherd.  Many would consider you a simple minded and illiterate, down trodden member of society.  But the reality of Jewish culture in those days was that many young boys were taken from their families at a young age and sent to a school to train in the Torah, or the Law of Moses.  The best students, who graduated from this primary school, went on to secondary school where they would be indoctrinated even more heavily in the Jewish Scriptures, including the prophetic writings.  Eventually, most of the students would be weeded out and only the absolute best and brightest would go on from secondary school to train as a direct disciple of a Rabbi.  What this meant was that there were many young men who, although they were not deemed sharp enough to be a Rabbi themselves, had spent years in the Jewish educational systems and learned intimately vast portions of the Hebrew Scriptures before returning to their family trades.  In fact, it is likely that some or all of the Apostles of Jesus fell into this category; men who had flunked out of Rabbi School but had picked up a tremendous amount of Scriptural understanding along the way.

So let’s imagine that you are an adult male Jewish shepherd.  Although your occupation is somewhat mediocre, your understanding of your God and the promise of His salvation is as complete as it can be with a limited human understanding.  You are keeping watch over your flocks one night when an uncountable army of angels suddenly appears and tells you that the Messiah has been born.  You and your family hurry to see this thing that has been told you by the angels.  You enter a stable in the town of Bethlehem.  You see a young married couple and a newborn baby lying in a manger.  Shockingly, the mother allows you to hold the child for a few minutes.  And as you do, the realization crashes in on you, fueled by your years of training and your understanding of who and what the Messiah is, that you are literally holding God in your arms.

This would have been absolutely earth shaking to a Jew.  And that’s exactly why most of them spurned the very idea.  The idea that God Himself would take human form and everything He did, everything He said, everything He taught, everything He warned against, was the literal and audible voice of God Himself.  It was not a message by proxy through a human prophet.  But it was actually God speaking.  Can you even imagine the shocking implications of this?  I don’t think that we can to be honest.  Most of us grew up either in a home where at least some idea of Christianity existed.  Failing that, most of the rest grew up with at least some concept of Jesus.  And so when we came to Him for salvation it was with an understanding of who He is that was somewhat detached from the reality of who He is by two thousand years of human history.  It cannot be over stated how much of a paradigm shift it was for God to go from speaking through human surrogates to speaking directly to anyone who would listen.

Is it questionable whether a first century Jew would have been able to connect the Scriptural dots and realize that Jesus was truly God in the flesh?  Perhaps.  There is precedent for it, as evidenced by Peter’s and Nathanael’s dual admissions that Jesus was the Son of God.  But my point isn’t whether such a thing actually occurred.  It’s to make the point of what a complete 180 degree change of thinking this was for them.

On July 16^th, 2004, President Bush was scheduled to visit the Civic Center in Beckley.  To be honest, I don’t remember if he actually made it or not.  But the hubbub around town was nothing short of ridiculous.  Some people were falling all over themselves for the chance to see him in person.  Of course the disruption of regular travel on the roads was enormous due to security concerns.  And all this was for a man who, admittedly, isn’t the greatest public speaker the world has ever seen.  But he was the President of the United States of America, with all the power and prestige of that office behind him.  Now contrast that with what we are talking about here in Hebrews.  Can you even begin to imagine what it would be like to have an opportunity to hear God speak in person?

All of these elements come together in the person of Jesus to make Him the ultimate prophet of God.  There is only One who is the image of the invisible God.  And there is only One in Whom the fullness of Deity dwells bodily.  And there is only One who is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature.  If you want to know who God is, then start by examining Jesus.  He is the best and fullest and clearest picture of God available to mankind, because He is God Himself in human flesh.  All the rest of Scripture is subservient to Christ.  The Old Testament points to Him.  The New Testament explains Him.  And the Holy Spirit exalts Him.  Stated bluntly, if the meat and drink of your daily Christian experience is not Jesus Christ then you are doing it wrong!

Moving on, the second office that Christ fulfills, according to the text of Hebrews 1, is that of a priest.  The phrase is rather short and seemingly mundane: when He had made purification of sins.  Our human tendency may be to skim over it quickly without much contemplation.  But we must resist that impulse because this statement is absolutely packed with a truckload of theological (relating to God), metaphysical (relating to that which is beyond the physical), and existential (relating to that which exists) significance.  First let’s define what a priest actually is.  Once again we will turn to the Bible itself for inspiration.  Just a few chapters away, in Hebrews 5:1-3, we find the following: For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; he can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided, since he himself also is beset with weakness; and because of it he is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins, as for the people, so also for himself. 

There are two observations I would like to make about this description.  First is that the requirement of a priest implies an offense.  Notice the phrase “sacrifices for sins”.  The purpose of a sacrifice in a religious context is to appease a deity for wrongdoing.  In this case the wrongdoing is sin.  Sin is the visible expression of the opposite of God’s character, seen in both moral and physical variations.  And because God is perfectly holy, righteous, and just anything that is contrary to Him is automatically unholy, unrighteous, and unjust.  One of the best examples of how this plays out can be found in Isaiah 6:5.  The prophet Isaiah is given a vision of God’s throne room.  Probably for the first time in his life he comes face to face with the enormity and magnitude of just how holy God is.  Then as it dawns on him how far below that mark he is he cries out the following wail of grief: “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”  Isaiah’s lament perfectly captures the only appropriate response to falling short of God’s glory.  And thus a sacrifice is necessary as a theological apology, as it were.  It is an offering to atone for the wrong that has been committed through the medium of sin.

The second observation is that this definition of priesthood presupposes the necessity of a mediator.  A mediator is one who acts as an impartial third party to bridge the gap between two estranged groups or people.  In this case man, having sinned and offended God, cannot atone for his own sin.  God has decreed that someone of His choosing must fulfill the role of mediator on behalf of the sinner.  In the case of ancient Israel under the Mosaic Covenant this was the Levitical priesthood, beginning with Aaron as the first high priest.  Prior to that time, men such as Moses or even heads of household such as Job, were permitted to offer their own sacrifices to God on behalf of themselves and their families or countrymen as the situation warranted.  But even had God not specifically ordained certain men to function as priestly mediators between mankind and Himself, frankly, common man is incapable of performing this function anyhow.  Consider the Israelite reaction to beholding God in Exodus 20:19: Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.”  The people could not handle the undiluted majesty of the glory of Almighty God on display.  They were more than happy to have Moses serve as a go between for them.

Now then, with these principles in place, the question must be asked, was there something significant about Christ’s purification of sins that makes it more noteworthy than what had come before?  The answer is resoundingly and triumphantly, yes!  Hebrews 7:23-28 paints the picture for us: The former priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing,  but Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently. Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.  For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.  For the Law appoints men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath, which came after the Law, appoints a Son, made perfect forever. 

The problem with the Levitical priesthood was not the system that God designed.  It was the agents who were selected to participate in the system.  The priests who were responsible for facilitating atonement for the sins of their countrymen were themselves sinners.  Before they could offer sacrifices for anyone’s sins, they had to make offerings for their own failings.  But the offering had to come from outside of the man.  You see, the tainted blood of a sinful man cannot atone for his sin, because it is plagued with the guilt that overshadows all of his existence.  This is why the Jews were instructed to offer only spotless, pure animals as sacrifices.  But even when such an animal was selected, there is a sense in which even the spotless animals were still defiled.  Romans chapter 8 reveals that the creation is currently enslaved to corruption and it groans in anticipation of being set free.  This extends to animal life.  To make matters worse, let’s suppose for a moment that you hypothetically managed to locate a spotless lamb, free from the corruption of sin.  

You’re still out of luck because even in perfect circumstances no animal can atone for man’s sin.  Hebrews 10:1-4 makes this clear: For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.  So what you’re left with is a system wherein tainted priests offered up tainted sacrifices on behalf of tainted supplicants.  This created a vicious and never ending cycle of constant sin and endless atonement.

But what Christ did was come in and completely blow the doors off of that arrangement.  In His work as the ultimate high priest He serves as both the perfect spotless priest and the perfect spotless sacrifice simultaneously.  First of all the implication of Hebrews 10 that we just looked at is that you must have a real man serving as an atonement for mankind’s sin. Second of all you need a clean and pure scapegoat which Jesus most definitely was.  1 Corinthians 5:21 expresses this idea beautifully: He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.  You have to have both of these elements; a man to take the penalty and the absence of sin in the man so as to provide a lasting redemption.  Jesus fulfilled both of these requirements fully.  And lest there be any remaining doubt, God Himself demonstrated His satisfaction with this atonement by raising Christ from the dead.  No other sacrificial offering in all of history was ever raised back to life.  Only Jesus was afforded that honor and that stamp of ultimate approval.  His resurrection is the evidence of the superiority of the work that He performed.  So by becoming the means through which God’s wrath is completely satisfied and man is once and for all given the opportunity to be restored to a right relationship with God Jesus became our permanent mediator.  As 1 Timothy 2:5 says: For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

To attempt to grasp the significance of this on more than an intellectual level I would like you to once again imagine for a moment that you are a Jew.  Let’s say a middle aged Jew in the first century.  Your entire life has revolved around this never ending cycle of sin and atonement.  If you are completely honest with yourself, although you do understand the seriousness and significance of the offering of sacrifices to atone for your sin, frankly it tends to get a little monotonous at times.  And in the back of your mind is the realization that were truth to be told, you don’t always bother with the required sacrifices for each and every offense you commit.  To your mind it’s just an impossibility due to financial limitations and time constraints.  You just don’t have the free time to spend traveling to Jerusalem constantly.  Nor do you have the monetary resources to give up valuable resources every time you sin.  And so as you have grown older the oppression of the religious system of your people has grown increasingly burdensome in your mind.  You feel as if there is a great weight of guilt hanging around your neck that you can never escape from.

For a person in this situation the freedom offered through faith in Christ would have been a complete game changer.  It would have shaken their world view to its foundation.  It would have shattered all of the preconceived notions of how things ought to be done, learned over a lifetime of immersion into Judaism.  Think about it.  No longer is it necessary to travel to Jerusalem to atone for sins; they have already been covered once and for all.  No longer is it necessary to go to a priest to have your sin guilt washed away; you have now been adopted into the family of a royal priesthood, capable of going directly to God through a perfect High Priest as mediator who is always available, is never vindictive, never takes advantage of you, and is never greedy.  No longer do you have to slaughter birds and cattle, pour out drink offerings and count out grain offerings; the ultimate sacrifice that can never be topped by anything in the universe has already been given.  The cumulative effect of all this upon the psyche of a first century Jew would have been overwhelmingly shocking.  And apart from the work of the Holy Spirit most likely completely unbelievable.  Is it really any wonder that so many Jews both then and now have found it difficult to believe in Jesus as the Messiah?

And for us in the 21^st century.  Do we truly grasp the significance of what was done for us?  I think our default mode of thinking is to take it for granted.  It all seems so remote and removed from our present circumstances in affluent and comfortable America.  But in spite of these cultural and relational obstacles it would serve us well to spend time meditating upon the incomprehensible magnitude of the work of Christ as our ultimate high priest, perfect and timeless, constantly interceding on our behalf to wash away the guilt of our sins, and perpetually defending us before the throne of God against the accusations of our enemy.

The final role of Christ that is outlined for us in this passage is that of a king.  I get this from the final phrase in verse 3: He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.  This concept of sitting at the right hand of a ruler was immediately clear and obvious to a Jewish mindset of that day.  It was automatically understood that for someone to sit at the right hand of a king meant they were equal in power and authority with the king himself.  When this right hand person spoke it was as if the king was speaking.  The phrase appears multiple times in the New Testament in reference to Jesus and five times here in Hebrews alone.  Every usage is simply an alternate way of expressing the idea found in Matthew 28:18: And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”  He has been elevated to the highest possible position in the universe, given all glory and honor and power, and reigns supreme as king eternally.

Now then, what exactly is a king?  That may seem to you a rather simplistic question not worthy of spending time on.  But we must be sure that our concept of a king comes from God rather than our own understanding.  The Bible presents us two different views of kingship; one according to man and the other according to God.  In 1 Samuel chapter 8 we find the Israelites demanding a king.  Ostensibly it is due to the poor conduct of Samuel’s sons Joel and Abijah.  But God reveals to Samuel that the issue is really about Israel’s rejection of Him as their sovereign Lord.  He gives a description of an earthly king to Samuel in verses 11 to 17 and instructs him to relay it to the people.  It goes like this: He said, “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants.  I won’t take the time to exhaustively break this passage apart.  But I think the idea is rather obvious.  A king according to man’s standards is domineering, rigid, selfish, greedy, lazy, and cruel.  Now contrast that with an altogether different description of kingship, found in 2 Samuel 5:1-3: Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, “Behold, we are your bone and your flesh. Previously, when Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel out and in. And the Lord said to you, ‘You will shepherd My people Israel, and you will be a ruler over Israel.’” So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them before the Lord at Hebron; then they anointed David king over Israel.  What made David a good ruler had nothing to do with the size of his army, the promptness of his servants, or the bounty of his grain fields.  What made him a godly king was his willingness to shepherd, or protect, his people by leading Israel out and in.  He was the first to go hungry when famine struck.  He was the first into battle and the last to leave.  He was the first to feel the bitter effects of cold when wood for fires were scarce.  Rather than leading through command he led by example. 

Now to be sure, David bungled these characteristics at a few different points in his life.  But what we have here, early in his career, is a description of the best of his kingship.  And it is this depiction that is the one that most accurately describes Christ as king.  He is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last.  He leads us by example of humility in taking on human flesh and lowering Himself for a time lower than the angels.  He leads us by example of treasuring Scripture in our hearts by using it to defeat the temptations of Satan.  He leads us by example in demonstrating ultimate sacrificial love by laying down His life for us.  And He is prophesied to lead us by example in showing uncompromising zeal for God when He returns to earth in power and glory.

In His incarnation Christ gave us the perfect example of exalted servant humility the way it should be.  But when He returns He will be a terrifying enemy to those who oppose Him.  Revelation 19:11-16 describes Him this way: And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself.  He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.  And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”  Let’s not pull any punches with this.  The reference in verse 13 to His robe being dipped in blood is absolutely horrifying in its significance.  It is referring to a symbolic word picture found a few chapters previous in Revelation 14.  An image is given in this chapter of God’s consuming anger over sin taking the form of a great wine press.  In the culture of the day this would have been a massive stone bowl, with a huge and heavy rock cut in the shape of a wheel and stood on its side.  The wheel would be rolled around the outside of the bowl, crushing the grapes that it rolled over.  This idea is taken and given full flower in verses 19 and 20 as a metaphor for the destruction caused when God finally executes judgment upon the earth: So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood came out from the wine press, up to the horses’ bridles, for a distance of two hundred miles.  The clusters that are thrown into the press are people.  And Revelation 19 makes it clear that Christ Himself is the one doing the pressing.  This is what it means that He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood and that He will tread the wine press of the fierce wrath of God.

Quite frankly, this is horrifying to consider.  But I want you to notice one final element here.  That is the motivation of Jesus even in the midst of all this carnage.  Habakkuk is not a book that people normally associate with end time prophecy.  But contained in chapter 3 is, I believe, a vision of the triumphant God-man returning to earth in power and glory.  I won’t take the time to describe it in detail because I’m already way long with this essay.  I strongly encourage you to read it yourself as soon as possible.  It is a supernatural display of literally earth shaking power that Hollywood can’t match on film.  My point though is not all the pyrotechnics on display.  Rather, it’s the reason given for what God is doing.  It is found in verse 13: You went forth for the salvation of Your people, for the salvation of Your anointed.  Even here, in the midst of fiery retribution and unquenchable zeal for God’s glory, we find the King of all kings laying waste to His enemies, not out of revenge or hatred or vindictiveness, but out of a desire to save His loved ones from destruction.  Even at His most violent Jesus is undergirded by mercy and grace.

Do you see the picture of this God-man that Scripture paints for us?  He is the ultimate prophet, priest, and king.  He is limitless in power yet doesn’t grasp it greedily as we would.  He is boundless in love yet doesn’t qualify it with conditions we would.  He is perfect in form and function yet doesn’t lord it over others as we would.  He is literally the visible image of God in human form.  He is the ultimate Imago Dei, or “image of God”.  If you already know this Jesus then I invite you to meditate upon Him anew.  Refresh your wonderment at His greatness.  Rediscover your broken heartedness over the fact that He laid down His life for you and yet you spurn Him daily with your sinful choices and tendencies.  If you have never met this Jesus then I invite you, I plead with you today, this very hour, come to Him in repentance over your sinful heart.  Yield control of your life up to Him and stop wasting it on vain pursuits that will not outlast the week, let alone your days of life on this earth.  A relationship with Him is unquestionably the most satisfying one you will ever experience.