God Has Spoken
Thoughts on Hebrews 1:1-2.
Introduction
Note: This is the first in a series of posts on Hebrews, taken from a sermon series I preached in 2012 while I was serving as a bivocational pastor. Hope you find it helpful!
Have you ever heard the story of the four blind men and the elephant?
This story is used a lot in comparative religions classes to try to tell us something about our ability to know what God is really like. In the story, four blind men, who obviously have never seen an elephant, are examining the elephant from different vantage points. One feels the thin tail of the elephant and says, “the elephant is like a rope!” Another feels the enormous trunk-like leg and concludes that the elephant is like a tree. The third man feels the trunk and says, “no, the elephant is like a hose”, and the fourth, feeling the massive side of the elephant, says that the elephant is like a wall.
The idea is that knowing about God is like the blind men knowing about the elephant - their knowledge is fragmentary, incomplete, and frequently wrong. The Buddhist sees one part of the reality of God, the Hindu sees another part, the Christian another part, and the Muslim still another part, but none of us sees clearly, and certainly none of us could ever accuse the others of being wrong.
However, this story is incredibly misleading. For one thing, the guy telling the story has already given the game away. The blind men may not know what it is they’re touching, but the storyteller knows - it’s an elephant! Because he can see the elephant, he knows that the blind men aren’t right, and he can tell them what the elephant is like and correct their misunderstandings.
Now, none of us can see God, so in a sense, we are like those blind men. But here’s the thing - God is not like an elephant. God has the ability to communicate to us about who He is and what He is like. If God tells us what he is like - if God speaks, then we don’t have to wonder if we’re partly right and the Hindus are partly right and the Muslims are partly right. Because if God speaks, we move from guessing to knowing.
The book of Hebrews opens by telling us in no uncertain terms that we don’t have to wonder - God has spoken. God has not left us in the dark. We can know, really know for certain, what He is like and what He expects of us, his creatures.
But we look at the text, we should take a moment and talk a little bit about the book of Hebrews as a whole. There are four things you should know about this book:
We don’t know who wrote it. A few of the early church fathers claimed that Paul wrote it, but this opinion has been almost universally rejected, for a few really good reasons. For one thing, Hebrews doesn’t sound like something that Paul wrote - the language and the grammatical stylings are very different. Plus, Paul makes it a point of identifying himself in his writings, and Paul’s name never shows up in this book.
However, the name of Timothy does show up in the book, and Timothy was a close associate of Paul’s. So if Paul didn’t write Hebrews, we can be fairly certain that the author ran in the same circles that Paul did. Some have suggested Barnabas or Apollos as possible authors, but at the end of the day, I agree with the church father Origen who said, “whoever wrote [Hebrews], only God himself knows.”
Hebrews is a sermon. In Hebrews 13:22, the author calls the book his “word of exhortation”. It is rich in Scripture, as a good sermon should be, and it aims to use the Scriptures to warn and encourage his hearers.
Hebrews was probably written to Jewish Christians living in the heart of the Roman Empire sometime before 70 AD. We know the recipients were Jewish Christians from the extremely high number of Old Testament quotations and themes in the book, and from the fact that even the very earliest copies of this book have the title “Hebrews”. We know they were living outside of Palestine because the author quotes the Greek translation of the Old Testament, not the Hebrew Old Testament, which indicates that the recipients would not be expected to know Hebrew. And we know it was not written after 70 AD - the date when the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed - because the author describes the sacrifices that happened at the Temple as still going on when he wrote.
The recipients of this book were undergoing the threat (and sometimes the reality) of persecution for their faith in Christ. The Roman Empire had three classes of religions that they recognized. First was the official religion of the Empire, which was the worship of the Emperor and the Roman gods. Next came other legal religions, which were officially tolerated by the Romans. Judaism was one of these acceptable religions that had Rome’s official OK. Finally, all other religions that did not have the Roman stamp of approval were technically illegal.
With the outbreak of organized persecution against Christianity in the Roman Empire under the Emperor Nero, many Christians of Jewish descent were tempted to go back to the Judaism they came out of. After all, if they were Jews, then they wouldn’t be persecuted. If you could sum up the argument of the book of Hebrews in one sentence, it would be something like this: “Because Jesus is greater than the old Jewish forms and practices, you must not turn away from Christ to go back to your old ways of life and worship.”
God Has Spoken
So with those general points in hand, let’s take a look at our text, Hebrews 1:1-2:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
If you look at these two verses, you instantly see that there is a contrast being drawn between two acts of speaking. But before we look at the similarities and differences between these two acts of speaking, let’s take a minute and just dwell on the essential fact of these two verses, and it is this: God has spoken.
What are some of the implications of God having spoken?
If God has spoken, then we have a reliable guide to His nature, character, and demands on our life. We don’t have to guess what God is like and what he commands us to do - he has told us!
If God has spoken, then His word carries absolute authority in the universe. No one can overrule God’s word, no one can question his Word, no one can gainsay his Word. This is the God and Creator of the universe who speaks. Let all the earth be silent before him!
If God has spoken, then we have a basis to evaluate the truth claims of all religions. It’s not like the blind men and the elephant, because God has spoken - he has told us that he is like this and not that, and therefore we have an authoritative basis to say to the religions of the world, “No, your idea of God does not match what God Himself has said about Himself. You are wrong.” And to say that is not arrogance, but humility, because if God has spoken, it is arrogance to say that you are right and God is wrong.
If God has spoken, then we have an obligation to obey his commands. God made us, and therefore he has the right to tell us what to do.
If God has spoken, then he desires a relationship with us. He could have left us in the dark about himself, but he has told us about Himself so we could get to know him and to live in relationship with him.
God Has Spoken Before
So God has spoken, and the author of Hebrews wants to tell us some things about God’s speaking. As I noted above, this speaking takes place in two phases - an old phase and a new phase.
Verse 1 tells us about the old phase: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.” There’s a lot of information packed into this verse, so let’s take time to unpack it, bit by bit.
First, “long ago”. This indicates some significant amount of time had passed between when God spoke in this first way and when Hebrews was written.
Next, “at many times and in many ways”. This speaking by God was not a one time event, and all of those events were not the same.
Next, “God spoke.” In the Greek language, there are two ways - two tenses - that indicate past tense. One of them, called the imperfect tense, indicates a continual action, and had the author used this tense, it would indicate that God was speaking all the time. But the author uses the other Greek past tense, the aorist tense, which indicates a specific point-in-time action. If you take the tense of the verb along with the words “at many times”, and you’re left with a picture of God speaking multiple times, but not all the time.
Next, he spoke “to our fathers”. Remember, Hebrews is written to a Jewish audience, so he’s specifically referring to their forefathers that we read about in the Old Testament.
And finally, he spoke “by the prophets.” God spoke via specific men who were given specific messages from God to deliver to God’s people. Men like Isaiah, Elijah, Jeremiah, and even Moses. They were God’s spokesmen.
It should be obvious here that the author has in mind the Old Testament scriptures here. We should receive the Old Testament for what it is, the very speaking of God. It is authoritative. But it is also incomplete. Because God has not finished speaking - he has something else to say.
God Has Spoken by a Son
Look at verse 2: “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” In this verse we see some deliberate contrasts between the first speaking and the second speaking.
First, instead of “long ago”, the second speaking comes “in these last days.” Now when we hear the phrase “the last days”, we tend to think in terms of the period of time just before Jesus returns. But we need to understand that that is most emphatically NOT how the New Testament uses the phrase. And you can tell that because the author says “these last days”, indicating that the last days are going on when he’s writing this sermon!
The New Testament uses the term “the last days” to refer to the entire period of time between the resurrection of Jesus and the return of Jesus. So, if you’re wondering, “are these the last days?”, the answer according to the New Testament is an emphatic “yes!”. Now, does that mean the the return of Jesus is right around the corner? Well, it could be, certainly. But this is not the first generation to think that the return of Jesus absolutely had to happen in their lifetimes. Jesus could return today, before you finish reading this article. But he may not return for many years, even many hundreds of years. The important thing is not that we know when he’s coming, because he said very clearly that we wouldn’t know. The important thing is that we are faithful while we wait.
In the last days, Hebrews 1:2 tells us, God has spoken by a Son. Not by the prophets, but by a Son. Not in multiple ways, but in one definitive way. Not at various times, but in one climactic event.
God has spoken this second, ultimate time, not in words, but in a person.
Do you remember the words of John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”? Hebrews is using this same type of language. Jesus is called a “word” because a word is a communicator of information. When I want to tell you something, I use words to do it. If what I want to tell you is complicated, I use a lot of words, but I use words because words convey information.
In the past, when God wanted to tell us about himself, he used words delivered by the prophets, but those words were not complete. God still had more to say.
But now, God has spoken, not in words, but in one final, perfect Word - a Son. And the Son is the best communication about the Father that there could ever be. Verse 3 says that the Son is the “exact imprint of his nature”. Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”. We can’t see God, but Jesus is an accurate picture of God’s nature.
John 1:18 goes even further: “No one has ever seen God; the only God [that is, Jesus], who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” In other words, because Jesus is God, just as much God as the Father himself is God, Jesus is a reliable communication about what God is like.
Now, Hebrews is going to spend a lot of time unpacking this Word - showing us who Jesus is and what he has accomplished for us. In the next installment, I’ll look in more detail at the remainder of verse 2 as well as verses 3 and 4, which give us a summary of who Jesus is and what he has done.
Enjoyed reading. Looking forward to your second installment on Hebrews.