Hebrews 1:1-2
Greetings everyone. We’re just at the cusp of this study of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 1, and you can think of chapter 1, verses 1 through 4 as opening salvo, as he enters into this theme of the supremacy of Christ in all things. Could really put that as a title for the book of Hebrews, the supremacy of Christ in all things. And if we kind of want to put this in its larger context, we can kind of, sort of, walk in from the broader context into the narrower context and place Hebrews 1:1 to 4 in its larger context.
So the larger context is Hebrews 1:1 through 4:13. That’s this first large chunk of the doctrinal exhortation section, which starts in chapter 1, verse 1 and ends at chapter 10, verse 18. So that’s the doctrinal exhortation. But then you have this big chunk of Hebrews 1:1 through 4:13, and one commentator describes this section, as he said, it’s a very short history of the disobedient people of God. And that is really what the theme there is recounting, how God gave the law to his people and they summarily broke it.
It called for, a need for a better covenant and a greater redeemer and that’s the case he’s trying to make. Within that larger section, chapter 1, verse 1 through chapter 4, verse 13. The narrower section that we’re in here is 1:1 through 2:18 and that shows Jesus is the great revealer of truth. Well, Moses, it was the law. Jesus it’s the gospel. So more than a prophet like Moses, more than a messenger such as an Angel, Jesus is a Son. And thus he is the highest, fullest, most supreme revelation of God.
He is God’s final word and that’s the point here at the very beginning. So let’s read these opening 4 verses. “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power;
“who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.” So as the pastor opens this sermon, it’s a written sermon. God is the one who speaks, and God is therefore the subject of the verbs in the opening sentences. “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days.”
Again, God, the subject, “He spoke to us in His Son.” And then notice how the pastor, I’m talking about the writer here when I call him the pastor, but the writer, the pastor subtly but certainly very clearly shifts the focus in verse 2 from God to the son. “God, having spoken in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.”
Now God still the subject at this point, if you’re tracking the verbs, he appointed, he made the world, that’s God is the subject of those verbs as well. But he’s starting to shift the attention by the subtle use of the pronouns there. So “he appointed,” it’s whom he appointed heir. So there’s a pronoun there and then, “through whom He made the world.” So he started to shift the focus over to the son.
He’s introduced the son and in introducing the son, the pastor is kind of clarifying who this divine person is. He’s not talking about God in three persons. He’s actually talking about one of the persons in particular. But we don’t know that until we see the term son. And we can now read back and see that when he speaks of God, he’s Speaking of God the Father, God the Father, distinct from God the Son and the father we see in this text that we know this is by divine inspiration.
So this is the father who’s the divine author or God, who’s the divine author here. We can see that the pastor and the writer is shifting his focus over to the son. The father is kind of pleased to step back. And especially as we see in verse 3, he gives center stage to the son and he’s pleased to do that. And for the rest of Hebrews, the son is in center stage. Notice how the pronoun, who, becomes the subject.
Who, referring to the son, becomes the subject of all the verbs in verses 3 and 4. Who “being the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, Who upholding all things by the word of His power, Who having made purification of sins, who sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, Who having become as much better than the angels as He.” Now He’s the subject of the verb, not just a pronoun, not just read in there. “He has inherited a more excellent name than they.”
So God has appointed him heir back in verse 2. At the end, in verse 4, he has inherited; the father steps away and puts all the focus, all the shine, all the spotlight on his son. God the Father is the subject of verses 1 and 2, and then God the Son is the subject of verses 3 and 4. So that’s what we’re going to focus on is God the Father in verses 1 and 2. Now in the original, which sounds just a little bit different than the English translation, here’s how the author opens, and it’s important for me to state it this way.
Just translating it from the Greek text, so that you can hear the contrast that he’s trying to draw in verse 1 and verse 2. So he starts out in verse 1, and here’s how it starts out in the original, “In many portions and in many ways long ago. God having spoken to the fathers by the prophets, that’s how it starts. And then you can hear a point by point contrast in verse 2, “In these last days, He spoke to us by his Son.” You hear the contrast.
We’ll do 4 points: Revelation, dispensation, communication, and culmination. Revelation, dispensation, communication, culmination. Number one: The revelation. I used to think of that opening phrase, “In many portions and in many ways,” as referring to kind of like all the different ways that God spoke or revealed himself through dreams and through parables and events and things like that; long ago in the Old Testament in particular.
He is God’s final word and that’s the point here at the very beginning.” Travis Allen
So I think about Nebuchadnezzar getting dreams, Balaam being spoken to by his donkey. On closer inspection, though, we can see the author is being more specific than that. He’s not just talking about every different kind of way that God might reveal himself. He’s talking about something more specific and identifying the specific and the special revelation of scripture of old. So he’s talking about the Old Testament.
That’s what we call the Old Testament, for them at this time, they just call it Scripture. But we can see it as the Old Testament, the 39 books of the Old Testament. And you can see this because he talks about God speaking, having spoken to the fathers, the fathers there being kind of a community referring to the nation of Israel and then to the fathers by the prophets. Balaam’s donkey, not a prophet. Nebuchadnezzar in his dream. There’s no prophetic thing going on there.
There was prophetic, but it had to point to Daniel to provide the prophecy for him or the interpretation of it. So we’re not here talking about the dreams that God gave to Pharaoh, Abimelech, Nebuchadnezzar. We’re talking about special revelation here, Old Testament revelation. The first of the two words, so you’ve got what’s translated as in many portions, and in many ways; you’ve got two words with polus meaning, many, at the front of those words.
So polumeros and polutropos the first one. The adverb polumeros means in many parts or portions. And it’s kind of like in the sense of like bit by bit, piece by piece, that’s how revelation came in the Old Testament, bit by bit, piece by piece. So this is about special revelation in Scripture. And more to the point, the author is drawing out the progressive nature or character of how God revealed Scripture in the past long ago.
He revealed it bit by bit, piece by piece, over a thousand years to his people, having spoken that way to the fathers by the prophets in the past. And again, having spoken, is a participle depending on the main verb. Now we see the point in the main verb, God spoke, that’s an aorist indicative. It’s a consummative aorist, or a finished action looked at as a whole.
God spoke and he spoke to us in a son, in his son. There’s a finality to the speaking here. We’re not to expect any more to come. This is the highest, the fullest revelation. In the son, God reached the culminating point of revelation, the very pinnacle of it, the supremacy of revelation in the son. When he says God spoke to us in his son, does he mean that it’s whatever the son says, whatever Jesus himself spoke while he was here in his ministry on earth, that’s all we’re talking about.
And so basically any of these other writings that are not by the son, we should just discard them. It’s only what he spoke. It’s the red letters of Scripture. Is that what the author is talking about? God spoke to us culminating point, highest point, supreme revelation in his son; only listen to the son. Why or why not? When we see in the book of Hebrews, we’re going to see a contrast between Moses and Jesus. Moses, the lawgiver, Jesus, you could say the gospel giver or the law fulfiller, the law completer.
We see Moses and Jesus; we see these big prophetic events of these lives. So in Moses we see him receiving the revelation from God on Sinai. That’s called the law. First five books of the Old Testament, you know, Genesis through Deuteronomy, everything that comes after that is prophetic. It’s the prophets who are pointing back to the Law, interpreting the Law, exhorting through the Law, and even prophesying for a future time of fulfillment of the Law because the law was never meant to stand on its own. It has a completion. It has a fulfillment that it points to, and that fulfillment has come in Jesus Christ.
Why then do we read these other letters in the New Testament? What makes Hebrews worth studying? It’s because Christ when he spoke, we’re talking about this final aorist tense of the verb doesn’t picture like something in a point in time that it only happened when Jesus came, but it’s looking at the event, at the whole. So Jesus and his apostles, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s the revelatory reality of Jesus and his apostles.
And that’s why all that was completed in the first century does not continue on from the second century on to today. And that’s why we don’t have people standing up saying, hey, I got a word from God. We see right here, and we can back this up with so many other scriptures to say the final revelatory event, it’s in Jesus, in his apostles. Don’t have time to develop the point any further, but just to say when God sent his son, he reached the culminating point of revelation, the very pinnacle of it. This is what he’s talking about right here, the supremacy of revelation in Jesus Christ.
So he’s opening this letter up with the nature of revelation, a better revelation in that the old was partial and progressive and always pointing to a fulfilment in the new, which is complete, which has completed the old. Here’s another improvement.
Second point: the dispensation, the dispensation. Note the contrast between “long ago having spoken to the fathers” in verse 1 and then “in these last days he spoke to us” and we know from the Old Testament prophetic scripture, last days has prophetic significance. Last days refers to messianic times. Last days refers to the old dispensation coming to a close and the opening of a new dispensation that started at the incarnation and ends at the second coming.
It’s interesting how he says, these last days, like near demonstrative pronoun, the days we’re living in right now, he speaks of. These last days and you know what? We’re still in them, we’re still in the last days. So we’re sharers with the original readers of this epistle. We share in their time, their dispensation. We’re all living in the last days.
We’re no longer living in the age of anticipation, but in the age of fulfilment. So we live in a better dispensation. The old dispensation of promise and anticipation has come to a close because what the promises pointed to, what they anticipated was Christ. Now that he’s come, this new dispensation is one of promises fulfilled, completed, all pointing to the consummation of our hope when he comes again.
Notice in the third point: The communication. The communication, “In times past, God spoke to the fathers by the prophets.” The prophets, all of whom are voices. You could say they’re human instruments through which God communicated and revealed prophetic truth. But in these last days, he spoke to us by a son. Our translations say, in his son. Maybe there are some translations that say, in the son.
In my LSB translation, it puts the word his, which is a possessive pronoun. It puts that in italics to indicate to us, to the reader, that’s not really in the text. It’s not in the text. The possessive pronoun, his, is not in the original text. So we might want to make this definite by saying, in the son. So replace, his with the, so we can identify, distinguish him from all other sons.
And for the rest of Hebrews, the son is in center stage.” Travis Allen
But the definite article is not in the text either. There’s no pronoun his. There’s no definite article, the, but we all know who the pastor’s talking about. He makes it abundantly clear, plain, as he continues. Without the article, he’s doing something interesting with what’s called an an arthrous noun, substantive here. Without the article, he’s drawing attention not to the indefiniteness of who the son is, but actually he’s drawing attention to the quality, the character of who this person is.
He is a son related to the father, not as a prophet, but as a son, and we should say, also related not as an angel, but as a son. There’s only one of those, very special. This is the most special of all instruments, the most special of all communications. No mere voice crying in the wilderness, as John the Baptist said he was, but one who is a son. And when he speaks, he speaks with the voice of his father. He bears the character, the quality, as we’re going to see the imprint of his father. When he speaks, the father speaks. Guarantee it.
Daniel Wallace says, the point is that God in his final revelation has spoken to us in one who has the qualities. Well, he says the characteristics of a son. I say qualities and characteristics of a son. Credentials vastly different from the credentials of the prophets, or you could say from the angels, which is what we see coming next in the text.
So we’ve got a contrast in communication as well. The contrast is between voices, prophetic voices, instruments, conduits, on the one hand, and then, the word, on the other hand. The one who is the Word, Jesus is the Word of God. He is a son very different from everyone else, every other prophet, every other voice. So revelation, dispensation, communication.
And finally, a fourth point: The culmination. As we keep reading into the next two verses, look what it says. “God after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days, He has spoken to us in His Son, whom” or we could say, “in a Son whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world, whom he appointed heir of all things.”
Appointed. We’re going back to pretemporal, precreation. We’re going back to eternity past. We’re going back to that pactum salutis, covenant of redemption. He appointed him heir of all things. It’s basically, it’s the father looking at the son and saying of everything that comes out of this cascade of revelation in creation and redemption, you get it all, you get it all. It’s all going to you. It’s an amazing statement. “And then through whom also He made the world.”
Think of those two phrases, “Whom He appointed heir of all things,” first one; second one, “Through whom also He made the world.” What single words summarize each of those phrases, that kind of connect with each other. This is talking about cosmology and eschatology or if you prefer teleology. He’s the one in whom all things will end, that point to the telos of all things. So he’s heir of all things in the sense that he’s inheriting everything, but he’s also the one through whom God made the worlds.
What do you think the pastor’s point is in telling of the son’s irreplaceable involvement in the beginning and in the end? Right here in verses 1 through 4, he’s really hit all the themes, that he’s dealing with throughout the entirety of the letter, entirety of the sermon. He’s hitting the supremacy of Christ as mediator, as revealer, as the one who brings a new covenant. He’s the supremacy of Christ in his priesthood, in his intercession, in his power, in his authority.
It’s everything we see the supremacy of Christ. He’s setting it up right here and giving us the reasons why. In fact, right here from the very beginning, everything that’s worked out from here is just an out working of verses 1 through 4. It’s just an unpacking of what he said in kernel form in 1 through 4. When we get this, we’ve got everything. Let’s pray.
Our Father, thank you for just this kind of very brief, dipping our toe into the water as it were, to get into this amazing exhortation from the pastor to his congregation as they’re going through difficult times. We do know that every congregation at all times goes through difficult things. This is the chosen lot of your people, all of us, like sheep set up for slaughter. And yet it’s not purposeless. It’s not futile.
It’s for the point of sanctifying us and purifying us. It’s for the purpose of us sharing in the sufferings of Christ that we may share in the glories to follow. We look forward to those days. But while we’re living in these days, in these last days, let us listen carefully to the son. Let us be fulfilled in the fulfillment of his ministry. Let us rejoice in the fact that we’re partakers of a better covenant, a new and living way, and we have a great High Priest who watches over us. We love you and thank you Father, in Jesus’ name, Amen.