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Jesus is YHWH: The Hebrews Series part 5 (Heb 1:6-2:1)
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Pulling no punches. Leaving no reasonable room for doubt. This is part 5 in the Hebrews Series. Catch the whole playlist HERE. You can download the notes I used to teach this study HERE. Lots more on my website: https://BibleThinker.org
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Did you know that God has a name in the Old Testament? A specific name. Now, Jews nowadays will not use the name of God out of an act of reverence. They don't want to use his name in vain, so they simply will not use it at all. In fact, they will type G D if they're writing out the word God. And they will not use the name of God, the one found in the Bible. In the Old Testament in particular, I don't think that we are supposed to avoid using that name. I think that might be an overreaction to a desire to preserve the honor of God's name. But it's actually in the Old Testament. Yahweh. Yah. Yahweh is God's name or Jehovah. There's a debate on how it's pronounced. I won't get into all that today. Just know there is an actual name for God in the Old Testament. This name is only used of the true God. And anytime this name appears, without any dispute. When you see Yad, hey, vav, hey. These Hebrew letters in the Old Testament, you know, it is always talking about God Almighty, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, the only God. And why am I telling you all this? Because if the Bible in the New Testament, or the Old for that matter, if it calls Jesus Yahweh, like not just suggest that he is deity or he has God qualities or is a God, but actually calls him Yahweh, then that's really significant. Theologically it means like a whole bunch of dominoes fall into place about who Jesus is. And not only does it mean he's God, it means he would be the God of the Old Testament, the God who spoke through the burning bush, the God who created the universe and all that is in it. So what if the New Testament authors were willing to straight up identify Jesus as Yahweh? Well, as you might be able to guess, they are. And they do. And they're going to do it in a passage we're going to study right now, today, along with a bunch of other awesome things. There are many modern groups who deny the full deity of Jesus, who try to make him a lesser kind of a God or something other than who he truly is. Yahweh of the Old Testament, the God of all things. Mormonism does this. Jehovah's Witnesses do this. Muslims do this. Buddhists do this. Unitarians do this. Maybe they want to take Jesus and separate him from Yahweh to make him devalued in some sense. Or maybe they want to get away from the Old Testament. There is actually a group who does. They want to say that that Old Testament God's evil, but Jesus is the hero and he fights against that Old Testament God. And it's just like all of that is all of those groups, all of the ideas are blown out of the water. When you see Jesus as Yahweh, as the New Testament indicates, as we will talk about today, that gets me into what we're doing right now, which is a Bible study. I say the Bible should be exciting to you. It should probably be more exciting to you than it is, more interesting, more intriguing. And your estimation of its value, of its intelligence, of the brilliance and the wonder of Scripture should be very, very high. And if it's not, I have a solution. It's called a really long Bible study. Because when you go deep in Scripture, when you spend many hours studying it, and then you come out with these amazing gold nuggets of truth that aren't just about, oh, I can sort of, I'm super spiritual, so I can grab out of the space this interpretation nobody else would think of. But rather you're seeing the intricacy and brilliance that God has baked into the text of Scripture right there. For us, that is rewarding. That is a beautiful thing. So we're going to do a serious Bible study. Welcome to the Hebrews series, a slow going but ongoing series. It's a verse by verse Bible study through the book of Hebrews. This is part five. I'm doing Hebrews chapter one, verses six or seven through chapter two, verses one. And I'm going to teach this Bible study twice. Not the same study twice, a different study twice. I'm going to give you a quick ish overview of all of the verses, kind of what's the main point? What's the major flow of Hebrews 1:6 through chapter 2:1. Then after doing that, what would maybe be more likely to show up on a Sunday morning type study at church? Then we'll break into the longer, more detailed, deep study where we're going to go into all of the details, talk about questions and hard questions about the passages, about what is being quoted in this passage. A lot of Old Testament stuff is quoted. Lots of questions exist about, like, why is Hebrews quoting this passage? Is it even quoting that passage? What is going on? I know that sounds like vague. We'll get there and we'll go into it in detail. So there's two studies here, and I think the second study is where the gold Mine is, but the first gives us the main purpose of the passage. And if we miss that, well, then we miss out on the whole main point. So here we go. This is Hebrews chapter one, verses six through seven. We're going to read it together. And what I want you to do as you read it, I'd encourage you to do is ask questions. Think to yourself, what do I need to know to understand this passage better? What does this mean? Why does it say this? Why is that referenced? What is that referring to? Try to ask hard questions, because that's how you prepare yourself to study deeply. You just start with questions. Questions are the beginning of Bible study. So Hebrews 1, verse 6, all the way through to 1, it says this. And again, speaking of Jesus, he's the firstborn here, and then the Father is the he. So when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all God's angels worship him. Of the angels, he says, he makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire. But of the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. And another quote you, Lord, that's going to be Yahweh. We'll get into that. Laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning. And the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe, you will roll them up. Like a garment, they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end. And to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. And I'll be stopping there for today's study. Now, as I read this passage, you're probably noticing something already. This doesn't fit your typical Bible study stuff, right? Like versus you. Just when you grab a random passage of scripture and quote it. You don't quote this because you have too many. It's too many questions. You're like, why is he talking about angels? Why is it angels or winds and ministers of flame, fire? What is this about of the Son, he says, you, throne, O God way is he Calling the Son God here, what is the nature of this? Who are his companions? What's the oil of gladness? What is going on with all this stuff, you, Lord, is that talking about Jesus in verse 10, you, Lord, laid the foundation, or is that talking about the Father? What is going on? And it brings up a lot of questions that are not devotionally powerful, but they are theologically important and really powerful. But they don't give you like that five minute devotional excitement. We're not doing five minute devotionals, we're going deep. So for context, in Hebrews 1, we're jumping into verse 6, right into the middle of a passage that is all about the nature of Jesus. It's describing to us who Jesus is. And it does it brilliantly, like with heavy, strong statements, but statements that, they require you to put them together like puzzle pieces so that you get a nuanced view of who Jesus is, you understand thoroughly who Christ is. And he's not just man. He's not just God. He is God. He is also man. He is a lot more than meets the eye, I'll put it that way. And Hebrews has been comparison, comparison, comparison, making a comparison between Jesus and the prophets. This is the first several verses in the book of Hebrews, chapter one. Then it shifts to talk about angels all of a sudden. And I just want us to understand the reason, I think, why angels are brought into the discussion. First off, there's scripture that talks about them and they want to get into that. But angels are brought into the discussion because it feels, to me, at least, it feels as though the author of Hebrews, under the inspiration of the Spirit, is saying, I want to reach deeper. I've compared Jesus to prophets, but oh, they pale in comparison to him. Let me find something greater to compare Christ to so that I can show how much better he is even than that thing. So looking around for the most exalted thing the author can find in all of creation, apart from God himself, angels. And then the comparison between Jesus and angels comes and Jesus is seen to out outstripe them. Is that the right term, to be so much greater than them by an immeasurable standard? And that is the point of Hebrews here, is to help you see how amazing Christ is. And not just in the kiddie children's churchy, oh, Jesus is amazing, but in the sense in which the most brilliant mind in the world could look upon Christ and just be stunned and in awe of how amazing he is. So we've jumped into the middle of that passage. Jesus is better than angels. So here we go, the quick ish Bible study. Bible study number one. It says here and again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all God's angels worship him. Worship belongs to God alone. That's the context of worship in Scripture, is that it belongs to God alone. Especially when you talk about angelic worship, right? If you see angels worshiping something in the Old Testament, that something is God. Like, inevitably, that's God that's being worshiped. Unless it's idolatrous, evil worship. God is the one being worshiped, especially in particular by angels. The idea that angels would worship Jesus then is very powerful in showing you who Jesus is as compared to angels. He is the object of their worship. Let all the angels of God worship him. Worship who? Jesus. Because it says when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all the angels of God worship him. In the book of Revelation, John actually bows down to worship an angel, this amazing angel that he sees. And he bows down instinctively because he's so overwhelmed by its glory. And the angel stops him twice and he says, no, you can't do that. Only worship God. God alone can be worshiped. So an angel himself saying only God can be worshipped. And yet here Hebrews one says, who is worshipped by the angels? Jesus. The theology comes together here to say not only by plain claims does the Bible call Jesus God, but also through the logic of the way it talks about Jesus and treats Jesus. He is worshipped and therefore he is God. So all the angels worship him. Why does it say, though he brings the firstborn into the world? What does this mean? Some people stumble over this because they think this is talking about the creation of Jesus. And that is certainly not the case. Firstborn does not mean created. Firstborn is not the phrase. First created. Firstborn is a status of preeminence. He is the preeminent one in a family. The firstborn is the one that is of highest rank. When God calls Israel his firstborn, this doesn't mean it's the first nation he ever made, because they certainly weren't. There were lots of other nations God made, but rather that God has chosen them to be special, that they are in a special place in comparison to the other nations. So when Jesus is the firstborn, it has those connotations. In John 1 as well as Hebrews 1, we read clearly that Jesus is the uncreated creator. He's the one who creates. So, yeah, he's brought into the world as the special one of God, but the World itself, according to Hebrews one is brought into existence through him. Did you catch this? He's the creator, and then he's the creator who enters creation, and then the angels are worshiping him. What we have here in verse 6 is this amazing reference to effectively the nature of Christ's incarnation, yet his deity both being presented there. Really neat stuff to me. Very neat stuff. John 1, Hebrews 1, both of them will push this forward. But now things get more intense as we go through, because Hebrews 1:621 is going to give us multiple Old Testament quotations. And we're going to look at these Old Testament quotations in a lot of detail today in our two Bible studies in one video. Two for the price of one. Instead of paying nothing twice for two Bible studies, you can pay nothing once and get both at the same time. That's the kind of deals we make here on Bible Thinker. All right, bad Jokes aside, verse 7 says the following of the angels. So, and it's going to be this thing where God says something about the angels and he says something about the Son of the angels. He says he makes his angels, winds and his ministers a flame of fire, but of the sun. He says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. So now this is like a ranking issue. These verses here, these three verses quickly give us a description of angels as ministers, winds, and a flame of fire. This is to say that they are created contingent, lower beings, and they serve some greater purpose. They are winds and they are flames. We will get into why they are winds and flames in the second Bible study, how it speaks of their serving as well as their destroying things. And we will go to the Old Testament passage. This is from. But you get the idea that they are servants. That's the main thrust there. They're ministers. And that word there just means servant. That's what minister means. You're a servant. What about the Son, though? The Son, he's given a completely different description. The Son is just straight up called God, your throne, O God. Why would you say that this is about the Son, this phrase, oh God, this statement, and not about the Father? Well, because it says in verse 8 of the Son, he says, and it assigns the phrase, your throne, O God, into the mouth of the Father, who is speaking it to the Son and calling him God, your throne. O God is forever and ever. This pushes way against so many false theologies. Generally speaking, cults tend to devalue Christ. They tend to change the identity of Jesus more often than not. And this would save so many people from so many. Like, all you have to do is read the Bible and, you know, like, I can't be Jehovah's Witness anymore. It's right here in the text. And yeah, they've got their own translation, which I have on my desk right here, the Jehovah's Witness translation. I'll reference it a little bit later. And they try to reinterpret and change the meaning of these words. We'll get there in the second half of the study. But for now, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. So he has an eternal throne. Jesus is deity. And this gives us a trinitarian idea, because check this out. The nature of the Trinity is that you have one God, yet there is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are three that stand in relation to each other. There's a relational quality within God. If God is alone, he still is with Himself in this plurality, this Father, Son, Holy Spirit relationships. But there's still only one God. That's the simplicity of the doctrine. But the Old Testament drills this in. There's only one God. And here, even in the New Testament, talking about God, it has the Son and the Father conversing to each other within the only God that exists. It's just this neat and nuanced thing. If you reject the doctrine of the Trinity, I don't know how you explain this in a smart way, but with the doctrine of the Trinity, or I should say because of this, there is the doctrine of the Trinity flowing from it. There's only one God, yet He stands in this relationship within Himself. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Not just him pretending to be the Father one day, pretending to be the Son another day, but rather him actually being Father, Son, Holy Spirit. All right. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. This is speaking of his eternality. Eternal Jesus has an eternality. He also has a righteousness. And guess what? The kingdom, it belongs to him. Jesus isn't just a servant or a high being within the kingdom. It is in fact his kingdom. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of the Son. The Father and Son have the same kingdom because they are the same God. Neat stuff. Neat stuff. There's an. Again, I said there's an eternal throne. So the throne speaks of authority. The angels were called servants. They're down here. But the Son, he is seen as having great authority, having a throne, an eternal throne, the throne of God. So he has this authority that he's not just higher than angels, he's infinitely higher than angels. He is just in a whole different category, a class of his own, the class of being God. He's also always Lord, if your throne is eternal. Think about this. If your throne is eternal, then you are always king. Jesus was king before he came to the earth. He was king while he was walking on the earth. He's the king who is coming into his future kingdom, or the expansion of his kingdom, because he already has a kingdom, but it will be expanded when he returns. And so his lordship did not begin at his incarnation. Jesus doesn't start out with nothing and then gain everything. Rather, Jesus has everything. He gives it up, becomes incarnate, sets aside everything, and then he gets it back because he is worthy. But when he gets it back, he gets us with it because he has redeemed us. And now he has. He doesn't just have us as on the wrong end of his judgment, right on the other side of the gavel, but rather he has us in his kingdom, in his love and in his grace. So beautiful stuff, eternal kingdom that the Son has. And then verse nine talks about the proven righteousness of the Son. We get this with Jesus. He lives a perfect and holy life. And think about that with this verse. You've loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. This picture of oil of gladness beyond your companions, as this is being quoted, comparing Jesus to angels, comparing Jesus to prophets, and the Book of Hebrews is just going to compare Jesus to everybody, to angels and prophets and to Melchizedek and to Levi and to Abraham and to Aaron and to all these different things. So Jesus has been anointed because of his functional righteousness. Like he actually lived the perfect life. He set aside his king, his kingdom, in a sense, and. And then he earned it back through his perfectly righteous life. So that in a sense, we're twice His. He created us, but he also bought us. I think this is cool, quoting this Old Testament verse to talk about the incarnation and the righteous life of Jesus. Wow. Verse 10, verse 10, it says, and you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning. This is talking about Jesus. I Want to point this out? Make sure it's on your screen. This is talking about Jesus here, because verse 8 says of the Son, he says, and then it has a quote and then picking up and you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth. This is pretty clear with the Greek. The person speaking and who they're speaking to carries over from verse 8 also into verse 10, so that it is of the Son that he says, the Father is saying you, Lord, and that's going to be Yahweh. We'll get to that. We'll do more on that. Laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning. And the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe, you will roll them up. Like a garment, they will be changed, but you are the same. And your years will never have an end or will have no end. Let's talk about this. Oh, this is just the, this is just the overview. This is going to be awesome stuff coming. But this is where we get Yahweh. So Psalm chapter 102, 5, 7. That's what's being quoted here. Later we will go to the psalm, we'll look at it all. But for now, just know that's what's being quoted here and it's addressing Jesus the way that the inspiration of the New Testament comes out. Hebrews 1 is saying this, the Father says this of the Son, God says this of Jesus. But God is often shorthand for the Father in the New Testament. Not always, but often. And it's of the Son that he says, you're Yahweh, you're Yahweh, you're that God, you, Lord, that L, O, R, D. If you ever go to your Old Testament and you ever see capital L and these little capitals O, R, D, that's because that is the divine name. That is generally speaking, that's in your, in translations. That's because that's Yahweh or Jehovah. That is the divine name in the Old Testament. And so when the New Testament is quoting the Old and you have the same thing, it's because what they mean, the divine name. Jesus is being described as having the divine name. Now, there's pushback against this. Of course there is. It's about the deity of Jesus. There's going to be argument and debate on it because of heretical groups that want to argue against that. And I'll talk about that later. But it's describing Jesus here. And he is described as Yahweh. But not only that, he's also described as being creator. You laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands. He's described as being creator. Earlier Hebrews talked about how all things were made through Jesus. And then some people wonder if it's proper to call Jesus the Creator. Is it more that the Father is the creator and the Son is the one by whom creation takes place? But is it proper to say he's actually a creator, that he is the Creator as well, the same creator? And the answer theologically seems to have, you have to say, yes, of course you can say he's the Creator. But here we have Hebrews one that actually calls it out. Specifically, you laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands. It's not just that it was done through Him. He can be seen as an active participant in creation in a way that mimics the Father, the way that the Father is discussed and talked about in, in many places. So that's a pretty big deal. Then we have more. They will perish, but you remain. They'll wear out like a garment, right? But you stay the same. Your years will have no end. There is a constant erosion of reality that's happening. We're always like, you know, the whole law of entropy thing, everything is falling apart, right? I'm falling apart, you're falling apart. Maybe you haven't hit that age yet where you felt it, but you will. It'll come. It's sobering. Creation is falling apart. Things are winding down. They were wound up by God at the beginning and they are winding down. And yet God himself is eternal and the same. But to say this about Jesus, who was this man walking the earth not long before Hebrews was written, who. People ate with him and they touched him. They watched him be crucified on the cross. They saw him after he had risen from the dead. And they're now understanding with clarity, you're the Creator. You were the Creator who entered creation. This is the biggest revelation of the entirety of human history, is to realize who Jesus is and what he has done for us. It is something we're so used to because we grow up hearing about it. Maybe if you grew up in church or you hear about it from people who were used to it. So it sounds kind of mundane, it sounds kind of meh. But this is the most mind blowing fact of all of reality, that this is Jesus we're talking about, that these descriptors are that Jewish Itinerant preacher. He was the Son of God. He was God with us who came to bear our iniquities and live for us and then die for us that we might live for Him. He rose from the dead because he was conquering our death that we actually have. This blows my mind. Christians, we have the solution to death, the eternal thing, the thing, the scariest thing, the thing of all things that all of us face, that we fight against unsuccessfully. We have the solution to this physical and spiritual death, distance from God, brokenness in relationships. We have the solution to all these things in Jesus Christ. And this should be the most mind blowing fact of reality that we are freshly excited about and willing to tell other people about because it's actually true. Like they don't need Jesus. Because my children's ministry told me to say that you need Jesus. You need Jesus because you obviously need Jesus. He's the only solution for you, man. Lord, help us to have the fortitude in our hearts and in our minds to speak the truthfulness of Christ to people who need him, that we don't go Jesus when we're talking about the Lord of Heaven and earth. So this is Him. He's eternal. He's eternal unchangeability in verses 11 and 12 of Hebrews 1. So there can be no debate if you take Hebrews one at face value. Jesus is God. He's the same eternal creator, Yahweh of the Old Testament. He is not the Father. The Father and him have a relationship together. In fact, in this very passage, it's things that the Father is saying of the Son, so that there's a relational quality that's going on there. So he is relational, the Father, Son, Spirit. But he is that same God. So this is against say like Marcionism. Why would I bring up that? Marcionism was this ancient, like heresy in the Christian church. They wanted to get rid of certain books of the Bible. They wanted to jettison a lot of the Old Testament. It was evil. They thought the Yahweh of the Old Testament was an evil, bad God. And Jesus came to teach us a different, better way. And people have been saying this stuff ever since. And it's not true. It's not what the Bible things. So the Bible's like, no, Jesus is the same God. He's that Yahweh. But even now there's like in India there's a guy, as I understand it, named Shibu Pediakal, who is very popular, who's growing in popularity. His stuff's not in English, I think it's in Hindi, so I can't really respond to it. But my understanding is that this man is out there teaching the same Marcionite heresies, trying to say that Jesus isn't Yahweh. This is a fantastic passage of Scripture to refute that nonsense and that attack on the very person of Christ, it's never going to stop. These heresies always recycle themselves. So it's good for us to be aware of passages like this. All right, verse 13 says, and to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Now, this is too much even for me to get into today. This is a quote of Psalm 110, verse one right here. That psalm is the most commonly quoted Old Testament passage in the entire New Testament. And there's a ton of stuff in there that we could get into. But Hebrews 1:13 isn't focused on all of that stuff. It's particularly focused because it already affirmed that Jesus is Yahweh. That's not the emphasis right here. It doesn't have to do it again a single verse later. The focus here is a little bit different than what we got in the previous verses. It's on Christ as the future judge of all humanity. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Jesus created and he lived the righteous life. And now we're looking at his Second Coming and the interim between now and then. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father in that eternal throne that is rightly his, because he laid the foundations of the earth, and he's unchangeable and he's God. And there's a time coming where his enemies will be made a footstool for his feet. That is, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. The reality of Jesus is that he is utterly inevitable. You either bow to him now willingly, or you bow to him now unwillingly. And there's just no other option. He's an ultimatum. Receive him freely or he will just take over. And that's his relationship to creation, because it's his throne. And his enemies will be made his footstool. But he'd rather make them his brothers and sisters. He'd rather make them his friends. And so he dies on the cross to make his enemies his friends. It's a great thing for us to know that Jesus will have victory. In the meantime, we're preaching the gospel, reaching out arms and saying, jesus wants you over here. God loves you and does want you. Over here. Yield it to him joyfully. And if you refuse, he's still going to rule. You can't stop that. You can reject Jesus as Lord. He's still going to Lord over you, whether you like it or not. You won't be in his kingdom, but you can't fight against his lordship of the universe or his control, even in your own life. So this is kind of how Jesus taught, too. Sit at my right hand till you make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Jesus spoke his parables like this. He'd say, when the Son of Man comes and with the holy angels with him, that there was a time he was coming back for judgment. I mean, he was. People miss this sometimes. He was there in his first coming, physically there on the earth. That was his first coming. And people thought maybe Jesus would do all the Messiah stuff in that first coming. But Jesus keeps referring to another additional return, an additional time when the Son of Man comes and does all this stuff. There's this arrival of the Son of Man in a future, and that's when he's going to reckon all the nations. That's when he's going to separate wheat from tares. And that's when he's going to hold everybody to account. So there is a second coming that we talk about and have talked about, because Jesus talked about it initially. And here Hebrews one talks about it. Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father until he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet. Verse 14. Told you I moved quick. For me, this is quick. All right. For me, this is very super. This is like light speed. It's like the Flash. If I was a superhero, it would be the Flash. Although, I don't know. I don't like the Flash so much anymore. Hebrews 1:14. Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who would inherit salvation? This is speaking of angels. Jesus compared to angels. Remember, this is a compare and contrast assignment. Jesus is sitting, waiting for his enemies to make his footstool. He is the Lord. He's the Creator. He's eternal. He's unchanging. He is the perfectly righteous one. And the angels, they're ministers. They're sent to serve people who will inherit salvation. They have a subordinate role compared to Christ. Now, that's not to diminish. Angels, like, don't mess with angels. You know, angels show up and they're like, don't be afraid. Or sometimes they don't say, don't be afraid. And there's reasons for people to be afraid. Jesus, however, is so much further exalted than them. So I don't want us to read Hebrews 1 and take away from it, devaluing or lowering angels, our estimation of angels. And like these messengers of God, these beings that God has created and that are far beyond us in capacities. But, you know, like Gabriel introduced himself, I'm Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God. Like, that's a huge deal when he introduces himself like that. But we should estimate them very highly and then realize Jesus is infinitely higher. That's the point. The point is to take the highest thing that you can find, compare it to Jesus so you can see that he is so much, so much greater, so that your heart can explode in your appreciation for Jesus Christ. The worship of angels is warned against in Scripture. We're not supposed to spend too much energy on angels, to be honest. Let no one, it says, disqualify you. Insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that is from God. This. This idea of emphasizing angels too much is. Is actually a concern even in the pages of Scripture. We don't want to spend too much time on that, but to realize that they're there to serve and minister and they ultimately point to Jesus. But I want to take you before we do our second Bible study. Here's the end of the first Bible study. Matthew, chapter 21, verse 33. I've been dying to share the parable of the tenets again with you guys in this context of Hebrews, the Hebrew study, because I think it so relates to the things that we've just been studying. So the contrast that we should think of between Jesus and angels and Jesus and the prophets. Jesus did the same thing Hebrews one is doing, but he did it in the parable of the tenants. So let's read it here. Here, another parable. He says, there was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. The Old Testament uses the same kind of concept. This guy plants a vineyard, goes away. It uses the analogy of a man planting a vineyard and taking care of it to relate to God planting and helping Israel. It's in Isaiah, chapter 5, verses 1 through 7. That chapter relates to this. It's interesting because it really is like Jesus has this in his mind as he's speaking. Jesus focuses, though, on the tenants. He doesn't just focus on the vineyard, but he focuses on the tenants. That is not just thinking about Israel representing Israel, but thinking about the people who were in charge while the Master was away. See, God gave the law. And he asks these leaders in Israel, priests, kings, etcetera, to be the ones to rightly take care of his people, following his rulebook, so to speak. Well, that didn't happen. So verse 34, when the season for fruit drew near and he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit, and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another and stoned another. This is a picture of them persecuting the prophets of the Old Testament and the messengers of God. And he sent other servants more than the first, and they did the same to them. They rejected those two. And Israel has not been well at receiving the messengers of God. They have not done well. I mean, nobody else would have either. If some God chose some other nation, it would have been the same story. Because part of it is showing us human nature that we're just this messed up and we need total salvation. We don't just need to reform our lives. We need to be born again. Verse 37 says, finally, he sent his son to them, saying, they will respect my son. That is so. Oh, that is like so powerful to think about this Jesus himself speaking. He's basically telling them who he is. The prophets have come, they've many times ignored them, rejected them, even killed John the Baptist, the most recent prophet in the New Testament times before Christ. And then you have Jesus telling the story, oh yeah, they'll respect my son. And they don't. And they're not listening. They don't hear what he's telling them. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. See, by rejecting Jesus, they were trying to claim Jesus kingdom for themselves. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? What will he do to those tenants? And they know the answer. They said, he'll put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons. And then Jesus, this is more than we'll get into today. But Jesus offers this amazing Psalm that was just this incredible mystery that is all about Jesus. Have you never read in the Scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. You see, they're the builders rejecting Jesus and he's going to become the cornerstone. And then he goes on, and then they realize that he's talking about them and they get really mad and they want to arrest him. Instead of repenting, they just get angry. Sometimes when you share spiritual truth, it hits people really close to where they're at, and they're sort of forced into either becoming angry, repenting, or somehow trying to, like, pretend like they didn't hear what they just heard. And so that's kind of what happens here. They get mad. So when the Son shows up, here's the point and here's why it relates to Hebrews 1 through 1, 6 through 2 1. Because when the. When the sun shows up, the stakes are higher. Prophets have spoken. Angels have spoken in the past. When they didn't listen, judgment came. But you know what? The sun has come now. And if you reject Jesus, if you don't listen to Jesus, this is a major theme in Hebrews. If you don't yield your heart and life to the lordship of Christ, if you don't treat him as who he truly is, God with us, there is judgment coming. This is one of the major themes in Hebrews. We can't hide from it. It's not something we're comfortable with because we always want to be good news people who have nice things to say about everybody. But it is true. It is true. So at this stage, you might want to stop and take a break. You may want to go get a cup of coffee. I think I got a cup of coffee right here. Because we're about to go into the complicated, challenging, but rewarding deeper portion of the Bible study. Bible study number two is coming up right now. This is the Old Testament passages that we're going to cover. We're going to look at all of the verses that Hebrews 1 and the verses we've covered, the verses that refer to the Old Testament. We're going to go to those Old Testament passages. We're going to ask hard questions. We're going to try to understand them. We're going to look at whole chapters of the Old Testament to try to see what value there is in it and to see how sometimes the New Testament quotes the Old in a way you're not expecting. So then you think, what are they even saying? Here. But if you dig a little deeper, it's very rewarding. This is the deeper stuff. I need more coffee and maybe you should get some too. I don't know. All right. Hebrews chapter one, verse six. Not a do over. This is going to be new content, same passage. And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all the angels of God worship him. We haven't talked about where that's from, haven't gotten into detail about it, that's for sure. And did you know it's one of the most complicated questions in the entire book of Hebrews, believe it or not. So first let's ask the question, when do we see angels worshiping Jesus? When in the Bible do you see angels worshiping Jesus? Because that's what it's referring to. And some people say, well, this is referring to its first coming. So that when it says when he brings the firstborn into the world, that's a reference to the first coming of Christ. And the angels are worshiping. So some go, well, maybe Luke 2, 13, 14, show angels worshiping Jesus. And suddenly this is at the birth of Christ, there was a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. There definitely are angels worshipping. And it is at the birth of Christ they're worshiping God. Which logically you might say, well, that doesn't say, is it Jesus specifically though. Right, right, it doesn't. But if Jesus logically is God, then them worshiping God is also them worshiping the Son. But it does seem a little bit like Hebrews hasn't tried to show it. It doesn't seem like Hebrews is quoting it for that purpose. Right. When it says let the angels of God worship him, that it's quoting it quite. Because it's saying because he's God, the angels are worshiping. It seems like there's something focused on the Son, not just focused on God. And so Hebrews and Luke 2, I don't know, it's a little bit. So some people go, well, actually the when is the second coming though? When he brings the firstborn into the world is a reference to the second coming, as in he will in the future bring the firstborn into the world. Again, because he's waiting at the right hand of the Father right now. And that's when the angels will be worshiping him. Not that they won't worship or haven't worshiped before before, but that's a specific moment. That's highlighted. And for this you could say, well, Revelation 5:11 might relate Revelation 5:11. It says, Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, and what are they doing? They're worshiping the Lamb. Worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and glory and honor and blessing. And the Lamb, for those who don't know, is a metaphor for Jesus because he was like a sacrificial lamb. He died for our sins. And so he's also called the lion of the tribe of Judah because he's also the ruling king. And we have these two realities that are very true about Jesus. So they're worshiping Jesus, angels are worshiping Jesus here at something like the Second Coming or something approximate to that. And yeah, that could work. That could work. So then there's two options for the phrase again, in Hebrews 1:6. Again, this is the part that's getting a little heavy. But if you stick with me, the deep study of Scripture is not immediately rewarding, it's eventually rewarding. It's like struggling through marriage problems. It's not immediately rewarding, it's eventually rewarding. You have to keep struggling through. And if you don't struggle through, you miss out on a lot of so there's two options for what it means when it says, again, he brings the sun into the world, because some will grab onto that and they'll say, ah. Again, that's the second coming. When he brings the sun the second time into the world, that could mean second coming. It could also not be a reference to a time period, but just be a reference to setting up a quote. So here we have it happens a lot, actually, in Hebrews 1:5. For to which of the angels did God say? And it has a quote. Then it says, or again, and it has another quote. So I'll put it on your screen. And then verse six again, and it has another quote. And if I go to Hebrews 2:13, it introduces another quote the same way. And again I open my trust in him. And again, it's like a habit of the author of Hebrews. He does this. It's also in chapter four, verse five. It's also in chapter 10, verse 30. So that's very, very possibly. Sorry, let me get back over to Hebrews 1:6. Very possibly what's meant by again, it's just again, meaning in another quote when he brings the firstborn of the world. So that wouldn't be an implication of the second coming. So FF Bruce has tried to answer this question differently and some people agree with him. He's a scholar and what he said about this is the phrase when he brings is not about the timing of like a specific arrival of Jesus. First coming, second coming. It's not about that. It's rather, and I'll read read to you what he wrote, he says the moment intended by the conjunction when is probably neither the Incarnation nor the second advent of Christ. It is not so much a question of his being brought into the world as of his being introduced to it as the Son of God. So it's not so much oh, when he brings the Son into the world like physical arrival, but rather the sort of revelation of who Jesus is. When the knowledge of Christ comes into the world, we will see the angels. We see the angels worshiping him, which would be consistent with revelation but would not assign it to a specific time period. Does that make sense? We keep reading the phrase brings the firstborn into the world. I mentioned this briefly earlier and I won't go into it now, but it does imply the pre existence of Jesus. You can't bring someone into the world unless they have existed out of the world. At least that's implied. Is Hebrews teaching the pre existence of Jesus? Well yeah, this is like a no brainer. The whole chapter, Hebrews one has it over and over and over again. He's the one who's doing the creating. He's the one who has an eternal throne. He's the one whose years are without end. So yeah, he has pre existence. He's straight up called Yahweh. But it's also here in verse six. He's brought into the world. He's not created. As John chapter one shows, if anything is created, Jesus is the one through whom it was created. Which would mean that Jesus wasn't created. He is eternal. As John 1 says, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. It just is. Hebrews talks about this too. Signs Jesus as creator, not creation. Important distinction to make, which should be mind blowing. The difference between creator and creation is bigger than the difference between you and an amoeba. It's bigger than the difference between you and anything else you can think of or any two things in creation. They're more like each other than God is like anything in creation, philosophically or theologically. Your mind just goes, he's creator. He is creator. He's God. This is Mind blowing. There's another deep question in Hebrews 1:6. This is probably one of the hardest questions. In fact, Tom Schreiner says this is one of the most disputed verses in the book of Hebrews. So Hebrews 1:6 is quoting the Old Testament, and what verse it's quoting? That's what people are arguing about. There's like two options that people generally give, and we'll look at both of those and some of the confusion that's around that. So again, this is where we're going deep. This is the kind of stuff. I split it into two studies. I fear if I share this at the early part of the study, I will just lose people. And I don't want to miss the main point of the passage, but I do want to go deep because your pastor would never have the time or ability to do this on a Sunday morning the way I'm doing it online. I view this ministry as supplemental. It's giving you stuff that you're not going to find elsewhere and not replacing anybody's church or anybody's pastor or anybody's ministry, but supplementing it with something hard to find. Hopefully, I'm producing that kind of ministry content. So Hebrews 1:6 quotes this, Let all God's angels worship him. What is this quoting? There's two main passages people put forward. One of them is Deuteronomy 32:43, which I have on your screen now in the Septuagint. I'll explain that later. Well, I'll just tell you. It's the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It's. It's not the Hebrew manuscripts that we have that have survived the copies. But it says here, let all the angels of God worship him. Okay, so there's the exact phrase, and it is exactly right. It fits these word for word. It's exactly what we see quoted in Hebrews. But there's two challenges to this. There's two challenges to this that make people go, maybe Deuteronomy is not what Hebrews is quoting. The first challenge is it's hard to make the case that this is original. I have to go to the Septuagint for it. It's not actually present in the Hebrew. I'll talk more about that later. And the second challenge is that it's hard to see how this is about the Messiah. When you look at Deuteronomy 32, it just seems as though it's purely about God with no distinction related to the Messiah or to the Son. And so how is this about the Son? Now I'll seek to answer that in a bit. But let me first show you the other verse that it might be Hebrews 1:6 might be quoting Psalm chapter 97, verse 7, where it says. Oh, let me see. I should go. Just a second. Here we go. All worshipers of images are put to shame who make their boast and worthless idols worship him. All you gods, I get. You see the word gods there? It's Elohim. It can be translated angels. That's a fair translation. That is how the Septuagint translates it as well. And it fits close enough. Okay. It's not word for word, the same as what we read in Hebrews 1, but we shouldn't expect exact quotes in the New Testament or even in the Old Testament. It was not assumed that if you were referencing a text, you were always giving a word for word quote. You might be paraphrasing. Sometimes you'd be combining two passages together. We do this in casual talk all the time. We're like, doesn't the Bible say. And then you say something. That's not word for word, but it is consistent with Scripture. It is like a teaching you got from the Bible. The New Testament can do that as well. In Hebrew, the word Elohim, Elohim, it has a variety of usages. This always stumbles people. So I want to take a second just to talk about it. That word Elohim, that's what's translated gods right there. That word can be used of God, the true God. It can also be used of, like, any sort of spiritual being. Samuel, when he's brought up as a disembodied spirit, he is called an Elohim, not because he's deified, not because he's a God, but because he's like a disembodied spirit being. He's a spiritual being. So Elohim, Elohim can be a reference to angels. It can be a reference to deceased humans, that they're spirits. It can be a reference to God. It depends on the context. And this is the big reveal to help you understand it. A lot of people think Elohim is the Hebrew word for God. And they're like, no, no, no, no. They use the word Elohim for more than what we use our word God for. So it's more than just a parallel to the word God. It's more complicated than that. And it's okay to just let it be. But this would be interesting. This would be the New Testament if it's a reference to Psalm 97. Or Deuteronomy for that matter. It'd be the New Testament affirming that the Elohim referenced there are angels, not some sort of non angelic being. Some of you have heard of the Divine Council theory and this does relate somewhat to that. I'm not saying it's like the whole answer to the question, but it's. It should be weighed into it that the New Testament calls these angels and is referencing either Psalm 97 or Deuteronomy 32. And that should relate to how you interpret those passages in relation to your Divine Council theory. Those are angels because that's the whole Hebrews thing is talking about Jesus compared to angels. It doesn't suddenly switch to some other being. That's all I'll say on that. If you guys don't follow me on that, don't worry about it. It's like a giant can of worms and I don't have time to unpack it all in the midst of this Bible study. I just thought it was relevant. So Psalm 97 is easy to see as Messianic. This is what it's got going for it. It's not an exact quote, but it's close enough. And it's very easy to see this chapter as Messianic. Very easy to see it as connecting to Jesus being about Jesus. In fact, even old non Christian Jews saw this as Messianic. Like major, major rabbis who are highly respected even today. Rashi and Kimi, they Both said Psalm 93, 99, including 97. We're all messianic. So that's something it's got going for it. Oh, it is kind of of the sun. Worship him, all you, all you angels. That it is kind of about the sun. That makes it feel better. But most scholars don't take that view. They don't think it's Psalm 97. They have a different view. So is Hebrews quoting Psalm 97:7. Psalm 97 is clearly about Yahweh, the chapter itself. It's very monotheistic. God is contrasted with all others. That fits Hebrews 1. Jesus is being contrasted with angels. To quote a passage where God Yahweh is being contrasted with all other gods and he is seen as alone worthy of worship. It's fitting for the New Testament to use this passage that's very monotheistic, very much contrasting God with others and then apply this to Jesus because it's trying to say the same things about Jesus. This avoids polytheism in the church when you are careful about it. So Jesus is that God the Psalm 97, God. Further, it fits well with the Second coming, which Hebrews also is interested in, is the Second coming. And Psalm 97 fits the second Coming. So I say all that, but I haven't shown it to you. We're going to read it. Psalm 97. It's just 12 verses. We're going to read through it, and you can think of those ideas as you read through it. The Lord reigns. That's Yahweh, right? Let the earth rejoice. Let the many coastlands be glad. Clouds in thick darkness are all around him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Doesn't that sound like Hebrews? It was talking about righteousness and his throne. Fire goes before him and burns up all his adversaries. His adversaries all around. Hebrews was talking about the judgment of his enemies. His lightnings light up the world. The earth sees and trembles, the mountains melt like wax before the Lord. Before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness and all the people see his glory. All worshipers of image are put to shame who make their boasts. And worthless idols worship him. All you gods. Now, this fits pretty well with the book of Hebrews. This is like he is this righteous one. He is this glorious one, and he's going to be compared to others. But he is the one who is to be worshiped. Then Zion, Jerusalem hears and is glad. And the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, O Lord. For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods, Jesus, as compared to these other beings, angels, really? Some would try to interpret that differently. That's my view. Verse 10. O you who would love the Lord, hate evil. He preserves the lives of his saints. He delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name. So Yahweh is subject throughout. And that one fits Hebrews a little better, it seems, than Deuteronomy. Yet commentaries prefer Deuteronomy, especially recent ones. Very smart people. That's not an insult. This isn't a mockery. Very smart people who are looking carefully, wrestling with these questions. They tend to think Deuteronomy is referenced here. Why? Well, first off, the Septuagint fits perfectly. Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 43. Let all the angels of God worship him. It just fits perfectly. Let me show it to you, though, because now we get into the sort of tangly mess of the Septuagint versus the English versus the Masoretic Hebrew. All right, when we look at. When we say the Septuagint, usually what we mean is we're talking about this, like, Greek translation of the Old Testament that was largely available to the early Church and they would have been using it. This is a crude way of saying it's complicated to shoot, but basically, that's it. They were often using and quoting the Greek Septuagint because the New Testament is written in Greek. Sometimes they provide their own translation or some other translation we don't. We don't have. But often they will quote the Septuagint, the Masoretic, however, that is the Hebrew manuscripts that we have that date back fairly long time. We're talking like 1000 A.D. 900 A.D. and then have been sort of verified through further research and more recent discoveries in the Qumran Caves. 1948, I think it was. They discovered those and have been still working through them even today. These help to verify, like, the veracity or the reliableness of these Hebrew manuscripts. Most of our Old Testament that you read in your Bible is coming from the Masoretic. Specifically, it's just quoting from the Hebrew sources. They're not quoting from the Qumran Caves. They rarely are looking at the Septuagint if they differ from the Masoretic, but sometimes they do. The ESV on your screen is an example of doing exactly that. And you'll see how in the Septuagint, the phrase, let all the angels of God worship him, that exists in the Greek, in the Hebrew, we don't have it. And then the esv, for instance, includes it, even though the ESV usually quotes from the Masoretic or the Hebrew. All that to say, why are they doing that? Like, NLT is another example. They're doing that because they have something of an eclectic approach to using manuscripts. They don't just go, these manuscripts are great. These ones are bad. Sometimes they'll read a manuscript and go, this manuscript's really good. But in this one verse, we think that these other manuscripts have a better reading than this particular one. And then they'll do an eclectic thing where they sort of grab and they weigh each reading, each verse, each line, each word. And it's a lot of work and would bore you to death if you actually had to listen to how they make those decisions. Textual criticism is somehow really exciting and horrifically boring at the exact same time. I don't really understand how that works, but it does. There is, however, one cool thing I'll tell you and try not to bore you too much about it. A Qumran manuscript. So, you know, thousand years before the Hebrew that we have available for most of our Old Testament, there's a discovery of, like, stuff that was, like, written around and before the time of Jesus that we get, boom. And what does it have? It has, in Cave 4 of the Qumran Caves, it supports the reading in Hebrews of Deuteronomy 32, or the reading that says, let the angels of God worship him. That is, there is this incredibly, incredibly old document that actually suggests maybe that is the original reading. And Deuteronomy 32 should have that verse in it, which adds credibility to the idea that Hebrews is quoting Deuteronomy 32. Now, you might be thinking, why do I care? Mike, you're boring me to death. First off, I'll say, I hear you. But I also think you should raise your tolerance for being bored a little bit, or else you'll miss out on some really great things. You could simply say, well, if Hebrews 1 is quoting Deuteronomy 32, I can bank on the authority of the New Testament that that is the correct reading. But you could be wrong. It might not be quoting Deuteronomy 32. So that. That could be a little sketchy, too. Let's say, if it is Deuteronomy 32 and not Psalm 97 that's being quoted, what does that mean? Well, it would mean that let the angels of God worship him should be in Deuteronomy 32, or it should be in our consideration in Deuteronomy 32. Because the holy Spirit inspired this to be quoted that way. And the question I have left is, how on earth is this about the sun? Because as I read Deuteronomy 32, and I won't read the whole chapter right now, but you read it and you go, where is it about the sun? This is very challenging to actually figure out. It's not clear in any way. Psalm 97 does have a lot of elements that speak of the sun. Even ancient rabbis thought it had Messianic stuff going on there. But Deuteronomy 32 is a little different. Most commentaries I've read don't even try to explain how Deuteronomy 32 is about the sun and how the angels are worshiping the sun. When it says, let the angels worship him, they don't even try to explain it. They go out. It's about the sun and we don't know why. Other commentaries, they actually will say it's not about the sun, it's just about Yahweh. And then you ask the natural question, if it's just about Yahweh, then why is Hebrews quoting it and saying it's about the Son? Is Hebrews doing something wrong in this passage? Is there something sketchy going on and the answer is going to be obvious? No, but let's make it more obvious. Let's help with the obvious part. It's possible that Hebrews one is trying to set up a big zinger. And the zinger goes like this. I'm going to quote a verse that you know is about Yahweh with no indication it's about the sun. I'm going to quote it as though it's about the sun. And then you're naturally going to think, hey, Hebrews author, the angels of God worshiping him, that's about Yahweh, not the Son. But then in verse 8 he will proceed to show you that Jesus is Yahweh. And then in verse 10 he'll do so in no uncertain terms identify Jesus as Yahweh. So this could be part of a wind up for a punch of the Son. He says, but he's not this, that's Yahweh. Ah, but the Son is Yahweh. Do you catch the logic there? That may be what's happening here. That would be my, my. What I would offer as a theory to just grant that if it's about Deuteronomy and not Psalm 97. The other option that we should very much consider is the possibility that it could be both. That this could be a compound quote that the author of Hebrew is thinking of Psalm 87 and Deuteronomy 32. And both of those elements are true. At the same time. We do get compound quotes in the New Testament. This did happen at the time. They were just very familiar with their Bibles. And so they would sometimes do this because they're seeing things in both passages that are relevant to the, to what they're saying. And so they're bringing them together so that you can see the symmetry and the unity that there is in the Scriptures. And that may well be the case. Maybe we shouldn't be picking between the two. The Old Testament quotes that we find in Hebrews or other places in the New Testament, they're often not what you expect. I just expected to say, here's the Son, let the angels of God worship him. It was more complicated than that. But it's not worse than that. It's just different than what you expected because sometimes we assume a little too much. So the point here then is that Jesus is worshiped by the angels as God, not just as some other validation object of worship. He is Yahweh being worshiped. This is against Arianism, modern Jehovah's Witnesses, or anybody who goes, well, I'll call Jesus deity, but he's not the same deity as the Father. They're related, they're close. They really like each other a lot. But you know, there's like this two separate deity type things going on here. That's not what the Bible teaches. The point of Hebrews 6, Jesus is God. He alone is worshiped. Now the next pair of quotes is Hebrews 1, verses 7 and 8. Let's read those and let's dig deep. Of the angels, he says he makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire. And I've always had questions about this verse. I think you probably have too, as you've read it. What does that mean? But of the sun he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. And it goes on to describe his righteousness and his kingdom. These are two quotes rightly brought side by side, because one's about angels, one's about the sun. Let's talk about the angels first. The angels are winds, ministers and flames of fire, showing their lesser beings who serve a greater purpose. Then you have the Son. He's enthroned. He's God. He's eternally exalted and ruling. He has his own kingdom. He is the ultimate being who is the purpose of all this stuff. Angels are by nature servants. The Son is by nature the ruling sovereign Lord. And that's what makes it amazing that he comes to serve his people. That that is a humbling thing, not his nature, that he's just a lesser being. The quote of Hebrews 1:7 is Psalm 104, verse 4. Let's look at that. Psalm 144. It says here he makes his messengers winds and his ministers a flame of fire. But I think that we should just look at a lot more of Psalm 104 and understand it better. The basic idea is that they are servants. We already said that. But let's look at verse three because it's kind of this cool poetic connection between three and four. It speaks of God saying, he lays the beams of his chambers on the waters. He makes the clouds his chariots. He rides on the wings of the wind. He rides on the wings of the wind. And then he makes his messengers, winds, and his ministers, a flaming fire. And messengers can be angels as well. That word can be angels. So he rides on them, so they serve him. They're for him. Their purpose is ultimately to serve him, their subordinate. But there's this cool connection riding on the wings of the wind. And then his messengers are winds. And his ministers are of course, also a flaming fire. That is, angels are to be heeded winds, meaning that they're like bringing benefit and health. Wind blowing is usually considered a positive thing. But then you've got them as also fire, which is the other side of the coin. They bring judgment, they can bring wrath. An angel can bring destruction. And so his angels are powerful, and they do bring incredible blessings, and they can also bring incredible curses. And Jesus, just as he's higher than angels, so the blessings and the curses, they're a lot bigger, too. And the wind, the breath of the Holy Spirit, the new life he gives you is amazing, but also the fire of judgment when he returns, that is also an amazing thing. And you want to listen to the Son. You don't want to take for granted anything about Jesus. So what's cool to know about Hebrews quoting Psalm 104 is that in Hebrews, we're comparing Jesus to angels. And in Psalm 104, it's a comparison of angels to God, specifically to God, and the elements and stuff that overlap. It only really makes sense if Jesus is God. But then it works as. Yeah, exactly. That's the point. Jesus is God. You should be blown away by this. The quote In Hebrews 1, verse 8 is from a different place. And in that passage we see, you know, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. That is Psalm 45, verses 6 and 7. Really interesting Psalm. This is something that's being said of the Son according to the book of Hebrews. And here it is. Your throne, o God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of righteousness. You've loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. This is one of those verses in the Old Testament that's like a total enigma as you read it. Why is somebody being called God, but also this being or whoever has a God? You're thrown, O God, therefore God, your God. And you might want to interpret it differently. You might want to try to argue with something different, and we'll talk about that in a second. But Psalm 45. The big picture of Psalm 45 is that it's a love song. It's a love song about the king. And the king is God's chosen one who comes to rule over all. And the one who is being discussed here is this king. Some great, amazing king. It's not real specific, but we know who it's about. Ultimately, it's about Jesus and the church. This sort of love song is being about Jesus in the church. So Tom Schreiner puts it this way. He says the author argues typologically, Jesus as the greatest king. The Davidic line in the old testament, Psalm 45 literally fulfills the words of the Psalm. That is the nature of the psalm. So we're going to read the whole Psalm, Psalm 45. Kind of cool to study a whole chapter because it was a verse that was referenced in the New Testament. I think that's exciting to do. We're going to do it right now. We're going to quickly breeze through it, but it'll be rewarding, I think. So Psalm 45. Here's the whole thing. My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the king. My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever. Okay, so there's a person, a king, being described, and he's the most wonderful one, and God has blessed him forever. Keep this in mind, that God's done stuff for him. Gird your sword on your thigh, oh mighty one, in your splendor and your majesty. You could think of the book of Revelation and its description there of Jesus and the sword in your majesty. Ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. I love that. Ride ye out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds. A metaphor for go out and do amazing things. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies. The peoples fall under you. That is part of the glory of Jesus Return is that he does deal with his enemies. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of righteousness. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. This is, I believe, addressing the king that's being described as being God. Your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia from ivory Places. Stringed instruments make you glad. Daughters of the king are among your ladies of honor. At your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. Hear, O daughter. You can think of the church here and consider and incline your ear. Forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty, since he is your lord. Bow to him. This picture of like how the church has left the world. We have left what we've known and that we may be joined to Christ and know him corporately as his bride. It's beautiful. The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts, the richest of the people. All glorious is the princess in her chamber with robes interwoven with gold, in many colored robes, she is led to the king with her virgin companions following behind her with joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. In the place of your fathers shall be your sons. You will make them princes in all the earth. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore nations will praise you forever and ever. So it takes this picture of this, like, king of Israel with this, like, special bride. And Hebrews is translating this over to Christ, who becomes the ultimate king of Israel. Who has the ultimate bride. It's not direct prophecy about Jesus, it's typology. Here's this truth in the Old Testament. And it's a picture, it's a drawing, it's an outline, it's an illustration of what Jesus is. It's a living metaphor. Neat stuff, neat stuff. Now, some people try to reinterpret that. They think it's not your throne, O God. God is your throne. Okay, so let me get you there, Hebrews 1:8. And it says here, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The reason why this is troublesome for people is because Hebrews clearly says it's of the Son that it's being stated and it says, your throne, O God. So the Son is being called God. They reinterpret this to say, but of the Son, he says, God is your throne. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. I'll just offer you the fact that most commentators and translations have it as your throne, O God. That is not just Christians, not theists, just most. Most people are like, the idea of translating it, God is your throne is not a smart idea. There's always somebody out there who's willing to translate it anything anyway and try to build a case for it and sound smart. But I'll just quote to you from FF Bruce he says about this, or I should say, yeah, let me read to you. This is the quote from FF Priest. It's quite unconvincing. And the idea that it's God is your throne forever. It's quite unconvincing. With this, which a scholar speak for. That's poppycock. Nigel Turner, another scholar, says that is a grotesque interpretation to translate these words, God is your throne. It's just embarrassingly bad. It's probably, for the most part, people who say that are doing so because they have some theological bent against the deity of Christ and they're trying to figure out how to get around this clear section of scripture that is so strongly teaching it. It's very trinitarian. And then it's even. Because we know it's of the Son. He says, your throne, O God. And then if it's of the Son, God, your God has anointed you, then we have him as God who is being anointed by God. This is trinitarian. This is trinitarian. It fits with this high and nuanced Christology of Hebrews, chapter 1. Jesus is God, but he's also the Son. It's neat stuff. It's like one of those Old Testament riddles. What do I mean by Old Testament riddles? Proverbs, chapter 30. One of my favorite ones. Proverbs 31. The words of Agora, the son of Jackah, the oracle. The man declares, I am weary, O God. I am weary, oh God, and worn out. I know that feeling. Surely I am too stupid to be a man and have not the understanding of a man. I know that feeling, too. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Now he's just acknowledging his foolishness by comparison to God and how little he really knows in life. And the older you get, the more you hopefully understand the reality of this. But in verse four, it asks these questions, and it's amazing. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name and what is his Son's name? Surely you know. See, the writer of Proverbs starts by saying, I'm a dummy. And then the reader is laughing like, well, I know a few things. And then he asks you these rhetorical questions that you don't really understand. Who ascended to heaven and came down? Not in the Old Testament. You don't know who that's talking about. Who's gathered the wind in his fist. Oh, that's probably God, right? He's wrapped up the water in his garment. That's probably God. But what do you mean ascended? Wait, what is his name? And what is his son's name? We do know now, not because we're wise, not because we're smart, but because it's been revealed to us that Jesus is the Son of God. This hanging idea that God has a son and you need to know his name. This is written in the Book of Proverbs. This is hundreds and hundreds of years before Christ was walking the earth. Jesus unlocks the Old Testament. Sometimes, however, it's not riddles. Sometimes the New Testament just comes straight out and says it that Jesus is God. John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. That's speaking of Jesus. In John 20:28, let me give you several verses here about the deity of Jesus. Thomas speaking to Jesus, says, my Lord and my God. He just straight up calls Jesus God. And Jesus does not seem to have a problem with this because it's actually true. Romans 9:5, another deity of Jesus verse. It says, to them belong the patriarchs, to the Jews, and from their race, according to the flesh is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. People try to reinterpret that to say something else, but that's actually what it means. And then Titus 2:13 says, we're waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Not our great God and our great Savior, no, our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ just calls it out very plainly. The Bible is not opposed to doing this. Second Peter 1:1, Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who've obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now this is a special Greek construction where it says our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, which has been thoroughly, thoroughly researched and shown that it does mean that there is one being, Jesus, who is God and Savior. It's not two separate beings. And that's the Greek of it. You can look it up and check it out on your own. You're welcome to do so, but it's pretty secure. People try to fight against it, but it's pretty secure. There's more in this quotation of Psalm 45, though, that we haven't talked about yet. Jesus is naturally enthroned as creator, we know that. But also he has earned it through his righteousness. That's what Hebrews talks about. So he's creator, He's Lord, he has eternal throne, but he's also earned it because of this righteous living. And that's what's also in Psalm 45. So here's the passage itself, and you can see the text on your screen, verses 6 and 7. So Jesus is then twice enthroned. This is a theme that the New Testament and the Old Testament have that's important to mention. This blows over people's eyes sometimes. The fact that Jesus, that the teaching of Christ and the identity of Jesus and some of his works and salvation stuff, that this is embedded in the Old Testament is deeply profound and an evidence for the inspiration of Scripture, for the existence of God, and for ultimately the truth of Christianity. It's very powerful stuff. Another cool tidbit I want to point out in Psalm 45 is this word anointed. And that word anointed is connected to the word Messiah. God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. He's the one who has the greater anointing, so to speak. Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one. That's actually. That's what the word Messiah means. Anointed Christ is the same word just in Greek, Christos. It means like one who is anointed. And so Christ is that one. And so we have this here, Even in Psalm 45, this sort of messianic element that's right there. And he's anointed beyond his companions. And this is of course, because Psalm 45, as well as Hebrews 1, is contrasting God with other beings, angels, humans, and ultimately Christ is so much better. So let's go back to Hebrews and look at the next quote, which is Hebrews 1:10 through 12. So in this passage, I highlighted earlier that it has the word Lord there, which means ultimately we're getting Yahweh. Yahweh is being indicated by this word. In Greek, it's the word kurios. But when you use it in an Old Testament quote, you're referring to Yahweh. What's interesting, though, is when you go to the Old Testament verse, Psalm 102, verse 25, you'll notice that the word Yahweh is not there of old. You doesn't say, lord, you lay the foundation of the earth. So the divine name is not in verse 25. And this causes some people to go like, why is it being added in Hebrews if it's not there in verse 25? This isn't. You could say it's a Septuagint issue. I mean, it is in the Septuagint. If I go to the Greek version, Psalm 102, you do get the word Lord there. And maybe he was just quoting that. But obviously Hebrews is trying to give us Jesus as Yahweh here. And Psalm 102, 25 doesn't have Yahweh in that verse. And this is where some push back and Jesus isn't Yahweh because it doesn't have Yahweh in that verse. It doesn't have it there. The Divine name is not present in that verse. This can. This is the problem here is you're not seeing the forest through the trees. You're not seeing the forest through the trees. Jesus is very much identified as Yahweh. Let me show you how you can see this in Psalm 102. We'll look at several verses. Let's start with verse 12. I'll back up, back up to verse 12. You, Lord, are enthroned forever. You are remembered. And then all the you's after this are speaking of Yahweh. There's the yahweh in verse 12. And then Yahweh continues to be the topic of discussion in verse 12. It's there in verse 15, it's got it again. Nations will fear the name of the Lord. Then in verse 16, for the Lord, Yahweh. See how those capital letters, that's the indication that the English people writers are giving you to know that it's the divine name. Then you get it again, not only in verse 15, in verse 16, you get it in verse 18. Then you've got the Lord who's being praised. You have it in verse 19, the Lord looked at the earth. Do you have it again in verse 21? The name of the Lord in verse 22. To worship the Lord. It's all about the Lord all the way through. So verse 25 is talking about the divine one, Yahweh. It's the same God that is being discussed throughout the rest of the chapter. So perhaps a reason, not only because the Septuagint, but a reason why Hebrews goes to the effort of making sure to write Lord there is because the author of Hebrews doesn't want you to miss the point. Jesus is being called Yahweh. Here, let me quote this verse that shows it. But let me make sure you know, this is about, this is about him. This is about the Lord. You need to know this. So it's inserted there to make it even more clear that it's about Yahweh. Let's not miss the point of this with Christology. In Christology, we sometimes look at the Old Testament and we think, where do I find Jesus in the Old Testament? And I love that research. It's fun, it's amazing, it's rewarding, it's deep, it's inspiring. But you're looking at passages and going, is this Messianic? Is this verse Messianic? Is this chapter Messianic? And that's a good question. But that's not the only question we can ask. Because anytime in the Old Testament you see God doing something. You don't just assume that's not Jesus. Rather, the New Testament is saying, jesus is that God. He is that God. And there are multiple passages in here. I'll put them on your screen that you can look up on your own, where the New Testament specifically identifies Jesus with Yahweh without it necessarily being a Messianic thing. It's Messianic by virtue of its connection to or its application to Jesus, but not the actual passage itself. So when you see Yahweh doing something, in a sense you see Christ doing that thing. You see him not in the identification of the Son, but in the fact that he is the one true God. We don't need it to be Messianic for it to. For it to have connection to Jesus. Then we have our last verse. Well, first let's look at it In Hebrews Hebrews 1:13, where it says, this is our last Old Testament quote. I should say there's one more, two more verses in Hebrews. Hebrews 1:13 says, and to which of the angels has he said ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. I will cover this a lot more later. But this is Psalm 110. Hebrews will bring it up several times. So I'm going to wait to do a deep dive on Psalm 110. But just know this is like a huge Messianic passage. Very specifically Messianic. Hi, how you doing? Kitty want to come up? We'll see if she comes up. You haven't seen the cat in a long time, you guys. She just comes up and meows at me and then runs away. So I don't know what she's do to going going to do today. Come on. So it says the Lord. There she is, says the Lord, said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion, rule in the midst of your enemy. Okay, I'll do this in a second. I know those of you who have been begging to see Moxie. She hasn't been around for a long time. Here's the cat, Cam. Here's Moxie. There she is. There's the kitty. How you doing, fuzzball? Hmm? Yeah. Yeah. How's it going? Okay. I hope she doesn't cause too much distraction for us here. Probably too late for that anyways. All right, that was a nice little study break. Back into it. Psalm 110. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter, rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely in the day of your power, in holy garments from the womb of the morning. The dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. And this is what Hebrews will get into a bunch later. You are a priest forever. After the order of Melchizedek, this amazing puzzle that makes sense. In Jesus, the Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. Second Coming stuff. He will execute judgment against the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the whole wide earth. Over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook, by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head. Tons of stuff here, Lots of poetic imagery that we're sometimes not comfortable with and often just don't understand, but yet it is amazing stuff, and it is very much about Jesus. So Hebrews quotes it, and it quotes it because it's trying to get at the fact that Jesus is Lord. This verse, I don't think in Psalm 110, verse 1, I don't think it's being quoted to try to demonstrate the deity of Christ. It's trying to be demonstrating the second coming, authority and judgment of Christ. This is kind of how Jesus used it. So check this out. The same psalm. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Look at how Jesus quoted this verse, Matthew 22:41. He's asking them. He's basically talking about his identity. Who is Jesus? Now, while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question. And you always know you're in for a good time. When Jesus is asking Pharisees questions, saying, what do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is he? They said to him, the son of David, which was not a Wrong answer. Right, but it's not a complete answer. Jesus is the Son of David, but is that all he is? So he says to them, how is it then that David in the Spirit calls him Lord, which affirms several things that David wrote the psalm. It affirms that he wrote it under the inspiration of the Spirit doctrine of inspiration of Scripture. And it affirms that this is about the Son of man or about Jesus speaking about himself, the Christian. So how does David call him Lord, saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. If David calls him Lord, how is he his Son? Riddle, riddle, riddle. You know, riddle me this, Pharisees. The idea is that Jesus is highlighting that while he is the Son of David, he is more than that. He is more than that. That's what Hebrews is getting at, showing you the exalted Christ, the amazing glories of Jesus from before creation till till second Coming. You're seeing the COVID pulled up so that you know how amazing Christ is that you might yield and listen to and obey Him. Then we get some angelology stuff in Hebrews chapter 1, verse 14. Speaking of angels, are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? We are temporarily below angels, but there's a sense in which there are ministers serving us, those of us who will be saved. They're being served by angels who we will eventually be over. We actually will rank over them because we're going to be partakers of the divine nature. Scripture says. That's the words in Scripture, not mine. Partakers of the divine nature. We are those who will inherit the kingdom, and we will join with Christ in ruling all things. And so not as if we are Christ, but with joining with Christ as his bride. And so we'll actually be over angels in the same way that the queen would be over the servants of the kingdom. So do you not know? We will judge angels, Scripture says. And that's the difference between Jesus and angels. Jesus, they're going to be looking even lower to us later on because we'll be exalted, but Christ will always be eternally glorious and forever high above. Then we have the last verse for today. This is where the application comes in. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. And Can I just speak application for a minute? Because of who Jesus is, you have to be very careful with how you handle him and how you handle the message you receive from him and the danger being discussed here is this idea of drifting away, not just dropping off a cliff. The picture is of drifting of one who is close to Jesus, one who is aware of the glory of Jesus, one who was once enthralled by the truth of Christ. One who used to think, I am amazed that God actually loves me and hears me and that he's forgiven me and washed me of my sins. But that person, now those are just distant memories. Those are things like, I know they're true, but they don't really penetrate me. That person has drifted. Sin has perhaps been piling up in the person's life. And maybe there's things they're doing now that they used to be. They would have a deep, deep burden of conscience about it. They would feel devastated. Now, not so much because they've drifted. They don't know how far they've drifted. All they know is it's pretty cold where I'm at now. I used to be really hot. This is what Hebrews is warning us against. Don't drift away. And you can set aside for a moment, please, the Whether they're. Is it once saved, always saved, or you're never really saved? It's not that it's not a worthy discussion. It's that we use that debate to distract ourselves from applying this stuff into our lives. Sometimes we'll spend our time talking about that. We're not asking, like, where am I at in my walk with Christ? So I would just encourage you right now, very seriously to consider, are you drifting away? Right. Are you gradually or slowly being carried along like a current of water? I remember when I was a kid playing in the beach. I live in California, so we go to the beach. Some of you have never been to a beach, so just know this, that a lake stays still. But the beach is almost like a real slow moving river. You know, the water's constantly moving along the riptide. You know, it's constantly pulling aside, pulling you left, pulling you right. Typically speaking, it's moving you down the beach. So if you're playing in the water and you're floating in the water, and you're a little kid, you'll look up and you don't see your parents there, right where you thought they were. You see them, they're way over there. And if you keep playing in the water now, they're way over there and you keep playing, they're way over there. And what you have to do is you have to continually come out of the water Walk back down, over to where your parents are and then get back in. And this is us in the world. We interact with the world all the time, we're engaging with the world all the time. But we have to continually get out of the world, have times of devotion with Christ, have times of getting together as the church, have times of worship, confession of sin, times of service to other people in the kingdom, times of prayer. You need time of all these things because you're kind of coming out of the water, you're re centering yourself on Jesus, and then you can sort of be prepared to get back into this drifting world to impact it, hopefully for the Lord. But watch out in case you're drifting away. I'm not here to condemn you or beat you up. There's this moment when you're. When I'd be playing as a kid at the beach where I would look up after a long time of playing in the water and I would see how far I had gotten from my parents. And sometimes it was really far. And then I was like, oh, I better do something about it right now. Wherever you're at in your walk, wherever you're at in your life, look up and see if you've drifted far from Jesus. And I pray, encourage you, go do the things you used to do that kept you close. Reset yourself, Ask God to soften your heart. If there's sin that you've committed that has become easy, that has become like, you don't even hardly feel bad anymore, that's a huge danger. This is threatening your very soul. You have to come back to Jesus, which means, lord, help me see the sin the way you see it. Help me draw near to you, start getting close to God in those very practical ways that you used to do naturally and spontaneously when you were closer before. So go back to the beginning. How are you really? Please do that. That's the point of Hebrews. It's not just who Jesus is, it's that you respond to this and that you heed the message. Hebrews 2. 1. We must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. So I pray that for you. Speaking of which, speaking of which, let's pray. Father, we thank you for the grace that we have in Jesus Christ. That right now is an opportunity for me, for the viewers, anybody who watches this a year, 10 years from now, to recenter their lives upon Christ, to repent again freshly for sins. And we ask you, Lord, we've just confessed our sins. All of our sins are drifting Our casualness that we have towards others, towards Christ, thinking that we know, treating Jesus as he's less than the Lord of all things, the glorious One, the righteous King. We repent of those things. We ask that you'd open our eyes to see where we're at and how far, if at all, we have drifted from you so that we can recenter our hearts and lives upon Christ. We mean it in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys for joining me for an epic, long, awesome Bible study. Not because I'm awesome, because the text of Scripture is awesome. And the integration of the Old and New Testament that we're seeing here, we just dug into some of it today. Of course there's more. You could study Hebrews 1 for the next five years if you wanted and probably be very rewarding. But we're going to move on to Hebrews 2 next time. It's going to be slow. The Hebrew study is getting really slowly. And just because I'm juggling a lot of other things that my ministry is doing, not only the Hebrew series, but a bunch of other stuff, which right now is also some victim advocacy for people who have been hurt by leaders who are not honoring Christ. And there's a lot more coming on that you'll see on my channel. Maybe it's already out, depending on when you watch this. But just know that I'm working. I'm just working on a lot of things. So appreciate your prayers for me as well. Thank you.