Hebrews
Lesson 10 April 21, 2005
NKJ Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of
our God stands forever."
Hebrews 1:2
We are not moving very quickly but
we are sinking the postholes very deep.
The reason is that these first four verses in Hebrews are jam packed
with goodies. Every clause says
something about what is coming up in Hebrews. If we lay the foundation well in understanding and unpacking
these first four verses, then when we hit verse 5 everything is going to make a
lot more sense. Once we hit verse
5, like a machine gun the author will quote one Old Testament verse after
another.
If you were going to do Hebrews
right, it would take years. You
would have to take every Old Testament reference from every Psalm and go back
to the original Psalm and the original context and exegete that whole Psalm to
make sure that you understand that particular verse. I have to do that.
I am not going to take the time to go through each and every one of
these Old Testament passages in that detail. There are over 80 references to the Old Testament in
Hebrews. We are not going to spend
the rest of our lives studying Hebrews.
But we have to nail some of this down at the very beginning.
Corrected translation of Hebrews 1
Vs 1 After God spoke in a variety of
fragments and in various forms in time past to the fathers by means of the
prophets
Vs 2 He has in these last days spoken to
us by Son who He has appointed the heir of all things; through whom also He
made the worlds
“Fragments” emphasizes the progressive
nature of revelation in the Old Testament. Adam had some.
Noah had some. This was written down and passed along to Abraham. Isaac
and Jacob each had different fragments of revelation. Moses and Joshua and Samuel and David and all down the line
through Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea, Joel and Amos all had
different fragments. Even when the
whole Old Testament was put together it was still wasn’t a sufficient
revelation. It was still fragmentary because the Lord had not come yet. Salvation had not been provided. The Messiah had not filled all of the
Messianic prophecies. So then we
have the New Testament.
Even Abraham is called a prophet in
Genesis. You have Abraham, Moses,
Samuel, and all the way down the line.
“By Son” emphasizes the quality of
the Son. “His” should not be
there. It is not in the original.
It is an anartharous noun indicating quality. The emphasis throughout Hebrews is the superiority of the
Son. Too many people think that is
the message of Hebrews. It is
not. It is the foundation of the
message. The revelation of the Son
surpasses everything in the Old Testament. This is about as far as we have gotten.
I want to back up a little bit
before we get into the heirship issue, the inheritance issue. We need to go back to the phrase “in
these last days”. This phrase
generates a certain amount of confusion and a certain amount of Hollywood type
speculation. We have a new
mini-series on television that keeps using the phrase “the end of days.” What are the last days? I briefly hit this and said that “last
days” was frequently used in the New Testament to refer to the entire Church
Age period. But I went back to do
some more work on it and ran across a great article by my friend Tommy Ice who
wrote on this. I called him up and
told him I thought he did a great job on the Doctrine of the Last Days. I told him I was going to steal it from
him and he said to go ahead. Then
we got to thinking about all the things that we steal from each other. He had
been using my work on covenants for years. We have spent so much time over the years talking to each
other and reading and writing different things that we don’t know who did what
any more. That is the beauty of
the body of Christ. You encourage each other. You learn from each other. Nobody has a corner on the truth or on doctrine. Some men have different specialties in
different areas where they are taught by the Holy Spirit. We have to be thankful for them and
benefit from them.
The phrase last days is used for the
entire Church Age period.
There are a number of different Biblical expressions that refer to the
end times. (There is a chart on the website.)
All of these terms are related to Israel. What we are going to see is that in Israel’s thought and in
the terminology related to Israel, all of these terms relate to the end of the
Jewish age and what they will go through in terms of judgments and in terms of
various disturbances that give birth to the Messianic Age. So we have one set of terminology that
is distinct to Israel. In Jewish and Old Testament thought, all of this turmoil
that we call the Tribulation takes place at the end of the present age in the
process of giving birth to the Messianic Age. We have the terminology birth pangs in numerous passages
related to the Tribulation period.
We must distinguish between the last days of the Church Age and the last
days of Israel’s tribulation.
All of these phrases refer to the entire Church Age. Folks ask if we are in the end
times. The question is, whose end
times?
NKJ Deuteronomy 4:30 "When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the
latter days, when you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice
Distress refers to the tribulation. “Latter days” is when Israel finally calls on the Lord.
Last time we got into a discussion
of the next phrase. The key phrase
referencing His Son with a relative clause in the next verse is “heir of all
things”. This is crucial topic to
understanding all of Hebrews. The
book of Hebrews is telling us what Jesus Christ is doing in the ascension and
session of Christ and why it is important to the Church Age believer today in
terms of Jesus Christ’s current ministry seated (not ruling or reigning) at the
right hand of God the Father interceding for the church and preparing us to
rule and reign with Him in the Millennial Kingdom.
I am going to tell you why I am
emphasizing that. Because one of
the weird things that has happened in recent years is there came out of Dallas
Seminary a new kind of dispensationalism that came to be known as progressive
dispensationalism. The reason they
call it progressive is this. (It
is complex, but we will make it simple.) We believe that Jesus Christ came at
the First Advent to establish the kingdom. He offered it.
It was rejected and postponed.
We are in no form of the kingdom.
Progressive dispensationalism teaches that Jesus inaugurated the kingdom
and it is gradually coming in down through the Church Age until it is fully
here at the end of the Church Age.
It is a progressive realization of the kingdom until He comes at the
Second Coming. They won’t reject a
pre-trib rapture but it is rendered inconsequential. One of the things they do is that they say that Jesus is now
(because He inaugurated the kingdom) sitting at the right hand of God on
David’s throne.
There are all kinds of problems with
that. One of them is that if Jesus is sitting on David’s throne ruling and
reigning now, then it destroys the significance of Jesus Christ’s current
session and intercessory ministry as a high priest and what He is doing for the
church. These things can be devastating
in their long-term impact on how you understand the Christian life. The
Christian life and what God is doing in your life in the Church Age is
preparing each of us to rule and reign with Him in the coming kingdom. It is directly related to what Christ
is doing seated at the right hand of God the Father and understanding the
importance of this inheritance doctrine in relationship to Christ and then in
relationship to us. There is
special provision in Romans 8 for believers in the Church Age who become joint
heirs with Christ.
Sometimes at the end of class I jack
it up into high gear. People out
there know what I am talking about.
A long time ago I learned something that is true from me. I was reading a short book that was way
over my head. I kept trying and I
kept trying. I would read the
first chapter. Then I would read
the second chapter. I just didn’t
get it. Finally I said that I was
just going to read it. When I got
to the end and I read the conclusion I realized how the parts all fit together
to reach the end conclusion. Then
I went back and read the book with meaning. You have to do that sometimes with books. Sometimes you have to read something
three or four times. Sometimes you
have to listen to a tape three of four times or more before you finally get the
details. What will happen is that
I will have a ten-point doctrine and I have 10 minutes left and I am on point
5. I rapid fire through the last
five points so that you can see where it is going. I try to build the point so that it is moving to a
conclusion. Then I come back the
next week and slow it down and go through it again. Now you know where we are going and you can get the overview. Then we go back and put all of the
pieces of the puzzle together and see where we are going. This is important because when we get
into the 5th verse and there is a quotation out of Ps 2:7. The understanding of the significance
of what the writer is saying by quoting Ps 2:7 is directly related to
understanding this heirship concept. Psalm 2:8 ties this together with heirship. All of this is crucial because it gives
each of us a totally new framework so that we understand where we are going in
terms of the coming heirship. Most
of you were taught that being an heir of God and the joint-heir of Christ in
Romans 8 were the same thing. I
showed you last week why they are not.
There are two different heirships. It is crucial to understand that in Hebrews
1.
“Whom” refers to the Son. The word for appoint is the aorist
active indicative of the Greek word tithemi. It refers to an act in the past. It doesn’t define when that act took
place. There are two views for the
timing of that appointment. The
first view is that it took place before the creation of the world. The second view is that His appointment
to this position as heir is related to the ascension and His being seated at
the right hand of God the Father.
That is the correct understanding of this passage. It ties directly to what we are
going to study in Psalm 2. Psalm 2
is one of the most important psalms for Christology in the entire Old
Testament. In Psalm 2 we
understand that there is a point at the ascension where a decree was made
related to the Lord Jesus Christ’s heirship. God the Father says, “I will make You the heir of all
things”. A decree is pronounced at
that point that doesn’t come to fulfillment until the Second Coming. So God promises that He will defeat His
enemies and make His enemies His footstool at the ascension. He says to sit down and wait. That is what is happening in the Church
Age. So God is doing something else almost like an end run to get around
Satan’s opposition. It was
something Satan never expected because the Church Age wasn’t revealed in the
Old Testament. So this appointment
took place at the ascension
The word for heir is the Greek word kleronomos. It indicates possession; one designated as heir. We think of someone dying and
bequeathing something. But God
isn’t going to die. The second idea
is the idea of possession or ownership.
NKJ Numbers 36:2 And they said: "The LORD commanded my lord Moses to give the land as an inheritance
by lot to the children of Israel, and my lord was commanded by the LORD to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters.
NKJ Numbers 36:7 "So the inheritance of the children of Israel shall not change
hands from tribe to tribe, for every one of the children of Israel shall keep
the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers.
This is an issue if you have daughters. What if they marry outside the tribe?
NKJ Numbers 36:8 "And every daughter who possesses an inheritance in any tribe of
the children of Israel shall be the wife of one of the family of her father's
tribe, so that the children of Israel each may possess the inheritance of his
fathers.
The Hebrew word nahala means
inheritance, heritage, or possession.
The point is that if the daughters inherit they have to marry within the
tribe so that the land stays within the tribe.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.
NKJ Joshua 14:8 "Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the
people melt, but I wholly followed the LORD my God.
NKJ Joshua 14:9 "So Moses swore on that day, saying, 'Surely the land where your
foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever, because
you have wholly followed the LORD my God.'
The point is that God gave the land to the Exodus generation
positionally. It was theirs
potentially. They failed to obey
at Kadesh Barnea so that generation could not enter the land and realize their
rewards. The same thing can happen
to believers today.
NKJ Genesis 17:14 "And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the
flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has
broken My covenant."
He would forfeit his inheritance.
NKJ Numbers 14:24 "But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and
has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his
descendants shall inherit it.
Remember that Caleb and Joshua were two of the 12 spies that spied out
the land. They were the only two
that understood that their marching orders were to go on a long-range
reconnaissance patrol to analyze the enemy’s fortifications and to come back
and make an accurate plan of attack.
It wasn’t to see if they could conquer them but to understand how they
were going to do it. God already
said that they were going to do it.
Everybody else thought that God wanted them to go to see if they could
do it. If you don’t interpret the
Word correctly you are going to end up forfeiting rewards.
NKJ Psalm 73:26 My flesh and my heart fail; But God
is the strength of my heart and my
portion forever.
NKJ Psalm 119:57 You are my portion,
O LORD; I have said that I would keep Your words.
NKJ Psalm 142:5 I cried out to You, O LORD: I said, "You are my refuge, My portion in the land of
the living.
This tells us that there are two
categories of inheritance. Get this straight. There is the inheritance for the
firstborn and the inheritance for every son. You have an inheritance for everyone which is the Lord and
you have special ownership in the land.
From the Old Testament you get this double-tier of inheritance - a
special privilege for those who trusted the Lord and carried out His commands
and then you have a lower level of inheritance that is for everybody that is
not tied to obedience. Now we take that and apply it to the Church Age. We see
the same thing. For the Church Age
Christ was given ownership of all things. That is what happens in Hebrews
1:2. He is appointed the heir of
all things. The believer can share in that ownership as a joint heir of Christ
only if we mature as believers. That joint heirship is conditioned or dependent
on something.
NKJ Romans 8:17 and if children then heirs of God, and joint heirs
with Christ if indeed we suffer with Him,
that we may also be glorified together.
The problem is that this verse has
been mispunctuated throughout the generations.
The verse says that if you are a
child of God, then you are an heir.
Then you have the next clause set off appositionally as if both terms
relate to children - heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. But you see there is a conditional
clause after it. I thought all I
had to do to be saved was to trust Christ as Savior. Do I have to trust Christ and suffer with Him? What do you mean here? Do I sit on a pillar out in the
wilderness for 7 years? There is a
mispunctuation.
Woman without her man is nothing.
You can do two things with this
phrase.
Woman,
without her man, is nothing.
Woman
without her, man is nothing.
One phrase says that man is nothing
and the other says that woman is nothing.
It all depends on where you put a comma. There are no commas in the original Greek. So it is crucial if you relook at
Romans 8:17 that we read
NKJ Romans 8:17 and if children then heirs of God, and joint heirs
with Christ if indeed we suffer with Him,
that we may also be glorified together.
Children being heirs of God is one
category. Every believer will have
a certain inheritance. We are all
going to have resurrection bodies. We will all participate in the
rapture. There is no partial
rapture. There will be no more
tears, no more sorrow and no more pain.
The old things will pass away.
That is true for every single believer. Every believer will have perfect happiness. But there are
going to be distinctions among believers some will have an inheritance as a
result of the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Some believers are going to have an inheritance. Some will forfeit that
inheritance. That is the purpose of this conditional clause.
Secondly, you are a joint heir of
Christ and you will co-rule and co-reign with Christ if you suffer with Him. We will also be glorified
together. Tie this in with
Revelation and the role of suffering.
Hebrews 2:10 talks about the fact that Christ had to learn by the things
He suffered. Jesus Christ, perfect
humanity and no sin nature, still had to learn. He had to go through that learning process by being
tested. He had to learn to obey
God fully. He never disobeyed God. He never sinned. He advanced to spiritual maturity
through testing. That is what we
are talking about here. We are not talking about the suffering of Christ before
the cross. We are not talking
about some situation where you are being persecuted. Christians get the idea they have to do something to suffer
for Jesus. Let me tell you that if
you are a believer and if you are walking by means of the spirit in this world
in the angelic conflict then you will come under certain categories of
suffering that God designs for your spiritual growth to test the doctrine in
your soul.. James 1:2-4. The
result of this is that we co-rule and co-reign with Christ and co-glorify
Him. All that is background to
simply understanding Christ’s heirship.
Christ is appointed an heir.
Now we understand that heirship means possession.
NKJ Galatians 4:1 Now I say that the heir, as
long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master
of all,
So inheritance was tied up with His Sonship. He is not appointed the Son. This is where you get into some
confusion. Did it happen before the creation of the world or after? He is not appointed heir in terms of a
formal ceremony until the ascension.
Ps 8:5 tells us that man is placed under the authority of a man. This is why it has to happen at the
ascension. Jesus in His humanity ascends and sits at the right hand of God the
Father. It is at that point that
God tells Him to sit at His right hand until He makes His enemies a footstool. In
that process He will bring all of creation under the authority of Jesus Christ
so that a man finally fulfills His destiny and rules creation. It all comes together.
Col 1:20 says that Christ reconciled all things to God. Not just you and me, all things. Why all things? Because everything was separated from
God as the result of Adam’s sin.
When Adam sinned it didn’t just separate man spiritually from God (that
was the penalty of sin) but it reverberated through all of creation. Before the fall you didn’t have rain,
tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, disease, or antagonism in the animal
kingdom. When you look at Isaiah
65 this is a condition in the millennial kingdom once again. The lion will eat straw. The lion and
the lamb will lie down with each other.
When the wolf looks at the lamb, he doesn’t see lamb chops. When the
child plays outside, he can stick his hand in the cobra’s den. All of that is true once again in the
Millennial Kingdom. That is because Jesus Christ is restoring and reconciling
all things. Reconciliation has to
do with bringing all things back in line with the standard. That standard got violated and broken
when Adam ate the fruit. So, all
of this connects. It is like
pulling a bunch of different threads together and seeing that the plan of God
is complex, but it is simple. The
bottom line is that Jesus is the appointed heir at the time of the ascension
and all of this builds to a point that He is the ruler of all things that He
reconciled at the cross in order to fulfill man’s originally intended
destiny.
The next phrase is loaded with
meaning. “Through whom He also
made the ages.” That brings us
into an understanding of dispensations.
Just to close with a little
anecdote, I was talking with Tommy today and he has had a great opportunity to
teach at Criswell University in Dallas.
It was named after W. A. Criswell who was a pastor there for 55
years. The school used to be
pretty solid. It used to be
dispensationalist. But Tommy taught and said that most of their professors like
many other places have bought into progressive dispensationalism. So Tommy presented a case for
traditional dispensationalism and none of the students had ever heard anybody
present a case for traditional dispensational theology. Tommy likes to stir the pot a little so
he told them that progressive dispensationalism flows out of a post-modern
mindset. He had 5 or 6 people who
said that they had professors who were conservative fundamentalists. How could they be post-modern? What has
happened in the whole hermeneutic scheme is that everything has gone down to
hermeneutics. Whether you are talking about the Supreme Court or activism it
boils down to how you interpret something. Interpretation has become the big battleground today. How do
you interpret what people mean? In
the last 20 years was the development of complementary hermeneutics. The bottom
line on it is that they started using this terminology that the pre-understanding
of the person controls. We all know that if you are a Catholic you read the
Bible in terms of your Catholic framework. But all of a sudden in you are being led by the Holy Spirit
and applying hermeneutics, it is going to change your previous biases. But today whether you are talking about
law or theology, they are moving that background into the hermeneutic spiral. Now, no one can break out of it. If you
are a dispensationalist, it is because you have a pre-dispensational
understanding. The reason you are covenant is because you have a pre-covenant
understanding. If you are a
liberal it is because you have a pre-liberal understanding.
What does that mean? There is no
objective truth that can change your previous understanding of anything whether
it is the law or politics or whatever.
This is post-modernism.
Ultimately you can’t understand reality as it is. Therefore there are
not absolutes in law. There are no
absolutes in theology. There are
no absolutes in the study of the Bible because everything is subjectivized by
your pre-understanding. It
incorporates almost fatalism.
After Tommy explained that to the students they understood and gave them
a cause to think. Nobody is out
there today teaching consistent literal hermeneutics and consistent traditional
dispensationalism. That is why this is so important. It is important to understand because it impacts how you
view Israel.
We have to remember that as good Texans, Israel is the other lone star state.