“God has spoken” (Hebrews 1:1-4)

Central to our Christian faith is the conviction that our God is a God who speaks. The first picture that the Bible gives us is one of chaos and emptiness. And into that emptiness God speaks: “Let there be light.” And no sooner were those words spoken than the Bible tells us there was light.

So it continues over the six days of creation: “God said…”, “God said…”, “God said…” And each time we hear the refrain, “And it was so.” “And it was so.” And it was so…”

Our psalm this morning affirms that God’s voice, which brought everything that is into being—from the farthest reaches of the universe to the tiniest subatomic particle—continues to echo through his creation:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
     the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
     night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
     no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
     their words to the ends of the world…

The vastness of the night sky, the daily warmth of the sun: these and a countless array of natural phenomena all work together to reveal the God who is behind them. “Lord, our Lord,” we read elsewhere in the Psalms, “how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.” (Psalm 8:1)

John Polkinghorne, who enjoyed a long career as a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, would agree. He has written,

The universe, in its rational beauty and transparency, looks like a world shot through with signs of mind, and, maybe, it’s the ‘capital M’ Mind of God we are seeing … an origin in the reason of the Creator, who is the ground of all that is.[1]

If John Polkinghorne observed God’s creation from a macro-level, Francis Collins has investigated it on a micro-level. He is the geneticist who led the team that sequenced the human genome. He has observed, “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.”[2]

Is it any wonder then that Jesus used the things of nature to unfold the secrets of the ways of God? A mustard seed that grows to be the largest of garden plants, a measure of yeast that is folded into a lump of dough to make it rise, the buds on a fig tree announcing that summer is near, a cloud rising in the west heralding rain, the lilies of the field more beautifully arrayed than King Solomon in all his splendour…

Yet studying the phenomena of the natural world can lead us only so far. Job acknowledged this way back in the Old Testament. After reflecting on the remarkable works of God’s creation, he proclaimed,

These are but the outer fringe of his works;
     how faint the whisper we hear of him!
     Who then can understand the thunder of his power?
(Job 26:14)

So, as we move into the latter half of Psalm 19, we find that there is an additional, fuller, way in which God has chosen to reveal himself, and that is through the words of Scripture:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
     refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
     making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
     giving joy to the heart.…
They are more precious than gold…
they are sweeter than honey…
     in keeping them there is great reward.

Classic Christian teaching has always acknowledged that God addresses us both through his creation and through his divine word. One of the basic formularies of the Christian Reformed Church is the Belgic Confession, written in 1561. Here is what it says about the ways in which God reveals himself:

We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity… Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly by his holy and divine word, as much as we need in this life, for God’s glory and for our salvation.

Creator

All of which brings us to the opening verses of the letter to Hebrews, from which we read these words a few moments ago: “In many fragments and in many fashions in the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets,”—and here comes the critical word—“BUT in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son.”

Yes, God reveals himself through his creation. Yes, God has revealed himself through the words of his prophets. But it is in Jesus that we find God’s fullest and final revelation. Then the author (who is anonymous) goes on to list a series of astounding claims as to why this is so—why we look to Jesus as God’s ultimate expression of himself. I think we can summarize them under three headings.

The first is “Creator”. Somewhere along the way, as they walked with Jesus (and I suspect it was at a different point for each of them, or perhaps more accurately through a whole series of experiences) those first companions of Jesus came to the conclusion that this man, though made of flesh and blood as they were, was also something more—considerably more. Dare I say, infinitely more?

We see it in the gospels when Jesus asked them, “Who do people say I am?” The answers quickly rolled out. “Some say John the Baptist,” said one. “Others say Elijah,” piped up another. “And there are others who say you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” added yet another. Then Jesus looked them in the eye. “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” It’s not there in the gospels, but I always imagine a long silence at this point, until Peter, who seems always to have been the first to speak, blurted out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16).

The events that followed Jesus’ crucifixion only served to heighten and confirm this growing conviction. “My Lord and my God!” were the astounded Thomas’ words as he gazed on the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side (John 20:21). And as Jesus met with his followers for the final time, Matthew tells us that they worshipped him (Matthew 28:17).

So it is that scarcely a generation after all these events the apostle Paul could write to the believers living in Colossæ,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)

Radiance

We look to Jesus, then, as a participant with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the creation. To add to this, the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”. That word “radiance” is found only in this one place in the New Testament. It is related to the word for dawn. So the picture we are given is of the clear brightness of the morning sun with its spreading rays gleaming over the eastern horizon, bringing light to a world that has been shadowed in darkness.

Yet even that image fails to convey anything like the fullness of the radiance that is found in Jesus. What we are talking about here is nothing less than the shekinah glory of God. It is what Moses witnessed as he stood before the burning bush. The Bible tells us that he had to hide his face because he was afraid to look at God (Exodus 3:6).

Many years later, as he met with God again on the peak of Mount Sinai, Moses made a bold request—that God would show him his glory. To this the Lord replied, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:18-20)

Such is the indescribable radiance of the glory of God. And that is the radiance that we find in Jesus. “No one has ever seen God,” writes John in the introduction to his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God, who is closest to the Father’s heart, has made him known” (John 1:18).

Peter, James and John caught a momentary glimpse of that radiance as they stood with Jesus on the mount of the transfiguration. The gospels tell us that there Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white, as bright as a flash of lightning.

The apostle Paul observed that when Moses returned from God’s presence to meet with the people, the change in his face was such that he had to cover it with a veil. “But,” Paul adds, “whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away… And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is impossible to experience the radiance of Jesus and not find ourselves being profoundly changed.

Sacrifice

The picture of Jesus that the letter to the Hebrews gives us, then, is a glorious and exalted one: Jesus the mighty author and sustainer of creation; Jesus, the pure radiance of God’s indescribable glory. You might think there would be nothing left to say, but there is. And that is this: that this same Jesus came into our world for one purpose—to bring us purification from our sins.

Jesus, whose power brought galaxies into being, emptied himself of all power to offer up his life for you and for me. Jesus, whose radiance shines into eternity, willingly submitted to the ugly darkness of the cross. As Graham Kendrick has put it in the words of his powerful hymn, “hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered…”

This is the message that rings through the entire thirteen chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews. Indeed it has been described as the crimson thread that runs through the whole of the Bible. “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” wrote the apostle Paul to his fellow believers in Corinth (1 Corinthians 2:2). And again, to the Galatians, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

One of the last pictures that the Bible gives us is of a vast crowd of people—women and men and children beyond counting, from every tribe and nation, race and language. They stand around the throne of the Lamb of God and together their numberless voices thunder,

Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10)

Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise! (Revelation 5:12)

From its opening words to its last, the letter to the Hebrews is a call to worship, but not just the formal worship that we offer here on Sunday mornings (although that is a vital part of it). It is the worship of a heart overwhelmed with gratitude to the Lord of all creation, who shines with the pure radiance of the uncreated God, and who has trodden the road of pain and death, and by his sacrifice to claim for himself the likes of you and me.

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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[1]     Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, 25

[2]     The Language of God, ch 10

“The God who knows us” (Psalm 139)

It was my original intention this morning for us to look together at the Old Testament passage we read a few moments ago: the story of Samuel’s first encounter with God. The narrator opens the account with an observation that has to be one of the saddest statements in all of the Bible: “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1). Generations had elapsed since the time of Moses and the great events of the exodus. The voice that had thundered from the peak of Mount Sinai was scarcely a faint echo from the past. The worship of the tabernacle had degenerated into a hollow ritual. And the great moral principles that had made them unique among the nations had largely slipped from the people’s collective consciousness.

From this sad overview of the spiritual state of the nation of Israel the camera focuses in on a young lad fast asleep in the large tent structure that served as the centre of Israel’s worship. And in the stark silence of the night we hear a voice: “Samuel!” The young lad stirs, sits up, rubs his eyes and answers, “Here I am.” He gets up and runs to his master, the aged priest Eli. “You called me?” he asks. But the old man replies, “It wasn’t me; go back to bed.”

A second time it happens. “Samuel…” A second time he gets up and goes to the old man. And a second time he is sent back to his bed. He has barely fallen asleep when it happens again: “Samuel!” But this time the old priest has begun to figure out what’s going on. It’s all rather like what we read in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Narnia has been trapped in winter almost since anyone can remember, as suddenly the snow starts to melt, buds appear on the trees, and spring flowers begin to sprout and blossom. “Aslan is on the move!” So old Eli instructs the lad, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” Back to his bed the young Samuel goes—and sure enough the Lord comes to him again, “Samuel! Samuel…”

You know me

And this brings me to Psalm 139, which begins with the words, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me…” I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that God knows us. After all, he is the creator of the universe! Several weeks ago Karen and I watched the film Citizenfour. It centres on the story of Edward Snowden and how government agencies in our western nations are increasingly able to snoop on seemingly every detail of our lives. 1984 is long in the past, but it appears that George Orwell’s catchphrase, “Big Brother is watching you,” has become a reality—and for many of us, who value our privacy and our freedom, it can be a frightening one.

So what does the psalm mean when it says, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me”? Well of course it includes the idea that God knows all about us. He knows what’s in our emails and our bank accounts. He knew our DNA long before Francis Collins and others were able to map the human genome. Furthermore, the psalm tells us he knows what’s going on inside our hearts and minds—and that can be a scary thought! But all of that is not the point. For the Hebrew verb “to know” is not just about knowing facts. It is about knowing someone personally, having a relationship with them.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” the Lord says tenderly to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). When Jesus speaks to his followers about his being the good shepherd, he tells them, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15). So what we are talking about here is a personal knowing, an intimate knowing. To my mind we see it most poignantly in that scene outside the empty tomb on the first Easter morning. Mary Magdalene has come with her pounds of spices to anoint the body of Jesus. But the stone has been rolled away and the body has gone. Through her tears and the morning mist she sees a figure whom she mistakes as the gardener. “Tell me, sir,” she says to him, “where you have put him.” Then she hears the word that changes her life forever: “Mary…” (John 20:11-16)

“Mary…” “Adam…” “Emily…” “Alvin…” “Kewoba…” “Lolita…” “Gil…” “Brian…” “Samuel…” The Lord does not look on us only as a collectivity. He knows each of us by name. He knows our highs and our lows, our joys and our sorrows, our strengths and our weaknesses, our dreams and our secret fears—not to use them against us, but to come alongside us and to strengthen us along the journey of becoming the women and the men that he has created every one of us uniquely to be. And with that I have already arrived at my second point.

You hold me fast

That personal, intimate knowing of our hearts on God’s part inevitably leads to something more. So it is that we read in verses 9 and 10,

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
     if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
     your right hand will hold me fast.

When we read these words we need to remember that ancient near-eastern cultures gave particular significance to the right hand as opposed to the left. The right hand is the strong hand. The right hand is the useful hand. The right hand is the hand of blessing. It is for this reason that through Isaiah God promises the people of Israel, “Do not fear, for I am with you… I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). By the same token, when Jesus spoke about being struck on the right cheek, what he was referring to was a slap from the left hand, and that was a grievous affront. It was quite literally to add insult to injury. And so when we are failing or falling, it is with his right hand, the hand of strength, the hand of blessing, that God graciously reaches out to us and lifts us up and puts us in the place where we should be.

The apostle Paul expressed it memorably those magnificent verses in the eighth chapter of Romans when he wrote,

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39)

The late Scottish theologian T.F. Torrance hit the nail on the head in an illustration that I have found myself going back to again and again. He wrote,

Many years ago I recall thinking of the marvellous way in which our faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus Christ and grasped by his faithfulness, when I was teaching my little daughter to walk. I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand but upon my strong grasp of her hand which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely how God’s faithfulness actualized in Jesus Christ has hold of our weak and faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand.[1]

Torrance’s fellow countryman, the hymn writer George Matheson, put it lyrically in the successive verses of his hymn of 130 years ago: “O love that wilt not let me go… O light that followest all my way… O joy that seekest me through pain…”

As we read in the psalm, there is nowhere we can go, whether to the heights of ecstasy or to the depths of despair, or to the farthest place imaginable, that our gracious God is not able to reach out his hand to us and take us firmly into his grasp—and as we look at that hand we see on it the mark of a nail and the stain of his blood.

You lead me

All of these observations take us in the end, and as they should, to a prayer:

Search me, God, and know my heart;
     test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
     and lead me in the way everlasting.

If there is nothing else that we can learn from the verses of this psalm it is that we have a God whom we can trust to lead us through life, and trust to the uttermost.

Yet we would be horribly mistaken if we thought for one minute that following him turns our lives into a cakewalk. That is the false message being promulgated by the purveyors of the so-called “health, wealth and prosperity gospel”. The true gospel—and our faith—centres in the one who proclaimed, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” (Luke 9:23) and who warned those same followers, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). A couple of generations later one of those followers would reiterate the same warning: “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:13).

The Letter to the Hebrews dedicates an entire chapter to the stories of those who chose to follow God’s leading. It tells of some

who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated… They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:35-40)

Torture, floggings, stoning and imprisonment! All of this seems like a rather discouraging note on which to end a sermon. And it would be, were it not for two things: the companion and the destination. We have a God who promises, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Do you remember the story of Daniel’s three companions whom King Nebuchadnezzar commanded to be thrown into a blazing furnace for their refusal to bow to a graven image? When the king looked into the furnace, he saw not three men but four. They trusted in God’s promise,

Do not fear, for I am with you;
     do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
     I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

And were not Jesus’ final words to his followers before he departed this world, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20)?

When we come to the end of that journey (where the Lord has been with us at each step along the way) it will be to arrive at a destination to which nothing that we have ever experienced in this world can compare. It will be to set foot in the new Jerusalem, the very dwelling place of God, where God himself will be with us and we will know his unmediated presence, where he will wipe every tear from our eyes; where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away and everything will have been made new (Revelation 21:3-4). And our only possible response will be,

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!” (Revelation 19:6-7)

Amen.

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[1]     The Mediation of Christ, page 83