A Word about the Greatest Revelation

Today I want to share a word about the Greatest Revelation as I comment on Hebrews 1:1-3. 

We are begin a series of sermons I am calling the Greatest of All Time. That’s the assertion of the writer of Hebrews: Jesus is the Greatest of All Time.

Have you ever been the Greatest of All Time at something? I haven’t, though I might have had the opportunity. The main process by which this came my way was through my service as an Army chaplain. Consider these numbers:

• In a nation with a population of 330 million, I was one of a million members of the Armed Forces when I retired.
• I also was one of 3,000 chaplains across the three components of the US Army.
• I was one of 700 National Guard chaplains.
• I was one of 54 state chaplains.
• Before that I was one of 7 Special Forces Group chaplains.
• At that time I was one of only two National Guard Special Forces Group chaplains.

So, I was blessed, but was I the greatest ever? No! By some measures I wasn’t even the greatest chaplain among those with whom I served in the Alabama National Guard. Two of the chaplains who were junior in rank to me were chosen to attend the US Army War College and I was not. I was good enough for government work, I guess, but was I the greatest? No, not at all.

Even if someone is the greatest of all time at something, that doesn’t mean you want to be the greatest at it. The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip, gave up a very promising naval career when Queen Elizabeth took the throne. Reportedly that was a difficult pill for him to swallow, but Prince Phillip threw himself into his royal duties with diligence, including being present at the unveiling of thousands of plaques during the dedication of untold numbers of buildings and the like. In fact, he claimed to be the greatest unveiler of plaques in the world.

In our text for today, we will see that Jesus is the Greatest Revelation of God. Let’s read Hebrews 1:1-3.

Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. God has appointed Him heir of all things and made the universe through Him. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

The Revelation of God:

The writer of Hebrews begins matter-of-factly with what is an amazingly bold statement: God has spoken to us!  What an amazing blessing!

Conversation has a powerful impact on our lives because it reveals what is in our hearts. When conversation fails, communication fails.

My dad was a powerful influence on my life, but he was not a great conversationalist. I have ridden with him for hours, side-by-side in a car, and he never said a word. Often, when I would call home, he’d answer the phone, and almost immediately say, “Here’s your mother,” and hand her the phone. Still waters run deep, but they also can obscure what is at the bottom. I always knew my dad loved me, but I rarely knew what he was thinking or what he was feeling in his heart.

The Mandinka people of West Africa have many pithy sayings, and one of them goes something like this,

When two people converse, everything hidden under the bed is revealed.

Not only does God speak with us, He works hard at it! In Romans 1, Paul taught us that there is enough revelation in the natural world to tell us that God exists, and that right and wrong exists. That’s probably why, many, many years before the Mosaic law was given, that we see that Job made offerings to God for His family. God had revealed Himself through the natural world to Job.

This same thing happened within my family. I have a brother-in-law who is literally a genius. He qualified for membership in the Mensa Club, but he didn’t bother with applying. He had not been raised in church, and if he was not an atheist, he was at least an agnostic. That is, until he witnessed the birth of his first child, after which he said that there must be a God. Then he became a professing Christian.

Yet, our God leaves nothing to chance. He not only speaks by His actions, but also through His words.

• He spoke with Adam and Eve face-to-face in the Garden.
• He spoke with Abram in the Ur of Chaldees.
• He spoke with Sarah and with Hagar about their children.
• He spoke to Moses from a burning bush.
• He spoke to Elijah in a still small voice.
• He spoke to Samuel in a dream and to Isaiah in a vision.
• He spoke to Mary through an angel.

If we want to know what is on God’s mind and what is on God’s heart, He will not hide from us. James 1:5 tells us.

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him.

God speaks, and things happen. God speaks and He challenges us. God speaks and He comforts us. God speaks, and He reveals Himself to us in a personal way. 

The good news for us is that we don’t have to wonder about what’s on God’s mind and what’s on God’s heart. He tells us!

The Radiant Representative of God:

How can we come to know someone?  One way we can learn about someone is through their writing. When someone writes, they reveal what they want us to know. The subjects that they write on, the words they use, how they turn a phrase, all of these things give us insight into a person. It is a limited insight, but it is insight.

We also can learn about someone through what other people say about them, but that’s not always reliable. James Corden said,

Sometimes you can have a reputation for not being relatable and nice because you had a bad day once.

Coach John Wooden said,

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think that you are.

Historians often have the last word, so much so that one military historian reportedly told a general he was interviewing to be careful what he said, “Because what I write will make you or break you.” To another officer he reportedly said, “What I write about you will follow you for the rest of your career.”

We can learn about someone through observing their work. Scholars will study the paintings and sculptures of artists, and they make conclusions about them. Sadly, this is the same thing that retired Federal Bureau of Investigations criminal profiler John Douglas has said about serial killers. To know the mind of killers, he studied their work at the scene of the crimes.

We can learn about   through their pattern of life. This is the way that hunters find deer to harvest. They observe where and when the deer move, and then they ambush them. Again, the same is true in warfare. That’s why when I was in Iraq, I never felt I was in any real danger, even though we would go “outside the wire,” or leave our secure base, several times a month. We never knew when our commander needed to go see one of his units, and if we didn’t know our own schedule, the insurgents couldn’t know it either!

In today’s world we can watch people on television, or on the internet, and we can hear them speak and interact with others. This can make us think we know them and even think that we have a relationship with them. That’s what John W. Hinckley Jr. thought about actress Jodie Foster, and that’s what prompted him to shoot President Ronald Reagan to get her attention. Of course, he was deluded, and we delude ourselves if we think that we can truly know someone by watching them on video.

The best way to know someone is to meet them in person. I once did a funeral for a former US Marine who was a Vietnam veteran, and to my surprise, Dale Dye, a former Marine and actor was in attendance, He was not nearly as big of a person as he seemed to be on video. On the other hand, I once met a National Football League offensive lineman. I have always been a big boy and one of the tallest people in the room, but this fellow was massive!  Now I know why football officials look so small. They are just normal sized people!

Jesus came so that we might see God more fully. Philippians 2:5-8 tells us about this.

Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage.  Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.

Because God wants to know us and to be known by us, He sent His very best to us so we could see Him in person. He sent us Jesus, who the writer of Hebrews said was the exact expression of God’s nature.

From the fall of Adam and Eve to the first Christmas, only a few people ever saw God face-to-face. All that changed when Jesus came, and God Himself walked on the earth. In John 10:30, Jesus said, “The Father and I are one,” and in John 12:45 He said, “If you have seen me, you have seen my Father who sent me.”

Because Jesus was the exact representation of God, He was radiant. 

I remember nervously standing at the altar with my pastor on the day of my wedding and waiting to see my wife-to-be enter the chapel and walk down the aisle. I have never before or ever since seen such a beautiful sight. In our lives together, we have seen many wonderful vistas of God’s creation, from rainbows in Hawaii to the deep blue waters of the Caribbean Sea to the mountains of Scotland, yet even such stunning sights as those pale in comparison to the radiance of God, as witnessed through Jesus.

Acts 1:8 tells us we will be witnesses to Christ, in much the same way that Christ was the witness to the nature of God. The question for us is, are we radiant representatives the way that Jesus is? That’s a tough question.

The good news for us is that we don’t have to wonder about what God is like. All we have to do is look at Jesus!

The Reliability of God:

It is comforting to know that God reveals Himself to us and that what He reveals about Himself is wonderful. But God is not all show and no go. We can rely upon our God to be present with us and active in our lives

Some theologians recognize a creator God, but that is as far as their understanding of God takes them. These people ascribe to the theology of Deism, which says that God made the world and then took His hands off it, the way a child will spin a top, and then stand by to see where it goes and how long it stays up right. This is not an accurate understanding of the God who reveals Himself to us through His creation, His Word, and His Son.

Our God is intimately involved in our world, and He has demonstrated that throughout history. For example:

• He personally walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden and He protected them from eating of the Tree of Life and living forever in sin.
• He confused the languages of people at Babel, and He purified the earth by the Flood.
• He, by His own hand, closed the door of the Ark so that Noah and his family could be saved.
• He called out Abraham, and He walked with Isaac and He wrestled with Jacob, and He made Joseph the prime minister of Egypt.
• He called Moses from the burning bush and sent him to deliver the Children of Israel from slavery and to take them to the Promised Land.
• He gave Moses the Law so that the people would know how to live blessed and attractive lives together that honored God.
• When His people turned against Him, God sent judges to save them from themselves, and prophets to teach this His Word and His way.
• He even allowed His people to have kings, though that had very mixed results. That’s not God’s fault; it wasn’t His idea!
• He sent His Uniquely Begotten Son to save us from our sins, and He sent the Holy Spirit to write His law on our hearts.
• He created the church to finish the job of blessing the world that He started with Abraham, and He promised to be with us until the end.
• Finally, He promised to come for His people and to create a New Heaven and a New Earth for us to live with Him in eternity.

So, is our God distant and detached from His world and His people? No not at all. Just thinking of the partial Biblical record above is exhausting! Yet, God is still active, and He is still with us, sustaining His creation until the end.

What about us? Have we not seen God working in our lives? Of course we have, and what the writer of Hebrews tells us, and what the Bible record tells us, is that we can count on that to continue!

The good news for us is that we don’t have to wonder if God is with us. All we have to do is look at Jesus!

The Restitution of God:

Have you ever searched for a solution to a problem but were frustrated at every turn?  Few of us have the positive attitude that Thomas Edison had when he struggled to invent the light bulb. He famously said,

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Have we tried to solve our spiritual problems and found 10,000 ways that won’t work?  Of course we have. 

Have we tried to solve our relationship problems and found 10,000 ways that won’t work?  Of course we have. 

Have we tried to solve our emotional problems and found 10,000 ways that won’t work?  Of course we have. 

What we need is someone to help us, someone to guide us, someone to solve our problems. Jesus reveals to us that He is the one who can do that, and in fact He is the only one who can. As the lyrics to the worship song go,

God will make a way where there seems to be no way,
He works in ways we cannot see, He will make a way for me.
He will be my guide, hold me closely to His side,
With love and strength for each new day He will make a way. 
He will make a way.

Notice that Jesus is sitting down. That means His work for us was completed. This is revealed in His last words from the Cross in John 19:28-30,

After this, when Jesus knew that everything was now accomplished that the Scripture might be fulfilled, He said, “I’m thirsty!” A jar full of sour wine was sitting there; so they fixed a sponge full of sour wine on hyssop[a] and held it up to His mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” Then bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.

A little later in Hebrews we will see this fact again. Hebrews 4:9-11 says,

Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. For the person who has entered His rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from His. Let us then make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience.

The good news for us is that we don’t have to work to earn the forgiveness of God or wonder if we have done enough to appease Him. All we have to do is embrace what Jesus did for us!

Conclusion:

Do we want to commune with God? Do we want to see God act in a personal way in our lives? Do we want to find rest from our cares, and fears and sorrows? Do we what to find healing and forgiveness? Then we should look to Jesus! We will see all of these things and much more in Him!

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt