"Greater Than Angels: Jesus the Son" Sermon: Hebrews 1:4-6

“Greater Than Angels:  Jesus the Son”

[Hebrews 1:4-6]

January 22, 2012 Second Reformed Church

            Angels exist, and angels are powerful.  What do you believe about angels?

            The television picture of angels in “Highway to Heaven” and “Touched by an Angel” and other such pieces, portray angels as beings that help us.  They almost are conceived as wish-granters – another type of leprechaun or fairy.

            The first century Jews and Christians believed in angels, as well. 

            At Stephen’s martyrdom, he accused those who were about to stone him:  “you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it” (Acts 7:53, ESV).

            And Paul wrote, “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary” (Galatians 3:19, ESV).

            God has used angels to bring His Word and the Law to humans and to carry out the blessings and punishments of the Law.  But some in the first century church had begun to believe that the angels were greater – more powerful – more to be revered – than Jesus.

            The author of Hebrews tells us that God spoke to and through the prophets and then His Son.  Last week we saw his argument that Jesus, God the Son, is God Himself – not something less than God.

            As we continue, he begins to address those who say that Jesus is less than the angels, and he argues that Jesus is greater than the angels.  In this first section, he argues that Jesus is greater than the angels because Jesus is the Son of God.

            “having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

            Last week we saw that Jesus is God because He is seated at the Right Hand of God on His Throne.  We understood this to mean that Jesus – fully God and fully Man – has been granted all the Authority and all the Power of God.

            In receiving the Authority of the God, the Son became superior to the angels. 

            “Wait a minute,” some of you are thinking, “If Jesus is God, hasn’t He always been superior to the angels?  How can we say Jesus, the Son, became superior to the angels?  That sounds like we’re saying the Father is greater – superior – more God – than the Son.”

            The author of Hebrews is not saying that:  the Son is completely God and the Father is completely God – They are both the same One God – utterly equal in Their Divinity.

            But the Son Incarnated as the Person of Jesus.  Jesus of Nazareth was sinless, but His Body was fallen – it aged and decayed and got sick.  And those who should have recognized Jesus as God the Son, rejected Him, as Isaiah tells us:  “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3, ESV).

            God the Son, as the Incarnate Jesus, was not seen as superior to the angels – He was mocked, and despised, and crucified.  Jesus was named a thief, a heretic, someone that God and man rejected.

            But that changed when Jesus rose from the dead – when Jesus stood up and the stone rolled away, and He visited with over five hundred people, and then ascended before their eyes up into the heavens, to sit on the Throne of the Son, exalted and glorified, the Victorious Messiah – Savior – Christ.  The Son of God in His Flesh became superior to the angels in Person and Name.  The word angel means “messenger.”  Jesus is the Messiah – the Savior – the Christ.

            As Paul writes, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:6-11, ESV).

            Jesus is greater than the angels because He has been glorified and proved His Name to be Messiah – Savior – Christ.

            “For to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’?”

            David wrote the Psalm about himself, which also continues this Truth about Jesus:  “I will tell of the decree:  The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.  You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel’” (Psalm 2:7-9, ESV).

            God promised David that he would inherit the nations – the earth – figuratively, as the king of Israel – that he would be victorious over all his enemies.  Yet, as we look at this and God calling David His “begotten,” we understand that this cannot mean that God gave birth to David – begotten means something else – that David became a Son to Him, but not in the manner of birth associated with created creatures.

            Similarly, we see this scripture fulfilled as a description of Jesus, and God saying that He has begotten Jesus and that He has become a Son to Him.  Again, God does not give birth, so we are talking about something different here – becoming a Son but not through the manner associated with created creatures.  God did not become pregnant and give birth to Jesus, much less God the Son in His Divine Person.

            In the special relationship God the Father and God the Son have, first both being the One God, and then through the Incarnation, we see an eternal begetting of the Son.  God the Son was begotten of God before the Creation and before time – it is an eternal begetting – this relationship between the Two Persons of the Trinity has always existed, and they continue to exist as God the Son put on human flesh and Incarnated as the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, was glorified in His Body, and resumed sitting on His Throne.

            Jesus is greater than the angels because He is begotten of the Father.

            “Or again, ‘I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son’?”

            The third reason Jesus is greater than the angels builds on the second:  God is Father to His Son.

            The scripture quoted comes out of a discussion God had with David.  David had desired to build God a temple, and God told him that his son – Solomon – would be the one to build the Temple.  And God told David that He would care for Solomon:  “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men,” (2 Samuel 7:14, ESV).  The first part of this verse is quoted in fulfillment about Jesus, the Son of God.

            Again, God did not give birth to David, and God did not give birth to Solomon, and God did not give birth to God – to Jesus.

            The One God has always existed.  The One God has always existed as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Three Persons.  In becoming human, God the Son remained God and remained in the same relationship with God that He had before the Incarnation.  The Son has always been the Son and will always be the Son.          

Although the Father and Son are equal in Divinity – in being the same One God – the Persons execute Their Priority in matters.  For example, although the Triune God created everything that is, and each Person is cited as creating everything that is, in God speaking to us in our words – in our language – in a way that we could understand, God gives the Father priority in the creation of all things.  This is not to say that the Father is greater – the Father and Son are equally God – this is part of the mystery of the Trinity.

            However, we can say this, God has never called or considered an angel to be His son.  God the Son has a relationship with God the Father – a standing with Him – that the angels never have.  And He is the same One God.

            Jesus is greater than the angels because God is His Father, and He is God’s Son.

            “And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world,”

            Jesus is the firstborn into the world.

            Paul repeats this witness, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers”

(Romans 8:29, ESV).

            “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15, ESV).

            “and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

            “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Revelation 1:5, ESV).

            And so we find ourselves asking, “How can God be the firstborn?  Wouldn’t this make God the Son less than God?  If God always existed, and the Son was born at some time, doesn’t that make the Son a lesser creature or a lesser god?”

            What we must understand is that “first” does not always mean “first in order.”  For example, David, who became king, was not the firstborn child of his parents, but he was the firstborn as far as the choice for king.  David had preeminence over his brothers and was chosen to be king.

            When we read that the Son is the firstborn, it cannot mean that He is the oldest of the children, because God does not get pregnant and give birth.  So we understand “firstborn” to mean “having preeminence.”  The Incarnate Son is the greatest in the world.  He is the greatest of His brothers and sisters.  He is the greatest over Creation.  His victory over death is the greatest.

            Jesus is greater than the angels because He is greater than anyone and anything in all of Creation.

            “he says, ‘Let all God's angels worship him’” (Hebrews 1:4-6, ESV).

            The author of Hebrews, finally, quotes Moses as he sings a hymn about God and His works on behalf of Israel:  “Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries.  He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people's land” (Deuteronomy 32:43, ESV).

            Here, the reason given to worship God – and the Son – is that God is vengeful – God will avenge His children and punish His enemies.  God will bring absolute justice to pass, and that is one reason that God is worthy of worship.

            The author of Hebrews may also have David in mind, as he writes in the Psalms:  “All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; worship him, all you gods!” (Psalm 97:7, ESV).

            Here, David says that God is worthy of worship because idols are worthless – idols can do nothing.  Whereas God is the God of the Creation.  The Creator and Sustainer of all things.

            God tells the angels to worship God the Son, because God is worthy of Worship.  He is Holy, Holy, Holy.  The angels understand that and forbid humans to worship them, as John records:  “I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God’” (Revelation 22:8-9, ESV).

            The angels are shown to us as worshipping God – worshipping Jesus – God the Son:  “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, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!’” (Revelation 5:11-12, ESV).

            Jesus is greater than the angels, because the angels worship Him.

            The author of Hebrews is seeking to persuade some who have gone astray from orthodox teaching that Jesus is greater than the angels.  Jesus is not a lesser creature because He is the Son or because He was begotten or because He Incarnated.  In our text, the author of Hebrews gave five reasons that Jesus is great than the angels:

            Jesus is greater than the angels because He has been glorified and proved His Name to be Messiah – Savior – Christ.

Jesus is greater than the angels because He is begotten of the Father.

Jesus is greater than the angels because God is His Father, and He is God’s Son.

Jesus is greater than the angels because He is greater than anyone and anything in all of Creation.

Jesus is greater than the angels, because the angels worship Him.

Let us understand that Jesus is greater than the angels – both our perception of what the angels are and the reality of what God reveals to us.  Jesus is greater.  Jesus is God, so He is worthy of all worship.  Let us, with the angels, worship God the Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:

            Almighty God, we are humbled as we try to consider what it means that there is One God Who is Three Persons.  We only grasp at what it means that God is Father and Son, and that the Father begat the Son.  Thank You for revealing Yourself to us, and though we do not fully understand how all these things are, we are convinced that You are God and Jesus is God, and He is worthy of all worship.