Hebrews 1:1-3

By Louis T. Talbot

To be released Tuesday February 19. And good morning my radio friends and friends of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. This is Louis T. Talbot greeting you and welcoming you to the beginning of our study in Hebrews, a verse by verse Bible study in the epistle of Paul to the

Hebrew Christians of his day. A great many of the difficulties that arise as one reads this epistle will immediately pass away if we keep in mind that it was not written to gentiles but it was written to Hebrews. The Spirit of God used the Apostle Paul to write to the Hebrew Christians of that day to encourage them to stand fast because great numbers of nominal believers were turning back to the offerings of little lambs and the other shadows of the temple worship.

Remember please my friends that when the apostle Paul wrote this epistle that the temple was standing when Paul wrote these epistles the Temple was still there. That is that the Temple in

Jerusalem was not destroyed by Titus until A.D. 70. And so all the ceremonies were going on in the temple and there was a great temptation for a lot of these nominal Christians to go back to the ceremonies of the temple and to the offering of little lambs for their sin.

Now there is no doubt that the book of Hebrews was written to the Hebrew Christians of that day to encourage the real Christians to stand fast in their confession of Christ. You know that having heard of Christ and heard Christ himself in the streets of Jerusalem and in

Capernaum and out in the fields of Palestine that many had become his followers but they were only nominally followers. Undoubtedly their great expectation was that Christ would set up his earthly kingdom and would deliver Israel from the Roman yoke. Then when the Lord Jesus Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3

Christ was crucified and taken back to heaven and his disciples were persecuted, a great number of them were going back to the temple and to animal sacrifices.

Many were in this class and I guess that they were like those two disciples that the Lord

Jesus Christ met on the way to Emmaus. You will remember that story that is recorded in Luke

Chapter 24 How the Lord Jesus Christ met those two men after the resurrection. And he drew near to them, He found that they were very sad and the Lord Jesus said to them, "Why are you so sad?" And they said concerning Jesus of Nazareth, "And we trusted that it had been him which should have delivered Israel." And my dear friends they were not the only people that were in that company. They were not the only people who had the hopes that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to set up his kingdom in that day. And the day when Christ was crucified you know that that their hopes were blasted done and they felt that they had been misled.

Now the apostle Paul in his epistle writes to encourages the real believers. He does what

Christ did on the way to Emmaus because you'll remember that after they said, "We hoped that this man would be he who would deliver Israel." We read that the Lord Jesus Christ said, "O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to have entered into his glory?" And then we read that Christ, beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded unto them the things concerning himself how that he was going to die and suffer first and then he would return and establish his kingdom.

But my dear friends there was another class of Hebrews that the Apostle Paul was addressing in this epistle. He was writing to enlighten those Hebrews who were intellectually convinced that

Christ was the Messiah but because of fear of persecution that they had not made any definite confession of Christ. But they too carried on the ceremonies of the Old Testament and especially

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 the offering of little lambs. And those lambs that were offered in the temple were of no value now because they pointed to the Lamb of God and the Lamb of God had already come.

I said to you yesterday that many of these Hebrews did not confess Christ because they saw what happened to the Hebrew Christians who did confess Christ. You know that the lot of the Hebrew Christian has always been a rough one and pressure was brought to bear upon them and their property was confiscated and so on. They had seen the persecution heaped upon those who openly confessed Christ and some were affected by it and were going back to the shadows and so the apostle Paul begins by flooding their minds with the glory of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I want my dear friends for you to not how majestically hard this epistle opens concerning the person and the work of Christ. Just follow me as I read verses 1-3 will you? God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." I want you to note my dear friends that the fathers that he is referring to of course are Abraham Isaac and Jacob. If [inaudible] Paul had begun any of his epistles to the Gentiles that way that they would not have known what he was talking about. But when these Hebrews read about God having at sundry times spoken in diverse manners unto the fathers by the prophets they knew exactly what he was talking about. And then

Paul goes on to say, "Have in these last days spoken unto us by his son."

Now I want you to note the picture of the glory of Christ that follows, "Whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." My friends what a portrait that the Apostle Paul by the Spirit of God gives of our blessed lord to

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 these Hebrews. And my friends, you know some of you folks may not be going through the same difficulties or having the same problems as these early Hebrews. You are not being thrown to the lions but you may have a lot of problems and sorrows and heartaches. And I want to say to you my friends that the cure for all ill and all fear is just to have your eyes, your vision filled with the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonderful Lord Jesus we have. How insignificant are our problems and our troubles become in the light of this revelation that he has given in these opening verses. Do you remember that little chorus? "Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace."

And when the apostle Paul sits down to write an epistle to meet the need of these apostles, these Hebrew Christians rather, the Hebrew Christians who were disturbed because

Christ did not establish his kingdom and then meet the need of those Hebrews who were intellectually convinced that Christ was the Messiah but they were afraid to come out into the open because of the persecutions. You know that the Apostle when he sat down to write to them to meet their need, the first thing that he does is to flood their vision with the glory of the person of Christ.

I want you to look at this verse one will you? Let us read there, look at this verse 1, very closely. the apostle begins by saying, "God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets." That is the apostle Paul here stating that all through the old testament days that God was trying to say something to the people but he could only give it or reveal it in piecemeal and that he did it in diverse manners and in sundry times. That he spoke through dreams and he spoke through visions at different times but he could only say it just a little at a time. He could not say all that he wanted to say to any one prophet. He gave what

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 he had to say in fragments. He gave a little to this man and a little to that man. It was given in fragments that is, what God wanted to say in the Old Testament was given piecemeal. No prophets spoke all the truth at the one time. It was given in the form of a piecemeal revelation.

That's the very best that God could do. You know to Abraham God gave a little, and to Moses a little, and two Isaiah a little, and to Daniel a little. And on through the Old Testament period that

God was adding a little by little to his revealed word. For example that God told Adam and Eve when he spoke to the serpent in the Garden of Eden that the seed of the woman, that is the virgin born son of God, would bruise the Serpent's head. And it was the first promise of the Redeemer whose physical body represented in Genesis 3:15 by the heel was to be bruised on Calvary's cross.

Now about two thousand years passed and then God gave Abraham a little bit of this piecemeal revelation. God told Abraham that the promised seed should come through Abraham's family. And yet other years passed and then God gave to Jacob just a little bit of this piecemeal revelation and this revelation was all about his son. And God told Jacob that the king of Israel was going to come through the Tribe of Judah. And still after centuries that went by and in the time of David, God promised that Israel's Messiah and King should come through David's royal family. Then after three hundred years passed then God told Isaiah that Emmanuel should be born of a virgin. All about the same time He spoke through Micah saying that he was to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. and thus my friend, over a period of four thousand years that

God was revealing a little here and a little there that a redeemer was to come through a certain family and through a certain tribe and through a certain nation And that he was to be born in a miraculous way in a certain city. Meanwhile God was also revealing a little here and a little there that the promised Redeemer was to be crucified before he entered into his glory, that he was to

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 be despised and rejected of man, that he was going to be betrayed by his own friends, buried with

[inaudible] in his death and raised from the dead to ascend into heaven and to sit on the right hand of the Majesty on high as a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

My friends you say why that sounds like the epistle to the Hebrews and so it does. For the epistle to the Hebrews is nothing more or less than the New Testament explanation of the Jewish

Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel's Messiah and priest and king. A little here and a little there and God had prepared his people for the coming of Christ. But my friends at the very best the revelation in the Old Testament was only a piecemeal revelation. But here Paul says,

"But in his son he has spoken once for all." You know in the Old Testament revelation spoken by the prophets was partial and incomplete. But the revelation spoken by the son of God was final and complete. God has nothing more to say to us other than the message of his son through the

Lord Jesus Christ. My friends what a proof that Jesus, the only begotten Son of God was better than Israel's prophets, mighty and godly though they were.

When the Holy Ghost wrote that he had spoken by the prophets in diverse manners, He meant that he had spoken had something by prophecy and something by history and then by ordinance and then by a dream. He meant that he took a man like Aaron and told him to dress in a different way And Aaron was just like any other man but he had garments of blue and purple and scarlet. And then God told the people just to study that man because he was a picture of another man. And then sometimes God spake by parable and by an earthquake and by fire and by

Tempest. You know that he spoke in diverse manners and at sundry times. Sometimes God sent an angel to speak his message. To Moses he spoke through the burning bush, a manifestation of the Shekinah glory. And you'll remember that when God gave a little bit of it to Daniel that he sent an angel. And then to David he sent Nathan the prophet. Verily indeed he spoke in the olden

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 times in diverse manners in times past. That is that God was giving them this picture of the coming of the Messiah as prophet and priest and King in a piecemeal way.

But there we read in this verse, this first verse, "But at the end of these days," that is the end of the Old Testament period, "That God spoke once for all in his son, the living word of

God." That's why the Lord Jesus Christ is portrayed in the first chapter of John as the living word, "In the beginning was the word." And when Jesus came, God spake everything at the one time what he wanted men to know. So Moses who wrote the first books of the Bible, so the psalmist and the prophet, and the historian, and the judge that God had spoken of a coming

Redeemer then the Redeemer came. And by the incarnation of the Son of God the world received

God's full and complete and final message. The prophets had realized that their writings were only fragmentary. They knew that. Do you remember how that Moses, writing in Deuteronomy chapter 18 and verses 15 to 18 he says this, "The Lord thy God shall rise up under thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren likened unto me, And under him shall ye Hearken. And the Lord said unto me I will put my words into his mouth and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him to speak." And God gives a warning that men should hear his voice. Do you see my friends that God knew that even after all of the Old Testament prophets had spoken for thousands of years concerning the coming of the Savior, he would yet have much more to say to a simple and guilty world? And therefore he told Moses to say that he would yet speak once for all in his son.

My friends the last one of the Old Testament prophets to speak was Malachi. After

Malachi is prophecy then there were the four hundred years of silence and no added voice was heard from God. And then we read in Galatians chapter 4 verse 4 that when the fullness of time was come God sent forth his son and in that son he opened his very heart of Grace and forgiving

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 love. And in his son there was the revelation of the height and the length than the depth and the

Breadth of his forgiving love and mercy and grace.

You know my friends in the Old Testament days that God spake through the sacrifice of a little lamb? And then the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world came. in the Old

Testament days God spake through the High Priest and the king and the Tabernacle and the temple and he gave to Israel an altar and a candlestick and a mercy seat and they're all foreshadows of the glories of the person and the work of Christ. But the time came when God spoke everything.

And you remember that at the time of the transfiguration that when the Lord Jesus Christ was on that mount that there came a voice out of the unseen that spoke to Peter James and John.

And he says, "This is my well beloved son hear ye Him." And you know that the Lord Jesus made a revelation that was not known in all its fullness through the Old Testament prophets.

That revelation he gave to Nicodemus in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." I want to tell you my dear friends that the Old Testament revelations were all piecemeal and yet during all of those thousands of years God didn't say everything. Then he said, "When the fullness of time came, he sent his son over whom the Old Testament revelations concern. The son that was before time promised," and he spake everything in Jesus. As he stood among men

He said this, "No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the father, he hath declared him."

You know that there are those my dear friends who call themselves natural religious. And they tell us that they don't go to church on Sunday, they go out to the woods on the Lord's Day and they claim to worship the god of nature. But I want to ask you, what does nature ever tell

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 them about the love of God for lost sinners? You may take the tiniest insect that only lives for a day and put it under a microscope and you'll find that is perfectly made by a great God. You can look at the flowers and you can magnify them and the more magnifying you do you know that the more perfect they are. But I want to tell you my dear friends that nothing in nature, nothing in flowers reveals the mercy and the love of God. You know that if you could find anything about the love and the mercy of God in nature that India would not need any missionary because in

India you see nature in all of its beauty. But India, while it has its beautiful flowers and rivers and lakes and natural beauty in abundance, India is sin and in sin there is darkness in India, misery in India, because they do not know him. Then the apostle Paul is putting before these

Hebrews That God has now spoken once for all.

My time is up but my friend look at this this six fold, this seven fold revelation in verses two and three. After he says that he has spoken through his son everything, which means that

Christ is greater than all the prophets combined, He gives us this vision of his glory. That the son is appointed heir of all things. The son is the one by whom all the world were made. The song is the revealer of God's glory. The son is the express image of his substance. The son is the upholder of all things. That is that which we call gravity is nothing but the power of our Christ.

The sun is the savior of sinners and the sun is the king priest who sat down at the right hand of

God after he finished the sin question at Calvary. If any of you folks my dear friends are in trouble, let me remind you of that chorus, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus look full into his wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace." And I'm sure that when those Hebrews read those three verses, to say nothing of the rest, strength was imparted to them to suffer in life and even in death for the one who is the ante type

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Talbot: Hebrews 1:1-3 of all the shadows of the Old Testament. Thank you for listening, Tune in tomorrow. Goodbye and God bless you all.

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