Christ: Our Supreme Guide

Hebrews 1-2:1-4

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
July 14, 2024
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes

The harder the climb, the more you need a guide. There are 98 14rs in the continental USA. You have to have a guide that is very explicit who tells you, “Don’t go this way or that way.” Others would say, “Here’s a great place to have lunch” or “Look at this view, it is amazing,” and “Don’t go down there because it is a little sketchy.” You need a guide that’s qualified, someone that has been there, done that, that’s helpful. And we need a constant guide, that is always with us throughout our hiking.

The whole book of Hebrews is about Jesus as the supreme guide. He is better than angels, He is better than Moses, He is better than any king that has come along.

The writer is writing to a group of Jewish in the first century, thirty or thirty-five years after Christ was crucified so there are people among them who saw him when he was alive, who believed, they are formally Jews “Hebrews” who become Christian. They live in a global city context, in a pluralistic society. These are individuals who were well acquainted with the Old Testament and the writer assumes they are very knowlegable about the first five book fo the Old Testament, the Torah.

The recipients of this book of Hebrews are folks who are oppressed and persecuted, we can see this in chapter 10. They are a minority group who is following this Lord Jesus which is difficult to do this in the Roman empire, because people believed there is only one lord and that is Caesar and to say that otherwise could get one put to death.

I am told that if you travel to Cuba, Russia or China, North Korea, perhaps some countries in south America and you speak negatively of the government leader, you will suffer serious repercussions.

Another temptation these Christian Jews have was to go back to the law. They understood that they had all the pieces in place: We have a Creator, a monotheistic God, then he came to show himself to us in Christ, and Jesus is the Messianic hope and He is the one, but can we keep going back to law? Doing this would be a lot safer, they reasoned.

There are some parallels between what was happening then and the reality we’re living today. Christians in our generation are increasingly marginalized by society and often we wonder, “I can’t be totally sold out to Jesus, can’t I just follow from a distance?” Then other of us can be tempted to go back to the law, “Can I just do something on my own to gain God’s favor?”

Now enter the writer of Hebrews and she or he says, “No, no, no, don’t drift away, I am going to tell you why you need to stay in the gospel, be encouraged” and that is the whole point of the book.

Now we don’t know if the writer was Apollos, or Barnabas or Paul, we don’t have enough information to assign a particular author to this book of Hebrews. But it is someone who heard directly from God or Christ, possibly someone who was in the circle of the first apostles.

Today we are going to hear that Jesus is a better guide, because he is clear, he is qualified, and he is constant.

He is clear (verses 1-4) meaning he is explicit; he is distinct and he has communicated to us. One of the themes about the book of Hebrews is that God speaks, he has actually spoken to us. Now, he is totally other than us, so how would he speak to us? Look at this in verse 1:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, (let’s pause for a minute here, there are two words, “polimeros” and “polytropos” in the Greek. You hear poly, meaning multiple or many ways. Think about this he spoke thourgh Mary, prophets, teachers, shepherds, herders, apocliptic literature, love songs, and wisdom, he has spoken to us) but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

Jesus as Creator, God incarnate, and Holy Spirit, a great mystery. He is the cause and the effect. Ephesians, John, Colossians declare in Him we have life, he created all that exists.

The old prophets would say, “Thus saith the Lord,” but Jesus never said that, in fact he said, “I say to you.” Even in regards to the law, he said, “You heard it said, but I say unto you.”

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

In the Greek the word “representation” means “mark,” it means “imprint” a “stamp.” Jesus is the perfect theology.

At times we hear folks say, “The Bible says…” and the intent is to beat us over the head or argue theology. Individuals that want to claim biblical truth, but don’t live as Jesus at all. If our theology does not match up to the way of Jesus, a life that looks like forgivness, grace, mercy and compassion of Jesus, then we’re off.

Christ is the embodiment of theology and he sustains all things and he spoke things into existemce. It is the word “Rhema,” the spoken word, not the word “logos,” which means speech or message.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Consider this: 1500 years prior to Christ there was sacrifice after sacrifice. People had to atone for their sins, and the priest never sat down. Thousands of lambs and millions of animals were sacrificed to pay for our own sins. It was a bloody religion, why? Because someone had to pay for our sins, it was part of the Levitical system.

Jesus comes down and offers the final and full sacrifice and he finally sits down, why? Because it is finished, he said this as he died on the cross. And he sits at the right hand of the majesty which is the place of all authority.

Verse 4:

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

He is better than the angels because he is son, he is God. Christ is a superior guide because he is clear, explicitly God. And he is qualified.

He is qualified

This is what you would call citations.

Read: Hebrews 5-14

He is constant

Now we move to one of five warning passages in the book of Hebrews:

Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

“Pay much closer attention” is a unique Greek construction of words that mean “to be furiously obsessed, fixated, focused, obsessed over this.”

Over all that you have heard so that you don’t drift. There is nothing more than the gospel. Get underneath, be obsessed with it.

Drifting from God is a slow fade, we forget who Jesus is, how we’re justified by him, how he give us our identity, then we drift. This is core.

Verse 2:

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution,

If we go against God’s laws, we face consequences, a built-in part of the system. We are crushed under his demand.

Verse 3:

how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard,

Verse 4:

while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

Jesus is better, Jesus is superior.

Theologian N.T. Wright reflected, “How can you cope with the end of one world and the beginning of another one? Or the thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire became flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Jesus is either supreme or he is insignificant, a scam and our commitment to His will reveal how we view Him.”

How do we know if we’re in God’s path? There are several ways for example, our prayer life will reveal our love for Jesus, being in God’s word, loving God’s people, sharing with others what God means to you. Is Christ your supreme guide, if not, why not, if not now, when?