While there are many ways to get to know another person, the best way is to listen to them when they speak, to hear them describe their sense of right and wrong, their memories of the past, their desires for the present, and their goals for the future. Indeed, it’s near impossible to experience relational intimacy with anyone apart from deliberate attentiveness to what they reveal about themselves.

And what’s true of our relationships with the people around us is true of our relationship with the God above us. If we desire to know our Creator—to worship him rightly, walk with him truly, rest in him fully, grow in him obviously, trust in him totally, talk about him joyfully, and bring people to him urgently—we must listen attentively when he speaks, how he speaks, and through whom he speaks. God wants to be known and he’s gone to great lengths to make that possible. Are we listening?

SERMON MANUSCRIPT 

There are many ways to get to know someone. You can spend time with them. You can talk to others who know them. You can go through their garbage or watch them from the bushes outside their home. 

There are many ways to get to know someone, but the best way is to listen to them when they speak: to hear them describe their sense of right and wrong, their memories of the past, their desires for the present, and their goals for the future. In fact, it’s near impossible to experience relational intimacy with anyone apart from deliberate attentiveness to what they reveal about themselves.

And what’s true of our relationships with the people around us is true of our relationship with the God above us. We cannot draw close to God by listening to others talk about him, studying the garbage of worldly philosophies incapable of finding him, or observing him and his people from a distance. 

If we desire to know our Creator—to worship him rightly, walk with him truly, rest in him fully, grow in him obviously, trust in him totally, talk about him joyfully, and bring people to him urgently—we must listen when he speaks, how he speaks, and through whom he speaks.

And God has spoken. He has eloquently revealed himself to humanity, describing his idea of right and wrong, his knowledge of the past, his desires for the present, and his goals for the future. He has spoken providing you and I with all we need for intimacy with him. The question is, “Are we listening?”

SELF-DISCLOSURE

It’s been rightly said that “revelation from God is the only way we can know anything about God” (Wellum, 33). Unless the Creator turns on the lights, creatures remain in the darkness. Unless the Lord opens his mouth, we will never open our eyes.

But he has spoken to us and he wants to be heard by us because he wants to be known by us. The God of the universe desires intimacy with humanity, and this letter opens with a beautiful, poetic declaration of that divine self-disclosure.

Long ago, God spoke to the fathers in the prophets. In ages past, God revealed himself to his people, through his people. The Almighty lifted the curtain of eternity and said, “Here’s what I’m like. Here’s what I want. Here’s what you’re to do.” And he did this in many portions and in many ways. 

God has not been dull or unimaginative in his self-disclosure. He spoke the world into existence, he swore an oath to Noah, called Abraham to a new land, directed Moses through a burning bush, instituted a nation from a mountaintop, instructed Elijah by a whisper on the wind, and caught Isaiah up to his throne. He used dreams and visions, angels and trances, writing on a wall and a talking donkey, a cloud by day and fire by night, earthquakes and great fish, laws and rituals, prophets and priests, the heavens and the heart. He spoke through Ezekiel and Amos, Joel and Habakkuk, Jeremiah and Daniel. 

With this opening line, the author of Hebrews floods the minds of his readers with examples of a communicative God. The pageantry of the entire Old Testament comes crashing into their collective consciousness: “[God] spoke long ago … in many morsels and in many manners.” He’s always wanted to be known.

But it gets better because, “in these last days,” in this new era, God “has spoken to us in [a] Son.” Then he spoke to the fathers, now he’s spoken to us. Then his speaking was with variety, now it’s by singularity: from many prophets to one Son. God’s diversified self-disclosure has now coalesced into a solitary communique.

Imagine you had a pen-pal, someone abroad with whom you exchanged weekly letters. You did this for decades, writing to one another about life, love, hurts, and dreams. You grow to know them well and to love them. 

Then, one day, that pen-pal knocks on your door, explaining they’d just moved to town. In that moment, flesh and blood has replaced paper and pen and the relationship is forever changed. It’s not that the letters have now become any less true, honest, or revealing. It’s just now you can see your friend’s mannerisms, watch their expressions, and hear the varied intonations in their voice, realities that build on top of, bring clarity to, and fill in the blanks of intimacy that past forms of communication left. You already know this person, but now you can know them more accurately and more completely. 

In the past, God spoke truthfully, lovingly, and with clarity. But all of that self-disclosure anticipated an incarnate self-disclosure; all of that former revelation paved the way for a cumulative and climactic revelation, not one that changed or cancelled what had been said but one that converged all that had been said into itself, summarizing, incapsulating, completing, fulfilling, explaining, and empowering it all. 

And that aggregate divine self-disclosure wasn’t a proposition but a person. It wasn’t a sonnet but a Son. It wasn’t an email but Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus Christ is the final, most personal, ideal, and beautiful self-disclosure of the Creator to his creation. God wants to be known by us and so he spoke to us in a Son.

And that means that anyone claiming to know God, hear from God, have access to God, or lead people to God and yet not know, accept, and believe in the Son of God, is deceived, deceiving, or both. 

Any knowledge of God devoid of the Son of God is like a pen-pal relationship—inherently incomplete, insufficient, and incapable of true intimacy. On top of that, it’s insulting to the God who’s gone to such lengths to make himself known. Ignoring, downplaying, or rejecting the Son is a form of soul-damning, intimacy-killing selective hearing.

SON-DISCLOSURE

God has spoken. In the past it was veracity through variety but, in these last days, he’s spoken in a cumulative crescendo of self-disclosure, “in his Son.” And it seems the mention of the “Son” (v. 2) gets the author excited and celebration and adoration starts pouring from his pen. 

He moves from self-disclosure to Son-disclosure; from how God has spoken to what that speech is like. And there are three main points about the Son that the author wants to highlight, each one indicated by a relative pronoun, “whom” or “who.” 

Let’s take a running start at the first one. [1:1–2b] The Son is the ultimate communication of God from God. And what’s he like? Well, first, he owns everything. 

Psalm 2 records God speaking to his Messiah, saying: “Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as your possession.” When we look at the Son, we’re looking at the one who is destined to inherit a global dominion when he reigns as king. He owns everything.

Not only that but he created everything. Look again at verse 2: “through whom (there’s the relative pronoun) also he made the world.” John says that, “All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:3). Paul writes, “For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him” (Col 1:16).

Jesus is, all at once, the “last word” and the “first word,” both the tail-end of revelation and genesis of revelation. The Son anticipates a future inheritance that he himself made, being as eternal and powerful as God because he is God. He was there before time and matter, the agent through whom God fashioned the world. He created everything. 

Finally, the Son is above everything. Although it isn’t translated in most English Bibles, this final point begins with another relative pronoun. [1:3–4]

At the heart of this final clause is that the Son “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Guthrie, 56). Everything else in verses 3 and 4 prop-up the reality of his unparalleled exaltation.

The Son is the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his nature.” Jesus is not an approximation of divine truth, he is the embodiment of God’s essence. When you look at the Son, you see God, perfectly, without deviation. Jesus himself claimed this in John 14: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

The Son “upholds all things by the word of his power.” He created all things and he sustains all things, governs all things, upholds all things. Paul says that “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). He’s the glue. He’s the word of God incarnate and by his word all things remain. 

The Son, “made purification of sins.” Unlike the priests of old who laboured daily making sacrifices for their own sins and for the sins of the people, Jesus sacrificed himself, his blood paying the penalty for the sins of the world. The scarlet stains of our transgressions were washed away by the blood of the Lamb of God.

And because of these things, the Son is exalted. Perfectly manifesting divinity, powerfully sustaining reality, and permanently cleansing iniquity, he sat down at the right hand of God, the place of greatest honour in the cosmos, high above the angels—powerful, glorious beings who brought revelation to God’s people, having been given a greater name than they. He’s above all.

So, who is this Son? Why should we listen to him if we want to know God? Because he owns everything, he created everything, and he’s above everything, manifesting divinity, sustaining reality, and cleansing iniquity. There’s none like him.

KNOW GOD THROUGH THE SON!

If we want to know God—truly know God—why would we look anywhere else besides his perfect self-disclosure? Why would we think that we can know him as we want to know him, know him as he wants us to know him, without knowing his Son, being in awe of his Son, studying his Son, revering his Son, and worshipping his Son? 

More than that, why do we think that we can endure this life of faith with all of its heartbreak and temptation, frustration and persecution, cross-carrying and self-denying, without knowing rightly who it is we’re following? Why would we ever think that we can be faithful without an intimate relationship with the one to whom we’re striving to be faithful? We’re being reminded in this passage, invited in this passage, commanded in this passage to know God through the Son!

The fitness industry is a multi-billion dollar a year racket, mostly built on half-truths and lies, peddling miracle cures for weight loss, novel 30-day programs for body change, sweat-free fat loss, secret metabolism boosters, and never-before-known muscle-building exercises. The industry is hugely successful in selling something that people want in ways that will never actually work because the reality is, becoming fit is a slow, often unexciting, self-denying, monotonous, pain-inducing process. And that just doesn’t sell as well. But the truth is, there are no shortcuts to physical health.

Similarly, there are no shortcuts to spiritual health, brothers and sisters, even though many are for sale. “What you need is this experience, this fresh prophecy, this new word of knowledge, this novel feeling, this exciting way of doing church, this never-before-found revelation of God, this get-mature-quick formula, this culturally sensitive doctrine, this tolerant teaching, this buffet-style-choose-your-own-adventure walk with Jesus.” It all sounds so exciting and relevant and not so stodgy and old-fashioned as my grandma’s religion. But it’s all a lie.

And yet many churches invest in this racket, prioritizing the product of worship rather than depth of worship, chasing fun in youth group instead of foundations of faith, seeking something new instead of drilling into what is old. Pastors preach to felt needs in the congregation, clever sermons on cultural issues and trendy topics rather than curating the beauty and power of the inspired word of God. And the tragic but predictable result of all of this is that you have people who want to know God but never really will.

If we want to grow in our knowledge of and intimacy with God, we’ve got to listen to him when he speaks. If we want to get spiritually jacked, establish health for our souls, endurance for this life, we’ve got to go to the gym together, day after day, week after week, and study Christ. If we’re looking anywhere other than God’s Son in order to know God and draw near to God, where we are looking is certainly deficient and probably errant.

God has spoken, brothers and sisters. He wants to be known. Let’s listen together, helping one another know God through the Son.

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