Prophet, Priest, King

Our Scripture reading this morning is from the letter to the Hebrews and chapter 1, and you can find this particular reading on page 1001. Seems quite appropriate, doesn’t it, for the day? Hebrews 1:1:

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 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. 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. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

Father, we pray that as we turn now to the Bible, that you will help us both to understand it so that you would illumine the printed page to us, that you would shine through the cloudiness of our thinking, and that the words that appear before us may take on significance in our understanding of the person and work of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

C. S. Lewis once observed, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”[1] “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.” That quote has been in my mind throughout our Christmas celebrations, because these celebrations, which we wait for for quite a while and then which pass all too quickly, are celebrations that might easily be celebrated on an entirely earthly level, so that family reunions, the exchange of gifts, food, and friendship, rest from the routine become essentially the entirety of our celebration.

Now, of course, we rejoice in all of these things as being good gifts from God. But if we are not simply to live out the Christmas period—and we’re at the end of it, if you like, now, today and into the next week or so—then it is entirely necessary for our gaze to be lifted from earth to heaven. And one of the means that God has given to us in order that that might happen is the Bible, so that when we read our Bibles, it takes us away, if you like, from the passing fancies, from the earthly focus, to realities which are eternal.

Incidentally, that’s why it’s so important to read our Bibles. And if, as I said earlier, you haven’t a plan for reading through this coming year, then please take us up on that if it’s one of your New Year resolves. And you’ll discover—we’ll discover together—that when we turn to the Bible, it is there that we are confronted by the stupendous claim that the baby in Bethlehem is God become man. You see, it’s personally possible for us to have gone through Christmas without ever really thinking that out at all. Why would we? How would we? Well, again, it is the Bible that confronts us with it—in the words of the prophet, “Behold your God!”[2]—so that when we turn to our Bibles, then it is impossible for us to get away with notions of God as being simply some kind of eternal energy that we channel into our being, as one of the local journalists addressed the celebration of Christmas some years ago. When we turn to the Bible, it won’t allow us to dismiss Jesus as simply some kind of cardboard Christ. It won’t allow us to find Jesus stripped of his deity, stripped of his authority.

And so, in these past studies, throughout the week before and Christmas Eve and last Sunday, we have focused largely on the identity of Jesus. And this morning, from these verses in Hebrews, I want us to think just a little about his activity: his activity in creation and his activity in redemption.

Christ the Creator

Now, actually, we’re going to focus on the latter rather than the former, but we do not want to miss what the writer to the Hebrews has to say here concerning the work of Christ in relationship to creation. Look at what he says there: “He is the radiance of the glory of God … the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” It is “through” him that “he created the world,” there at the end of verse 2. As we saw last time in John, without him—without the Son—nothing has been made that has been made;[3] that “he is before all things”;[4] that heaven and earth will one day pass away, but he will remain.[5]

Now, why is it good for us and important for us just to pause on this for a moment this morning? Well, just a cursory reading of the newspaper in the last two or three weeks has introduced us to the question, again, of the origin of the universe and of the fascinating study of scientists in relationship to what they’re referring to as “the God particle.” And if you’ve followed that at all, then you will have been, like me, quite fascinated by it.

Most of it is entirely beyond my capacity to understand. The closest I came to being a scientist was one Christmas, I was given a chemistry set for my Christmas. I think my parents had a hope that perhaps that that part of my brain would actually kick in at some point. And I remember myself and my younger sister sat on our bed—on my bed, probably—on Christmas morning and promptly opened up this chemistry set, opening test tubes and vials and all kinds of things, and we made an incredible mess of the bedspread. I remember that and my mother coming in and deciding there and then that probably chemistry was nothing in my future at all. I had clearly no idea. So I’m very wary of this.

So, I read, along with you, that they have this vast collider that is seventeen miles in circumference. Did you read that? That it stretches around an area in Geneva that is absolutely unbelievable. “The collider’s purpose is to recreate, on a tiny scale, the instant of genesis. It accelerates protons to 99.999999% the speed of light.” And “when the two beams collide, they release a titanic energy of 14 trillion electron volts and a shower of subatomic particles shooting out in all directions. Huge detectors, the size of large apartment buildings, are needed to record the image of this particle spray.” And then the article goes on. It’s very technical. I shouldn’t read it to you. You probably won’t get it. And eventually, the professor from the university in New York says, finding this particular particle “is not enough.” It challenges Einstein’s theory of relativity and so on. It’s a vast issue—people getting freaked out, the way, presumably, they were when Copernicus made his revelations. But what the professor says is that finding this particle “is not enough.” Listen to this: “What is needed is a genuine theory of everything, which can simply and beautifully unify all the forces of the universe into a single coherent whole—a goal sought by Einstein for the last 30 years of his life.”[6]

Now, it’s customary for us just to be written off as silly Christians because we believe the Bible. But is it wrong to point out that the very cohesion for which the scientist looks will eventually, if they are humble enough to acknowledge it, not cause them to discard their scientific investigation but cause them to acknowledge that at the end of the line, in actual fact, in the midst of this mystery, the answer does lie here in God, the creator of the universe?

All the desires and achievements of time will never be able to satisfy, never be able to rectify the flaw which lies at the heart of things.

The writer is telling his readers that nothing lies outside the embrace of the work of God—that the creation of the universe, the continuation of the universe, and the consummation of the universe is under his authority and his control. So when you read your newspaper and you ponder these things—and some of you are clever enough to examine them at a level that I can’t—then remember to read all of that scientific material in light of the Scriptures, and recognize what they have to say.

Christ the Redeemer

That’s just a word concerning creation. Let’s come to the matter of redemption. Redemption. Because what the writer goes on to tell us is that Jesus is the agent of God’s special activity to rescue and to raise fallen humanity. That’s why we were singing about it last weekend: “Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.”[7] Why is it necessary for the sons of earth to be raised? Answer, says the Bible: because history has a fatal flaw. And the fatal flaw in history is such that all the desires of time and all the achievements of time will never be able to satisfy, never be able to rectify the flaw which lies at the heart of things.

You remember in Hamlet, he says… Is it Horatio or somebody who says that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,”[8] he says—humbly acknowledging that there is that which is out there and beyond us. Gauguin, the Postimpressionist painter of the nineteenth century, in arguably his most famous work, writes on his canvas—something that he didn’t do on any of the other canvases, apparently—three questions up on the top right-hand corner, but none of them with question marks. Just three phrases: “Where do we come from”; “What are we”; “Where are we going.” And C. S. Lewis says the reason that these longings remain unmet is not because our world is so poor, but it is because we were not actually ultimately made for this world[9]—that there is a fragrance that we have in our minds that we never smelled, that there is a melody line that we’ve never heard, that there is a journey that we’ve never taken; there is a destination that we know to be out there, but we have never reached it. And what the Bible says is that this is one of the indications of the flawedness of our lives.

And what the writer to the Hebrews says is what the Bible itself says—namely, that the only way that we’re able to know this God is not by means of speculation but as a result of revelation, as a result of the fact that he chooses to place himself within the realm of our perception. And he graciously renews our fallen understanding, placing himself within the realm of our perception and renewing our understanding, which has been clouded as a result of the fatal flaw.

People, if they think in terms of the flawed nature of society, tend to think about it having done nothing at all to our intellects, having done nothing at all to our minds, so that sin and sins are all in another realm altogether, whereas man has, if you like, free rein to his ability to think, and therefore, he thinks absolutely logically, absolutely properly. But what the Bible says is no—that sin has affected our ability to think, and unless God renews our understanding, we cannot think our way to God. You cannot find an intellectual road to God. The only way that God may be known is for him to place himself in the realm of our perception and to renew our ability to think. And that is the significance of the incarnation. God comes, now, and places himself in the realm of our perception. He doesn’t shout to us from away up here, but he comes right down to where we are.

Now, the way in which Calvin explained this, and others like him, as we’ve known before, was in terms of the threefold office of Christ—that we are introduced to him as a Prophet revealing God, that we’re introduced to him as a Priest reconciling us to God, and that we are introduced to him as a King who reigns as God.[10] That is not new material, but my responsibility is not novelty but clarity. So let me, on this first day of this new year, of this year of grace 2012, point you to Christ.

The Prophet Revealing God

First of all: Jesus as Prophet. Prophet.

He is himself God’s full and final word to men and women. He makes God fully known to us. He has spoken, as we see in our text: “At many times and … many ways,” he “spoke by the prophets to our fathers.” The speaking that was begun in the role of the prophet but was incomplete has now been brought to completion in the Lord Jesus Christ—begun but not completed, and then, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[11] God now has spoken finally and savingly. He hasn’t spoken in such a way that he gives us a concept to wrestle with or a philosophy to adopt but a person to trust and obey.

Why would we need a prophet to reveal God to us? Well, answer we’ve noted: because we are ignorant of God. And the darkness is not on the outside. The darkness is on the inside. You can read that all through the Epistles. Paul says it again and again but classically in Ephesians 4: the gentiles, he says, were “darkened in their understanding.”[12] They were thinking wrongly.

Jesus is himself God’s full and final word to men and women. He makes God fully known to us.

When Jesus appears and begins to preach and to do his miraculous deeds, indicating that the kingdom of God has come, one of the immediate responses on the part of people is to say, “Surely a great prophet has come among us!”[13] “A great prophet has come among us!” But eventually, what happens is that all of the expectation of what a prophet would be is insufficient to sustain the immensity of who Jesus is and what he’s come to do. And that’s why the three offices of him as a Prophet and as a Priest, as a King, should not be viewed in terms of isolation from one another but should be viewed in their entirety together. The prophets came to inform, and Jesus came to transform.

Do you know that the role of the pastor and the teacher is a prophetic role? Do you know that what happens when the Bible is taught is that Jesus Christ’s exercising his prophetic ministry through his Word by his servants? Do you realize that when my colleagues step up in my absence over the next three weeks and four weeks and on through the months, that they are exercising a prophetic role under God—that each individual is God’s man for that moment with God’s Word for God’s people. Do you realize that? I wonder.

Luther made it very clear when he was speaking to the ministers of his day many years ago. This is what he said: “[It is] a right excellent thing, that every honest pastor and preacher’s mouth is Christ’s mouth, and his word and forgiveness … Christ’s word and forgiveness.”[14] On the last day, God will say, “Have you preached that?” He will ask the listeners, “Have you heard that?” Then, on that last day, you will realize that you did not reject the pastor but God.

To fulfill such a role is not to give little talks out of an ancient book so as to placate the expectations of a congregation. To do this requires courage, consistency, conviction, and compassion. Because, you see, ultimately, Christ is the preacher. Christ is the worship leader. It is always, always about him.

He is, then, the Prophet revealing.

The Priest Reconciling Us to God

Secondly, he is the Priest reconciling. You will notice what it says: “After [he had made] purification for sins…” You see that in verse 3, at the very end of verse 3, the sentence there: “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of [God].”

If your Bible is open, you could turn forward just a couple of pages to chapter 10, and let’s just see how the writer works this out. I’m not going to expound it but just remind you of it. Hebrews chapter 10: “Therefore, brothers”—or “brothers and sisters”—“since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he [has] opened for us through the curtain”—this is Hebrews 10:19—“that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

I wonder how many of you remember one of the best sermons preached from this pulpit, by a little Scotsman. His name is Terry McCutcheon. And he came visiting us here, and he preached. I think it was from Psalm 30. It was a wonderful, wonderful address. And in the course of that, he said in his broad Glasgow accent, explaining what has happened as Jesus, as a Priest, bearing sin… And I’ve never forgotten it. I wrote it down and remembered it. Perhaps you did too. He looked out on us, and he said, “You know, if something’s going to get clean, something else has to get dirty.” “If something’s going to get clean, something else has to get dirty.” And what he was pointing out was that Christ dirtied himself, filthied himself with our sin, in order that we might be cleansed by the power of his blood.

This, you see, is the great mystery of the incarnation. If the damage by our flawedness is going to be repaired, somebody is going to pay. If the damage is going to be rectified, somebody will pay. Either we will pay on that day, or we will accept the payment that has been made on behalf of sinners when Christ, having provided purification for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Father.

There’s a way back to God from the dark paths of sin;
There’s a door that is open [that] you may go in;
[And] at Calvary’s cross [that’s] where you begin
When you come as a sinner to Jesus.[15]

If we do not grasp the immensity of the finished work of Christ as having provided once for all a purification for sins—if we do not grasp that—then we will inevitably lapse into justification by doing our best. Justification by doing our best. And there is all the difference in the world in coming upon a congregation that understands that Christ has taken in himself all of our ugliness, all of our flawedness, all of our messed-upness, and has given to us gratuitously the wonder of his righteousness. The vibe that goes through that kind of congregation is vastly different from the vibe that you will find in a congregation that actually has now assumed… Because they haven’t grasped the immensity of what God has done in Jesus as a reconciling Priest, now you will find a group of people who are regarding themselves as accepted by God as a result of doing the best they can.

The King Reigning as God

He, then, is a Prophet revealing, he is a Priest reconciling, and he is, finally, a King reigning. He is a King reigning: “He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Once his work of revelation and reconciliation was completed, God raised him to sit on his throne.

And that’s why we’ve said—and it bears reiteration—when we come to the Christmas event and we look in upon the cradle, as it were, if we’re going to make any sense of that cradle, we have to backtrack to the prophetic words that point us forward there, then we have to come forward from that cradle to the cross, and then from the cross, we need to go forward to this place described for us in Hebrews 1, where Christ is now enthroned—crowned, if you like—as the ascended King, so that we understand the big picture of what has happened: that God, who sits outside of time, has stepped down into time. Born into shame and ignominy, there we find him in a cradle. Now we find this messy humanity on a cross. Why is that man so messed up? Answer: because I am so messed up. And the only way for me to be unmessed up is for him to get messed up on my account.

But the story does not end there, for this Christ is now enthroned in glory, and he, you will notice, “upholds” everything—“upholds” everything—“by the word of his power.” In other words, if he were to take his hand off, everything would collapse.

You see what I said at the beginning? I said, you know, the Bible will not allow us just to sidle off with a cardboard Christ. We can’t get away from it. If we’re going to read our Bibles and take it seriously, we can’t dismiss this Jesus. Now we’re confronted by the fact that he is not only a Prophet who spoke so that our ignorance might be dealt with, he’s not only a Priest who reconciled so that our sin might be dealt with, but he is a King who reigns so that all of our destiny might be dealt with—so that we can come to him this morning, realizing that he is the source, he’s the sustainer, and he is the goal of all created reality; so that when you go to the particle stuff and you examine it—and some, as I say, are able to do so from a great scientific perspective—we do so in light of the fact that Christ upholds everything by the word of his power; that he is its source, he is its sustainer, and he is its goal.

The Lord Jesus Christ is entirely reliable because of who he is. He is the upholder of the universe. So we can trust him.

And what that actually means, too, is that there’s nothing that lies outwith the realm of his interest or his concern. That’s why it means that a Christian has a view of science. A Christian has a view of the ecosystems. A Christian has a view of how you treat animals. A Christian has a view of how we care for humanity. Why? Because we know, in Jesus, the one who made it all; and we know, in Jesus, the one who redeemed it all. The hymn writer put it like this:

This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me [springs]
The music of the spheres.[16]

But at the most intensely practical level—down at the level of the lady with whom I prayed last Sunday morning in between the services over the telephone, who had just been diagnosed with cancer. She’s alarmed by it, unsettled by it, fearful on account of it—all entirely understandable. Her Christianity did not allow her to say, “Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter.” No, it matters intensely. But as we prayed together on the phone, I sought to remind her that the Lord Jesus Christ is entirely reliable because of who he is. He is the upholder of the universe. So we can trust him with our tragedies. We can trust him with our failures. We can bring to him our hearts. We can be honest before him about our fears. We can acknowledge that whatever our ability to cope with the prospect of death might be, that we may rest secure in the one who has triumphed over this last brutal enemy—because of who he is.

Well, our time is gone. Let me finish in this way. At the beginning of our little run here in Advent, we said fairly routinely that the story begins with God taking the initiative and coming to us in Christ. The story is not, as the media likes to portray it, “Man is out there scanning the universe to try and find a God, if there is one.” No. The story is actually the reverse of that: that God has come seeking to save the lost.[17] I hope we’ve understood that.

To the extent that we have, let me ask you, then: If God has come to us through Jesus that our ignorance might be dealt with, our sin might be cleansed, and our destiny might be settled, isn’t the only realistic response for us to come to God through him? The message is that God has come to us through Jesus. Isn’t it only right that we would then come to God through Jesus? Have you ever come to God through Jesus? There’s no time like the present.

Father, thank you that the entrance of your Word brings light; that you are an entirely gracious, loving, and reliable God; that although you are disowned and devalued and challenged and maligned and abused, the fact that a blind man is unable to see the sun does not mean that there’s no sun to see, and the fact that we, in our blindness, deny you, refuse your kingship, spurn your salvation, ignore your pleadings is an indication once again of the fact that history is flawed, and my history is flawed.

Thank you that you’re an initiative-taking God—that you’ve come right down to where we are in Jesus in order that we might know you. Help us, then, this day and all of our days, to come to you through Jesus. Help us to rest in the majesty of who he is, in his power and in his might, in the tenderness of his love, in his interest in children and the least people in society and the left out and those who’d made a royal hash of everything—the Zacchaeuses of the world, who had become masterful at cheating; the woman at the well, who’d looked for love in fifty different places and never found it. How compassionate is this Christ? This is the one we trust. This is the name we proclaim. This is our Prophet, Priest, and King.

Hear our prayers, O God, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), book 3, chap. 10.

[2] Isaiah 40:9 (ESV).

[3] See John 1:3.

[4] Colossians 1:17 (ESV).

[5] See Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33.

[6] Michio Kaku, “The ‘God Particle’ and the Origins of the Universe,” Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2011, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204026804577098382660789136.

[7] Charles Wesley, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” (1739).

[8] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.4. Paraphrased.

[9] Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. 3, chap. 10.

[10] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.15.1.

[11] John 1:1 (ESV).

[12] Ephesians 4:18 (ESV).

[13] Luke 7:16 (paraphrased).

[14] Martin Luther, quoted in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, part 1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936), 107.

[15] Eric Herbert Swinstead, “There’s a Way Back to God.”

[16] Maltbie Davenport Babcock, “This Is My Father’s World” (1901).

[17] See Luke 19:10.