River Road Church Baptist

Dr. Cecil E. Sherman

October 5, 2003

“The Reflection of God…The Imprint of God”

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

…And encourage him fully. I remember when I was in his place and this kind of an assignment would have been a terror to me. I’m not sure if Mack is terrorized, but he ought to be!

I’m especially grateful today for the words of Bob Shepherd. They were to the point, they were eloquent, and they are something that needs to be heard by the house. We will speak to this in other ways in the months to come and when I return to you in two weeks, God willing, I will speak on stewardship. Every once in a while, there is somebody who is offended inordinately when the pastor speaks on stewardship. I have told you this so that you may be absent, or so that you may come and justify your reasons for your opinion. But this is to our need and then almost immediately thereafter, all of us will be asked to make a statement of our intention for the year to come. So, that’s the sequence of events; know what’s going to happen. We need to step up and do this right. There are two ways to deal with church finances. You can mess around with it and be broke all next year, or you can back off and punch it, and be done with it, and be fully funded next year. I prefer the later and that’s what I intend to lend such influences I have to do.

I want to speak to you today, briefly, on the Hebrews text. Hebrews sets out to establish the claims of the church for Jesus. It is an argument. Now, we won’t enter into their argument fully, but always the church is thinking and rethinking who Jesus is and where he stands in the structure of our thought; the thoughts that underpin this institution. Who is Jesus? Is Christology all that important? Well, this text says, “Jesus reveals God fully.” I made the title to this sermon; actually I lifted it right out of the third verse. “He is the reflection of God,” and then a bit of redundancy, “He is the exact imprint of God.” God revealed himself to humankind over an extended period of time. The first verse takes this into account. “God, who in other days has spoken to us through the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his son.” This is a paraphrase of that verse that suggests the linear quality of what God is always about, telling us a little more about himself and a little more about himself and a little more about himself. We call this revelation. God is other. He is of a different nature from me.

When I speak to you of God, I see through a glass darkly. One theologian said, “When we talk about God, we’re talking about the fence around the mystery.” Somebody we understand only in part, just a little bit. So, God began to tell people what God was like and as he told us what God was like, it was implied that he is telling us what God expects of us. So really that’s sort of heads and tails what God’s like and what he expects of us. Through the prophets, this information was cumulative and so, notice this time, my hand is not moving like so, it is ascending. We are gathering, learning more, and some of the statements about the nature of God in the early part of the Old Testament, we count primitive. We don’t imitate some of that material. But as you move further, you see an ascent, a clarifying, a focusing. “God who in past time has spoken to us through the prophets,” and he told us a little more and a little more and a little more, “hath in these last days,” and it moves up again, “spoken to us through his son.” A reflection of God, like looking in a mirror. An exact imprint of God, almost a copy, and all of these illustrations are flawed and they will break down if they are put under a scope, but the idea is – we get the clearest picture yet. So when you come to your New Testament there’s a break. In your Bible it says, “The new covenant of our Lord Jesus Christ,” information at another level, this is the argument of the church. Jesus reveals God fully.

But the second idea…Jesus identifies with us wholly and he does this, the text says, through suffering. The church argues that Jesus is fully God, divine, fully human, and he gave evidence of this humanity by entering into our suffering, and particularly did he do this on the cross. Paul makes the same argument in Philippians 2, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God did not think this a thing to be held onto or clutched, he turned it loose, he entered into our predicament. He was obedient fully, even to death on the cross; therefore, God has exalted him.” But the argument in Hebrews runs like this, because he has had this suffering—the suffering we will memorialize in a few minutes—because he has known this suffering, he understands. I can make the argument and you understand it immediately. Understanding God is a reach, is a thing done partially. Paul said we see through a glass darkly. But you can turn that argument around. Does God really understand what it’s like to be human? Does God know what it’s like to lose a child? Does God know what it’s like when you’re supposed to provide and you lose a job? How could God know what it’s like to be healthy and then not to be healthy? And maybe with no prospect of regaining health. And how could God ever understand what it’s like to die? It made a powerful impression on the ancients that Jesus had entered holy into our experience through the cross. He had walked in our shoes, crawled into our skin, known what it’s like.

I must confess, there are times when, as a pastor, I have said to people, “I understand.” But my intention to come alongside was overstated. I really don’t know what it’s like to be married to somebody for 60 years and then all of the sudden to be a widow. There are lots of things I don’t understand. I’ve not been there and to glibly say, “Oh, I understand,” may be well intentioned, but it’s way beyond anything I know. This text says what Paul said in 2 Corinthians. He knows our pain. “No temptation has o’er taken you, but such as is common to us all,” and he has been in our place. So, the argument goes, Jesus reveals God fully, Jesus identifies with us wholly; therefore, that’s where the text is moving, Jesus is qualified to be the pioneer who brings us back to God.

In the second chapter, Barbara read where God’s intention was that humankind should have dominion. But then it goes on to say that was the intention, but that’s not the way it has turned out. G.K. Chesterton said, “Whatever you say about human beings, they aren’t what they were meant to be.” And then there comes along somebody who can take us where we are meant to go, where we’re supposed to go. There comes a pioneer who can take us from where we are to where we need to go. So, the church calls that pioneer Jesus. We make hymns to him, we pray in his name. In our preaching, we lift him up. He’s the centerpiece of our theology, the head of the church, and the theme of our song. The goal of this church is to turn out people who give reactions to life situations like Jesus does. I’m going to say that again. The goal of this church is to turn out people who give reactions to life situations like Jesus did. That’s a work in process, but that’s the target. The product of the church is people in the image of Christ. This is our message, this is our intent, and this is our work. That’s what it’s all about. Now if we do, we make people acceptable to God; and if we do, we make people who are fit to live as stewards of God’s creation. And so it is with reason that the sermon ends by asking you to follow the pioneer and come to Jesus.

CES; Lisa King, mt