
Jesus is probably NOT Michael the Archangel: The Hebrews Series pt 4 (Heb 1:4-7)
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Theological Exploration of Jesus as the New Adam
This chapter explores the theological concept of Jesus as the 'New Adam', contrasting his role with that of the original Adam. It highlights how Jesus' life, death, and resurrection bring redemption to humanity and all of creation, along with the cohesive narrative of the Old and New Testament.
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This is part of that swoop theology we see in Hebrews. So Jesus is exalted above all things. He's the creator through whom the worlds were made. He upholds all things by the power of his word, all that stuff. And then he comes into human nature. And in a sense, he lays all that on the line. He takes his, his ownership, his, his, his power, his claim upon all things. And he lays it on the line according to his performance and his goodness that he will live out as a human. But you might ask like, why, why would he do that? This is where the Bible does this. It constantly does what, in all honesty, what a lot of like screenwriters do and authors and novelists and stuff like that do is they have like this, this setup and a payoff moment. So the setup here is, is like Adam, Adam in the garden. He's related to Jesus ultimately on the cross while through his life. So even, even in the wilderness, Adam being tempted, Jesus being tempted, um, Adam dies for his own sin. Jesus dies for all of our sins, but Adam, he's in the garden and he represents all of humankind. He's like our, our, uh, our stand in where he goes. We all go. Adam fails. Adam sins and we all fall with him. Jesus. He then comes like the new Adam, the second Adam, the Bible actually talks about him as being this. And he enters in as a human to be like the new representative as Adam was. So Jesus will be, but Jesus will do it right. Adam took us from perfection in the garden into the fall, into this horrible state where things are now. Jesus takes us from this horrible state into exaltation. There's a swoop that you've got going on. Romans 8.20 talks about this and says that as Adam sinned, as he failed, and as we have all sinned, creation fell too. It wasn't just humans that fell. It was creation itself that fell down into bondage and had to be delivered as well. You can think about how if a kid's very disobedient to their parent, the parent might be, I'm going to sell in your car. You're grounded. You can't use your PlayStation or whatever. The things that you own, the things that you're responsible for, they fall too. They fall with you. And this is what happened with the earth. It fell too. Romans 8.20 says this. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. It talks about, and I know this sounds kind of complicated, but this is the theology of the scripture here. Creation fell with Adam. And so when Jesus, he fulfills and lives out the perfect life, he buys it all back. So yeah, he owns the world because he created it, but he then gives it to mankind, subdue the earth and fill it, take dominion and mankind falls and our stuff falls with us. Jesus represents the perfect person, the perfect Adam. Now he lives the perfect life. He dies for our sins. He pays the penalty for sin. He purchases back all of us, but also all of creation. So we all come together. Jesus, that's how he inherits something. This is how he gains something through his, his death and resurrection that he wouldn't have already had. So Hebrews 1.4, that's why he's inherited a name more excellent than the angels. He, he earned it. He earned it. So you could say Jesus owns us twice. I think that's a good way to put it. He, he made me and he bought me and he did this with creation as well. All right. Now there's an Old Testament reference here that I just want to highlight. I won't get into detail because we'll, we'll look more at it as we're going along here. But in Hebrews one, verse four, we have this phrase, the name he's inherited, the name, the name, the name that's significant because Hebrews one, five is going to quote second Samuel chapter seven. 2 Samuel 7, a whole big significant portion of it, it does have repetition of the idea of the name. God's going to make a name for the son of David. And all I want to say is you wouldn't notice this if you were casually reading. But even the idea of the name here is integrated in the mind of the author of Hebrews and really under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It's integrating Old Testament context in detail. The New Testament, we usually think of the New Testament as proof texting the old. Quote a verse. That's all I wanted. I just wanted that one verse to prove the point I was making. Now I'm moving on. Hebrews is not doing that. Hebrews is quoting a verse that has this expansive section of scripture that has deep, powerful meaning as it relates to Jesus. The integrated nature of the Old and New Testament is amazing. I remember hearing years ago arguments for the inspiration of scripture. You guys can see if you can track with me on this. The arguments for inspiration of scripture, some of them are pretty simple and easy, right? You could say, oh, well, the Bible presents like scientific foreknowledge. Or you might put it more simply this way. Knowledge of things that men later discovered to be true, such as Hebrews will talk about this. The fact that space, time, all that stuff was created, it has not always existed. That's one of the things we see in scripture. Now that was actually fought against and not believed until like the, almost the middle part of the last century. So about a hundred years ago, they started going, yeah, you know what? Maybe it was created. In fact, some physicists fought this because they thought it was too religious of a conclusion. the universe is created, if it hasn't always existed, if it required a moment of beginning, then it's like you're saying there has to be a God. And now people try to run from this conclusion, but it is the most obvious conclusion of just all of a sudden everything exists. Poof, out of nothing. It's a beautiful evidence for God, right? But it's also predicted in scripture. Hebrews, we'll get there when we get there. Hebrews chapter 11. I'll get it. I'll do a little thing on that, on the origin of the universe. So there's scientific stuff like that. You also have evidence for scripture. You have things like fulfilled prophecy. If you go into the Old Testament or even the New Testament, you have instances of prophecy. So in the New Testament, it could be like this. Hey, let's demonstrate that we have reason to believe that the gospels were written early or that at least Jesus's statements about the destruction of the temple were in fact said before the temple was destroyed because he describes not one stone left upon another. That was a really particular prophecy. The Romans didn't even want to destroy the temple. Like this was a source of revenue for them and glory for the empire. But it was destroyed in like a series of strange events. It did happen. Stones were actually cast off the temple. Even today in Israel, if you want to find actual stones from the original temple, the easiest place to do it is to find them in a pile of rubble sitting alongside the temple mount because there were not one stone was left on another. So you could do it that way. You could also go to Old Testament prophecy and you could look at Ezekiel and the destruction of Tyre. I have videos on that. T-Y It's a city. You could look at statements about other historic events that were in fact fulfilled, especially around Jesus. Jesus himself has prophesied many times in the Old Testament. This is evidence for the inspiration of scripture, right? Hey, God wrote this thing. But I'll have to say there's another piece of evidence for the inspiration of scripture that I didn't appreciate. I heard it and I would echo it, but I never really appreciated it until I started going deep on reading how the New Testament was using the Old Testament. That is the unity of scripture. That's the phrase. They go, well, the Bible is unified. It's like 66 documents written over, you know, 1400 or however many years, 2000 years, you know, you guys can debate that either, either way. The thing is, it's written over many, many expansive lifetimes, people who lived on different continents. It's written in multiple languages, all these different authors.
This is part of an ongoing series of serious Bible studies going through the book of Hebrews verse-by-verse.
- You can watch the whole Hebrews Series HERE (more vids added as I make them)
- My full Jesus in the Old Testament playlist is HERE
- How Jesus is "The Angel of the Lord": HERE
- Fulfilled prophecy in Ezekiel about the destruction of Tyre: HERE
- HERE are the notes from today's Bible study.
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