Chapter One
We are MADE for a relationship with God.
“Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through His Son…”
Hebrews 1:1-2(a)
Read Hebrews Chapter 1
What’s the Problem?
I have a friend who is deaf. She lost her hearing when she was 6 months old. As a result of her deafness, her speech was also impaired. So, when I first met her, communication was difficult. As days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, an unusual thing happened. The more time I spent with my friend, the better I understood her.
Of course, my friend always knew what she wanted to say, and she always understand herself. Her mother and those closest to her also usually understood her. Those who communicated via sign language understood her as perfectly as one human can understand another. My ears though were unaccustomed to her voice, and I didn’t know American Sign Language. Therefore, the problem in my communication with my friend was not my friend. The problem was me.
From the beginning, God has spoken to His people. In Genesis we read about how God warned (Genesis 2:16-17), called, and conversed with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). Throughout ancient history, He has spoken to His people through angels, judges, prophets, priests, and even ordinary people. He has and continues to speak personally to His people through visions and dreams, signs, promptings and His Word. Scripture even tells us that God uses nature to reveal Himself to mankind (Psalm 19:1-6). God wants to communicate with humanity and has taken great efforts to do His part.
Pastor Tim Harris once said, “Our lives are meant to be an ongoing conversation with Jesus.”
Almost everyone talks to God at some point in their lives. Even hardened atheists have been known to throw up a few foxhole prayers when their lives are in danger. But praying is not necessarily conversing with God. As William Hazlitt, an English writer, artist, and philosopher of the 1700s, once said, “The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.” (William Hazlitt, Selected Essays, 1778-1830)
In order to communicate with God, we have to listen as well as speak. The problem is our lines of communication are damaged by sin.
Jesus is God and God’s Son
How do people introduce you, or how do you introduce yourself? When my sons were young, they were often involved in sports. Remembering the names of their teammates was challenging enough; remembering the parents’ names seemed impossible. I think most of the parents felt that way. As we cheered our kids on from the sidelines, we would visit with one another. My conversations usually began like this, “Hello, I’m Tricia. I’m the Brown boys’ mom.”
Of course, I’m not just a mother. I’m also a wife, a daughter, a sister, an employee, a friend. As such I find that many of my introductions begin with these types of relational connections. “Hello, my name is Tricia. I am Ian Brown’s wife. I am the daughter of Jean and Gerald Carter. I am the sister of Marsha Crawford and Nancy Duffer.” You get the picture.
God introduced His son in the same way. “World, this is Jesus. He is my son.”
Now, if you are new to this whole Christianity thing, you may be confused. “Hold up, wait a minute! I thought Jesus is God. Now, you’re telling me He’s God’s son. Is He the son, or is He God?” It’s OK to be confused; it’s a confusing topic.
We call this the Trinity. The concept is found in scripture, but the word isn’t. Our God is a triune God. Triune means consisting of three parts. Our God is a God of three parts: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each part of the Trinity is distinctive and serves a different role, but each is completely and equally God.
There are many ways in which authors, speakers, and pastors try to simplify this concept to help people understand it better, but every analogy will fail in some point. For example, I can say that the Trinity is like me in that I am Tricia Kylene (Carter) Brown. I am a daughter, a wife, and a mother. Each of those identities is separate and has separate responsibilities, but I am all of them equally. In the same way, God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. However, this illustration collapses when we consider that I cannot separate myself. I cannot be a mother to Ryan in one place and serve my parents as a daughter at the same time in a different location. God did and does. His son, Jesus, came to earth to live and die and be resurrected. God the Father remained in Heaven. Yet, they were still One, both still God. It gets tricky, doesn’t it?
Here’s the thing. That’s why we call this faith. Can we just admit, up front, that we aren’t going to figure it all out? I’ve been a Christian for 45 years, and there is still so much I don’t know and even more that I don’t understand. Guess what? That’s OK. In fact, it’s more than OK because if I knew it all and understood it all, then, in essence, I would be God, and we all know that I am not.
God doesn’t expect us to know everything. He expects us to believe Him.
Ssh! He’s introducing His Son. It’s time to listen.
Jesus is our Creator and Sustainer
Sjon-Paul was a very inquisitive kid. He asked really hard spiritual questions at a very young age. For example, “If God is so big that He holds the whole world in His hands, how can He fit inside my heart?” It’s hard for us to imagine God because God never had a beginning, and He will never have an end. Because Jesus is God, He too has always existed. I know, you thought he was born on Christmas. Of course, you’re right, well, kind of.
Christmas is our celebration of the birth of Jesus as a human infant, but as part of the Trinity, Jesus is God and therefore eternal. He has no beginning and no end. In Hebrews 1:2, the author says that “through the Son he (God) created the universe.” In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.” Who was God speaking to? He had not yet created mankind. It’s highly unlikely that He wanted to make man in the image of animals. No, God was talking to Himself. He was addressing the Son and the Holy Spirit.
While most of us know a lot about Jesus’s time on earth, we don’t think about where He was or what He did before that time or what He’s been doing since. Before Jesus was born on earth, Jesus was in Heaven as part of the Trinity. He was at creation and actively involved in it. He was also active as part of the Godhead in Heaven, and interestingly enough, He actually appeared in bodily form on earth before His physical birth as a child. These preincarnate appearances of Christ in the Old Testament are called Christophanies. Sometimes, scripture refers to this with the term “angel of the Lord.” For example, in Genesis 18, when the Lord appeared to Abraham in human form, that was Jesus. Think of it this way. Since God is Spirit (John 4:24), anytime (in the Old or New Testament) when we see a human representation of God, it’s Jesus.
Most of us know a lot about Jesus’s earthly life; so, let’s skip that part for right now. Consider instead, what has Jesus been doing since He returned to Heaven after the resurrection? The author of Hebrews tells us that He is sitting at the right hand of His Father. Have you ever heard the expression, “He’s my right-hand man”? During the ancient times, when a king sat on a throne, the seat to the right of him was considered a special place of honor. The person who was seated to the right of the king was known to be a close and personal associate of the king. This would have been someone who was trusted by the king and given the authority and power of the king. Of course, while a human king’s right-hand man may have the king’s backing, Jesus and God are fully united. Therefore, Jesus has the same authority, power, and influence of God the Father.
Scripture tells us that right now Jesus is sustaining everything by His power. That means that the sun continues to shine because Jesus wills it to shine. The earth continues to turn because Jesus wants it to. Dogs bark, birds fly, and fish swim because that’s what Jesus wants them to do. Jesus is our Creator and our Sustainer. Of course, He’s also doing some other really important things—like intervening on our behalf—but we will discuss that later.
Because of all this, Jesus is greater than angels. Angels are God’s servants; Jesus is God’s son. Angels are created beings; Jesus is the Creator. Angels care for people; Jesus saves people. Jesus is also greater than the prophets, who were imperfect people like you and I.
So, now you know. Jesus is God’s Son. Because Jesus is also part of the Trinity, He is God. Because He is God, He is eternal. Because Jesus is eternal, He was present at and took part in creation and even appeared to men before His human birth. See how much you’ve learned all ready? This is tough stuff. People go to school for a long time and pay a lot of money to figure it out. Give yourself a pat on the back. You’re making great progress.\
Jesus is the Answer to our Problem
There’s a story I read once about a young boy who grew up in church where they sang all the old hymns. Songs like “Amazing Grace,” “How Great Thou Art,” and “The Sweet By and By” were a part of his normal Sunday worship experience way before he learned how to read. The little tike sang with all the gusto he could muster, even if he didn’t get all the words quite right. Years later, when he finally learned the true lyrics, it cleared up a lot of his spiritual confusion. He never had understood why the church wanted to sing a song about how great God farts.
Our inability to listen to God is not a result of a physical problem with our ears. It is also not a mere form of miscommunication. The reason we don’t listen well is because of sin. Adam and Eve’s failure to heed God’s command ushered in a sin problem that has infected and affected every generation since. God has always spoken to mankind; we just haven’t always listened. No matter how many ways He tried to communicate with us, we didn’t get the message. It’s like trying to speak when your cell phone coverage is spotty. You may hear a word or two, but the message is incomplete.
God sent angels and prophets and visions and dreams. He tried to display Himself through nature and tried to speak through personal methods of conviction and conscience, but He knew that we needed more. We needed Him to deliver the message in person, and when I mean in person, I mean in the person, someone with flesh and blood, bones and body, someone to whom we could relate and someone that would, in return, relate to us. God needed a perfect messenger, someone who wouldn’t muck it up, someone who could say and do exactly what God would say and do. The answer was to send Jesus.
Know God, Know Jesus, Know Yourself
An old trunk I purchased before heading to college served as a dress-up box for my young sons. I collected interesting items of clothing and costumes at yard sales and after Halloween sales. Every now and again, one of the boys would dress in a costume and put on a mask. When he entered the room, I would feign surprise, “Oh my, look at that knight in shining armor. Sir, can you tell me where Brandon is? I haven’t seen him around here, and I’m afraid he might be missing.” Inevitably, the boy would pull off his mask and shout, “Here I am Mom! I tricked you.”
Of course, he hadn’t, not really. No matter how good the costume or his imitation, my son couldn’t exactly represent a knight or a monkey or the super hero or anything else he pretended to be. He could only be an exact representation of himself.
That’s not the way it is with Jesus. Because Jesus is God, He expresses the very character of God. Some translations say “express image of” or “exact expression of.” Anything that we say of God is true of Jesus, and anything we say of Jesus is true of God. If we want to know God, then we need to know Jesus. If we want to be like God, you guessed it, we have to be like Jesus.
Our theme verse for this book is Hebrews 10:10, “For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.” The original Greek word for “to be made holy” is sometimes translated as “sanctified.” It means to be made special, to be made sacred, to be set apart. To be made holy is to be made like God.
Because of sin, we are separated from God. Our relationship with Him is broken. So, God sent His son, Jesus, to this earth. Jesus, who is eternal and unchanging, is our creator and sustainer. Because he is the revelation (the means by which God speaks) and the redemption (the message God gave us), He was able to make a way for us to have a relationship with God. God sent Jesus to show us how we can be made like Him. It is only through Him that we can have a relationship with the Father and only through Him that we can truly know ourselves.
As author Mark Batterson wrote “If you want to discover who you really are, seek God.” (Whisper, p. 140)
When we want to get to know someone, what do we do? We say, “Hello.” We send a text. We make a call. We communicate. The more we like someone, the more we want to communicate. When we love someone, we highly value and seek out communication. It makes sense then that we should want to communicate with God. We need Him, but why would a perfect, holy God, the creator of the universe, the one who is worshipped by angels, our rightful king, who is eternal and invincible, why would He want to communicate with sinful humans in the first place?
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
God loves us so much that He wants to develop a relationship with us. Sin prevented that relationship; so, God sent His Son to be the answer to our problem, the means by which to communicate with us, the bridge to a relationship between a holy, righteous God, and an unholy, sinful people. What can we learn from all this?
Because we see Jesus in relationship with the Father, we can know that we are MADE to be in relationship with the Father as well. We are MADE for a relationship with God.