Colleen and Nikki talk about the introduction of the New Covenant including the book of Hebrews’ teachings of who Jesus really is. Podcast was published April 21, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Thanks for rejoining us as we do our studies through the covenants. Today we are going to actually introduce the New Covenant. That’s a biggie for all of us who have left Adventism for the sake of the gospel, and we’re just glad that you’re hanging in there with us. And during this time of isolating for this virus which is sweeping our world, actually, we’re glad that we can have these moments together where we can think about eternal truth, even while these temporal things are going on around us and messing up our schedules, and it is hard not being able to meet with the body of Christ, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yeah, it is.
Colleen: So many things that I miss from that. We’ll talk a little bit more about that when we do our next podcast on living in isolation. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Nikki, let’s just jump into the deep end.
Nikki: Okay!
Colleen: When you were an Adventist, what did you think the New Covenant was, or did you even know there was one?
Nikki: I had heard the phrase. I’m sure I read it.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: But I thought that it was just the New Testament. There was the Old Testament and then the New Testament, and I thought that the New Covenant was the New Testament, and that was about it. Pretty simple. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Right. So all those books, the gospels, the history, the letters, and the eschatology book, all that was the New Covenant.
Nikki: Yeah, that’s really what I thought, I guess. The life and teachings of Jesus. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Okay. [Laughter.] Well, that was the title of a class in Bible back in college. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I think it was my sophomore year. [Laughter.] The Life and Teachings of Jesus. Boy, when I think how I learned those things from the Adventist perspective, it’s so different now.
Nikki: Yeah, and you know, I think I thought that Ellen White was the bridge. You had the Old Covenant, the bridge, and the New Covenant –
Colleen: Oh.
Nikki: – and she bridged the two.
Colleen: What did she do that made the New Covenant make sense, or did you have any sense of how she bridged?
Nikki: What she did was she made it really obvious that you have to keep the Ten Commandments, you have to keep the Sabbath, you have to do it on the right day, and you’re spiritual Israel, and you’re attaching yourself to the old – the Mosaic covenant. Then you look at Christianity now and you see, oh, they’re not keeping all of the Mosaic covenant, and so, I don’t know. She made it make sense in a way, I think, for me as a kid, not knowing all the other sanctuary doctrine stuff, just the Sabbath.
Colleen: Did you have the belief – I know I did, but I’m curious to know if you did – that you had to do your part in the New Covenant, just like Israel had to in the Old.
Nikki: Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Yes. Actually, I had to do a better job than Israel did.
Colleen: Right. Well, yeah, I had that thought too –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – had to do better than Israel.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But I had to keep the law in order to be saved, and if I kept my end of the covenant, God would ultimately save me, but I had to keep my end of the covenant.
Nikki: Absolutely.
Colleen: Which betrays a terrible ignorance of what the Bible says the New Covenant is.
Nikki: Yes, it does, especially when the biggest rule to follow isn’t even written in the New Testament, the sabbath-keeping.
Colleen: It’s amazing we missed that. You know, never once in all the list of sins that Paul mentioned, people who are this or do that will not see eternal life, will not enter the kingdom, and sabbath-keeping is never mentioned in that list of potential sins.
Nikki: I always thought that was tricky.
Colleen: Yeah, exactly. You have to have special knowledge.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Well, let’s just start by reading the central passage where we first hear the New Covenant articulated, and interestingly, this passage is in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah wrote while Israel was exiled into Babylon, while Judah was exiled into Babylon. He wrote from a position of the nation being disseminated, being punished for its idolatry. The city of Jerusalem, the country of Judea, was decimated by the Babylonians, and Jeremiah was given this amazingprophecy by God that was meant for Israel, but we learn in the New Testament that it was expanded to include all who believe. So let’s turn to that central passage where we first hear what the New Covenant actually is. It’s Jeremiah 31:31-34.
Nikki: “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.'”
Colleen: That’s an amazing promise, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yes, it is.
Colleen: What stands out to you when you look at this that maybe you didn’t notice as an Adventist? [Laughter.] What contradicts what you understood as an Adventist?
Nikki: Well, this covenant has to be different because it says that it’s not like the one that He made with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah, when He brought them out of Egypt.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: It has to be different.
Colleen: Yeah, it does. And who’s He making this promise to, right in this initial declaration of the New Covenant?
Nikki: The house of Israel and the house of Judah.
Colleen: He is writing to Israel. We learn later that this promise is applied to all who believe. But when it was first given, it was a promise to exiled Judah. We learn that it’s going to be different. And what will be the mark of this. I mean, what is God going to do when He makes this covenant with His people?
Nikki: He’s going to put His law inside them, on their heart. He’s going to write it on their heart.
Colleen: That’s right. And how did you understand that law as an Adventist?
Nikki: [Laughter.] I knew what Adventists said, that He was going to put the Decalogue on our heart, that He would write the Ten Commandments on our heart. I thought that was the human conscience. Honestly, I don’t know that I knew how to interpret that or what that meant.
Colleen: I don’t think I understood it either. Although when this is repeated and referred to in the New Testament, I doremember having the huge cognitive dissonance, ten years at least, before I understood what the gospel really was, that if the law is on the hearts of believers, it was striking to me that I knew people who were not Adventist who had definitely nine laws on their hearts.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: They did want to honor God, but they had to be taught the Sabbath by an Adventist –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – to have the Sabbath make sense, and it didn’t seem to fit with “I will put it on their heart and you won’t have to teach your neighbor these things.”
Nikki: It makes Him a weak God, if you think about it. Because if God can put it on the heart but then history can lose one of them and then God needs to get a remnant church to come in and teach it, it undermines Him, and it puts the saving work in the hands of humans, who are going to go and spread the message that He failed to keep on the heart. It doesn’t make sense.
Colleen: So true. It makes no sense at all, no sense at all. So God is declaring this through the prophet Jeremiah to exiled Judah. Is there any human response or agreement to this promise that God is making?
Nikki: No, I don’t see any.
Colleen: Would this be a conditional or an unconditional covenant?
Nikki: This is unconditional.
Colleen: Because God is making these promises, and He’s not saying, “If you obey me, I will do this; if you agree, I will do this; if you keep my Sabbath, I will do this.” He’s just saying, “The day is coming when I will do this.” Unilateral, unconditional, there is no limit to this. There is no time limit. There’s a beginning when He will do it, but there’s no end once He does, and there’s no human participation in the promise. So this is an unconditional promise. That was a key thing I did not understand when I thought “New Covenant” as an Adventist because I always thought I had to participate for any covenant promises to come true.
Nikki: I might have worked my way around that with the fact that He sent Jesus and we had nothing to do with Him sending Jesus, but that’s not what this says. This talks about a single work of God alone, to put His law on our hearts.
Colleen: And what we know from the New Testament, from the apostolic writings, we understand that this only became possible because He sent Jesus and after Jesus fulfilled the law.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That was when the New Covenant became possible. But He doesn’t explain that in the promise. He just says He’ll do it. This is the initial statement. Just for the sake of keeping this more or less simple, without looking at every single text that can be looked at, let’s jump forward to where Jesus presents the idea of something new, something coming, to a teacher of the law, and we find this in John 3:3-6, where Jesus meets with Nicodemus when Nicodemus comes to Him at night to ask Him about Himself. Let’s go to John 3, and let’s read verses 1 to 10.
Nikki: “Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, “You must be born again.” The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?'”
Colleen: I never understood as an Adventist when I would read this passage – and I did read this passage, especially in my adult years before discovering the gospel, but when I was trying to make sense of things that were starting to seem confusing, I remember reading this and thinking, “Well, what does Jesus mean? Where is there any place in the Old Testament that would refer to being born again? How could Nicodemus have been expected to understand this?”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And yet Jesus implied very strongly that it was there. He is the teacher of Israel, he should have understood.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So what strikes you about what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, Nikki? What strikes you now that is different from when you saw this as an Adventist?
Nikki: The whole passage is different now. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start as a believer, and as a new believer when I first left I was very stuck on the fact that He says “The Spirit gives birth to spirit,” that what’s born of the Spirit is spirit.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then, looking at the Greek, just through an interlinear Bible, you see that the word for the Holy Spirit is the exact same word as the spirit that comes from Him, the Spirit gives birth to spirit. That really helped me in that part of coming out of Adventism, understanding that I have a spirit that needs life, that is dead, and it needs life, and realizing – I don’t know, I was always mystified by the wind blowing where it wishes, and now I see that as – it’s a complete act of God.
Colleen: It’s not a human act.
Nikki: You can’t choose to be born again by going and getting baptized and signing a list of fundamental beliefs.
Colleen: Nope. And that was more or less how I understood verse 3, where Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Well, I didn’t know what being born of the Spirit meant. I guess I sort of thought of that metaphorically, like God changes your mind and convinces you of the Adventist truth. But the water, I didn’t know what to do with that except water baptism.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: To dovetail that with Jesus saying, “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t understand what I’m saying?”
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I’ll never forget my astonishment when several years ago I looked up the cross references for that verse and discovered it cross referenced me to Ezekiel.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Now, Nikki, you’ve talked about this. This is a big deal for you. Would you talk about that, please, and take us there?
Nikki: It’s just like you. As I was reading this passage and I was finally learning how to read my Bible and use my cross references, I discovered that Ezekiel passage too. That is in chapter 36. It begins in verse 26, and this is – interestingly, this is talking about the New Covenant and what God’s going to do.
Colleen: I had no idea that was in Ezekiel.
Nikki: No. And so, clearly the work of God in the New Covenant is connected to the new birth. Okay, let’s start in verse 24. “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.”
Colleen: What are the things here that God is promising Israel through the prophet Jeremiah? It’s kind of interesting. It’s very important to see that there are different things that He’s promising to do. They’re all related, but they’re different things.
Nikki: It makes me think of His promise to Abraham, that He was going to give them land, and so He’s saying that He’s going to bring them from all over the nations and put them in the land. As you move down, it talks about Him cleansing us, cleansing them from their idols –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and giving them a new heart and a new spirit, and I just love the fact that you have Him putting a new spirit in them and putting His Spirit in them.
Colleen: That’s two different things.
Nikki: Two different things, and again, the same word in Hebrew.
Colleen: I’ll give you a new spirit; I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. It’s so interesting too that He uses the metaphor of stone and flesh to talk about the new heart He’s giving them.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” This is not, like, a foreshadowing, necessarily, of what I’m going to say, but it’s interesting that God uses this particular language because Adventism loves to say, “Stone is permanent. God wrote the law on the stone with His fingers, and that is eternal and permanent because it’s written on stone.” But here God says the temporary thing, the evil thing, the defiled thing is the heart of stone, and He’s going to replace it with a heart of flesh, a soft heart, a heart that’s open and responsive, not “set in stone,” shall we say. And it’s just so interesting to me that God specifically uses that language and how Adventism has twisted the metaphor of stone into something very skewed from what Scripture teaches about the law of stone in the New Testament. When I saw this, I realized this is what Jesus meant when He said to Nicodemus, “Are you the teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things?” He speaks here of both being sprinkled with clean water and being cleansed by the clean water and about the new heart and the new spirit and receiving God’s Spirit. What does the water represent? It seems to be an ongoing discussion among people. So where do we find a reference in the New Testament that explains or defines being washed with water, like Ezekiel prophesied?
Nikki: Well, that makes me think of Ephesians 5.
Colleen: This is in an interesting part of the New Testament where Paul is talking about the relationship of husbands and wives and comparing it to the relationship between Christ and the church. It’s a moving passage, actually –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – where he talks about how husbands are to treat wives, wives are to respond to husbands, and how Christ treats the church and cares for her. In verses 25 and 26 of Ephesians 5, what does Paul tell us about the comparison between Christ and the church and a husband with a wife?
Nikki: He tells husbands “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”
Colleen: He’s defining the washing of water like the cleansing process of being cleansed from defilement as being washed with what?
Nikki: With the word, the word of God.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? It’s God’s word that cleanses us from all our defilement. In fact, Peter emphasizes this fact in a text I’ve heard you quote, Nikki, in 1 Peter 1.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Why don’t we look at that passage in 1 Peter 1:22 and 23, where Peter identifies what the word does.
Nikki: He says, “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.”
Colleen: So here Peter connects being born again with receiving the imperishable word of God, which he calls “living and enduring.” God’s word tells us the truth. God’s word is what cleanses us from defilement. It’s what Jesus uses to cleanse us as His bride, we who believe and who’ve become part of the bride of Christ. It’s the word of God that cleanses us so we’re spotless before Him. So when Jesus said to Nicodemus that you must be born of water and the Spirit, what’s He actually saying here? He’s quoting Old Testament, He’s referring to Ezekiel, but the full meaning is what, from the New Testament perspective?
Nikki: One other text that connects the washing with being born again can be found in Titus chapter 3 in verse 5 and 6: “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” So we see there that washing of regeneration, the new birth.
Colleen: And this is brought about by the truth which is in God’s word and by His giving us a new spirit and His Spirit so that we can understand the truth of His word. All of this was in view when Jesus talked to Nicodemus that night, and Nicodemus, still living pre-cross, being a Jew, under the law, should have understood what Jesus was talking about, and when Jesus actually chastised Nicodemus and said, “Are you a teacher of Israel and you don’t know this?” But the Old Testament taught that there would be a New Covenant, that it would come upon those who believe by God’s sovereign act of love and grace by which He washed those who believe with the regeneration brought about by His giving them a soft heart, by helping them to understand, by the Spirit putting God’s living word on their hearts, and by giving them the new birth with a new spirit and the seal of His own Spirit on them. This was all there, and Jesus is telling Nicodemus, “This is what has to happen before someone can enter the kingdom of heaven.” This is new. This kind of new birth was prophesied, it was promised, but it wasn’t experienced prior to Jesus coming. This is something new that came with Jesus. Having established that the New Covenant was first promised in Jeremiah, reiterated by Ezekiel, and that Jesus taught it to Nicodemus early in the Gospel of John, we have to say: How, based on this teaching, is a person born again? What would you say, Nikki, to that question? How is a person born again?
Nikki: There would be two parts to that for me.
Colleen: Okay.
Nikki: I would say you have to hear the word of truth and believe, and it has to be the true gospel about the true Son and what He did. And the other thing I would say is, according to the Gospel of John, we’re not born again by the will of man but by the will of God. In 1 Peter 1:3 it says that according to God’s great mercy He caused us to be born again. So I would say it is through faith in the true God and the true God’s gospel –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and it is God’s work of bringing us to life.
Colleen: It sounds like it’s all of God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And those of us who believe experience this reality that God does in us through His word, through His Spirit, through giving us a new heart and a new spirit and washing us with regeneration by the truth of His word.
Nikki: And if I could just emphasize that word “cause” that Peter uses –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – that God causes us to be born again, an act of God. We see that in Ezekiel, that He will cause them to walk in His ways. I always want to point that out when we’re talking about having left Adventism, because so often people say, “Okay, now you have a New Covenant and you’re born again and you don’t have to obey anything? You can just do whatever you want?” Well, no, that’s actually not the New Covenant. The New Covenant, the new birth, with it comes obedience by the power of God at work in us.
Colleen: In order to understand the implications of the New Covenant – because all of us who have left Adventism know it’s not possible to put the Sabbath guilt we learned in its proper perspective, which is to bed, never to be seen again, we can’t even understand how to do that without understanding the New Covenant fully, and so to do that we’ve decided to take a somewhat slow but careful look at the Book of Hebrews because if there was any book anywhere ever written that explains why the New Covenant is new and what makes it new, it’s the Book of Hebrews, and to do that we have to first establish the New Covenant is something that God promised, yes, but it becomes reality in the person of the Lord Jesus. It’s not just a philosophical difference; it’s not just an administrative decision. The New Covenant is accomplished in Christ Jesus, and it is given to us who believe in Christ Jesus. Jesus isn’t just the mechanism or the tool or the channel through whom God does something. Jesus is the bringer and the essence of the New Covenant, and that’s why the Book of Hebrews is so important for people who’ve been Adventists, well and for everybody really, but because we were taught a Jesus that the Bible doesn’t teach. So we’re going to start by just looking at Hebrews 1. Hebrews 1, I didn’t understand in the past very well. Certainly as an Adventist I didn’t. It just seems to be a collection of Old Testament quotes, and I wanted to say, well, this is almost redundant. Why are we doing this? And I realize now Hebrews 1 is establishing, as a basis for understanding the New Covenant, who the Bible says Jesus is. We have to have the right Jesus if we’re going to be able to have the right New Covenant. So let’s just start walking through Hebrews 1 and look at some of the amazing things that we find. Nikki, how would you like to just start by reading 1 and 2, verses 1 and 2.
Nikki: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.”
Colleen: Okay. Let’s just stop right there and ask ourselves: What are these two verses telling us about Jesus? What strikes you, Nikki? I know that this is kind of an impacting portion of Scripture when people first start understanding what Adventism was and what we’re leaving.
Nikki: In the past God spoke in the prophets, and He did it in many different ways, many different portions, many different prophets at many different times. I know that’s not in the text, but that’s all a reality. But then in these last days He has spoken, so now we have past tense. It’s done, one time. Singular event. He has spoken to us in His Son.
Colleen: And notice that preposition in His Son, or the ESV says by His son. It does not say He has spoken to us through His Son.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: That’s extremely important. Jesus is not a mouthpiece for God. Jesus is God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God has spoken to us in Jesus or by Jesus because Jesus is God, and God has spoken. And it also says who He is in terms of creation and the universe. What else does it say about Him there?
Nikki: It says that He was the one who made the world and that He is the one who’s inheriting what He made. God made Him the heir of all things.
Colleen: You were saying beforehand this reminds you of another book, the beginning of another New Testament book.
Nikki: Yeah, it does. It reminds me of the beginning of the Gospel of John.
Colleen: It does me too.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: So we have right from the get-go, whoever the author of Hebrews is, and it’s not known who it was, but clearly he writes from an intimate understanding of Jewish law and is showing who Jesus was compared to the law, this author opens his epistle by telling us Jesus is God’s final word, Jesus created the world, Jesus is inheriting the world, in other words, Jesus is whom?
Nikki: He’s God. And it’s worth pointing out that these two simple verses tell us how the story ends.
Colleen: Yes, that’s true!
Nikki: There is no controversy. He is the heir of all of it. It’s appointed, it’s done. We’re not waiting to see who gets everyone.
Colleen: When was that established?
Nikki: Before the foundations of the earth.
Colleen: Well, yes it was. And it was when He died on the cross that He broke the curse of the law and rose from the dead. He broke the curse of death. Ever since then, there is not even any wishful thinking on the part of Satan that maybe He can cause Jesus to be defeated. No. Satan’s defeated he’s already defeated. So that’s the first thing we see. Jesus is God. Creator, heir, final word, and it’s also interesting to notice that these two verses indicate that the last days began with Jesus.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So we are living in the last days, definitely. This virus is a sign of the last days, but the last days began with Jesus, and the end of all things is yet to come. But we can see – based on what Jesus told us in Matthew 24, we can see that things are happening that are preparing the world for those last end-of-time events, but we don’t know when they will be yet. We just know we’re in the last days. That being said, let’s look at verse 3 and see what verse 3 tells us about Jesus.
Nikki: I really like this one. It says, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
Colleen: So, what are the things we learn about Jesus here?
Nikki: I tripped a little as I was reading because I actually memorized these first four verses in a different version.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: And I love how the ESV puts it. It says that “He is the exact imprint of His nature.”
Colleen: Oh, cool.
Nikki: And that put to bed any notion of Him having a sinful nature when I read that.
Colleen: Yes. Oh, that’s so true, such a good point. So He is the exact imprint, or the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of His nature, which is complete righteousness, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, all the omni’s, every single powerful thing is the imprint of God’s nature, and Jesus has that too. So then it says He does what?
Nikki: He upholds all things by the word of His power.
Colleen: You know, that reminds me of Colossians 1:17 where it says, in Jesus, in Him, all things hold together. And I remember hearing – well, actually I remember Richard telling me, coming home from a men’s Bible study years ago, that Gary Inrig had taught through a passage in Colossians and pointed out that in Jesus all things hold together and that that is, in the Trinity, the role of the Son, to hold all things together. He created it, the word of His power, the creative, eternal, divine word of Christ holds everything together, so here again, Jesus is being established as the One whose power, eternal power, is holding everything together. And then what does it say He did?
Nikki: It says, “When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” That’s completed atonement.
Colleen: Yes. And how do we know that?
Nikki: He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Colleen: Was there ever a time in the law when a Levitical priest sat in the tabernacle or the temple?
Nikki: No. They were always working.
Colleen: No. They were always working, always standing. There was no finished-ness about their work. But Jesus sat down. And symbolically, the phrase “sat at the right hand” is a phrase that represented the power of God. So Jesus sits at the powerful right hand of God. He is God’s power. He is at the right hand of God. He has all of God’s power, as we’ve seen in the fact that He’s defeated sin and He’s holding everything together. And then, in 4 it starts to compare Him to the angels. What does it say in 4?
Nikki: “Having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.”
Colleen: When I learned as an Adventist that God exalted Jesus to the position of Son, way back in pre-history, and it made Lucifer jealous, and he turned on Jesus and solicited a third of the angels of heaven to go with him against Jesus and thus triggered the great controversy, how can we know this is wrong?
Nikki: [Laughter.] Well, let me count the ways.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: First of all, only God can create. He created the earth. He was God. He was not an angel. He was far superior to the angels. He always was God, so there was no elevation of Him to the godhead. That’s not anywhere near this. He upholds everything by the word of His power.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It’s all under His sustaining control. He’s not going to go to war with one of His creatures that He’s sustaining.
Colleen: Yes. I mean, Lucifer knows that Jesus is His creator. The idea that there’s a great controversy, that he was jealous that God exalted Jesus, all of that suggests that Jesus once was an angel, and a lot of Adventists do believe that He was once an angel.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: In fact, I’ve even heard some Adventists say that Jesus became an angel, took the name “Michael” before He became a human, and that He went and tried to win the fallen angels back. Now, I don’t think Ellen White says that, but I’ve heard that as an explanation.
Nikki: That’s fair. I mean, she took a lot of creative license to come up with her story, so what’s to stop them?
Colleen: It’s blasphemy.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Jesus created Satan, and He’s inherited a more excellent name than they. Whose name does Jesus have?
Nikki: The name of God.
Colleen: Yes. He is Yahweh. Angels never have the name of God.
Nikki: I do see contained in this text, though, the mystery of the hypostatic union because we have, at the beginning of the text, He’s clearly God, He’s created all things, He upholds the universe.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: But then we also see in 4 “having become as much better than the angels” –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and this would be the “fully man” aspect, not an elevated angel.
Colleen: No. It’s more like an elevated human who is also God the Son.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: It’s the humanity of Jesus that was elevated. He wasn’t an angel. In verse 5 we have a quote, and here we start the quotes from the Old Testament, and let me just say again, I had no idea as an Adventist that the Psalms were Messianic, many of them, that they actually prophesied or foreshadowed the Lord Jesus, but here’s the beginning in Hebrews 1 of where the writer shows from the Old Testament who Jesus is. “For to which of the angels did He ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you?’ And again, ‘I will be a Father to Him and He shall be a Son to me?'” Well, he’s quoting from Psalm 2 when it says “You are my
Son,” and indeed, that is what the Psalmist says there. It’s not clear explicitly that the Psalmist was speaking of Jesus, but in retrospect, looking back from this side of the cross, it’s very clear it was a prophecy of Jesus. And this author is now saying – he’s applying it to Jesus, he’s saying, “Which angel did God ever say that to?” Only to Jesus. And then, it’s interesting that the second quote, “I will be a Father to Him, and He shall be a Son to me,” is right out of 2 Samuel 7:14, right out of the Davidic covenant where God promised to give Abraham an eternal throne, a dynasty, and a kingdom. When God told David through the prophet Nathan that He would be a Father to Him and David would be a son to Him, and here we have the author of Hebrews applying that verse to the Lord Jesus, the true Son of David, who would sit on the eternal throne of David. And then in verse 6 we have another quote from Psalms, this time from Psalm 97:7, where he says, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” Well, what’s significant about that?
Nikki: Angels only worship God.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: I love that in verse 6 it says, “And when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him.'” That’s the Christmas story.
Colleen: Yes, it is. And Jesus, we also learn in the New Testament, is the firstborn –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: He’s the firstborn of creation, which is – that’s Colossians, which is a title of ownership over, and He’s also the firstborn from the dead.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He’s the firstborn on a couple of different counts that only God the Son could have ever been. And it’s also interesting that in Psalm 97 this quote is used and applies to God Himself, to Yahweh, and here this author is clearly calling Jesus God by applying this Psalm, referring to Yahweh by applying it to Jesus, who is Yahweh Himself. So in verses 7 to 9, what do we see here?
Nikki: So in verse 7 it says, “And of the angels He says, ‘Who makes His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire.’ But of the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.'” So it’s very clear he’s comparing the Son of God, God, to the angels. The angels have a job.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: God calls Jesus “God,” He calls Him His Lord.
Colleen: In verse 7, He calls the angels winds and flames of fire, but it contrasts that in verse 8 with what He says of the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever,” and that’s right out of Psalm 45:6, and I think it’s so amazing that this author clearly applies this verse to Jesus, and in its original setting it was clearly talking about God, so the connection is unmistakable. This author is establishing the identity of Jesus as God, who has an eternal throne.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And then, of course, in verse 9, how does he describe Jesus from the Psalm?
Nikki: That He’s loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.
Colleen: And has anointed Him with the oil of joy above His companions. And we can see how God did that with Jesus. He raised Him up from the tomb and gave Him eternal joy of having been the propitiation that satisfied the demands of God’s own law and has forever exalted Him above His companions. Now, what companions is that about? What does that mean? Why does he use the word “companions?” This is referring to what aspect of Jesus?
Nikki: His humanity.
Colleen: Jesus is God, but He is also man, and God exalted Him, as the Son of God and the Son of Man, above His companions, and His companions, in the context of what we know from the New Testament, is likely referring to whom?
Nikki: Israel.
Colleen: His fellow Israelites and maybe specifically His disciples. But God has exalted Jesus above them all. And then in verse 10, another quote from the Psalms, this time from Psalm 102:25. And what does verse 10 say?
Nikki: “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.”
Colleen: In the original Psalm, this is referring to whom?
Nikki: To God.
Colleen: And here, the author is ascribing it to –
Nikki: To Jesus.
Colleen: So it’s clearly reiterating that Jesus is the one that created and laid the foundations of the earth. And then, in verses 11 and 12, what do 11 and 12 say? These are quotes from Psalm 102:26 and Isaiah 51:6.
Nikki: “They will perish, but You remain; and they all will becomes old like a garment, and like a mantle You will roll them up; like a garment they will also be changed. But you are the same, and your years will not come to an end.”
Colleen: So again, in these original passages in the Old Testament, who would Israel have understood the writers to be addressing?
Nikki: Yahweh.
Colleen: But here the author is addressing them to the Son, to Jesus, and what’s he saying is true about the Son? What are the things he is saying here?
Nikki: He’s eternal.
Colleen: And what authority does He have over creation?
Nikki: He has the authority to roll them up like a garment, to remove them.
Colleen: He is eternal. He outlasts creation. He made creation, but He has the authority to end it, to roll it up like a garment, and at the same time His years will not end. He will never come to an end. He is always the same.
Nikki: This is alpha and omega.
Colleen: Oh, my goodness! That’s true! We have two more verses in this chapter. In verse 13 we have another Psalm quote, this time Psalm 110 again. It’s interesting that the author of Hebrews repeatedly throughout the Book of Hebrews refers to Psalm 110, applying what Psalm 110 says to Jesus. And in verse 13, what does he quote as applying to Jesus?
Nikki: “But to which of the angels has He ever said, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?'”
Colleen: He is quoting the Psalm where there’s clearly something that probably Israel didn’t fully understand, although they might have understood it to be God speaking to David, but what is God saying to the Son as applied in this passage? God is saying sit where?
Nikki: At His right hand, at a seat of power and authority.
Colleen: And what will be His footstool?
Nikki: His enemies.
Colleen: That’s an amazing thing. That’s not just limited to human enemies. That’s limited to all enemies, spiritual enemies, angelic enemies. All enemies will be made His footstool. It’s just so fascinating to me that the author of Hebrews has spent a whole chapter establishing that Jesus is better than the angels, is more powerful than the angels, and shares an identity with God. We had an angelic confusion in our Adventist worldview because who did we think Jesus was?
Nikki: Michael the Archangel.
Colleen: And even if we were taught, as I was, “Oh, Jesus isn’t an angel, Michael is just another name for Him,” if you look at Scripture where Michael the Archangel is written about, it’s very clear it can’t be Jesus because in Jude he dares not rebuke Satan but says, “The Lord rebuke you.” Well, no angel –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] I mean, if Michael the Archangel was Jesus, he would have rebuked Satan because Jesus did rebuke Satan in His ministry on earth. Furthermore, Michael is called “one of the princes” in Daniel 10. But Adventism has this great confusion, and you know, I found it really interesting because in the study notes of the NASB Bible, there’s a little note here that says, “Among the Dead Sea Scrolls” – and many of the scrolls that were found in the caves along the Dead Sea were not only Scripture scrolls, there were also Jewish writings that came down through the years, and in some of those extra-biblical writings, there is evidence in some of those Dead Sea Scrolls that there was an expectation among Jews, or among some Jews, that in the Messianic kingdom, Michael the Archangel would be the supreme power. I just found that fascinating. This is an ancient, ancient heresy –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – not unique to Ellen White, but she somehow managed to pick up this horrifying heresy and make it an integral part of Adventist doctrine.
Nikki: It’s interesting too that Michael the Archangel is a key player in New Age types of religions.
Colleen: In fact, I’ve heard it said that in New Age, in the New Age, they worship Michael the Archangel.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And to think that we had this very distinct blasphemy stuck inside our Adventist doctrine, it’s just not surprising we didn’t know who Jesus was. And finally, we have a really definitive verse to end this chapter, where he defines angels very, very clearly. What does he say in verse 14?
Nikki: He says, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?”
Colleen: Well, there are several things in this verse that I think are really significant. First of all, he identifies the nature of angels. What does he say they are?
Nikki: They’re spirits.
Colleen: They do not have bodies. God is spirit, angels are spirits. Humans have bodies, but we also have spirits; we are embodied spirits. But angels are spirits, and they have a function. Their god-ordained function is what?
Nikki: They minister to those who are going to inherit salvation.
Colleen: They do God’s bidding for those who are being saved. You know, there are many times that I look back on in my life, and I think, “What just happened?” Like the time our older son was learning to drive, and we were on an entrance ramp onto the freeway, and we were stuck between a semi on our left and a van in front of us, and there was a sudden stopping, and there was no place to move. We were stuck on that ramp, and to go to the right would have been to go down a cliff, to go to the left would have been to run into that truck, and to go forward would have been to run into that van, and there was no room to stop. And both Richard and I braced ourselves for the inevitable crash and perhaps death, and our vehicle, with our son at the wheel, slowed without skidding, in a seemingly normal amount of time, and came to a stop a safe distance from the van in front of us. It was not physically possible. Now, I can’t say exactly what happened or how, but that’s one time I look back on and think, I do think that God had an angel there helping our son stop the car. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: So we don’t even know when these things happen, but it says that God sends them out to do His will for those who are being saved. So, in looking back over this chapter, what stands out to you, Nikki, as why the author of Hebrews put this first in the book and what we, as former Adventists, need to know?
Nikki: Well, it matters who Jesus is. It matters what we think of Him, and the author of Hebrews is very, very clear, just in this very first chapter, that Jesus is God and that He is far above the angels and that He has won, and that’s where we start, that’s not where we finish, that’s where we start.
Colleen: So the rest of this book will make more sense as we understand that it is this Lord Jesus whose finished work of death, burial, and resurrection inaugurated the New Covenant. We have to know this was not just an example Jesus. This was Jesus who fulfilled the law, God the Son, incarnate in flesh, to save us from ourselves, to rescue us from sin, and to reconcile us to God. And if you haven’t placed your trust in Him, we pray that you will. And why don’t you make it your decision to go ahead and read this first chapter of Hebrews before we do our next podcast on Hebrews, which will actually cover chapter 2, and read along with us and see what it is that God has revealed about His Son in this book. It will make the New Covenant make so much more sense, because it’s not just a legal change. It is a personwho brings us the New Covenant, and if this person isn’t God, the New Covenant cannot be secure, but because of Jesus being God, we know it is, and we know that in Him we are secure as well.
Nikki: And if you’re looking for a way to pass the time during this quarantine, memorize the first four verses of Hebrews chapter 1. They’re wonderful verses to have on hand as you’re speaking to your Adventist family. They’re wonderful verses to meditate on, and you will never regret having them stored up in your heart.
Colleen: And just saying, they put to bed the idea that we had an extra-biblical prophet that gave us any kind of insight that hasn’t been given in the Lord Jesus.
Nikki: As you spend time thinking about verse 3, remember that He had all of the attributes of God, and this could take you even into a time of meditating on what those are.
Colleen: If you have any comments, questions, or ideas or suggestions for the podcast, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you’d like to subscribe to our weekly email or donate to Life Assurance Ministries, you can go to proclamationmagazine.com. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram, like us, and write a review for us wherever you listen to your podcasts. We thank you for studying with us, and we pray that the truth of Jesus and what He did in His finished work will change your life forever, as it has ours.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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