To Encourage You

Hebrews 1:1-2 “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.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m a big picture kind of person.  While I may be interested in the details of a matter, I typically feel better about things if I can see it all from 30,000 feet. In other words, I want to know the “why” behind the “what.”  If I don’t know the purpose behind what I’ve been asked to do, I struggle to put my heart into it.  That’s one of the reasons I love the Word of God.  Although it’s full of details about all kinds of things, it has one big picture in mind. It has it’s focus on one big thing. And what is that “thing,” so to speak?  It’s the person of Jesus Christ.  He’s what it’s all about – life, meaning, purpose, the past, the present, the future.  He is everything. 

As we begin to look at the book of Hebrews, we find an emphasis on this truth.  Here we are reminded that God has been speaking to men for a very long time.  At the very beginning of time we see Him walking and talking with Adam.  And how do we know this?  Because God told us about it by the prophets.  The very first thing we are told about men and women after He created them was that “God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food” (Genesis 1:28-30).   But behind all this, the big picture of it, was that all that God had created, including man, the earth he was to live upon, and everything in it, He had created “by his Son” and it all belonged to the Son, for He was the heir. 

We are here because of the Son. We continue to live as long as we are sustained by the Son.  And we are to live our lives to bring glory to the Son, for it’s all about Him in the end.  Everywhere we look we can see evidence of Him, because He made it all.  It was fashioned by His hands.  In everything we do, we are accountable to Him. 

As the verses above tell us, we’ve received the message of Christ “at many times and in many ways.”  What an understatement this is, for “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voicegoes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Psalm 19:1-4).  In other words, every moment of every day in everything we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch we are being spoken to by our great God and the Son Who made it all. 

But then we have been spoken to even more clearly in words, the words of the prophets and apostles as God spoke through them.  And what were they speaking about?  They were speaking about the Son.  As Jesus told the Jews (who were seeking to kill Him), the Scriptures that they studied were “they that bear witness of me” (John 5:39).  And as He spoke with some of His disciples after His resurrection, we are told that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).

But then, it was not only in the “indirect” ways of the Creation and the Prophets by which God has spoken to us about the Son, for “in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,” directly, that is, face to face.  This glorious Son of God, Who created all things, and about Whom all the Old Testament Scriptures speak, entered His own Creation as a person, to reveal Himself in the most incredible way of all.  He came to be born just like us, to live just like us, and to die just like us, and in all of it He showed us the very glory of God. 

So, do you realize this?  Have you seen the big picture? Do you know that the only reason you’re here is because the Son of God created you? Do you realize that the whole purpose for your life is to “fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13)? Or are you one who has missed the mark?  Have you lived all of life as if the One Who gave you life doesn’t even exist?  Are you one who, although He came to you, His own possession, you, as that possession, have received Him not (John 1:11).  For you see, “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but (we, the very ones whom God has made, our “owner” and Master” – so very often) . . . do not understand” (Isaiah 1:3). 

Don’t miss the big picture. The big picture is the Son