Better Messenger (Humanity)

Introduction & Orientation

Psalm 8 (ESV)

To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Those are the words of the popular Psalm chapter 8. I say popular because Scripture records both Jesus and the Apostle Paul quoting from this Psalm in their teaching and we are going to encounter it as we continue in our journey through the book of Hebrews.

What we hear the great Psalm writer, King David, express here in this poem or song is that he is looking over the beauty of all of Gods creation and then wondering why would a God who could create such an amazing vast universe actually care at all about out what happens in the seemingly small lives of humanity.

Why would such a magnificent being be “mindful” over the affairs of mere humans when He is so much more than us, so “other-than” us?

The answer is because we too are a part of God’s magnificent creation. We too were designed to display the magnificence of God’s creative genius and so we are a part of it, but we also stand out from it. God has given us a unique glory and honor that nothing else in all creation has, He created us to be the caretakers and stewards of His beautiful world. God made this world to be uniquely subject to humanity and we are to exercise dominion over it in such a way that it flourishes and thrives.

But this is no cause for personal pride over the unique role in which we have been given, but cause for praise and worship to the giver who gave it to us:

Psalm 8:9 (ESV) O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Tension

This is our created purpose. Humanity exists to display the glory and honor of God in taking what the “good Lord gave us” and investing it in this world in such a way that it draws out the potential that our creator God built into it. This is how God designed it, but it is not how we have displayed it.

Ever since the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, every generation of humanity has fallen short of this glory that God gave us. Romans 3:23: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,That is what this verse means.

It doesn’t mean that we have failed to attain the glory that God alone deserves - we never could do that or should even try! In fact that is the very lie that has been tripping us up since the beginning when the devil promised Eve, that we could “be like God”(Gen 3:5) We are created being and as such we can never fully be like God, but we can display His glorious design in us.

We could, but we don’t. Instead we keep trying to what God has given for His glory and direct it to our own. And in this way all of humanity has fallen short of the honor and glory that God intended for us to display… all except for Jesus that is!

Last week we saw how as the “Son of God” Jesus’ lineage, likeness and inheritance makes him a BETTER messenger than even the angels. But did you know that just as important as Jesus being the “Son of God” is the fact that Jesus was also “The Son of Man”. In fact, this was Jesus’ favorite way of referring to himself. Over 80 times throughout Jesus’ teachings we read of him referring to himself as “The Son of Man”.

And this brings us to yet another place were we have to roll up our sleeves and do a little digging. Where we need to think a little deeper and push ourselves a little further because this title means something more than just the words that are contained in it. We have to consider the time frame that this was written in and what the Jewish audience in the first century would have understood Jesus to be claiming with the words “The Son of Man”

Because this was more than Jesus simply claiming to be human, no one looking at him would think anything else. But in fact, this was Jesus claiming to be a very particular human. Human, yes, but uniquely human so that Jesus didn’t display his humanity in the same way that we all do.

He uniquely did what we failed to do in that He perfectly displayed the honor and glory that Psalm 8 is talking about. And so in His unique humanity, Jesus gives us the perfect example of how we were designed to be but have always fallen short.

But more than just giving us an example, Jesus provided the way for all of us to follow Him into recapturing that original honor and glory that we have each forfeited in our sin. This is how...

Jesus’ humanity makes him a BETTER messenger.

So open your Bibles with me to Hebrews chapter 2 and we will pick up where we left off last week in verse 5 which is on page 1001 in the Bibles in the chairs. I will pray and we will seek to experience more of Jesus together.

Truth

So remember that the first of many argument that the author of Hebrews is making is that even though we might want to have a supernatural experience with one of the other messengers of God, the angels, as the “God-Man” Jesus is a BETTER messenger.

So from verse 5 we read:

Hebrews 2:5–8a (ESV)

For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,

“What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?

You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.

“Testified somewhere” is rhetorical because we, along with the first readers recognize these words. This is a direct quote from Psalm 8 the passage we opened with and again it reflects what Theologians call “The creation mandate” that our first parents were given in the garden of Eden. The purpose that God gave us to be the kind of operators in His good world that would draw out all the creative potential that God built in.

Genesis 1:28 says of our first parents 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.”

This was our charge. Our mandate. And God created in us everything we needed to flourish in this role of having dominion over the earth so that their was nothing on the planet that was, as the author of Hebrews says “outside our control”

So do you see how insidious the lie of the Serpent was? He led Eve to doubt God’s goodness, to believe that somehow God was holding out on them when in fact God gave humanity the most honored position of having dominion over every earthly thing!

Every plant for food, Every sunrise for warmth, Every animal for entertainment, Every forest to explore. Every river to swim, Every song to sing, Every lesson to learn. Every joy to discover. God created all this to be subject to humanity...but...as the author of Hebrews points out...

Hebrews 2:8b(ESV) At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.

No we sure don’t, do we? Instead of everything in this world rightly responding to our dominion over it, we live in the constant strain of a broken world full of thorns, thistles, storms, disasters, disease and death.

APPLICATION Even if you are here this morning and you don’t really believe in all this God stuff, my guess there has still been times in your life when you know that something has gone wrong in this world. Even though we employ a whole host of things to keep us distracted from those deeper realities…there are events and observations in our world that brings us to say things like… “That is just not right” or “Things shouldn’t be that way”. When we dare to think deeper, or circumstances drag us there… we each have a sense that something is wrong in this world, that things are not as they “ought” to be.

And throughout time humanity has attempted many “god-less” answers to these nagging question, but they always come up short. We keep thinking that we can try and rethink, reform, rebrand or recycle our way to a new world...but no matter how much traction these movements start out with…eventually they all fizzle out and fall short.

There is just nothing in this world that can bring us lasting hope, happiness, significance or security. So we need something from another world.

We still “do not see everything in subjection to [humanity]”, But…verse 9...

Hebrews 2:9

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Things defiantly are not as they should be, but we have hope because...

Jesus humbled himself to be like us (Heb 2:5-9)

David’s Psalm says that like the rest of humanity, for a little while, Jesus was made lower than the Angels. Can you imagine how the angels responded when they got the news that the one through whom all creation was made was about to step into that creation and become…for a little while…lower than angels?

I don’t know how the minds of angels work or even if they have a sense of wonder or humor but the Bible is clear that Jesus did in fact humble himself to be like us.

The apostle John refers to Jesus with the title “the Word” in his Gospel and it begins just like Genesis begins with the words…

John 1:1 (ESV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

So John teaches us first of the divinity of Jesus, God the Son on display, but then in verse 14 we read...

John 1:14 (ESV)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John was among the eye witnesses who walked, sat, talked and ate with Jesus and he saw the glory of the one who was both “The Son of God” and “The Son of Man” on display before his very eyes. It was humanity displayed as God designed it to be…full of grace and truth.

In his letter to the Church in Philippi The Apostle Paul described Jesus humbling himself like this...

Philippians 2:5c–8 (ESV)

...Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Jesus humbled himself, became like us, a little lower than the angels, says Hebrews...

But again it was about more than just giving a good example for us learn from, His mission was much more magnificent than that. As Philippians 2 continues to say

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

This walks us into our second theme in that...

Jesus suffered and died to deliver us (Heb 2:10-15)

Jesus was both humbled and glorified in his mission to save the world. He was humbled because he lowered himself to the level of human likeness, but he was glorified in how he perfectly lived out the human experience…even in this broken down environment where everything pushes us the other way.

Heb 2:10-11

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

We might not think much of it, but that statement “It was fitting” was a fire-starter for the first century readers of Hebrews.

Because even today, one of the biggest reasons that many Jews give for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah is because they can not bring themselves to see their “deliverer” as one who suffered. He was to be a great military conqueror, not a disgraced man who suffered and died on a cross.

And it isn’t just the Jews that struggle with that idea. Muslims claim that they have even greater respect for Jesus than Christians do. Did you know that Muslims believe in the existence of Jesus?

In fact the Koran mentions Jesus more than any other prophet except for Muhammad of course. They believe in the virgin birth, much of his teaching, that he was a holy prophet, they call him the “Messiah” and they believe that he is returning again someday to defeat the anti-Christ and rule the world...

But they don’t believe He suffered and died on the cross. In fact, they teach that at the last moment, his betrayer Judas was switched in and it was he who suffered and died on the cross not Jesus.

So for Jews and Muslims alike, it would NOT be fitting for the Messiah to suffer and die in such a disgraceful way. Good and godly men don’t suffer disgrace but they transcend suffering and experience honor, power, wealth and pleasure. That is the Messiah that they want to follow…not a suffering savior.

And beware Church, because there are many false teachers today who claim the label of Christianity but seek to deny or downplay the idea that our perfect example Jesus was a suffering servant and a crucified savior. Mostly because we don’t like the idea of following after someone who came to suffer...

And that is why the writer of Hebrews is so insistent that it was not just happenstance that Jesus suffered. He was not a victim, this was a fitting part of God’s plan all along.

FOUNDER, PIONEER, TRAIL-BLAZER

To understand how this works we have to dig a little deeper into what it means that that Jesus is the “founder” of our salvation. The Greek word here is the word ἀρχηγός (arch-e-gos) and it is one of those words that if you were to read it from 4 or 5 different translations you would see it translated 4 or 5 different ways. Along with “founder” we would find “pioneer, author, leader, captain” and even “chief”.

The struggle I have with the word “founder” is that for some reason, at least in my mind it seems rather passive. But the big idea is that Jesus was the trail blazer who led out not only to show us the right way to be human but also to carve out the path for the rest of us to follow.

There is nothing in Jesus’ story that shows him to be some sort of privileged elite who never really had to struggle in this life and then wants to tell the rest of us how to life. In order to “bring many sons to glory” Jesus fully entered into our world and suffered under the same and ever greater struggles and suffering.

You know my news feeds are lighting up right now over Caitlin Clark a college basketball phenom out of IOWA turned WNBA superstar and it seems that everyone in the old guard wants to shut her down. They are trashing her in public, saying that she isn’t really that good but then in clutch moments they are double teaming her on the court. Mmmm…she must be doing something right!

But this is nothing compared to how desperately Satan and his “old guard” were gunning for Jesus.

This is why we read over and over again of how Jesus went off by himself to be with the Father because He was getting slammed day in and day out. And consider all the injustices that were constantly being lobbied against him by religious rules and people clamoring for power under Roman rule.

Knowing the kind of miracles that Jesus was capable of doing, it had to be so tempting to respond to these pressures in self-serving ways. You know that we would have, and Satan himself was out there tempting Jesus when he was physically weak… but through it all Jesus set himself apart as holy, he sanctified himself and so blazed the trail for our sanctification… Verse 11...

Hebrews 2:11–13 (ESV)

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,and then he gave some examples of times when he did just that… saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.”

This is where so many false teachings about Jesus breaks down. Jesus was not some sort of superman walking around in a Clark Kent costume. He wasn’t pretending to be human and then when some crisis hit all he had to do was find a phone booth. His signs and wonders were all subject to the movement of the Father through him, that is why we see them again in his Apostle after him. Jesus’ human nature operated just like ours so that he can rightly call us “family”.

Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV)

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

You see death is a very human characteristic. Even if you could find a religious system that rewarded moral perfection with the removal of earthly suffering… it still wouldn’t stop death. Humanity continues to maintain a 100% mortality rate.

This is what our suffering savior suffered for. To deliver us from the fear and the power of death by sacrificing his perfectly lived life, trading it in...for our corrupted one.

So our third and final theme for the week is how:

Jesus Christ now and forever can help us. (Heb 2:16-18)

Hebrews 2:16–18 (ESV)

For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

Remember how we said the first week of the series that the “offspring of Abraham” is another way of saying the “Hebrews” and how the Bible includes those of us who believe in Jesus as “offspring of Abraham” by promise.

The idea here is that Jesus did not come down to earth to fix anything in the heavenly realm, where the angels reside, but he is a BETTER messenger in that He has come to help those of us here on earth! So the author continues to say...

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

The connection here between the role of the “High Priest” and the process of making “Propitiation” would have been well known to the original audience of Hebrews. Especially when it came to the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the once-a-year ceremony where the High Priest and only the High Priest would carefully enter most Holy place in the Temple, a place called the “Holy of Holies” and offer a single sacrifice “to make propitiation for the sings of the people”.

Now there was a huge process that the High Priest had to “suffer” through in order to be ready to take on this role. He had to make sure that he obeyed everything that God commanded in order for the sacrifice to be effective… are you starting to see the connection? We will return to this later in Hebrews as well...

But to make Propitiation was to accomplish two things:

1. To make the right payment or offering to appease God and...

2. To see the people be reconciled back to God.

It was the breath of Jesus’ humanity, the fact that He is “The Son of Man” that made him a fitting representative to go before God and help us in this way. A way that includes leading us back to living a life that glorifies God in the present and one that continues with to glorify God for all eternity.

Hebrews 2:18 (ESV)

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Gospel Application

So Jesus was like every other person in that He had a human nature like ours, but He was also unlike any other person in that He also has a divine nature. As much as it seems like a contradiction, Jesus is both truly God and truly Man. He is the “God-Man”. Exactly how those two nature work together is something that has had theologians debating for centuries, but suffice it to say that both Jesus’ divine nature and His human nature are essential doctrines of the Christian faith.

Throughout history the Christian Church has gone through seasons when they have swung the pendulum too far in one direction or the other so that Jesus was thought to be just a man particularly blessed by God or God just pretending to be a man... but neither one works on it’s own. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is both “The Son of God” and the “Son of Man”. Without these two realities firmly in place our hope for salvation unravels.

Jesus’ divine nature made his obedience and suffering perfect and effective,

and...

Jesus’ human nature made him our perfect representative as one who completely obeyed God and can sympathize with our weakness.

Landing

I warned you, Hebrews is a deeply and richly Theological book, but we need books like this to plant these things firmly in our hearts, minds and Soul. As the “God-Man” Jesus is the BETTER messenger… because

Jesus Christ is in fact the BETTER Message.

Let’s pray into these things together...

DO I REALLY BELIEVE THAT WHAT I BELIEVE IS REALLY REAL