Session 3

Hebrews 2:1-9

Video Content Development

Scheduled video shoots: August 15/16 – Planning to shoot sessions 1-4

Draft of Hebrews 2:1-9

1. Introduction

a. Personal Greeting

The first chapter of Hebrews helps us to start putting this complicated puzzle together. He points to the promise of throughout the Old Testament, that God would send a savior who would be the full revelation of God. The claim, is that Jesus is the promised savior and is shown to be greater than all previous forms of God’s revelation.

In considering chapter 1, you may wonder, why did we spend so much time demonstrating His supremacy over the angels?

Human beings have a tendency to praise and worship-marvel at anything they perceive to be more significant than themselves. Even when another human has great skill, or prestigious status, we look to them as if they are greater or more significant than other people.

With that in mind, if you were to see an angel that is radiating God’s glory from existing in the heavens..... you might be surprised how you respond.

When mankind feels inferior either we run or we worship.

All of the angels come from God. Their existence, beauty, strength, splendor, even the wind of their wings come from Him. He is the true power, the true radiance of glory, the only eternal, all powerful, giver of life. He is the all-wise, all-knowing, ever-worthy king of majesty. There is nothing and no one like Jesus.

This reality, creates the platform for our author to give us some much needed direction.

2. Segue Questions

Identify several cultural errors that keep people from seeking God.

All religions lead to God, mans lack of spiritual responsibility, the message needs to be palatable…etc

Identify several practices that deter us from spending time in God’s presence.

Too busy, always seeking pleasure or entertainment, the slow searing of moral conscious from dabbling with sin…etc

Leader Guide:

Read Hebrews 2:1-4 together

3. Teaching 1st Point: The Message is Reliable

a. 3-5 minutes

b. Focus on verses 4-14

In 2012, I was living in Eastern Montana, it was a dry - hot year. Even as we came into the month of June, there had already been a number of forest fires. Wanting to be able to be able to help, I decided to go get my redcard, which would allow me to be a volunteer fire fighter. I remember sitting in the class learning all the heat and speed of a forest fire. I was amazed at their ability to jump river’s, roadways, and other natural barriers.

Much of what we learned was how to work as a team and stay safe. My instructors had been on hundreds of fires, they experienced it first hand and they spoke spoke plainly to us in order to clearly communicate life saving information. They couldn’t share enough about each person playing their role and sticking together as a team.

Now consider someone who receives the training but has never been on a fire. What if on the first fire they are called to fight, they choose to use personal intuition and theoretical strategy. Instead of staying with the team of fighters, they decided it will be more affective to divide and conquer, so they go to a different part of the fire by themselves. Their words would be alarming and as this person starts walking off alone, other firefighters would know its not just a poor strategy, the real issue is that it is likely a fatal decision.

This is the picture that our author is painting. That throughout the history of the Jews, the Lord has given first hand experience and information to people. Yet, the people of Israel kept falling away. We are being called to consider that where God has brought us revelation, He has expected us to respond. The Old Testament is filled with stories of people who fell into sin and had to pay the consequences for it.

Consider the

plague’s of Egypt (Exodus 7-14)

Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 16) where we have a picture of the ground swallowing everyone involved.

King Saul’s continual drift from God’s way of living (1 Samuel 15)

Uzzah Touching the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:6-7)

We could even consider God bringing the whole country of Israel into Exile - Twice! (Assyrian Exile 722 BC and Babylonian Exile 586 BC)

Whenever God’s word is ignored or taken less than seriously, we find appropriate punishment to follow. Not only do we consistently see the Lord’s justice in this sense, but it also doesn’t seem to matter if it is accidental infringement or direct disobedience. Both are a demonstration of rejecting God’s plan.

This is simply how we see God’s call to take Him seriously throughout the Old Testament. His call to the people of Israel is to learn to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. In Deuteronomy 6, He not only calls them to love God with all that they are but to diligently teach their kids about Him. That they should pay so close attention to what He has revealed to them that they should bind His words to their hands. That they should dwell on the Lord with such regularity that His words are like frontlets to our eyes.

The call of the Lord is not a nice story. It is not helpful principles for life. It is the difference between righteousness and wickedness - which is the difference between life and death.

Now consider the larger point that is being made. We can clearly see the results of not obeying God’s word in the Old Testament. The word given by His angels, spiritual beings who are servants of God.

But we no longer rely on the words of angels. We no longer hear God’s message through them. Their message proved reliable.

How much more reliable are the words of Jesus? How much more significant will our indifference or disobedience be?

Many of us live as “Christians,” we can talk the talk, and even walk the walk whenever somebody is watching. But God watches you all the time. There is never a moment in your life that He doesn’t see. He knows the motives and desires of your heart. If the message of the angels was reliable and punishment came to all who lived indifferent to God, how much more attention should we give to Jesus? Knowing that God came to us in the form of a man, and fully revealed Himself, and called us to love Him with all of our Heart, Soul, and Mind.

Where God has brought revelation, He expects us to respond.

How does your life reflect being fully committed to Him?

4. Group Discussion:

a.

Leader Guide:

F.F. Bruce “The older revelation, the law of Sinai, was communicated by angelic intermediaries, but God’s final revelation was given in His Son and therefore demands correspondingly serious attention. The truth and teaching of the gospel must not be held lightly; they are of supreme moment, they are matters of life and death, and must be cherished and obeyed at all costs. The danger of drifting away from them, and so losing them, cannot be treated too gravely.”

i. As a group, work through verses 4-14 aiming to compare what is claimed and said about Jesus to what is said of God’s angels.

5. Teaching 2nd Point: The Glory is only found in Jesus

Throughout history, mankind has attempted to seek greatness. We strive at great lengths to have authority, power, and respect from people around us. Most of us can readily identify a few people in our life who crave to be desirable, who care too much what other people think, who always aim to impress or to be credited with forward progress. But as Solomon once said, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”

From the moment that sin entered the world, the pride of mankind has caused us to strive for acceptance, love, and respect. But as we continue to strive our acceptance morphs into a desire for greatness, love can turn into a desire to control, and respect into a craving for authority. Our pride will always desire more. It takes us down a terrible path that leads to nowhere. Solomon’s point is that you can spend your whole life building your empire, but then you die. What good is your empire now? Even being driven to live with sovereign power over others proves faulty. As in the end we will find we have no sovereignty at all.

In Hebrews 2:6-8 our author quotes Psalm 8. That is where David is lost in his imagination in asking how great is God? He ponders God’s majesty, glory, and strength. In considering the creation of the moon and stars and what it takes for them to be held in place - it must not have been anything more than God simply moving His fingers.

Yet, God in all His power, in all the splendor of His glory, in His position of total authority - He is mindful of man. It doesn’t make any sense to David. David’s view of God is so high that he can’t see how man would be of any value to God at all.

Yet, in our state of frailty, God is mindful of us. Not only is He mindful, but He cares about our names, He cares about our children, He cares how we live our lives and how we interact with Him. God has no personal need of us. There is nothing that we can do for Him, nothing we can provide at all.

But God’s love for us run’s so deep, that He wasn’t going to leave us to our own demise. God came as a man. From being born to dying in agony, He experienced everything that the fragile man experiences. He is mankind's perfect representative - who is able to pave the path to provide salvation. Meaning that Jesus was destined to obtain all of the sovereignty that mankind has sought ever since the fall. But the difference is that He is God in the flesh. He is perfect in every way. In order for Jesus to provide purification for sin, to pave the path that leads to salvation, He would have to conquer all of the affects of sin, including death itself. Not only was Jesus tempted in every way, but He also took your sin and my sin upon Himself. All the guilt, all the weight, all the shame, all the punishment. Every ounce of darkness placed on His shoulders to be taken to the grave.

This is what it means that for a little while He would be made lower than the angels, even though we know that He is much superior.

In coming back to life, Jesus displays an emphatic victory over death and sin. By the way, that is the same death and sin that mankind hasn’t been able to overcome throughout all of history.

Jesus didn’t have to come, He didn’t have to die. There is nothing that we can provide for Him, nothing we can do for Him. Yet, we were cursed with the reality of death. In dying on the cross, Jesus paved the way to pass from death into eternal life. He tasted death for all of us, before we ever had to; so that we can know and experience freedom from the curse. In His great power, Jesus has reshaped the threat of death into a blessed gateway leading us into His eternal kingdom. The kingdom, where we will see His name high and exalted, and His glory put on display for all eternity.

Do you recognize the eternal value of what Jesus has said?

Do you dwell on what He has done for you?

Does it compel you to stop allowing yourself to be distracted or kept from spending time in His presence?

These are the questions that lead to eternal life. When we will see Jesus reign over everything. Everything will be in subjection under His feet.

6. Group Discussion:

a.

c. Leader Guide:

i.

7. Teaching Summary

a. Summarizes the major points and concludes by leaving a challenge or application that is based on the three collective teaching points.

i. Should be direct and clear.

In this section, we get a final comparison between Jesus and the angels. We are told that the word of the angels was incredibly valuable and reliable. That the history of God’s people has confirmed their words. But know, we get to hear and see God Himself, in the person of Jesus. We respond to His word based on what what He has revealed about Himself and also what He has done for us.

When it comes to true Sovereignty, we find that it is only found in Jesus. He is the heir of all things, the creator of the world, the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. Jesus upholds the universe by the word of His power and by that word, has made purification for sins. He now sits at the right hand of the Father and watches as the Holy Spirit is actively working to bring everything in subjection to Him.

There is nothing greater in life than Jesus. He is the all-Sovereign God who has proclaimed the truth of His kingdom. In that revealed truth, He invites you and me to personally know Him. To walk with Him and make Him the Lord of our life.

There is no better way to live your life, to spend your time, than to follow and worship Jesus.

8. Close

Thanks for watching today. I am praying that the Lord would compel you to to study Psalm 8. That you would get caught up in imagining about God’s power and glory. Because without Him this life is all for not. He is the prize and the joy of life, may you be unable to escape dwelling on His revealed love.