The Better Adam

For in subjecting everything to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him. But we do see Jesus—made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone—crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Today we are going to take a bit of a look at a literary idea called “types.” Another way to describe “types” would be “examples.” We can see authors use types for characters in their books.

I have used the example from the Old Testament of David fighting Goliath. When we read this story we should not see ourselves as David facing the giants in our life of stress, monetary problems, etc. David is actually a “type” or future example of Jesus who would defeat the giant of sin and death, while we are Israel’s soldiers on the sidelines who were too weak and scared to get into the battle.

We see these examples all over Scripture. The first “type” of Christ that we see is Adam. In Romans 5, Paul talks about how sin came to many through Adam but life came to many through Christ.

Today in our passage, we see how Adam was given dominion over the earth. However, Adam failed to do his job in reigning over the earth. Sin made Adam’s job more difficult. But we will also see that Jesus succeeded where Adam could not. The Second Adam triumphs where the First Adam failed.

Big Idea: Christ reigns where Adam could not.

Hebrews 2:5

For he has not subjected to angels the world to come that we are talking about.

The author continues to establish his point that Christ is superior to the angels. This time, he does it by saying that God has not subjected the world to angels. This was not an honor that he gave to them. However, we will see in the coming verses that God subjected the world to humanity, and eventually to Christ.

(The Essenes and Michael ruling the messiahs)

Hebrews 2:6

But someone somewhere has testified:

What is man that you remember him,

or the son of man that you care for him?

It is interesting that the writer does not specify where this OT quote is from or who said it. This should not take away from the author’s reasoning in this book. For the author, that information does not matter because what is important is that this quote is from Scripture, the Word of God. Let’s be honest, how often to we try to remember where a passage of Scripture is and can’t remember the book it is in?

The OT passage that is quoted is from Psalm 8:4-6 in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT). In this psalm, David is proclaiming how wonderful God is. And as he is getting to the verses about mankind that the author of Hebrews quotes in his message, David looks to the wonder of the skies and says:

Psalm 8:3-4

When I observe your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you set in place, (Then goes into asking about man)

what is a human being that you remember him,

a son of man that you look after him?

I believe that the author of Hebrews is using these verses in the right context, obviously. It’s Scripture. But I think we miss the amazing comparison that David was making in this psalm if we don’t look back to this beautiful song of David.

David said that when he looked at the heavens, he saw the work of God’s hands and fingers. He saw the moon rotating around the earth, and the multitudes of stars hung in the heavens by the hand of God.

To give us a little better understanding of just how small we are in this universe, the two Voyager probes that were launched in the late summer of 1977 have travelled 15 billion and 13 billion miles away from earth. They are far enough away that a signal from Earth, traveling at the speed of light (180,000 miles per second) to the two probes, takes 23 hours and 19.5 hours, respectively. Even with how far away they have travelled from Earth, Voyager 1 would need to increase its speed by over 17,000 times to get to the speed of light. Then it would have to travel at that speed for 25,000 years to get to the Andromeda galaxy, the closest independent galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy.

Seeing the vastness of the skies, David asked God, “What is so special about humanity that you would not only remember us, but that you would go out of your way to care us?”

How many here have asked that question? I know I have! I have asked God why he has called me to shepherd people in knowing him and his word more and more. I have so many flaws that it seems hard to believe that God would want to use me.

Hebrews 2:7-8a

You made him lower than the angels

for a short time;

you crowned him with glory and honor

and subjected everything under his feet.

As we read these verses, we may want to jump right ahead to the application, or prophetic meaning, of this passage and say, “That is Jesus!” But we are getting ahead of ourselves if we just jump to that. We have to see that, in the psalm, David is still talking about mankind.

It was humanity that God made lower than the angels for a short time. Now, when we think of a short time, we think of a few minutes, or hours, or days, maybe a few years. In the grand scheme of our lives, a few years can still be a short time. But David is talking about humanity since Adam. God made humanity lower than the angels, from the beginning of creation.

Depending on your view of how old the Earth is, that “short time” could be either shorter or longer than someone else sees it. Even if we take a “young Earth” view of creation and say that the world is only 10,000-15,000 years old, that doesn’t feel like a short time. However, that means that man will be exalted above the angels at some point that will outlast the time that we are now lower than them.

David also says that God crowned man with glory and honor, subjecting everything under the feet of man. Like I said earlier, we cannot just jump ahead to saying, “This is Jesus.” We would be missing a major part of the story.

Adam and Eve were given dominion over the earth.

Genesis 1:26-28

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”

So God created man

in his own image;

he created him in the image of God;

he created them male and female.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

When God created Adam and Eve, he also gave them the glory and honor of looking after the earth. The mandate from God to humanity was to subdue the earth, to take dominion, to rule and reign over the earth.

Let's look at the rest of this verse in Hebrews 2.

Hebrews 2:8b

For in subjecting everything to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him.

The author of Hebrews says that everything was made subject to man. Despite the insignificance of man that David talks about in Psalm 8, God gave man rule over all of creation. We saw in chapter 1 of Genesis that Adam and Eve were to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over all the animals, birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and even the Earth itself.

However, we see in the last bit of this verse, and can see as we look out at the world today, that we still do not see the world fully subjected to humanity. Why?

The reason is sin. As my previous pastor would often say, “Sin breaks everything.” The sin of Adam and Eve broke the fellowship they had with God. It also brought the curse that God placed on the earth because of their sin.

We see in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, God curses the serpent, and then proceeds to give the ramifications of sin to Adam and Eve. He tells them that childbirth will be painful for the woman and that the ground will fight against the man with thorns and thistles as he tries to bring up crops for food. In other words, there are now hindrances in the way of humanity ruling over the earth as we were commanded to do.

Because of this, man has not taken dominion as he was directed and created for. Man struggles to control himself, let alone the fish, the birds, or the animals. I once heard a pastor say that:

The only control Scripture tells us to have is self-control.

Because humanity lacks self-control due to sin, we do not see creation subject to man. However, humanity still feels the drive of that mandate from the Lord to take dominion and rule the earth. Humans try to fulfill the mandate, but not in a way that God intended or calls us to.

We can see this in many environmental advocacy groups and organizations in the battle over the causes and implications of climate change.

Time for a quick time out. Before I go any further I need to say this. It was not my intention to go this route in this sermon. I understand that there can be hesitation and uneasiness around topics that seem more political than theological. I am not a political spokesperson. That is not where God has called me to serve him.

That being said, many topics in the cultural and political sphere have become theological in their nature and application. The way the world and our current culture treat the issues of climate change and environmentalism has theological implications that cannot be ignored. My goal is not to get on a soapbox about my feelings on these issues, but to look at what the word of God has to say about them.

Time back in.

When most people think about taking care of the environment, they think about what it means to recycle, about preventing trash from getting dumped into the oceans, and about pictures of dead animals that swallowed things like batteries or pieces of plastic. As humans who have been given authority to steward the earth that God has given us, I think we should do everything we can to cut down on waste, not let wildlife areas get taken over by trash, and protect wildlife as best as we can.

Let’s go back to Genesis 1 and God’s description of how man was to take care of the earth after He created them.

Genesis 1:28

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

We were created to rule over the earth.

However, some groups think that this is not enough. Some leaders in the environmental advocacy contingent believe that, to save our planet for future generations, there needs to be fewer people in those future generations. If that sounds extreme, I would encourage you to listen to the Just Thinking Podcast with Darrell Harrison and Virgil Walker and their episode titled, “A Biblical Theology of Climate Change.” There will be a link in the sermon notes for you to be able to go and listen to that podcast. A lot of the information I have today is based on listening to that episode.

How many of you have seen the Avengers movies, Infinity War, and Endgame? I am going to give away some spoilers then. In these movies, the main bad guy is a character named Thanos. His goal was to collect the Infinity Stones and use them to wipe out half of all life in the universe. His motive was rooted in his belief that the universe's finite resources would lead to inevitable suffering and that reducing the population by half would ensure the survival and prosperity of the remaining half. He saw this as a necessary act of "salvation" to prevent the collapse of civilizations due to overpopulation.

You may be wondering why I brought this up.

Groups like the Earth Policy Institute, the Sierra Club, and the World Wildlife Fund have either advocated for policies and politicians, or their founders have advocated for policies, that promote “reproductive rights” and access to “family planning” services, which are politically correct terms for abortion, though there are other aspects to those services as well, because these are essential components of “sustainable environmental practices.”

The logic is that we can’t “sustain” the Earth because we are going to overpopulate the planet. This is completely antithetical to God’s command of “Be fruitful and multiply.” This is human wisdom. Human wisdom says, “If there are fewer humans, there will be fewer problems.”

Darrell W. Johnson comments about how nations continually walk away from the authority of God and treat humanity as the only authority in speaking about the dragon and the two beasts in Revelation 13, stating:

“...Governments (nations) which step out from under the rule of God do not become more divine. They become demonic. Governments (nations) that exalt humanity as the measure of all things do not become more humane; they become more bestial.”

In other words, power (or dominion) that no longer resides under God will seek to play God and become even more bestial instead of humane.

I will not make the earth, or humanity, my God or my basis for what is right or wrong. I can’t even let how I feel about something determine what is right or wrong. We must find the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality in God and in His Word.

As I mentioned earlier:

“Political” issues have become theological issues.

In Matthew 6, we see Jesus talk to his followers about anxiety. And he compares humans to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.

Matthew 6:26

Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?

So Jesus tells his human followers that they have more value than birds. Did you know that the fine for disturbing or hurting the egg or nest of a bald eagle is up to a $100,000 fine and as much as a year in prison for a first offense?

I have no problems with this type of law and punishment to protect animals that are endangered and on the verge of extinction. As I said earlier, we should do what we can to take care of God’s creation. What I do have a problem with is that the organizations advocating for such laws tend to also advocate for “responsible family planning” and “reproductive rights” (aka advocating for abortion rights) as essential environmental sustainability practices.

As a Christian, I believe we should protect the vulnerable eagles. But we should also protect vulnerable humans! And no human is more vulnerable than the one in the womb.

Next, Jesus talks about the flowers and how they don’t sew their own clothes, but they have more splendor than Solomon did.

Matthew 6:30

If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith?

Jesus is now saying that we have more value than the flowers and the grass of the field in the environment around us. This culture does not see the world this way, though. The world does not understand that humans are the only thing we see in Scripture that was created “in the image of God.” As David is quoted here in Hebrews 2, we are crowned with honor and glory from God.

The world is doing what it can to try and save a planet that is passing away. We saw a few weeks ago when the author of Hebrews quoted Psalm 102 where it says this:

Psalm 102:25-26

Long ago you established the earth,

and the heavens are the work of your hands.

They will perish, but you will endure;

all of them will wear out like clothing.

You will change them like a garment,

and they will pass away.

David says that this world will perish, wearing out like clothing. He also says that God will change them (being the earth and the heavens) like a garment. In Revelation 21, the Apostle John says that there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Revelation 21:1

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Where is our trust if we think this planet will die without OUR intervention? We as Christians cannot fall for the deceitfulness of this world that would take our eyes from the one who holds all things together, as we saw in our first sermon in the book of Hebrews, that Jesus holds everything together by his powerful word. This world is telling mankind that we are the solution.

Psalm 103:19

The Lord has established his throne in heaven,

and his kingdom rules over all.

When it says that God’s kingdom rules over all…that means ALL. Our sovereign, all-knowing, and all-powerful God knows what our planet needs, what we need, and will provide everything necessary in his own power, his own timing, and due to his own knowledge that is beyond all human comprehension or reasoning.

The problem is, we have allowed our foolish hearts to be darkened to the truth of God’s sovereignty over all things. Paul tells his readers in the opening chapter of his letter to the Romans of how humanity has turned away from God, incurring his wrath for our unrighteousness, and becoming foolish because of it.

Romans 1:18-23, 25

For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.

Humanity still has the drive to rule the Earth. We still feel the pull to take dominion over creation. We just fail to do it well, often making things worse, because of the sin and pride in our own hearts. We think we are wise when we are really fools.

But that is not the end of the story.

Hebrews 2:9

But we do see Jesus—made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone—crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.

Though we have not seen man fulfill his created purpose, what does the writer of Hebrews say we do see? Jesus. This is actually the first time that the author uses the name Jesus. Throughout the entire first chapter, he referred to Christ as the Son. And now, he declares that the Son is Jesus.

Now we get to see Jesus. Now we get to read Psalm 8 in view of Christ’s prophetic fulfillment, being the full realization of the ideal man. He came to earth as a man, a little lower than the angels. Christ humbled himself, as we looked at in Philippians 2 in February. The author of Hebrews has repeatedly said that Jesus is superior to the angels, and now shows through fulfillment of Psalm 8 that Jesus came to earth as a human, being made lower than the angels. Why?

In doing so, Jesus was able to taste death. This is another way that Christ is superior to the angels. According to GotQuestions.org:

Physical death is something that humans experience when their bodies cease working and their spirits depart from their bodies. Since angels do not have physical bodies (as they are spirits) they cannot experience physical death.

Since angels cannot suffer from bodily death, they could not be a sacrifice for humanity. The punishment for sin is death. Only a human could take on that punishment for the rest of mankind. And so Christ came to earth, fully God and fully man, to be that sacrifice for us.

The writer of Hebrews says it was the grace of God that sent Jesus to earth to die for the sins of all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus for salvation. Grace is getting something that you do not deserve. Grace is being clothed with the righteousness of Christ, which he earned with his perfect obedience to the law. According to Romans 3:23, we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. One translation says that we have fallen short of God’s glorious standard.

Our salvation cannot be earned. It is a gift from God, offered through the sacrifice of the Son, and made effective through the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor. If we could earn our salvation, then we could boast about it. But Ephesians 2 says that our salvation is not by works, so that no one can boast. It is completely a gift of God’s grace.

And what reward is given to Christ? Hebrews 2:9 says that he was crowned with glory and honor, as we see in Philippians 2, because of his sacrificial death for all of humanity. God gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus rules over all of heaven and earth. And just as Psalm 8 said, we do not yet see everything fully subjected to Christ. We still see war, famine, murder, disease, and other things that show this world is not perfected. But if we have submitted ourselves to Christ’s rule, we will see the new heaven and the new earth when Christ comes in glory.

In a world filled with chaos and uncertainty, the message of salvation through Jesus Christ stands as our hope. As Hebrews 2:9 reminds us, Jesus was made lower than the angels for a brief time, tasting death for everyone. His sacrifice was a profound act of grace, offering us redemption we cannot earn on our own.

Friend, you may wonder what your place is in this vast universe. Like David said, "What is man that you remember him?" Yet, despite our insignificance, God cares for you deeply. He calls you to repent from your sin, to turn away from the distractions of this world, and to submit your life to Christ.

This submission is not a passive act; it requires courage and active decision-making. Acknowledge your flaws and shortcomings, and lay them at the feet of Jesus, who bore your sins on the cross. Embrace the grace offered to you and allow His transformative power to reign in your life.

Will you respond to this call? The path to true fulfillment and purpose begins with surrendering to Christ, the one who is crowned with glory and honor. Don't wait—accept His invitation today.

Next Step: I will submit my life to Christ.

Let is Pray.

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