Hebrews 2:1-18
Notes
Transcript
Nearly two years ago, the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore collapsed because a massive container ship lost all power. With no means of stopping or changing course, the ship struck a pillar which then caused the bridge to collapse into the river below, killing 6 road maintenance workers.
Even more tragic and dangerous is drifting away from Jesus.
So far (1:1-4): keep listening to Jesus, God’s final and definitive word.
The Superiority of the Son and The Inferiority of Angels (1:4-14)
This week…
We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.
These believers are in danger of drifting away from the message about God’s final word in Jesus Christ, most likely because of intense persecution.
Opposition has a way of making you question whether you really want to follow Jesus.
Don’t allow yourselves to drift, the writer says, but stay firmly anchored to the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
Temptation isn’t necessarily to drift into a Christ-less religion, but to drift into a kind of Christianity that ignores its distinctives and loses its power.
That temptation is alive and well today isn’t it?
Another temptation is that we seek to grow in our faith by looking for ‘fresh words,’ or extraordinary experiences, ignoring God’s final word spoken through Jesus Christ His Son.
Either way, the temptation to water down the centrality, superiority, and sufficiency of Christ is strong. We preach salvation through Christ and Christ alone. There is opposition to that message.
So against this backdrop the writer urges us to
Pay Careful Attention To Jesus
Pay Careful Attention To Jesus
When the gospel of Christ is kept central in life and doctrine, we have the certainty of eternal hope and joy in Him.
However, if it’s not kept central the journey ahead is uncertain at best, disastrous at worst…
We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.
Answer: we won’t. The message of the OT delivered by angels was from God, and it was a binding covenant between him and his people, a covenant broken by his people and thereby incurring his judgment.
If that happened for them in relation to a message that was incomplete, how much more will it happen to us when we’ve received the final word of God in Jesus Christ his Son? There will be no escape. Drifting leads to inevitable danger.
But God has resolutely confirmed this message, this gospel…
how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
So certain and final is the gospel of Christ that God has given powerful confirmation of it in various ways. Yes, the Law came through angels with signs of power on Sinai, but the gospel has come through Jesus Christ and God has given his stamp of approval through various signs and wonders, not least by raising him from the dead.
Therefore, we must pay more careful attention to the things we have heard, so that we do not drift away. This gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way…
To guarantee forgiveness of our sin
To overcome the sin in our hearts and lives
To have sure and certain hope for the future
To be confident in God’s acceptance of us
Will you waste your time on empty voices? Will you risk drifting into danger for the sake of a new experience or fresh word? Will you ignore Jesus, God’s final word to the world?
A ship drifting dangerously close to the rocks is given a clear warning by the lights issuing from the nearby lighthouse. It can turn back from its danger and sail to safety.
The gospel is both the warning and the safety. It’s warns us because it shows us the seriousness of sin – the cross demonstrates God’s intense hatred for sin. But the gospel is also our safety because it shows us that our sin is paid for and dealt with at the cross.
Don’t drift away from safety in Christ, steer resolutely towards Jesus, paying more careful attention to what we have heard.
We can do that in the rest of the chapter, where we see him…
Regaining Man’s Lost Dominion (5-9)
Regaining Man’s Lost Dominion (5-9)
Humans were always meant to have dominion in this world, envisioned in Ps 8:4-6. Here we see…
The ideal man
The ideal man
But there is a place where someone has testified: ‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honour and put everything under their feet.’, In putting everything under them. God left nothing that is not subject to them.
This is Adam & Eve 1.0. Ruling over the dominion of the world – all animals, plant life, everything – all of it was given to mankind to rule and subdue. But now we see…
The imperfect man
The imperfect man
In putting everything under them. God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.
This is the problem. Humans should be ruling the world, all of it, with themselves under God’s rule; but we’re neither subduing the world nor submitting to God as King.
That puts us in the frustrating place of knowing that the world should be in subjection to us, but that actually we are now subject to the world, subject to the elements, subject to the devil, subject to death – all because of our sinful rejection of God as God.
These Hebrew Christians faced much the same, indeed faced suffering. But as they thought about Jesus, they thought ‘Hang on. Jesus was a man just like us, subject to the world, tempted by the devil and died just like us. How can he possibly help us?’ So they were tempted to look to angels, these heavenly beings who they believed to be in far more control than Jesus.
But with the coming of Jesus we now we see…
The renewed Man
The renewed Man
In putting everything under them. God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
We no longer have to look at how bad things are, or how out of control we feel because of our broken humanity, because by faith we see Jesus, the divine man, crowned with glory, honour and authority in heaven. He sits in the place that humanity should have been seated from the beginning.
Jesus is Adam 2.0. Jesus is what true humanity was always meant to be.
Not only that, but Jesus suffered death in order to restore to us what was lost. We still don’t see the world in subjection to mankind, but we see the man Jesus who has subjected the world to himself.
We will continue to face things bigger than us. But through it all we can look by faith to Jesus and know that the glory and honour lost in Eden will be fully restored in the new creation, and fully restored in us.
We know that about the future, because of what happened in the past. Jesus suffered death, experiencing (tasting) death for everyone. Because he suffered and died he has been exalted, and will rule eternally over all things at God’s right hand.
So ignore Jesus, and look to angels or elsewhere for help? No. Only Jesus has regained man’s lost dominion, only Jesus has been given glory and honour both now and in the age to come, and therefore only Jesus is capable of…
Bringing Many Sons to Glory (10-13)
Bringing Many Sons to Glory (10-13)
These Hebrew Christians looked at their overwhelming situation (suffering for faith), and then looked at Jesus, and were struggling to see how one who suffered could possibly help them.
But the writer says that actually it’s not a problem that Jesus suffered; in fact, it was right (fitting) that Jesus suffered for those he was saving, because they themselves suffer.
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory [restoring the glory and honour of Ps 8], it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.
What does it mean that Jesus was made ‘perfect’ through suffering? That he wasn’t perfect before? No. It means that in order for Jesus to fully enter into humanity, and to fully complete the work he came to do, he had to suffer, and he had to suffer death on our behalf. Otherwise his ministry would be imperfect and incomplete.
In so many ways we suffer because we don’t see everything in subjection to us. But we see Jesus, who was made perfect through suffering for us. He has become so much like us in every way that we are now part of his family…
Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, ‘I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again he says, ‘Here am I, and the children God has given me.’
These three OT quotations, from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 8, demonstrate how Jesus has shown solidarity with us, by becoming one of us (brothers), by making us one with him (children). And he’s done it by trusting his father through his suffering with us and for us.
Because Jesus has fully identified with us through suffering, he has made us sons with him, co heirs, we belong now to the father, forever in the protection of his care. Just as Jesus trusted his father in the garden, and when he cried from the cross ‘Why’ – so now we can trust in the sovereign care and protection of our heavenly father, because of Jesus, because of his suffering.
Because of Jesus and not angels, or anything else. The big scary things that we face don’t seem so big and scary when we consider that we are now co-heirs with Christ, with all his glory and honour that he now shares with us.
Moreover, the ministry of Jesus has banished fear by…
Disarming death and the devil (14-15)
Disarming death and the devil (14-15)
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Our two biggest enemies have been overthrown by Jesus. The devil – the cause of our sin, and death – the result of our sin. The power of Satan holds the power of death, and both have been disarmed and will one day be destroyed.
Jesus could not have done this if he hadn’t shared in our flesh and blood. His humanity is not a sign of terrible weakness as the Hebrew Christians thought, but a demonstration of his divine power.
That power has disarmed death and the devil. And because they are now defeated enemies there is nothing left to fear for those who have their eyes fixed on Jesus. Nothing can separate us from God’s love, we are more than conquerors through Christ.
If we no longer have to fear death, the thing that casts its ugly shadow over all of us for our entire lives, if there is no fear in death left for Christians, what else is there to possibly fear?
Those enemies are defeated but for the time being they are still around, and they continue to seek to do us harm. That’s why even as believers we can get fearful and frustrated, because we still have to face physical death, and the devil continues to tempt us. This is where we find Jesus…
Helping as our High Priest (16-18)
Helping as our High Priest (16-18)
How can the Hebrew Christians be sure that God is not against them? How can they know that he accepts them in spite of their sin? How do they know they’re his children?
For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Big theme in Hebrews: Jesus as high priest. For now it means that Jesus is on their side: interceding for them, atoning for them, turning God’s just and righteous wrath away from them. He has suffered for them.
Not only won salvation for them but helps them on the way as they seek to live their salvation out. Big part of that is helping them to look away from their circumstances and to fix their eyes on Jesus.
Jesus has it all covered. He provides help for us in every possible way we could need it. When fear and frustration begin to rise in our hearts because of the big scary things we’re facing, Jesus stands over all of it reigning supreme, because he suffered death to defeat all our enemies. And he now intercedes for us in heaven to provide us the help we need when we face temptation.
Temptation to give in, to run away, to look elsewhere. Temptation to doubt that God accepts us because of what we’re going through. Temptation to let our fears cripple us and keep us from enjoying freedom in Christ.
Jesus is over it all as our merciful and faithful high priest.
Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.
Don’t think about the big scary things that you can’t do anything about; think about Jesus, the one who died to restore what was lost, to bring us to glory as co-heirs with him, to defeat our enemies and to provide help when we’re tempted.
This is Jesus, our perfect, beautiful saviour. Let’s fix our minds on him together, and help one another to lift our eyes up away from the frustrations this world brings, and look instead to the saviour who brings eternal security and everlasting joy.
