Why God Became Man

Scripture Introduction:

There is a story tucked away in your Old Testament that is actually connected with our passage this morning in . In we read of King Ahaz. He’s a young dude at this point, likely in his twenties and he’s leading the nation of Judah. That’s the Southern Kingdom of the Israelites. 10 tribes to the north, two in the south. Here is what is happening politically for him. Assyria is the major world power at this point. Egypt still holds some sway over the world scene but Assyria is the new kid on the block who is expanding their empire. And they are going westward. This causes Judah’s neighbors to the north---Israel and Syria to grow uncomfortable. They encourage Judah to join them…but encourage in a, move our troops on the border, flex our muscles and say, “join us or you’re going to have problems”.

We read in , “the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” It’s a scary decision and one demanding the king’s attention. You HAVE to do something Ahaz! On to the scene comes Isaiah the prophet with a word from the Lord for Ahaz. “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint b/c of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands.” What God is saying to him is, “trust me. Don’t do anything. Don’t fight them. Don’t cater to them. Don’t join with Assyria. Just do nothing but trust me.”

Let’s put ourselves in Ahaz’s sandals for a moment. What do you think his fears are in this moment? The big one is likely death, right. Or at least that he’ll follow in the footsteps of other kings who end up getting their thumbs cut off and have to become slaves of another nation. But there are other fears in there too right. You know that his legacy has to be rumbling around somewhere in the background. The pressure of him being the leader is huge. Others are depending on him. And he has a reputation to uphold. Does he want to be the guy known for being defeated by Syria and Israel? There’s all those common things present in his heart, I can almost guarantee it. Shame. The things that pride makes you do. Fear of dying. Fear of the unknown. Fear of suffering. Desires for comfort. Desire for reputation. All of that is there.

put ourselves in Ahaz’s sandals for a moment.

And you know how I know that? Because Ahaz is just following in the footsteps of our first parents. All those fears and everything are present there as well. God said don’t eat that fruit from the tree because as soon as you do it you’re gonna die. And they ate it and now what stands over them and us for all generations is this death and this fear that comes with it. I appreciate the way John Piper puts this:

Therefore even for people who deny the reality of such a God, death is terrifying. This doesn't mean that most unbelieving people lead consciously terrified lives. It means that they are enslaved by the fear of death to find ways not to feel the intolerable fear that they have. That is, fear of dying is so natural for sinful people who are not ready to meet God, that it rules them like a silent master who takes many forms. The main form is the dream world of denial. Most people simply do not let themselves think about what is absolutely inevitable, namely, their own death. They are driven, consciously or unconsciously, to shut their eyes and close their ears and blank their minds to every thought that they are going to die and give an account to God.

So here is the issue, then, that stands over our text. God’s grand purpose for the earth is to fill all the earth with his glory—for the whole world to be filled with passionate worshippers from every tribe under the sun and to root out of his kingdom all sin and unbelief. Or to put that in a way similar to our text in Hebrews his goal is to bring many sons to glory. To create a people who will be in a relationship with Him, who will enter into his rest and rule his good creation. That was what you saw in the Garden and God is saying, I’m going to do it again. I’m going to bring many sons and daughters into this glory.

But what do you do when the sons and daughters have made shipwreck of their high-calling? That’s what we saw last week. What do you do when they aren’t really sons anymore. They are rebels. They’ve disinherited themselves. isn’t theirs anymore. Want me to finish off that Ahaz story a little bit. God said, just trust. I’ll take care of you. He’s offering rest, rule, relationship. And you know what Ahaz did. He saw the strength and power of Assyria. It was tangible. He could taste it. And he knew they could whip up on Syria and Israel. So you know what he did? He went into alliance with them. Paid a hefty tribute to them—that means sent them lots of money and valuables. And in doing this he also restructured the temple. Took out elements and put in stuff to the Assyrian gods. He even ended up sacrificing children to the gods of the Assyrians. Cause..safety.

It was fear. We’ve got to preserve Judah. We’ve got to stay in comfort. We’ve got to keep our power. It’s him trying to run from death and he sees that Assyria can help him do it. And Ahaz has the same stuff within him that is present in our hearts as well. That same fear can drive you to do similar things. Assyria didn’t look all nasty and have horns growing out of it. It seemed wise. It seemed politically shrewd. He likely even glossed it over with some religious language…we see him doing that later in . Here is Ahaz trying to get back rule but it does the opposite. I don’t know if he even consciously realizes that he’s saying, “we don’t want your kingdom, God.” But he does. And he ends up enslaving himself and his people.

So when God looks down to say, “i’m going to bring many sons to glory” this is what he’s dealing with. A people laden with iniquity. And lest you think this is just an Old Testament and wicked Ahaz problem isn’t this what we proclaim when we share the gospel. All have sinned and fallen short, we are filled with sin, we are totally depraved. And because of this…because of our guilt…because the punishment for sin is death, the Accuser, the devil holds sway. He can say, these fools are guilty! And he’s right.

Picture this. Goliath the giant—the great Accuser is taunting these “many sons to glory” and saying, “look at you with all your sin, your filth, your evil, your wickedness.” What they need is a champion. They need one who is like King David. One who will fight on our behalf and slay the beast—death, the fear of death, and the one who holds this power of death by his very right and true accusations of a guilty people. But God can’t just do it. He can’t just declare it. You can’t get a ringer.

What I mean is that humanity has to be represented by a human. If we’re going to fight this battle. It’s like church league softball. Let’s be honest, usually our church league teams aren’t the cream of the crop. But you’ve always got a team or two who uses it as “outreach”. What that means is that they find the very best ball-players in the community, ones who don’t even go to their church and they sign them up and say, “these guys play for our church.” Nobody likes that because it’s not an accurate representation. They don’t actually represent you. It’s the same way here. Goliath is the best the Philistines have and the Israelites have to have a fitting champion—one to represent him. Otherwise it’s not fitting. It just isn’t right. You can’t do it that way.

And so here’s our conundrum. God desires to bring many sons to glory. But these sons aren’t even sons anymore because they’ve made shipwreck of the whole thing. And by doing so they have a great accuser who stands over them with death—the right and just punishment for sin. It’d be unjust for God to just lift that. And God himself can’t just punch death in the throat. He can’t, as God, stand in our place. We need a champion, but we haven’t got one. So how does the all-powerful God rescue?

Hebrews 2:10–18 ESV

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. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, 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.” 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. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 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. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Sermon Introduction:

The Israelites couldn’t have gotten some giant

Now to the North he has Israel and Syria. Both of them are wanting to wage war with Assyria and they’d like Ahaz to be in alliance with them.

What we see, then, is that Jesus is that leader. He is that champion that we need! He is the one who restores . He is the one who wants again gives to us rest, rule, and relationship. He’s making all things new. But we have to be careful with how we picture Jesus and what we think about when we say he is our champion. Those in the ancient world viewed champions similar to what we do. It’s the Goliath. The big guy with, muscles, bravado. Not the little shepherd boy with a slingshot and a few rocks. Listen to this from

About 500,000 Roman citizens took the military oath of allegiance to me. Rather over 300,000 of these have I settled in colonies, or sent back to their home towns (municipia) when their term of service ran out ; and to all of these I have given lands bought by me, or the money for farms and this out of my private means. I have taken 600 ships, besides those smaller than triremes.

Twice have I had the lesser triumph [i.e., the ovation] ; thrice the [full] curule triumph ; twenty-one times have I been saluted as « Imperator. » After that, when the Senate voted me many triumphs, I declined them. Also I often deposited the laurels in the Capitol, fulfilling the vows which I had made in battle. On account of the enterprises brought to a happy issue on land and sea by me, or by my legates, under my auspices, fifty-five times has the Senate decreed a thanksgiving unto the Immortal Gods. The number of days, too, on which thanksgiving was professed, fulfilling the Senate's decrees, was 890. Nine kings, or children of kings, have been led before my car in my triumphs. And when I wrote these words, thirteen times had I been consul, and for the thirty-seventh year was holding the tribunician power.

The guy is just bragging all over the place. I’m a god. I’m a champion. I’m a warrior. So you’re a first-century Jew who is expecting Messiah to come and topple a tyrannical ruler like this, how do you picture it happening? That’s Caesar. What if I told you that our champion is going to go toe-to-toe with death itself. He’s going to defeat death. He’s going to defeat the devil and rescue tons of people from slavery. Well, he’d better have quite the arsenal.

What if I told you our champion was going to do this by becoming a baby. Preposterous. That’s what a Roman philosopher who lived about 250 years after Jesus thought:

Even supposing some Greeks are so foolish as to think that the gods dwell in the statues, even that would be a much purer concept (of religion) than to admit that the Divine Power should descend into the womb of the Virgin Mary, that it became an embryo, and after birth was wrapped in rags, soiled with blood and bile, and even worse.

Even supposing some Greeks are so foolish as to think that the gods dwell in the statues, even that would be a much purer concept (of religion) than to admit that the Divine Power should descend into the womb of the Virgin Mary, that it became an embryo, and after birth was wrapped in rags, soiled with blood and bile, and even worse.

That’s not fitting, says Porphyry of Tyre. But the author of Hebrews says something different. It was fitting he says....There are two big things I see in this passage concerning our great champion. First, fitting for him to stoop. Secondly it was fitting for him to suffer. So how are we going to apply this. First and foremost it’s a call for us to marvel, to rejoice, to worship, and to not neglect such a great salvation. It’s a call for us as we will see next week to consider Jesus. For a believer. For an unbeliever. But it’s I believe also a call for us to follow him in stooping and suffering. It’s the way of our champion. And we are called to follow him.

So I want to walk us through this passage and then show you how it applies.

It was fitting for our champion to stoop, therefore we must stoop

v10. It was fitting, that’s where I”m getting this language. It was appropriate. They’d talk like this in Rome about what was fitting for the gods to do. A reference here to the great God for whom and by whom all things exist, bringing many sons to glory. What’s that glory? It’s connected with the whole passage. Restoring of . Overturning the fall. Eternity in the redeemed and restored and newly made Edenic paradise. So it’s fitting that God in bringing many sons and daughters into this glory to make the founder of their salvation.

Founder there is an interesting word. You’ll see it translated different ways in different versions. If I had my pick, I’d say “champion” and that’s why I’m using that language. But leader, author, founder, source, any of those really do work. But I pick champion because I think the author of Hebrews does have in mind something kind of like what you see with David and Goliath. There is a representative thing going on here. So that if he defeats something then all those who are “in Him” share in that defeat.

This is kind of a silly illustration but it might help. My family likes to play Wii Party. It’s a video game where you play all these fun little mini-games and one of the things we play is called Board Game Island. On it there is a particular spot where you cannot pass this big spike ball unless you roll a 4, 5, or 6. If you don’t roll a 4, 5, or 6 the spike ball comes out and chases you back about 10 spaces. But here’s the thing once somebody rolls a 4, 5, or 6 the spike ball breaks and everyone who is behind that person no longer has to defeat the spike ball. It’s already been conquered.

That’s a silly picture, I think, but it’s something a bit like that which is going on here. Now of course the more full picture we would have from Revelation where nobody can open the scroll. Not a one of us could roll a 4, 5, or 6. Nobody can break the spike ball. So Christ is that one…he is the champion of our salvation, our rescue, our deliverance, our being restored again to status. And it happens through suffering.

He is made perfect through suffering. Now, wait. I thought Jesus is perfect and always has been perfect…so what do you mean he was made perfect. That word there for perfect is one that’s used often in the OT of a priest being consecrated. That’s a fitting way of saying, “qualified for service.” So what he means here is that it was through his suffering that he became qualified as our champion. And I think this is confirmed by what we see in verse 11. “He who sanctifies and the those who are sanctified all have one source.” That’s saying the one who makes us holy (that’s Jesus) and those who are being made holy (that’s us) all have one source. Now the original there doesn’t necessarily have the word “source”. You might notice that as a little footnote in your Bible. It just literally reads “all are of one”. But what that really means is that both Jesus and us have the same Father. We come from the same family. And that’s what propels him into what he says next in talking about how Christ was made like us.

He does this by quoting and then (which I made reference to early in the story of Ahaz). Now we don’t really have time to show fully what he’s doing here in this passage, so what we will do is tonight I’m going to show you how and relate to . We’ll work through those passages. For now it’s enough to say that he’s quoting those passages to show how Jesus as the champion has solidarity with us.

It’s what we see in verse 14. We’re flesh and blood and he became flesh and blood. Now why did he do that?

What’s happening there is that he’s showing how Jesus

So that “through death” he might destroy the one who has the power of death. In other words it would be through His death that he would conquer death. And really conquer the one who has the power over death the devil. And deliver us who through our fear of death we are subject to lifelong slavery. What does all of that mean?

First, he had to become man because God cannot die. The indestructible had to take upon himself flesh and blood and become destructible. It’s not that he ceased being God but he took upon himself flesh and blood. He was a partaker of this. What’s interesting is you can even see this in the tenses that the author of Hebrews uses. Verse 14 since the children “share” is in the perfect tense…which would imply that this is the “original and natural state” of humanity. While when it says, he partook it’s in the aorist tense which would indicate that he did this at some fixed point in time, by his own choice.”

This is kind of what verse 16 is pointing to. In order to rescue men he had to become a man. So, secondly, he had to become man to identify with us. Like us in every respect. This goes back to the champion thing. He had to become our representative and so in doing this he had to become truly like us. And he did and he conquered death. He defeated death.

And so what does that mean? It means that now death isn’t the end. Death has lots its sting. Death can no longer hold us. Jesus was resurrected from the dead into newness of life and so now if we are “in Christ” that same thing happens to us. That’s why when believers die we have hope. Because we know it’s not the end of the story. We know that resurrection happens. We know that we are now more alive than we ever will be.

But what does it mean here that he has overcome the fear of death? This changes everything. Why does death have a sting? Why does Satan hold power? It’s because our guilt and because death truly is the right sentence. His accusations can stick.

Embracing Accusations

That’s what propitiation means. It means Jesus has taken it all. He has taken away our guilt. He has taken away the sentence of death. There is now no condemnation.

So first and foremost this is why Christ had to become a man and this is the benefit of him becoming a man. He is our champion. He defeats death so that all who are in Christ win that victory as well.

But it’s also helpful because he can identify with our sufferings. .

And he can help us in our temptation. The rubber-band example.

Secondly, he had to become man to identify with us. Like us in every respect.

Are you in Christ?

Walk through lyrics. Are you living in resurrection? Or still the shame and fear of death and all that stuff…living in the victory that Christ has purchased for you?

Propitiation

Identify with our sufferings

Helping us when tempted

v11. For he

It was fitting for our champion to suffer, therefore we must suffer