Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome once again to this worship gathering of Hope Bible Fellowship.

It is one of the great honors of my life to be your pastor and to be here today to proclaim the Word of God to you.

We have a lot of ground to cover today so let’s just dive right in.

If you have a Bible with you, go ahead and open to Hebrews chapter 2. If you were with us last week you’ll recall that we ended with verse 9 which says,

So we ended with this understanding that Jesus tasted death for everyone.

This was a death that was substitutionary in nature, meaning that Jesus died a death in the place of someone else.

He died in the place of sinners, taking the wrath of God we deserved upon Himself and giving us His righteousness.

This Jesus whom we have seen described as “heir of all things,” and “the radiance of the glory of God,” in chapter 1 has been identified also as the Son of God.

Christians today are used to thinking of Jesus as the humble teacher roaming the ancient world with His followers but one author I read made the point that we rarely think of Jesus as he lives now and as He is described in verse 9 as “crowned with glory and honor.”

He reigns and reigns in power.

We get to share in that someday and it is a glorious truth.

So the author of Hebrews, after laying this out there, that this Jesus, who is greater than the angels tasted death for us then puts before us this beautiful passage we find in verses 10-18 of chapter 2. Follow along as I read.

READ

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s pray and ask God to help us understand it and apply it to our lives.

PRAY

The first aspect of the ministry of Jesus that we see in verse 10 is the saving ministry of Jesus.

Ultimately, Jesus came to save humans from their sin and deliver them to the Father.

I.

The Saving Ministry of Jesus (v.

10)

Right away, we see the Trinitarian nature of Christianity in verse 10.

When you are looking at a passage that has as many pronouns in it as this one, it’s a good practice to go through and figure out who they are addressed to.

This first one in verse 10 when it says “he, for whom and by whom all things, exist” is talking about God the Father.

When it goes on to talk about the “founder of their salvation” it’s talking about Jesus.

So we see that all along in scripture we see that our Christianity deals with the three in one Trinity.

Three persons but one God.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all have acted in our salvation.

There is no division in them and they act together in perfect unity.

As we look at the first aspect of Jesus’s ministry from this passage, I want to read verse ten one more time.

I want you to pay attention to the beauty of the language used here.

“in brining many sons to glory,” This phrase is a beautiful summary of the gospel.

It incorporates the relational and the familial aspects of the gospel and summarizes the work of Jesus in bringing many sons to glory.

Now there are many things Jesus’s did in the incarnation, in His death, and resurrection.

But this gets to the aim of it.

When the author writes “many sons”, he is identifying those who belong to God as sons.

That is to show the family relationship with those in the family of God.

Jesus is delivering these many sons to glory.

He is delivering them to the Father.

They make it to eternity with God.

A. The founder made perfect through suffering

Jesus is referred to in verse 10 as the founder of our salvation.

Other translations may say pioneer or even captain.

He is the forerunner.

He has gone ahead and as FF Bruce writes of this,

He is the Savior who blazed the trail of salvation along which alone God’s “many sons” could be brought to glory.

Man, created by God for his glory, was prevented by sin from attaining that glory until the Son of Man came and opened up by his death a new way by which humanity might reach the goal for which it was made.

As his people’s representative and forerunner he has now entered into the presence of God to secure their entry there.3

This is in agreement with what Jesus told His disciples during His earthly ministry in John 14, verses 2 through 4.

Jesus is the founder of our salvation.

But later in verse ten it says He was made perfect through suffering.

What does that mean?

I can tell you first what it does not mean.

It does not mean that Jesus was anything less than perfect in His life here on Earth.

He did not have any sin.

He was sinless.

In fact, the author of the book of Hebrews continually promotes the sinlessness of Jesus in the book.

The phrase “made perfect” refers to Jesus’s uncompromising submission to the Father even in the face of increasing hardship.

In Philippians 2:8

In suffering and dying upon the cross, Jesus was perfectly fulfilling the office of Messiah.

He was doing the things the Messiah had to do.

He was the perfect sacrifice for the sin of man.

This was ALL the plan of God the Father.

And at the very beginning of verse 10 we see that this was fitting.

B. The Father’s plan was fitting

That Jesus should suffer and die to make atonement for us was fitting, it was appropriate, it was perfect.

It was appropriate in accordance with His glorious character.

That’s something that will help us understand so much more of the way God works.

He always acts in keeping with His character.

He will never act in a way outside of who He is.

There are a lot of people who have a real issue with the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus.

They think it’s barbaric that an innocent man was slain on behalf of sinful men and people who don’t understand it have even referred to it as some form of child abuse.

This is not a proper understanding of what was going on at all.

They can’t reconcile what they see as a religion of blood and suffering with the God of love.

But what they truly don’t understand is just how deep and wide that love of God in Christ truly is.

Sin had to be paid for in blood.

And because God is true, holy, and just a sacrifice had to be made.

But because the love of God is so deep He also provided the perfect satisfaction for that sacrifice in Jesus.

And it is through that sacrifice that Jesus brings many sons to glory.

It’s how we get to be part of God’s family.

In being part of God’s family we see that Jesus is the elder brother of every Christian.

Everyone who is truly saved from their sins by the blood of Christ has Jesus Himself as their elder brother.

C. Jesus as our Elder Brother

Depending on what your older brother was like, this idea might not at first sound attractive.

I am the oldest in my physical family.

I had a younger brother.

I know that it was, at times, probably not a great joy to be my little brother.

If you grew up with an older brother you know that things can get competitive.

Or maybe you had an older brother who was just plain mean to you.

If that’s the case, this truth of Jesus as our elder brother might hit you in strange way.

Please know that Jesus is the best of all elder brothers.

He is the ultimate and perfect older brother.

Not one who is jealous of us or acts entitled like the older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son.

Jesus is the opposite of that guy.

Do you know this story?

Jesus tells this parable or story that teaches in Luke 15.

To summarize, there was a man who had two sons and the younger came to the dad and said he wanted to go ahead and take all of his inheritance right now.

This was akin to telling his dad he wished he was dead.

So the dad gives him his part of the inheritance and the little brother goes and squanders the money on wild living.

One day as he’s longing to eat the stuff they feed the pigs, he decides to go home and pledge himself as a servant to his father.