Hebrews 2 (Part 2)

Hebrews chapter 2. We are in the second part of this chapter. Incredible, powerful chapter. But a lot of just information. I have to tell you in complete honesty, I was studying through this portion of chapter 2, and I was a little frustrated just because there's so much here. And if I were to spend time going through all of it we'd literally be here all day. So I'm going to do my best to pass along what the author is saying here to us and how it applies to our lives. So chapter 2, we're picking it up in verse 10. We're going to read through the end of the chapter. Follow along with me as I read:

Stop there. Let's pray. As always, Lord, we come before you whenever we dig into the scripture because we recognize our great need of understanding that comes through your Spirit. And so we're asking, Lord, once again today that you would open our spiritual ears, our spiritual eyes and give us, Lord God, that heart to receive today. We pray that you would fill us with understanding that you would fill us with hope and that you would help us, Lord, to take this word and walk it out in our lives. We ask these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Amen. Amen. In order for us to really kind of set up what we're going to be looking at in these latter verses of Hebrews chapter 2, I wanna remind you of how we ended our study last Sunday with verse 9. And it was a powerful statement that the author made there, and it was, and here it is on the screen: (slide) Hebrews 2:9 (ESV) But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. And there is a tremendous amount in that single verse from last week. We're not going to go over it all again. Essentially, what the author is saying is he's really bringing out 2 simple statements. The first statement is Jesus was made like us. And he's just simply reiterating the incarnation that which we celebrate every Christmas. The fact that God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. Very simple, but, well, I say it's simple, but it's not simple. First of all, it's beyond our comprehension, how God could become a man and retain His Godhood. You know, that's frankly beyond us. But the truth of it is fairly simple. The next thing he's really saying in verse 9 is that He suffered for us. He suffered death for us. And so the reason that's so important to understand that Jesus, God became a man and He suffered is because He's going to predicate those ideas on the rest of what he says through the chapter. And essentially what he's going to do is he's going to outline for you and me how the suffering of Jesus benefited you and me and how it completed Him as the Savior. Now those are some interesting thoughts, but it all kind of starts with the very first verse that we read, which is verse 10. So look with me again in your Bible at verse 10. He says, "10For 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." And that single statement is going to be the jump board from which we dive into this whole passage. It's the jump off point, if you will. I don't know how else to say it. But I want to go through that verse 1 more time. Slowly so that we understand all of the prepositions and so forth and so on. Look with me again. Verse 10. "10For it was fitting" and I want to stop there because the word fitting, it's important for you to know means, appropriate. It was appropriate, "that he" and that is God the Father "for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory," that's one of the benefits that you and I get. We'll talk more about that. He said, "should make the founder of their salvation" your Bible may say captain or author. The word literally in the Greek means pioneer, the one who pioneered or went before us in our salvation. That's Jesus, "perfect through suffering." Now, if there's anything at all in verse 10 that is going to mess people up, it's the existence of the word "perfect" because whenever we're talking about God and we start using words like perfect, or being made perfect, we immediately kind of tweak and we think to ourselves, wait a second here. The author spent the entire first chapter convincing me that Jesus is God. Remember what he was saying in that first chapter. So why in the world would God need to be made perfect. Isn't He perfect already? So what is the author saying here when he said that Jesus was perfected or made "perfect through suffering." Well, you have to understand that the word perfect here is not referring to moral perfection. It actually means completion. He was completed. Through His suffering. And that is to say that there was something about the suffering of Jesus that created a completeness of fulfilling of the work of salvation. His saviorhood, if you will. Something about His suffering completed his saviorhood. I hope that is understood there. What the author does to the rest of this chapter is he begins to outline how Jesus was perfected or made complete and how that completion of His saving work and His saviorhood benefits you and me. And we're going to see the wonderful benefits that he's going to talk about in the rest of this chapter. And then when we get done, we're going to talk about why he brought all these things out. But I'm going to bring out essentially 6 things from this passage, and the first 1 is found in verses 11 through 13. By the way, let me put the title up here on the screen: (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior

This is what we're going to call this: How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior. Sorry, it's so long, but I couldn't figure out a way to shorten it. Verses 11, 12, and 13, show us the very first one. Read it with me again. "11For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified" (that's us) "all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them" (and the them is us, the body of Christ, believers, he's not ashamed to call us) "brothers," and then it goes on to quote some various Old Testament passages where we see that fulfillment of the Lord referring to the body of Christ, or the church, in that family sort of a way. And that's the first point that we're going to put up on the screen: (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family And that is that through his suffering, we are made family. This is not a small issue at all because Jesus suffered. One of the beautiful benefits or outgrowths of his suffering, which completed His saviorhood, is the fact that you and I have been made brothers and sisters to Jesus and children of God. You know, it's funny, people like to say in the world, those people who like to talk about God, there aren't that many anymore, but people who do will often say, you know, we're all God's children. Well, in the sense that He created us, I suppose there might be some aspect of truth to that. But the Bible says that we are made children by putting our faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. Let me show you this on the screen: (slide) John 1:11-13 (ESV)

He, Jesus, came to His own (that's referring to the Jews) and His own people did not receive Him, but to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right (to what?) to become children of God. And then he talks about how those children are born. They're born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. Born of God. There is a spiritual birth that takes place when you and I put our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior. We, of course, call it being born again. We are born of the Spirit. But what happens when we're born of the Spirit is we are brought into the family of God. You become children of God. And what's cool is that we're all related. We're birthed literally into God's family. You are my brothers and sisters in Christ. And there's a family identity that we have through Jesus Christ with all other believers. And it's amazing. We were fellowshipping, you know, last week you guys got to see, I'm assuming if you were here, Andrea was here doing worship for both the women's event and then for our Sunday morning services. And she's a lovely gal and, you know, lived most of her life in Germany where she was born and raised. Lived until she was 39 years old in Germany and then came over to the United States. From that standpoint, there's not a whole lot we have in common. We talked a lot to her while she was here. We talked about the culture she was raised in and the things that were part of being raised in Germany. Very different from the United States. There were a lot of differences that we had. But when we started talking about Jesus. It's just this mesh. You can tell we're family. She's my sister. I just met her, you know, a few days before that, and she's my sister and I can tell that, and it's a beautiful thing. But it came about through His suffering. He suffered that we might be made family. He suffered that you and I might be related first to Him and then to one another. It came through suffering and it perfected His saviorhood. It completed it. And it benefited us greatly. How incredible is that? Let's move on to the next completion, brought through Christ's suffering. It's in verse 14 in your Bible. "14Since 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," You guys know the story when mankind fell in the garden. And sin entered the world. Death came as a result of sin. And because we're all guilty of sin somehow, some way, satan has a right to demand our death. But Jesus took that away. He destroyed that power by destroying death itself. But you know, because satan's all about death. He's all about that. I don't know if you remember what Jesus said about satan in John's gospel, it's recorded in chapter 8. On the screen: (slide) John 8:44 (ESV)

You are (He's talking to the Jewish religious leaders there) you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. And then He goes on to say, interesting here, he was a murderer from the beginning. Talking about satan, Jesus said, he's a murderer. He was a murderer from the beginning. Isn't that crazy? By the way, that's a spiritual insight we wouldn't know apart from Jesus telling us. I wouldn't have known that. But He made it a very clear to us satan was a murderer from the beginning. What's that tell you about satan? He doesn't just come to give you a bad day. He comes to take you out. He wants to take you out. He would love to murder you. But Jesus destroyed something related to that. And so that's our second point that we're going to put on the list: (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family  He destroyed the devil and his power over death Jesus destroyed the devil and his power over death. Now it is true that death has not yet been eliminated. But the power of death has been destroyed. And I don't know if you remember what Jesus said to John the Apostle, right before He started dictating those 7 letters to the churches. Jesus made a very interesting statement about death. Let me show it on the screen: (slide) Revelation 1:17-18 (ESV)

He said, fear not. I am the first and the last and the living one. I died. And behold I am alive forevermore. And look at this. And I have the keys of Death and Hades. I have the keys. You know, that's a statement of power. If you're the one who has the keys, you have access, and you have power. What do keys do? They open doors. They open shut doors. They open locked doors. They open doors that keep us from getting places. And Jesus says concerning death, which is a huge mystery to us, for the most part, He says, I have the keys to that particular door. I look at the world that we live in seems like whatever you see in the world, the goal is just to somehow beat death. And they know they can't ultimately, but they're going to try. Whether it's through pills or Botox or plastic surgery. Don't people who get plastic surgery look scary. I mean, they think

--- they look young. And I look at them, I go, ah, you're scary. But they're trying to beat death. Sometimes a little cryo freeze might come in. I have to confess to you I have always been a fan of science fiction and you know, the whole Star Trek, Star Wars. You're not going to believe this, I saw the first Star Wars 21 times in the theater. That's why I'm so weird. But yeah, 21 times. I figured out that when you finally get to the place and you're watching a movie and you can see the mistakes they've made, you've seen it too many times. I figured that out. It's time to go home. Anyway. What's interesting about science fiction is that anything kind of goes. You can kind of come up with anything. Nobody's going to watch a sci-fi movie and go, oh, that couldn't happen. Well, of course it couldn't happen. It's fiction. It's science fiction. And so you don't have the kind of barriers or borders that you do when you're telling a normal story. You can be weird and just talk about anything. And what's interesting about science fiction though, is if you pay attention, you'll see that society will inject its secret desires of what we would really like life to be in science fiction. Gene Roddenberry did that when he created Star Trek. He wanted to see the sinful nature literally of man obliterated. So he created a science fiction story where there was no more poverty and no more disease and all these things got wiped out. It is a great thought, but it's science fiction, but it was in his heart. One of the other things that I've seen over the years in science fiction is the rise of the interest in artificial intelligence. And of course, you know, we've thought about things like that for a long time, robots and androids and stuff like that. But in the more recent last couple of decades, science fiction loves to perceive the idea of artificial intelligence being an actual life-form. Qualifying as a living being. It's science fiction. But there's something there. There's something there about wanting to beat death. There's something there about wanting to live forever. We've been looking for the fountain of youth ever since the idea was conceived. And along comes Jesus my Savior and yours. And He says, I have the key to that. I have the key to death. I hold it in my hand and it's an unlocked open door to Me. Isn't that an incredible thought? That which the world is longing for, looking for? Jesus has the key. And in Christ, we are the beneficiaries. But people make no mistake about it. He suffered for that key. He suffered for that key because you see, death was never ever meant to be a part of God's creation. Sin brought it into play, and it was the sin of man that brought it into play. And man had to suffer. Man had to suffer. A man had to suffer. God took care of that by becoming a man, and He suffered that He might win for you and me the key of death. Oh, well, I could sit and think about that for a long time. ---

Number 3 on our list is in verse 15. (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family  He destroyed the devil and his power over death  He delivered all those who were slaves to their fear of death Look at verse 15 in your Bible. This also relates to death. "15and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." And you can see it up there on the on the screen. He delivered all those who were slaves to their fear of death. So He not only conquered death and has the keys to it, but He delivers those who would otherwise live in fear of death and become enslaved by that. But He suffered in order that you and I might be set free from the tyranny and the dominion of that kind of fear. Because I'll tell you something, fear of death is a very cruel form of slavery. A very cruel form of slavery. And if there's one thing we can see in our culture today, it is radically enslaved by the fear of death. And if you need that brought out, none of us do, because all you need is a good worldwide pandemic, right? Yeah. And the fear of death becomes immediately known. And we have daily proof of it. In fact, there was a first century Jewish philosopher. First century, so this is a long time ago, but he wrote this quote, "nothing is so calculated to enslave the mind as fearing death." Isn't that something. When I sit and talk about the pandemic, I'm not in any way suggesting to you that it is not a serious issue or that we shouldn't pay attention and take it seriously. But what I'm saying is fear of death is a cruel, manipulative slave master. And when you give in to it, it doesn't want to let go. Because fear can never be trusted. And believers in Jesus ought to avoid the temptation to surrender to its demands. Because the problem is when you give into fear, it wants more. It wants more of your attention. It wants more of your time. It wants more of your energy, and the more you give it, eventually it becomes paralyzing. And it's sad to see a world that is overcome by fear. And here's the deal: Jesus suffered that you and I would be free from that fear. He suffered specifically so that we wouldn't walk around and be fearful. We recognize danger when it's real. You know, not having fear doesn't mean we blow off danger, but we're just not going to bow to it. It is not our God. Our God has the keys to death and He has suffered to deliver us from the fear of it. And we need to take that seriously. And if fear has been laying hold of your heart, can I just encourage you to go to the Lord and confess it as sin? We don't do that. People don't realize that fear is a sin. We're not to live by fear. We're to live by faith. So bring it to the Lord. People don't know what to do with, Pastor Paul, I'm so fearful all the time. What do I do with this? You bring it to the throne of Grace. You ask God to forgive you for not putting your faith in Him. Instead defaulting to fear. And you say, Lord, strengthen me, that I would not be fearful. I was talking to some people the other day and just admitting boy, it just comes over you sometimes and you have to resist, don't you? That fear. If you're listening something on the news or somebody says something and you get this wave that just wants to carry you. It just wants to envelop you. And you have to say, no, no, I resist that. Jesus Christ suffered on the cross that I would not be a slave to this fear and I refuse to embrace it. I instead, I'm just going to embrace Jesus. It would be nice if it was as easy to do as it is to say, wouldn't it? The next completion to the saviorhood of Jesus and the benefit for us is seen in verse 17. "17Therefore 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 to God," This is number 4. We'll put it up on the list. (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family  He destroyed the devil and his power over death  He delivered all those who were slaves to their fear of death  He became a merciful and faithful high priest He became "a merciful and faithful high priest" through his suffering. Very important. First of all, what's a high priest? That's really the same function that we saw in the Old Testament. Largely because, you know, the Old Testament priesthood was a picture of what Jesus was going to come do. Do you guys remember what the high priest used to do? One day a year on the Day of Atonement? He would go through the veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place, or if you will, the Holy of Holies. And he would once a year go into that room, he would bring the blood of animals and he would pour out that blood on the mercy seat of the arc of the covenant to atone for the sins of Israel. He'd actually go in twice on that single day. First he'd go in for his own sins, and then he would deal with the sins of Israel. Once a year on that one day. And so that we see there, the ministry the priest goes in and represents. You want somebody representing you who knows what you're going through, who knows what life is like for you, right? And so Jesus Christ suffered that He might be made a merciful and faithful high priest in the sense that He knows what you feel. He knows about your desires. He knows about your hurts. He knows about your pains. He knows about your fears. He knows you about your betrayals. He knows your sadness. He knows those things, and so He is representing you now before the Father. That's what high priests do. They represent. We like representation. Good representation. I don't know if you heard it in the news, but there was one of the Oregon state representatives wrote a letter already that got published to our governor concerning this new lockdown thing that she's going to put into effect. It's supposed to happen and start next Wednesday. And he's representing kind of the central part of Oregon. Burns, you know, that area. And he wrote an open letter to the governor and said, Madame Governor, you don't understand our area. I am here. I live in this area. These are the people I represent. And it's not the same as in Portland or Salem or Eugene. It's not the same. It's much more rural here. We don't have the kind of infectious rate that large cities are dealing with. And so to impose these kinds of lockdowns here in this area isn't going to work for us. You know, I heard about that and I thought, wow, that's good representation. Because he's representing his constituency and saying, you don't understand. You don't live here. This is life for us here in a more rural setting. Jesus is our perfect representative before the Father. Because He knows and understands the kind of things we deal with, he can represent us accurately, mercifully, faithfully, as our perfect high priest. And I love that. If you still look at verse 17, you'll notice that the last several words of that verse give us our next understanding of the suffering of Jesus. And it says, "to make propitiation for the sins of the people." I bet you haven't used the word propitiation in the last week, have you? It's a word that means to turn aside wrath. Which of course comes from sin. Jesus turned it aside for us, so we have the next list on our thing here. (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family  He destroyed the devil and his power over death  He delivered all those who were slaves to their fear of death

 He became a merciful and faithful high priest  He removed the wrath of God for those who believe He removed the wrath of God for those who believe. Now, this one isn't hard to understand how the suffering of Jesus removed the wrath of God. It was through His suffering that He bore the wrath of God. Jesus literally took God's wrath for you and for me. And because He suffered, He turned that wrath aside and it made Him a complete savior and it brought you and me this beautiful peace with God. Do you know how wonderful it is to be at peace with God? So many people in this world are living crazy lives because they're not at peace with God. They have no peace. They were created by God. They were created to know God, to love God, and to worship God, but they don't know Him. They don't love Him, and they don't worship Him. So there's this void in their life. And there's no peace. There's no peace. You can use that as an explanation for the reason most people do the dumb things that they do. Why does he do that? He's not at peace. He doesn't have peace with God. We have that peace because the wrath of God has been turned aside. It's been taken away. It's been consumed in the person of Jesus Christ. He suffered to take away that wrath that we might have peace with God. What a beautiful, powerful thing. Check out 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 9 and 10: (slide)

Because He bore it Himself. He suffered that you would never have to deal with the wrath of God. And finally, the author of Hebrews gives us the last completion of the saviorhood of Jesus in verse 18. If you look with me in your Bible, in verse 18 it says, "18For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted." And this is number 6, we'll put on the screen here: (slide) (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family  He destroyed the devil and his power over death  He delivered all those who were slaves to their fear of death  He became a merciful and faithful high priest  He removed the wrath of God for those who believe  He can help us when we are tempted He can help us when we are tempted because He understands temptation. And this is frankly something that the author is going to repeat a little bit later on in this letter. He's going to repeat it again in chapter 4. Let me show you how he says it again. He says: (slide) Hebrews 4:14 (ESV)

And that means a lot to me. Jesus knows and understands the temptations that I have to deal with. He knows and understands the temptations you have to deal with. I like that. I like that. I pray, and He knows. He knows what I'm going through. He knows what you're going through. When temptations come into your heart, whether it's temptation to fear, temptation to sin in some other way, some besetting area, some weakness of the flesh, He knows and understands. He gets it. He was without sin Himself, but He gets the temptation. By the way, since Jesus was tempted and was without sin, that tells us unequivocally that temptation is not sin, right? There are a lot of Christians who get condemned because they feel themselves tempted often. And they're like, Pastor Paul, why am I being tempted all the time? I'm constantly just being tempted. Am I even a real Christian? What are you talking about? Jesus was tempted. Jesus endured temptation. You think somehow you're going to get off scot-free? But no, that doesn't mean you're less of a Christian. In fact, it probably confirms that you're a Christian because satan's gunning for you.

I love having the fact that there's a high priest who can sympathize. We like sympathy. I like sympathy. Men like sympathy, especially when they're sick. I'll just admit it guys. Let's just do it right here. We're big babies when we're sick and we love sympathy. My wife, she's not here so I can talk about her. When they were passing out sympathy gifts, she didn't get it. And so here I am, you know, I got a temperature of 99, I'm going to die. She's like, oh, buck up you big baby. Where's the sympathy? But you know what? As much as we like sympathy, there has to be more than sympathy at the end of the day, when it comes to temptation. I mean, I'm glad that we can all sympathize with one another when it comes to the temptations that draw us off course in our walk with God. But I need more than sympathy, and so do you. I'm glad Jesus sympathizes with us, but I need Him to go beyond that and He does. Let me show you 1 Corinthians Chapter 10 verse 13: (slide) 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV)

See, that's the next step I need beyond just sympathy. I need Jesus to help me and to provide a way out when I'm tempted to sin. And He provides that way. Jesus is the one who provides the way. He is the way (John 14:6). And that's a beautiful promise by way of reminder to you and me that He doesn't just sympathize with your temptations. He's there to help you walk uprightly. He's there. He's there to give you a way out. So Pastor Paul, what does it mean then when I fall to temptation? It means I didn't take the way out, right? Probably because I didn't want to. I wanted to sin, so I did it because we're free to do that kind of dumb stuff, you know? So as we go back and look at this list, all 6 points, we see that the suffering of Jesus Christ has accomplished us great things through his suffering. (slide) How the Suffering of Jesus made complete His work as Savior  Through His suffering we are made family  He destroyed the devil and his power over death  He delivered all those who were slaves to their fear of death  He became a merciful and faithful high priest

---  He removed the wrath of God for those who believe  He can help us when we are tempted He suffered that we might be family. He suffered that the power of death through the devil might be destroyed. He suffered that He might deliver us from our fear of death and the slavery that is connected to that. He suffered that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest. He suffered to remove the wrath of God on our behalf. And He suffered to be able to help us in a powerful and wonderful way when we are tempted. And it's beautiful. Now, the reason that the author of this letter is going through the benefits of all these sufferings that Jesus did for you and me is to simply underscore the fact that it is through His suffering that our whole salvation is predicated and you can't take it out of the way. Remember, he wrote this letter to Jewish Christians who were being tempted to leave the gospel behind and go back to legalism under the law. And so he wrote this letter to remind them what Jesus accomplished on the cross through His suffering, He suffered so that we might have these things. It makes it more precious, doesn't it? When somebody suffers and sacrifices to give you something. Have you ever gotten a gift from someone and you knew that they couldn't really afford it, but they bought it anyway. Boy, that makes that gift very special. When somebody suffers. Joni Eareckson Tada tells a story about when she was still fairly young, but already paralyzed as a quadriplegic after her diving accident. She tells a story about how some friends wanted to cheer her up, so they decided to take her out on a cold winter's night for pizza. So they pulled into the parking lot and they got out of the car and they lifted her up and got her into her wheelchair, and they were all kind of feeling giddy and they were trying to lift her spirits. And so they decided to race her across the parking lot. But little did they know there was a patch of black ice along the parking lot, and they hit it and they lost control of the wheelchair. And Joni went flying. Remember, she's a quadriplegic. She can't protect herself in a fall. So she goes flying and she, nor can she feel if she's been injured seriously, so they don't know what to do. They're like, well, we shouldn't move her. She's lying there on this cold pavement parking lot, and they're like, well, what do we do? One by one, all of her friends took off their coats and laid them on top of her to keep her warm until the ambulance arrived to have her checked out. And later on in Joni's book, she's reflecting on this particular event, and she started to even kind of say, I wonder what it would've been like if the person who brought me to this pizza outing had a trunk full of blankets. I mean, they still could have done a very nice thing by saying, Hey, let me go get these blankets, and pulling them out of the trunk and putting them on her to keep her warm. But it would've lacked something, wouldn't it? What made it so beautiful is that they all sacrificed their own warmth in order to keep Joni warm, lying there on the ground. And that's what makes the things that are given to us so beautiful is the sacrifice. All the things you saw on that list, Jesus sacrificed to give them. And they completed His saviorhood. We have a wonderful God, do we not? ---