Two Journeys

You know, I've often wondered what it would have been like to land on the beach there in Cape Cod in December of 1620. The cold weather, it kind of cuts right through you. As I think about it, I think about the remarkable isolation of that little band of pilgrims as they landed there and the fact that there was really no one to help. At least so they believed at that point, they really relied on themselves to survive. They had come from crowded Holland and crowded England and landed in just remarkable desolation. What kind of isolation they must have experienced as disease ravaged their numbers and they bore that brunt alone. They were isolated Christians.

But I tell you that in the 21st century, there's a different kind of isolation that I see that's perhaps even more troubling than that. The isolation I'm talking about is a kind of a relational or spiritual isolation, a kind of an anonymity that some 21st century Christians are seeking in their church involvement. They don't desire to know or to be known. They desire a kind of an anonymity, they want to be isolated in that one sense. And I tell you, it is devastatingly unhealthy for the Christian life. It is not what a church should be. And it can take many forms, it can happen in a small church, or a large, it's not just endemic to mega-churches, although I think it's easy there, to slip in, in a huge service and to take in what they present for you to, in some sense be entertained, in some sense challenged and blessed by the ministry of the Word of God and then to leave. And no one knows your name.

But it's not just in big churches that that kind of thing can happen. It can happen in medium-sized churches and small churches as well. The bottom line is, we're only going to know and be known as much as we choose to be. And so what I want to do this morning, is kind of persuade you to choose to be. Kind of persuade you to choose to know and be known and be part of the local church. Now, I said last week, Hebrews 3:7-8 are the most important verses that I know in terms of my own personal daily walk with Christ.

I think there are other verses that are incredibly important and you may have your own life verse, but for me Hebrews 3:7-8 is incredibly important in terms of my personal standing before Jesus, day-by-day, and receiving from him my... A sense of marching orders. What is it he wants me to do? Big picture in my life and then day-by-day. And so we saw that in Hebrews 3 today, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts." And so I interpret that, first and foremost, to be the Holy Spirit speaking to me as an individual, as a child of God, through the written word of God. And then as the Spirit takes to what I've learned in Scripture, he applies it to my life and I'm transformed and I'm given my marching orders. These are incredibly important verses. But I believe the verses we're looking at today, Hebrews 3:12-14 are the most important verses in the Bible in terms of local church involvement.

And specifically in this area, of understanding one line from our church covenant. And that is this, "We will watch over one another in brotherly love." Have you ever heard those words before? Have you ever been here for 'New Member Sunday'? You know, we read our church covenant, every New Member Sunday. And those words, I don't know why, but those words stand out to me more than any of the other words. And they convict me. We will watch over one another in brotherly love, I want to talk about that today. And I believe that Hebrews 3:12-14, are the best verses in the Bible for understanding what I think those words meant to those who penned them in the church covenant.

It's not so important ultimately that we live up to a man-made covenant like that, although I think it's an excellent covenant and the promises are biblical and right, but they are rooted in Scripture, and it is incredibly vital for us to obey the verses we see before us today. So I'm going to be preaching two sermons on this one passage.

This morning, my plan is to just go carefully through in a very exegetical way, explaining each word, each phrase so that we understand Hebrews 3:12-14. And give a little bit of application at the end because we just won't have much more time. And then in two weeks, next week we have Dr. Akin and we're delighted to have him come and preach, concerning Lottie Moon; excited to have him. But two weeks from this morning, I'll resume and finish a look at Hebrews 3:12-14. And that's going to be primarily applications, in which I'm going to be seeking to take the ideas in these verses, and apply them to The First Baptist Church so that we can grow in our love for one another, okay?  So this morning, it's going to be mostly an explanation of what's here and then some application, but then in a couple of weeks, we're going to look at it again.

And as I look at these verses, I see right away a great danger here, a danger for us in our Christian lives. Look at it in verse 12. "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." The danger, in a word, for us; the danger facing us in this verse, staring us in the face is the danger of apostasy. Now, you may not know what that word means, but it's really just a transliteration of the Greek word that's right here in the text. αποστασία is the verb when it talks about turning away from the living God. And from that, we get apostasy. What does it mean? Well, the word in the Greek means to stand apart or away from, or to withdraw or to absent oneself from, that's what the word means. And see, the idea here is that we are in danger of apostasizing or standing apart or away from or withdrawing from, or being absent from the living God.

It's the second in a series of verses that I've linked before, and the NIV translation comes out most plainly, all of them linked by the word "away." So, in Hebrews 2:1, it says "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." Remember that. Drifting away. Here in 3:12, "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." And then the third in the series is all the way in 6:6. And there it talks about the danger, the grave danger of people who have experienced rich blessings in church life, I think we'll talk about that, if they fall away to be brought back again to repentance. So basically, as you string them together, there are three warnings and they're all dealing with the same danger. Don't drift away, don't turn away, don't fall away from the living God. That's what we're dealing with here. The danger of apostasy.

The Necessity of Drawing Near

Now in the book of Hebrews, nearness to God, proximity to God, being near to God is the goal of salvation, it's what God is doing. He's bringing us near to him, but these people are going away from Him. They're going away from the living God. So, over and over, the author of Hebrews will speak of the closeness of God to us in salvation and he exhorts us to draw near to God. For example, in Hebrews 4:16, it says, "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Isn't that beautiful? Let us approach the throne of grace. Let's draw near to God it's saying there. Again in Hebrews 7:19, it talks about the superiority of the new covenant, it says a better hope, a better covenant is introduced by which we draw near to God.

And then again in Hebrews 10:19-22 it say, "Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through his curtain, that is His body, and since we have a great High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith." This is an incredible privilege of the new covenant. The old covenant was all about thus far you may come and no further. It's all about stay away basically in the old covenant, or you're going to get killed. But here, in the new covenant, we have an opening now. We have a new and living way to come right into the very presence of God, and multiple commands in the Book of Hebrews, that we should do so. That we should draw near to God, that we should be close to the living God.

But apostasy is the exact opposite, it's to turn willingly away from the living God. To choose to live a life apart from His holy presence, to try to carve out some kind of separate existence where God is not the center. Or perhaps God is not present at all, that is apostasy. These people turn away because they don't truly believe in the living God, they don't truly love Him, they turn from God back again to idols of their own imagination. The danger here in Hebrews in my opinion, seems to be more of a drifting away from God caused by unbelief and trials and difficulties that are connected with the Christian life, more than the kind of a defiant, angry rebellion against God.

These people as we've mentioned, were Jewish professors of faith in Christ, they had made a claim to be Christians. They were interested in the Christian Gospel, interested enough to claim it as their own. To in some sense stand with Christ and be counted as a Christian, to be water baptized I believe at one point. But now they're drifting, now there's a salt in their souls and they're in danger of doing the very thing that the author is talking about here.

They might quietly assent that the facts of the gospel are still true to them, but they've found that Christian life is too difficult to live, and the allure of the world is too difficult to resist. And so, they are little by little getting further and further away from Jesus. That's what I think is happening here, for these Hebrew Christians. And so the author is bringing up this great danger of apostasy, this danger of turning away from the living God.

The Living God

And think about that expression, the living God. The living God, see to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. It's a remarkable expression. It's used 28 times in the Bible, four times here in the Book of Hebrews, more than any other book in the Bible.

So this book, the author really seems to love this expression, the living God. Scripture in general, I think uses this expression, the living God, to focus minds the minds of sinful man on the central truth of the universe. There is one and only one God, and all other gods are idols or demonic impersonators of Gods. There is only one living God. Deuteronomy 5:26, it says, "For what mortal man has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire as we have, and survived?"

The Jews at the base of Sinai, they had the sense they were in the presence of a living God. He was alive. Not mute, or absent like the gods of the nations. The gods of the nations are dead, there's no life in them. Psalm 115, "The enemies mock us," says the Jewish Psalm writer. "Where is your God?" And the Psalm writer says, "I'll tell you where our God is" "Our God is in heaven, He does whatever pleases Him." "But their idols," says the Psalmist, "are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak. Eyes, they have, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, they have, but they cannot smell. They have hands but they cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk. Nor can they utter a sound with their throats," these dead gods of the nations, their idols."

The creator of the ends of the earth, the creator of the universe is the only God and dear friends, He is alive. More than you can possibly imagine, He is alive. Whatever that means, to you, to be alive. Life is such a mystery isn't it? What makes something alive, and the thing, the rock or the other thing is dead, what makes it alive? But God is the giver of all life. "For in Him, we live and move and have our being," our existence is in Christ." In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. He is the living God. So to turn away from the living God can be nothing but death, friends, nothing but death.

The essence of life then is to be in God. And the essence of death is to be separate from God. And so the author is trying to challenge these Hebrew Christians not to turn away from the living God. And I might go a step beyond and I don't think God the Father would mind.

Context: The Focus is Christ

If we would imagine that the author to the Hebrews was focusing specifically on Christ, that these Jewish Christians were turning away from the living God as He has been revealed in Christ. They've turned away from Jesus. In Hebrews Chapter 3, the context here, the beginning verses 1-6, of Hebrews 3, the author has been comparing Jesus to Moses and said that Jesus is greater than Moses, He's worthy of greater honor than Moses, His mission is greater than Moses' mission. Moses was a servant in God's house but Jesus is a son over God's house, He's greater.

Greater than Moses. And then in Hebrews 3:7-11, he brings in the testimony of Psalm 95, and the warning of Psalm 95, as we've seen. "Today if you hear His voice, don't harden your hearts." And he's harkening back to that earlier history when the Israelites refused to enter the Promised Land through their unbelief and their disobedience, they would not enter the Promised Land and so God declared an on oath in his anger, they should never enter his rest. And so, the author is bringing this history out of Psalm 95 to give the warning to the Jews. He's going to return to the history when we're done with Hebrews 3:12-14. So the end of the Chapter 15 to the end, he's going to go back to that history, and talk about it. But here in the middle, he just stops and just gets right to the point.

And the point of all of this, is this warning against apostasy, it's what the whole book was written about. And so right in the middle, he gets to this issue of Christ, of apostasy from the living God as He has been revealed in Jesus Christ.

The Great Offer of the Gospel

Friends, this is the greatest danger of our lives. This is the greatest danger of our lives, there is nothing in the world more precious to you than your soul. What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, said Jesus. Or what could a man give in exchange for his soul? There's nothing more valuable to you than your soul. And it is possible for you to lose your soul, according to those verses. Jesus came into the world to save our souls, He shed His blood on the cross that we might have eternal life. I am acutely aware this is an unusual Sunday, this is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, attendance is a little bit down, some unusual faces here.

I think it's quite possible I may be speaking to some family members or friends or guests who don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And you don't know for certain whether this is the last day of your life or not, you don't know how much longer you have. I'm pleading with you to turn to Christ today, while there's time. Jesus shed His blood on the cross, for sinners like you and me, that He might bring us into life that which is truly life, eternal life. The living God, a relationship with the living God, all of your sins forgiven, instantly. Now, while you sit in the pew, and listen to me, you just look to Jesus and you cry out to Jesus in your heart, and you say, "Jesus forgive me for my sins. I need You to forgive me, I ask you to forgive me, take me to heaven when I die. I want to live with you forever." And he'll do all of that, isn't that incredible?

It's the gospel. But now these Jewish people, they had heard that, they had assented to that, they had come forward and asked for baptism, they had been baptized on their profession of faith. But the initial profession of faith in Christ is not enough if it's not followed up with a life of faith-filled works by the power of the Spirit. James says it's a dead faith, it's not a genuine faith. You've got to keep running this race with endurance, and the only true faith is that which God gives in Jesus Christ, and that which God starts in us, He finishes right to the end. He opens up faith in the heart and He keeps it going until you don't need it anymore. And you know when you won't need your faith anymore? When you see Jesus with your own eyes.

So He opens up faith, He gives it to you as a gift and justifies you on that basis. What a gift, and I'm pleading with you now, hear the words of the Gospel. Jesus the Son of God died on the cross for sinners like you and me, shed His blood. Trust in Him and you'll be saved. The danger, however, is to hear, to make an outward kind of surface-y assent, to impress your friends and your neighbors, and your relatives, but it's not a genuine work of God in your heart.

And you could say, "How can I know?" Well, we'll get to that, but the issue here is at some point there's a drifting away, a turning away, a falling away. And so, the danger here is apostasy, turning away from Christ.

The root cause of the apostasy is sins effect on the heart. Look at the verse again, "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." The apostasy then is caused by a sinful, unbelieving heart. Now, what is the heart, what do we mean by the heart?

Well, according to the scripture, the heart is the essential part of every man, and woman, boy and girl. It's the core of your being. It's the part of you that thinks, and reasons, it's the part of you that feels, it's the part of you that perceives and understands. It's the part of you that loves and hates, it's the part of you that chooses and rejects. It's the heart. Now, the gospel of Jesus Christ goes after the heart, the Gospel wants all of your heart, your whole heart.

So the Bible often speaks of a whole-hearted devotion to God. Sermon on the mount goes for the heart. You have heard that it was said, You shall not murder, but if you're angry in your heart, you've committed murder in your heart. You've heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, but if you lust after another person you've committed adultery in your heart. The heart, the core of the being, biblically is, what the Gospels going after. A heart for Jesus.

The Essence of True Religion

Now, Jonathan Edwards in his Treatise on Religious Affections he said that the essence of true religion is a heart love, or affection, for God through Jesus Christ. That's the core of it. He says that, the heart, your heart, all of our hearts, has the ability to take in information about the world around it, to see it, to perceive it to understand it, but not only that, to either be attracted to or repulsed from everything you perceive to a greater or less degree. Some things you really love, somethings you only like, some things you slightly just dislike, some things you may hate. But that's just what the heart does, that's the heart's business.

And the danger here then is of a heart that turns away from the living God is really, in some sense, now repelled from Christ, not attracted to Jesus anymore. And note the adjectives here concerning this heart, a sinful unbelieving heart. These are very strong descriptors. The essence of sin is to turn away from God, to turn away from the living God for something else, something other than the living God.

The essence of unbelief then is to not see Jesus with the eyes of the soul as the most attractive thing that there is in the universe. Nothing more appealing, nothing more beautiful. Faith sees the invisible world and especially Christ at the center of it sees the person and work of Christ as the most staggering beautiful thing imaginable, the glory that comes from the love he showed in dying for us. The cross then not any longer merely an instrument of gruesome execution, but a display of the love of God that you'll spend eternity plumbing the depths of. But to you it's attractive. When I survey the wondrous cross, when I see the beauty there and the attractiveness my eyes have been opened and I just see it as a beautiful thing now. It's attractive to me, when it could have been repulsive.

So the work of Christ, the glory of Christ in His resurrection body, what it must have been like to see Jesus in His resurrection body. That mysterious spiritual body that can never die, is not subject any longer to death, free from that, passing through walls, coming into the upper room saying, "Here I Am. Shalom, peace be with you." People shocked, stunned, able to eat broiled fish, the glory of it, the beauty of it, the attractiveness of Christ in all of what he has done, and him seated on the throne of God at the right hand of Almighty God. How attractive and how beautiful that vision is, faith alone can see this ravishing beauty. I think it's why so many hymn writers meditate on this theme of the beauty of Jesus, the beauty of Christ.

One of them is just called Beautiful Savior. Don't you love that hymn? "Beautiful savior, I long to be", says the hymn writer. "I long to be where the praise is never ending, I yearn to dwell where the glory never fades, where countless worshipers will share one song and cries of worthy will honor the lamb. Beautiful Savior, Wonderful Counselor, clothe the majesty Lord of history. You're the way, the truth, and the life, you're the star of the morning, you're glorious and holiness, you're the risen one, heaven's champion, you reign over all." There's just beauty in those words, beauty.

The hymn writer's saying I long to be there. He would gladly lay down his own hymn to see Jesus face to face. Amen. We see through a glass darkly right now. But someday we're going to see ravishing beauty, and when we see him, we will be instantaneously transformed, and made like Him. That's the power of that beatific vision of the glory, the beauty of Christ. Many other hymns talk about it, Fairest Lord Jesus, the beauty of Jesus, the radiance or Bernard of Clairvaux wrote Jesus, the very thought of Thee was sweetness fills the breast, but sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest. This is the attractiveness of Jesus to the eye of faith. To the eye of faith nothing in the universe could possibly be more beautiful than Jesus, as morally perfect, as attractive as Jesus. He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being.

The greatest thing a heart could ever see then is the beauty of Jesus and to love him. Conversely, dear friends, the worst thing a human heart can ever do is to turn away from that display of beauty unfulfilled, and seek something created to fill that emptiness inside. It is a great sin. It is an infinite sin to turn away from the living God unsatisfied.

The Hardening of Sin’s Deceitfulness

Do you not see the devastation of idolatry, do you not see it, how dangerous it is to look at all that, Jesus and all that, and say it just isn't enough for me. There's just not enough there. What happens? Well, the origin of a sinful unbelieving heart is the deceptiveness, deceptiveness of sin. It says in verse 13, that the heart can be hardened by sins' deceitfulness, sin is a great deceiver. It doesn't come and tell you the truth, it never has, it never will. In Romans 7:11, it says, "For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me and through the commandment put me to death."

Sin is a great deceiver, just like its originator Satan, he is a deceiver, as well. It says in Corinthians, he masquerades as an angel of light, he doesn't come, honestly, to us, he comes looking kind of beautiful, kind of attractive he puts sin in that kind of garb too. It's attractive, it's beautiful, it's alluring, it's appealing. Genesis 3:13, "The Lord God said to the woman. 'What have you done?' And the woman said, 'The serpent deceived me and I ate.'" It's deceptive, it doesn't tell us the truth, it looks appealing, it looks like there's something that you can gain from it. But in the end it leads to death, Revelation 12:9, it speaks of Satan, "The great dragon", it says, "Was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world." He is a deceiver, he's lying to us concerning sin.

And He uses many deceptive techniques as well. Deceptive teacher. 2 John 7 says, "Many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world, any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist." False teachers are deceivers. Or there are deceptive philosophies, in Colossians 2:8, it says "see to it that no one takes you captive by deceptive philosophies." They seem to be wise, they seem to lead in a wise direction, but they're deceptive. Or deceptive lusts that wage war against our souls. In Ephesians 4:22 it says, "Put off your old nature, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts."

The lust is a drive and a yearning, a desire for something that is forbidden, and it's deceitful because it doesn't tell you that in the end an arrow will pierce your liver spiritually and it will kill you. It's dangerous, it's a deceptive lust. Then there's deceptive wealth or material possessions. Remember how Jesus was speaking of the different types of seed... The seed going to different types of soil and there was the thorny ground here, thorny soil, and these weeds grew up and choked out the plant making it unfruitful and Jesus said the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it out, making it unfruitful. Wealth can be deceptive. What is the effect of sins deceitfulness? A hardening effect on your heart. Remember we already talked about that last week.

"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart." You know what hardens your heart? Sins' deceitfulness. Sins deceitfulness hardens your heart. As we become accustomed to sin our hearts get little by little harder and harder to the gentle quiet voice of the Holy Spirit. A soft heart then is yielded submissive eager happy to obey Jesus. The opposite is a hard heart, it's resistant, it's peevish, sluggish to obey, resentful, hesitant, ultimately rebellious. Sins deceitfulness works on us over a long period of time little by little, we become desensitized, first to sins outrageous and wicked nature, then to sins great danger, then to its even presence. Don't even notice that it's even around, and would fight anyone who would come and say, this is sin.

It would be shocking. Perhaps, some of you have seen that movie Time Changers in which there's a time machine and you're brought back and an individual from I think the 1890s steps into our modern world, and is just patently shocked by what he sees. Just shocked by it. Like the proverbial boiling of the frog. Things changed little by little, incrementally, little by little, over time. You just don't know what's happening, and pretty soon you're boiled to death.

And so it is our hearts become little by little hardened by sin's deceitfulness. So to sum up, this passage is addressing a great danger. Apostasy: Apostasy is a turning away from the living God, it's caused by a sinful unbelieving heart, that the root of the sinful unbelieving heart is the deceptiveness, the deceitfulness of sin. Alright, that's the bad news.

What's the remedy? We need some remedy. Is there no balm in Gilliad? We want some medicine. It's been so dreary up to this point. Well I'm sorry if it feels dreary, it's just true. And you know it, don't you? But we need the remedy and here a remedy is given to us. I say it's not the only remedy but it's a very powerful remedy. And what is the remedy, the vigilant encouragement of the church is the remedy given here. See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

So Christ has established the church, it seems based on this verse, primarily to labor on one another's salvation, which is incomplete, we are to help each other finally be saved in the end. Now, that shouldn't shock any of who you have been coming here any length of time. Salvation is a process, justification, sanctification, and then glorification. We're en route. It isn't finished yet. Our salvation is incomplete and therefore we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but praise be to God we don't do that alone. You are not working out your salvation with fear and trembling, alone, you have a band of travelers with you, they're on the road with you and they are there to help you and you're there to help them, none of them better than any other, all of us on this dangerous journey. And so we are left not as orphans in the world, we are given the indwelling Holy Spirit, but we are given each other and a healthy church, will protect its members from their own sinfulness.

Fundamental then to a healthy church is a commitment to watch over each other spiritually, to care about how things are going spiritually and the knowledge then is I know that I have the seeds of my own spiritual destruction in my own heart. I already have the virus in me, it threatens to destroy me, I need help. And I'm saying that, I the Pastor I need that help, you need it too. And if you don't think you do, you're in deeper trouble than you ever thought you were. The Bible says "If any man thinks he stands, take heed, watch out, beware, lest you fall." So Romans 7 tells us we have this devastating problem called indwelling sin. You have this monster inside you. Like one of those creepy horror films where something's growing and living inside you and wants to eat its way out of you, it's disgusting. It is disgusting but listen to what Paul says in Romans 7. "I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do. But what I hate I do, and if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good, as it is, it's no longer I who do it but it is sin living in me."

That's not a cop-out, that's just the truth. I have a new creation existence, that hates sin and loves the law of God. I want to be pure and perfect. I want to be just like Jesus, but there's something else inside me, sin, that wants the exact opposite. So the seeds of my own destruction are within me. But thanks be to God, they're not going to win, Amen. Thanks be to God, they are going to be destroyed, the world, the flesh, and the devil will some day lay at my feet, vanquished foes obviously crushed, but I'm still in danger and one of the things I need is I need a healthy church around me to help me with that battle. And you need that too. And so we have to help each other.

Nobody should say I can handle my sin problem myself. I don't need anybody's help, I don't need to know or be known, I'm fine. No, you're not fine, you need help, you need help. And that's what this passage is getting at. It says, "See to it." Literally look after this thing, be vigilant, it all has to do with vision. See each other, and that implies know each other. See each other, see to it, watch over it. It's just simple Greek word. Look at it. Look to it, keep your eyes open, be alert, be aware. Similar to the watchfulness, we should all have over our own souls as Jesus said to Simon Peter, after he fell asleep, "Could you not watch and pray with me?" For one hour watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation, the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

What does watch mean? Watch so that you will not fall into temptation, be alert. Look both ways before you cross the spiritual street, there is danger. So the thing is, what we're getting here is, don't just watch over yourself. There are other people needing to cross the street too, watch over them as well. Look after each other. It's similar to the watchfulness that elders should have over the flock, at the end of this same book in Hebrews 13:17, it says "Obey your leaders, and submit to their authority, they keep watch over you keep watch over you as those who must give an account." Or again in Acts 20:28, again to the elders. "Keep watch over yourselves." Paul said to the Ephesian elders, "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, be shepherds of the Church of God which he bought with His own blood."

So also, all church members should have this same kind of watchfulness over each other. See to it brothers. This is a church-based word, this is something we should be doing for each other. It's a family matter, this is for the family of God, brothers and sisters are to watch over one another and see to it that none of you, not one of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart. Jesus is not willing that any of us should be lost. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, of them, I will lose none but raise them up at the last day. How many church members are you willing to lose?

How many of your brothers and sisters are you willing to let slip away into eternity, do you care? Does it matter how many of these regular tenders here at FBC end up in heaven, or hell? I say to you it should matter to you as much as it matters to me. "No pastor, it should matter a little more to you than it does to me." How can you make that argument? I might have different daily responsibilities, but it should matter as much to you as it does to me, whether your brothers and sisters are doing well spiritually or not, it should make a difference to you. And you're supposed to see to it that no one has a sinful, unbelieving heart. Well, that's easy. Just have them open up their little heart meter thing, and see whether it's in the red, yellow, or green zone. Alright, is that what we do? How in the world are we going to do that?

Well, I don't think you can do it unless you know and be known, you've got to have relationships with people, you've got to know people well. You've got to build bridges of trust, you can't just do this to anybody. I sense that you are developing a sinful unbelieving heart that's turning away from the living God, and I warn you, don't do it. Well why don't you try that ministry, see how far it goes. That's not going to work very well. But if on the other hand, a brother comes alongside a brother and says, "You know, I'm concerned about you brother." "What do you mean?" "I don't know, we don't talk the way we used to talk, things seem, you just talk different. And recently you're not attending home fellowship as often. I know you've had some good excuses the last week or two, but in general, I just want to know how you're doing." "I'm doing fine." "No, no but how are you doing?" "Well, there've been some challenges." "Well, what kind of thing? Talk to me, tell me what's going on?"

This is the kind of conversation we need to have with each other. The whole next sermons about that kind of practicality. So I want to talk all about that, but we've got to do this, we've got to watch over each other concerning our hearts. And the only way you can do that is to know and be known, get to know each other. And the remedy here is encourage one another, it's words. What else can you do? We don't have any tools, screw drivers and wrenches to get up on somebody's heart. That's just not something we can do. The heart is not that part of us that gushes blood.

It's in our minds, our souls. It's immaterial. There are no physical tools, there is however, a very powerful tool. The Word of God is a powerful tool for our souls, and so we need to be masterful craftsman, brothers and sisters in Christ who know how to use the word of God with our fellow church members and are able to minister the word of God. We are to encourage one another daily this Paraclete thing, being called alongside to exhort or encourage or warn or commend or consult. It's a very versatile elastic kind of word. The idea is, whatever they need to stay healthy in Jesus, do it for them.

If they're grieving, then grieve with them and console them with promises from God, if they're fearful then feed them, feed their faith with the promises of God, if they're starting to drift then warn them, exhort them concerning the promise, if they're just weary and fatigued in the Christian life then give them that exhortation. I grew up in the Boston area watching the Boston marathon, and I was talking to some of you that are interested in marathoning. I'm amazed, a half marathon, I think is long enough, but some of you are going to double that and go to 26.2 miles. Not trying to minister discouragement to you, but I told you that apparently the race is half over at the 20 mile mark. Half over. Not mathematically, but you just don't have anything left to give.

You're exhausted, your muscles are just depleted of all of their energy. And in the Boston marathon, there are three diabolical hills starting at the 18 and a half mile mark and ending a little beyond the 20 mile mark. The steepest is the third one at the 20 mile mark and there are all kinds of masochistic weirdo people that stand along the side and just enjoy watching. It's called Heartbreak Hill and they are dropping like flies, but then there are some sweet-spirited, other people, they're not there for that. They are there to exhort the people. Don't give up, it's downhill. Oh, look and see that crest, it's downhill from there. Think about it, think of all of your work, all that you've done. It's almost there. Don't give up.

We have to do that for each other, we can't drop out when it's getting really hard and so we are to encourage one another. It says daily, you don't have to be in church to do it. Get on the phone, use social networking if need be. Whatever it takes, encourage daily as long as it is called today. We already talked about that, but while we have opportunity to do something for Jesus can't do anything about yesterday except learn from it. Can't do anything about tomorrow, except prepare for it. But today we can live for Jesus, we can obey, let's encourage each other as long as we have a chance to do something for Jesus. That's what it's talking about.

One final word and we'll be done. Verse 14, "We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly to the end, the confidence we have at first." It's really a warning, if you look carefully at you know what to look at. Let me say what it is. The warning is only those who finish ever really began. We don't really know the eternal counsels of Almighty God, we don't understand predestination fully, though it's taught in the Bible. We know that God has identified has chosen his people before the creation of the world. If you accept that doctrine and it is biblical, the next question is, am I one of them. Am I elect am I predestined, am I a child of God?

You have come to faith in Christ, you've made a confession of faith. No holy angel came down with a shimmering certificate and handed it to you and been holding it in your right hand ever since. Didn't get anything like that, you just had a time with some other human being maybe, or in a church service or something. And you want to know what really happened then. Now, it's been decades, years, decades later. You want to know what really happened? And I'm struggling with sin, I'm having a... Am I a Christian or not? The central mark that the New Testament gives to answer that question is perseverance in holiness by the power of the Spirit of God. Keep running the race, don't give up, don't drift away, turn away or fall away. And it's interesting, the grammar here is just strange.

It's a perfect tense. "We have come to share in Christ…" That's past action, but it's connected with a conditional. That's just weird. Let me tell you how weird it is. Let me give you a sentence and you'll get a sense of it. George Washington was the first President of the United States if... What could you possibly put on the other side of the if that would make any sense at all, other than if he really was or if we read our history books right or something like that, either he was or he wasn't. It's a past event, something that happened in the past. So have you come to share in Christ?

Have you become a partaker in Christ? That's what the word means Have you? Has he become your inheritance. Are you a fellow heir with Jesus are you sharer with Jesus? Has that happened to you or not? The answer is Yes if you finish this race, that's what the author's saying. And so, therefore, dear friends, we have to finish this race and not only us but we have to help each other finish this race. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the power of your Word, the power of Hebrews. I pray that you would use Hebrews 3:12-14 to change First Baptist Church in a very powerful way, to be the strongest United spiritual community it can possibly be to help each one of us finish with endurance, the race that's marked out before us. Please help us, O Lord, to love and to be loved, to forgive and to be forgiven, to reach out to each other and to receive others reaching out to us. Help us O Lord, not to be freaked out by that, but to learn how to do it biblically, not in the manner of the invasive and wicked manner of the cults in which individuals seek to control others, but in the servant manner of a true brother, or sister in Christ, teach us how to do it we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

"Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken," Isaiah 1:2. from the beginning of time, the universe has been shaped by one awesome powerful creative force and that is the Word of God. "And God said 'Let there be light' and there was light." Genesis 1:3. Throughout Genesis, you see the voice of the Lord, the word of the Lord shaping and crafting the developing universe like the skillful hands of the potter shaping the clay. God's word from the very beginning, ringing throughout the creation, shaping it, making it what he wanted it to be. On Mount Sinai, the voice of the Lord was like, a thunder, it says, and the people were so terrified of it that they begged Moses, that they not hear this voice any more, lest they should die.

But another time, Elijah the prophet fleeing for his life from the wrath of Jezebel, hid in a cave on Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God, and God came to speak with him and had him stand before the Lord and first a great strong wind came by and God was not in the wind. And then a violent earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake and then a raging fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And then at last a still small voice, a low gentle whisper and when Elijah, heard it, he covered his face. He was hearing God speak.

And so the range of the voice of God is an awesome thing. God wanted to speak in a thunder on Mount Sinai. And he wanted to speak in a whisper on Mount Horeb. And I say to you that as we come to Hebrews 3:7-11, we come to the key moment of the daily Christian life, hearing God speak to us hearing the voice of God. And I think as we come to that key moment, we therefore come to a fork in the road, always a fork in the road. One way will lead to greater growth, greater fruitfulness in Christ, greater intimacy with him, greater heavenly rewards. The other way leads, well the other way. Less fruitfulness, growing distance between us and Christ, a colder, harder heart more unresponsive to God.

And what is that critical moment? I tell you, it's the moment of hearing God's voice, speaking to you by the Word and by the Spirit. It's the moment that the word of God hits your mind and you hear him speaking to you through that word of God. That moment is, now. The moment is today.

Now today as a pastor, as a man, as a brother in Christ, I'm going to bring you to that fork in the road again. The essence of the rest of your life in Christ, the rest of your life in Christ will be made up of this moment. This crucial moment, this awesome moment God speaking to you, speaking directly to your heart, by the Holy Spirit, based on some text of Scripture or another. Hebrews 3:7-8 tells you what to do at that moment. Actually it tells you what not to do. So as the Holy Spirit says "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…" And so today I want to exhort you with everything in my being to develop within you, a sensitive heart toward God the Holy Spirit speaking to you directly by the written word. So that number one, you will recognize God's voice speaking to you as you read some psalm or a passage from the Gospel of Matthew or some section of Romans, or something from Ezekiel, you're going to hear it as it actually is, the word of God and secondly, when you hear God speaking to you, you will not harden your heart, but rather do what your king is commanding you to do. It's the rest of your Christian life, right here. That's what we're talking about. So this moment of God speaking to you by the Spirit in the Bible, is the key moment of every day. This thing mysteriously called, today.

The rest of your Christian lives are going to be a tapestry woven by threads called today and today and today that's what you get. And if you can develop an ear for hearing Christ speaking to you today, and if you can develop a soft yielded submissive heart, that obeys the voice of your king, it will lead to the most blessed life you can live in this world, the most fruitful life and it will lead to eternal life, hereafter.

So we come to this text, Hebrews 3, and we come right away, in the NIV, to the word, "so". Right away to the word, "so". And so it brings us to the question of context, we always want to ask the question of context, how does Hebrews 3:7-11, fit into Hebrews. How can we understand it? And I think questions of context are never more fascinating than in this passage here. This is a remarkable context. It's like a telescope really, with four different levels of context.

Let's start with ourselves, us, we are here reading the text aren't we? We're in 21st century America, we're here at First Baptist Church, in Durham that's who we are, that's where we are in space and time we are reading the Bible together. First level of context, what's our context, what's going on with us? What's happening with you today, what's going on in your life, how is it going with Jesus, how is it going in your marriage, how is it going in your witnessing life? How is it going in your prayer life? What is your context? Let's start there. Questions of context.

But as we're doing that, we're recognizing, we're reading in an old book. We're reading the book of Hebrews. 2000 years old, that brings us back to the second level of context, one step removed from us, and that is the author to Hebrews and the Hebrew people he was writing to. The context of the epistle, itself. Remember, these are as we've been saying, Jewish people who had made an outward profession of faith in Christ, they probably testified to that by water Baptism. Confessed Jesus as their messiah, they've been baptized in his name, but now they were under terrible persecution, they were under pressure from their Jewish family and friends and neighbors and rabbis. They were under economic pressure. They were under legal pressure. And the pressure was pushing them in one direction that was to renounce their faith in Christ and turned back to Old Covenant Judaism. To say "no" to Jesus and "yes" to Moses. So the author to Hebrews is reaching, reaching, out to them. And speaking to them in that context, that was their context. And so he writes Hebrews. But he does so by reaching back in time, relative to him to Psalm 95.

He reaches for David speaking a thousand years before them to his own generation. David speaking to the people who were alive in his day, about 1000 BC, something like that. And so he writes Psalm 95, the author to Hebrews here is quoting Psalm 95. What you heard Tony read for the most part, was just Psalm 95. And so that's a third step of context. What was David's context, what was going on in his life, what was going on in his generation, what was he trying to say to the people that lived in his day? And as he was thinking about it, in about 1000 BC, he goes back even further in time, 500 years back, to the time of the Exodus, to the time of Moses, and the Jews and what was going on with them. And as they left Egypt, and as they went through the Red Sea and on the other side of the Sea, in the desert, two million of them in the desert. They start to doubt and question God, and they start to have problems and they start to quarrel, and argue with God. What was the context for that generation, the Jews under Moses is there in the Exodus. Four levels of context.

But I have faith in you, you can handle it. You can handle the multiple levels of context here, Amen. That's what you have to do to understand what's going on in Hebrews 3:7-11. But you know what, the interesting thing is it's the same word to every generation. Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. It's the same message to everyone in every generation the same thing.

And so David was thinking as he's writing Psalm 95, about the Jews, they had seen God do those awesome miracles. The ten plagues. You remember all of the displays of the power of God and the greatest of them all, the Red Sea crossing. I still think it's the most visually spectacular miracle in the Bible. What could top it? I think creation itself, I suppose, if you want to call that a miracle, but I mean the Red Sea crossing, they made it to the other side and they found two million strong on the other side, a desert. And the thing about a desert, there's just not much water there and there's not much to eat.

And so this huge nation of two million people began to quarrel with Moses, Exodus 17 and say, "'Give us water to drink.' Moses replied. 'Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?'" So they're crying out, the people are against Moses and against God, and doubting God. God commanded Moses to take his staff and strike a rock there in the desert and when he did a miraculous flow of water came out of that rock and the people were able to drink from that water and live. And he called the place Massa and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not?

Now Massa, in the Hebrew language means rebellion and Meribah in the Hebrew language means testing. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, which the author to Hebrews is using, they don't use the words Massa and Meribah. They just say, rebellion, and testing. And so if you look at verse 8, do not harden your heart as you did in the rebellion during the time of testing, that's Massa and Meribah when the Jews said, "Is God really going to be able to finish the job, is he really going to be able to bring us through all of this trouble into the promised land. And they tested God, and quarreled against him, they rebelled. It was a great insult, and that the consummation of that in that generation that churning rebellion, came when the spies came back and brought a good report about the land, but a negative report about the inhabitants of the land, and the people questioned whether they could go in and their eyes are fixed on the Anakites and how strong they were, and how tall, and they forgot about God and they wanted to stone Moses and go back to Egypt, at least they had a steady supply of food there and slavery. Forgetting God entirely.

So they rebelled. It says, in Numbers 14, 10 times they disobeyed God, 10 times, they tested him and God was angry at them for their lack of faith for their unbelief. And so David living in 1000 BC, maybe 500 years later looking back on that whole heritage. We'll talk more about at the end of Hebrews 3. But Looking back on it says, "Let's learn from history. Let's learn what they did and not do it, let's see what happened to them and not let it happen to us. So "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massa in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, 'They are people whose hearts go astray and they have not known my ways.' So I declared on oath in my anger, 'they shall never enter my rest.'" Don't be like them. That God then is set against you and declares on oath you will not enter his rest." And he's going to continue to meditate on this through into chapter four. So we need to learn from history. We begin in verse seven, with the word "so" or "therefore" or "wherefore" or something like that, whenever you see that you're going to look back to what we just covered and what did we just cover in Hebrews 3:1-6.

We learned the lesson last time that Jesus is greater than Moses. He's greater than Moses. Moses was faithful in the mission that God sent him to do. Faithful as a servant in God's house. But Jesus is faithful as a Son over God's house, and he's worthy of greater honor than Moses and his mission is greater than Moses' mission. Moses' mission was to bring the Jews out of physical bondage, in a physical nation of Egypt and bring them into a physical promised land where they could live out the rest of their physical days and die in peace in their bed surrounded by their grandkids. That's Moses' mission.

Jesus has a greater mission friends. Greater mission. His Exodus is a greater Exodus. He wants to take you out of bondage to sin and bring you to heaven where you'll never die and you'll be surrounded by people, forever and ever, where your sins will be forgiven and in order to accomplish that mission, he did far more than Moses. His blood was shed under the wrath of God on the cross so that unbelievers like us can become believers. We can trust in Christ and have our sins forgiven. It's a greater mission. And the Gospel message is, if you just... If you'll just repent and turn to Christ, all your sins will be forgiven.

So I'm crying out to you today. I know there must be some visitors there must be some unbelievers hearing me today. And my first level of application to you is simple, if today you hear the Gospel, don't harden your hearts, come to faith in Jesus, look to him now for the forgiveness of sins, trust in him while you still have time. Today, if you hear Jesus calling to you, then come and believe. His blood is sufficient for you and God didn't leave him dead in the tomb, he raised him from the dead on the third day. And so also shall you be raised. All you have to do is believe in Jesus and you'll live forever. It's the Gospel. You've heard it before, but today if you hear it don't harden your heart. Believe in Jesus, trust in him. I plead with you.

And I think the authors pleading with these Jews, he's saying, "You know, failure today is greater than failure then. The real question kind of as it was back in the days of the generation of the Exodus. So it is today. Are you going to stay with the leader that God has appointed all the way for the rest of the journey? Are you going to stay with Jesus until he brings you to heaven or are you going to turn your back on him through unbelief and wickedness, and go back to your life of sin?

The uniting theme of failure here between the Jews of Moses' time and the Jews of David's time, and the Jews of the author to Hebrews time, and then us in the 21st century. It's the same cycle over and over. We hear God's word we don't believe it, we are afraid of the consequences of faithfulness, and of obedience, afraid of what's going to come and so, we disobey and turn in our hearts, away from the living God. And so, we face the same key issue today that they did back in those generations. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." So, that's context.

So, now let's look at the details here. So as the Holy Spirit says, what a fascinating way to introduce an Old Testament quote. Who is this Holy Spirit? While we believe the Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, we worship one God in three persons, an infinite mystery, but clearly taught in the Bible, the Holy Spirit, then is God, God the Holy Spirit equal to God the Father and God the Son within the Trinity. He first appears in Scripture in Genesis 1:2. It says he was hovering over the face of the waters of creation, and he has never changed, he's exactly the same today as he was then.

He is the unchanging God. And the Spirit speaks, he communicates, he speaks through Scripture. The author ascribes Psalm 95:7-11 to the Holy Spirit. So "as the Holy Spirit says" and then you have in your English Bibles a little quotation mark there. And it's probably set off in a little bit different way. The way that the editors of English Bibles tend to set off Old Testament quotations visually from the page. So, you're looking at an Old Testament quotation, Psalm 95. And so the author introduces a quote from Psalm 95 and ascribes it to the Holy Spirit. The author's key idea is Scripture is the Holy Spirit speaking to you, that's what he's getting at. Again, notice how he minimizes human authorship. The encounter with God is maximized, the encounter with David is minimized. Now, he's going to mention David later. It's not like David doesn't mean anything, but he's not serving the author's purpose here. It doesn't really matter that it was David that wrote it. The issue here is that it's the Holy Spirit who's speaking. And so we come to the idea in the creed, he has spoken through the prophets. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit has spoken, through the prophets.

Let's say King David, for example, the author of many of the Psalms, the Holy Spirit would come upon him and he would prophesy. He would speak the words of God and so he says, in 2 Samuel 23:2, "The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me, his word is on my tongue." And so, when David would write a Psalm, like Psalm 95 it was really the Holy Spirit speaking directly through David. Frequently, the expression was used in the Old Covenant, the word of the Lord came to so and so. So the word of the Lord came to Isaiah or the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel. In the New Testament we learn from a couple of key verses from Peter, this doctrine of the Holy Spirit's involvement in the written Word of God. For example, 1 Peter 1 says that The prophets who were speaking about the salvation that was coming to us in Christ "searched intently with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances, to which the Spirit of Christ was pointing in them when he predicted the sufferings of Christ…"

The Spirit of Christ, then was in the writing prophets, enabling them to write the words that they wrote; the Holy Spirit was. And then in 2nd Peter 1 it says, "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture ever came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Jesus in the New Testament promised that the Holy Spirit would come on the apostles and the Holy Spirit would come on the apostles in a significant way to help them finish the Bible, I think; to give us the written New Testament. And so it says in John 16, "When he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come." And then on that grand, glorious day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down on the whole church. The gift of the Holy Spirit poured out like a river of blessing on all of the believers in Christ, and not only that, but Peter in his Pentecost sermon, made the promise for everyone that would believe in Jesus, from that generation, and forever. From that point on unto the end of redemptive history.

He said, "The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off." That's us Gentiles by the way. We were far off. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so we have this incredible gift. But what about us today?

Does the Holy Spirit still speak to us today? Well what does the Scripture say right here? "So as the Holy Spirit says…" Isn't that interesting? "The Holy Spirit says." Notice that it doesn't say, "so as King David said" and it also doesn't say, "so as the Holy Spirit said." All of those things would be true but the author is not emphasizing that. He's saying the Holy Spirit is speaking when? Right now. Today. How? By Psalm 95. And so yes the Holy Spirit does speak, to us today.

Does the Holy Spirit speak apart from Scripture? The answer is yes, the Holy Spirit can and does frequently speak apart from direct text of Scripture. For example, in Romans 8:16, it says, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirits that we are the children of God." That is the Holy Spirit speaking directly to your heart that you are a child of God.

Jesus said in John 10. "My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me." How can we follow Jesus? Except by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So yes, the Holy Spirit speaks many things apart from direct chapter and verse of the Scripture. The Apostle Paul, when he was with his companions in Acts 16, traveling about from place to place was kept by the Holy Spirit from going into one place so that he could preach the Gospel in another place. But I say to you that this speaking of the Holy Spirit, the vital of the Christian life is less clear than the way that the Holy Spirit speaks by Scripture. Less clear, the inner prompting of the Spirit are not perceived by all people but only by that person to whom it is given. The Scripture however, can be read clearly by everyone by simple laws of grammar that everyone has understood the conventions of language. If it's a good translation, the word of God comes across. And so we can read those nouns and verbs and adjectives we can understand, and with a growing database of history of biblical context we can get the interpretation right.

Some people, I think, in various circles of the Christian church, put a tremendous amount of stock in the Holy Spirit's direct communication to their hearts. They speak of the gift of discernment, or the word of knowledge, feel they have the ability to know things in the spiritual realms. It's possible and can't be ruled out biblically. Others believe the gift of prophecy is still going on today and they are able to say, "Thus says the Lord with the same authority is a biblical prophet. Again, it's possible, and can't be ruled out biblically.

But in any case, the Scripture tells us that we must test the spirits to see whether they're from God, or not. The private impressions that individual people get may or may not be actually the Holy Spirit speaking to that person. And so, in 1 John 4:1, it says, "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world." Or again, it says in 1 Thessalonians 5, "Do not quench the Spirit, do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything, hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil."

How then do we test the spirits? How do you test those private impressions or senses you get of the Holy Spirit. Well, I say it's by the Scripture. You test the private prompting of the Spirit by the Scripture. Westminster Confession of Faith, puts it this way, "The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence, we are to rest, can be no other than the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture."

Now, you lift up that expression "private spirits", and I think that means these private impressions that you have through the Holy Spirit. Friends, it is not the Spirit-filled person who's afire or aglow with the Spirit and hearing the Spirit speaking directly vs the cold dead letter people. We're going to the cold, dead letter of the Bible… That's not it dear friends. It's the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture and, not vs but... And the Holy Spirit speaking individually and personally to individual Christians. They're not in contradiction if they are than the private impression is wrong.

It is so easy to go to extremes here to quench the Spirit. So you don't trust any inner prompting of the Spirit would be wrong and lead you to fruitlessness. But to test the inner promptings of the Spirit above Scripture or before Scripture etcetera, is wrong, and leads us to heresies, we must be careful. So the Holy Spirit is speaking to us today, he's speaking to us right now, as the Holy Spirit says. So does the Holy Spirit speak apart from Scripture? Yes. Does the Holy Spirit speak contrary to Scripture? Never. And again, I say never. And then four more times. Never, never, never and never. He never speaks contrary to Scripture, why because he's never going to be contrary to himself.

So what is the application point for us here? Well simply put, when you get the Bible open it up and pray to God and say, "God, Would you please speak to me now speak to me directly speak to my heart now by the Holy Spirit as I read some psalm or something from Isaiah or something from Genesis or something from Romans, I want to hear your voice." And so Psalm 119, verse 18 says, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law." And then 1 Samuel 3:9, "Speak O Lord, for your servant is listening." The Holy Spirit speaks then when we open the Bible. He's speaking to us right now.

Every reading of the Scripture should be an immediate encounter with the living God as though you were there at the foot of Mount Sinai hearing God speak as in a thunder. Hear that thunder in your soul when you read Exodus 19 and 20. As if you were there with Elijah on Mount Horeb, and you could hear that still, small voice that gentle whisper. Listen for the whisper of the Holy Spirit when you read the scriptures. As though you were there with Peter, John, and James and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the bright cloud envelopes them and you hear the voice from the cloud speaking. "This is my beloved Son, with him I am well pleased, listen to him." And then you can hear Jesus speaking to you. Scripture is not a dead letter, not at all. Scripture is alive, it's powerful.

Now, the author is taking Psalm 95, and he's going to work it over, dear friends. He's going to be working on it for two chapters, working and working on Psalm 95 7-11, picking individual words up and thinking about them and working on them. And at the end of all that working on Psalm 95, at the end of chapter four this is what he says, it's like he interrupts himself, where he says, "Okay, I've done everything I need from Psalm 95." I just want to tell you what I think about the written word. Hebrews 4:12, "For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." Listen to the words, it's living, it's active, it's penetrating it's dividing its judging, it's a powerful change agent in your life, it's the Holy Spirit speaking to you. And I think this is the mark of a truly saved heart. If you're genuinely saved, you're coming to the written word with this one attitude this thought, this is not the word of men, this is the word of God to me today, right now.

So it says in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, "We also thank God continually because when you receive the word of God what you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as it actually is, the Word of God at work among you who believe." It's awesome, isn't it? So do you want an encounter with the living God today? Please say yes. Oh yes, I want an encounter with the living God. And go in or into your room and close the door and get the Bible out, open it up, pray a prayer, a simple prayer, saying "God speak to me" and then listen to what he says. There's your encounter with the living God.

And what should you do when you get it? Well, the Scripture says, "today, if you hear his voice." Now, I have a lot to say about today, because Hebrew 3 and 4 has a lot to say about today. Look at verse 12-13, "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily. As long as it is called today." That's an interesting expression. "As long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness."

Or again, in verse 15 of the same chapter. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." And then in 4:7, he kind of unfolds this whole theology of today. That's why the NIV editors decided to capitalize the word "today" in this chapter. It's like this special kind of glowing thing, this thing called "today". "So therefore, God again set a certain day calling it today, when a long time later, he spoke through David as we said before, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."

So what is this thing called today? Well, right from the very beginning of creation, God set up a rhythm, a kind of a rhythm to life. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And there was evening and there was morning the second day. There was evening, and there was morning, the third day. On the fourth day, God delegated that whole thing to the sun. So now, we speak in terms of sunrise and sunsets, but the same rhythm has been going on. This rhythm of day after day after day today.

And so the Bible uses the word "days" to refer to the time of your life. So, in Plasm 90:9-10, Moses said this, "All our days pass away into your wrath. We finish our years with a moan. The length of our days is seventy years or eighty, if we have the strength, yet the span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away."

So he goes back and forth between days and years, days and years, your years are made up of days dear friends. Your life is like a tapestry and every day, God pulls out a thread and weaves it in his loom. And that's another thread of today, that's what you have, you have today.

So what is today? Today is November 21st, 2010, here we are, Sunday, November 21st, 2010. We will never have it again. We'll never have it again. It's right here, right now, today. You'll see it again on Judgment Day, but you'll never have this day again. And so, you have today, and it's all you'll ever have. You had yesterday, you had it, but at that point it was called "today", you remember? Saturday November 20th 2010, you had it and you did what you did, whatever that was. You ate certain foods, drank certain drinks, went to certain places, talked to certain people, did certain things, thought certain thoughts, that was it. God noted at all it's all written down. Record is complete and perfect, and cannot be changed. There's nothing you can do about it at all. Yesterday is gone. You'll never see it again until Judgment Day.

Tomorrow. Now that's an interesting topic, isn't it? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, is... Well, what is it? November 22 2010, you know what the Bible says about tomorrow? May never come. You should not presume on tomorrow, it may actually never come. Book of James says you ought to say If the Lord wills, we'll get tomorrow, but when you get it, you know, where you're going to call it, it's going to have a new name, it's going to be called today. It's kind of the way it works. And so all you can do with yesterday is remember, it's lessons so that you can live today in glory to God. And all you can do with tomorrow is prepared for its battles and the Bible says go to the ant O sluggard, lay up treasure or store for yourselves… You're not supposed to say, "Hey look, tomorrow may never come so let's eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow we might die." That's the wrong attitude you should prepare for tomorrow. You know how you prepare for tomorrow best? Be maximally fruitful and faithful today.

Don't acquire a new sin habit that will burden tomorrow with wickedness. So you understand yesterday, today, tomorrow. Yesterday is for learning, it's lessons. Tomorrow is for trusting God in preparation, but today is all you're ever going to have.

And so what should you do? Well today if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart, don't harden your heart. What does it mean to harden your heart? Well, hardening your heart means that the word of God comes to you, meaning to change you, it's meaning to shape you, it's meaning to alter you and you say a simple word to it, "No, no, I will not do what you want me to do, I will not witness to that neighbor. I will not give that money. I will not use my spiritual gift in that way, I will not go to that brother or sister and show him or her compassion, I will not forgive that person, who has sinned again, I'm just no!" And you may not say it that baldly, but that's in effect what's happening. Today if you hear him telling you something, don't say no to God.

It has a synonym in the Old Testament and that is "stiffen your neck". So, a hard-hearted person, is a stiff neck person. It means the same thing. It means to not humble yourself before your king and not do what he says. And we're going to talk more about the hardened heart and how it comes about, in the next little section, but what is the destination of a hardened heart? Well, the destination is you get an oath from God declared in his anger that you'll never enter his rest. God says a word over you in anger, wrath that you will not enter his rest. And the issues here in Hebrews three and four are heaven and hell. That's what we're dealing with here. It's a greater mission that Jesus is on than Moses, he's talking about greater issues and the greater issue is heaven and hell. And the ultimate destination of a hardened heart that will not listen to God speaking in the word is hell. To hear this sentence, "Depart from me. You were cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." That's the destination of a hardened heart.

Friends, I plead with you not to go there. Instead when you hear God speak, just do what he says, listen to him, follow him in any area, it could be a sin habit that's in your life, God is speaking to you. He wants that sin put to death by the power of the Spirit, by the word of God, he wants it put to death, then put it to death. He wants you to use your spiritual gifts fruitfully in ministry, then use them. He wants a rich marriage between you and your spouse, then make it rich. Through love and forgiveness, and the giving and receiving of blessings. Today if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart.

Now we're going to go to the Lord's Supper. I asked a few moments ago, does the Lord speak apart from Scripture? Absolutely, this is one of the clearest ways that God speaks to me apart from Scripture. It's commanded in Scripture but I have prayed already that the Holy Spirit will fill this place that we will have an experience of Christ crucified and risen, and ascended, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit today as we partake in the Lord's supper. This is meant for believers, who have trusted in Christ, that you have repented, you have trusted in him. You've expressed that through water baptism. If so, you're welcome at the table if not, please refrain, lest you eat and drink judgment on yourself. But just know it's waiting for you, if you'll just repent and believe, as I said before, you can be there next time we'd love to have you. But if you're a Christian, struggling with sin, this is a good time to repent and partake of the Lord supper.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study your word. And now as we go to the table, we pray, O Lord, that you would speak to us through the Holy Spirit. Fill this sanctuary with a strong presence of the Spirit of Christ, that Christ's merits might shine in our hearts, his achievement on the cross. And that we might understand the message of the Lord's supper, as you speak to us Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus name.

I wonder what it must have been like to watch Moses coming down from the holy mountain with that radiant shining face. This was the awesome, confident, bold leader who had faced down Pharaoh and had boldly commanded him, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, 'Let my people go...'" This Moses, this was the one who had brought awesome and devastating plagues on the whole nation of Egypt. Plagues of blood and frogs and flies, gnats, locust, boils, hail, darkness and death. This Moses. This was the man who had led Israel to the brink of the Red Sea, hemmed up against the Red Sea, and then facing Pharaoh's enraged army. This man who had said, "Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today." Then led the Jews through the Red Sea on dry land, with water walling up to the right and to the left. Israel walking on dry ground, and then this one who had unleashed one final devastation on Egypt as the waters of the Red Sea came crashing back down on Pharaoh's army and destroyed it completely.

This was the man, this Moses, who had fed Israel with manna from heaven, and had struck the rock and had water flow out of the rock to care for the thirst of almost two million Israelites out in the desert. This Moses was the man who had led them to the base of the mountain of God. Mount Sinai with its terrifying display of power and of the holiness of God, a dark cloud, thunder, lightning, earthquake, a trumpet blast and the voice of the living God speaking the 10 commandments. "I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." This Moses was the very one who had climbed up that mountain and disappeared in that same cloud. Gone for 40 days and returned with two tablets of stone, the same 10 commandments now inscribed with the finger of God. And "When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, he was not aware that his face was radiant, because he'd been speaking with the Lord God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him." This Moses, how great was this man? How great this giver of the law, this terrifying, glorious figure, the greatest man of all Judaism?

Well, he was great. He was very great. Jesus is infinitely greater. And that's the burden of the text. As great as Moses was, Jesus is infinitely greater. Whose glory will not only temporarily cause one man's face to shine, but will irradiate all of the new heavens and the new Earth and us besides for all eternity. How great is that? And so we get to contemplate the greatness of Jesus once again.

I know you won't believe me, but now I'm telling you Hebrews is my favorite book in the Bible. Now you're going to quote that to me when we do the next book and you go ahead and do that. But right now at least, my favorite book in the Bible. And why? Because it just preaches Jesus to me day after day after day. And right away, that's what the text tells us to do in verse one. Fix our thoughts on Jesus. Amen. That's what we get to do again. It's going to be renewing to you. If you're a child of God, this is going to refresh you. If you're a child of God, it's going to recharge your spiritual batteries. Because you get to fix your thoughts on Jesus. That's the whole purpose of the paragraph. Now keep in mind again, the danger that the author to Hebrews was addressing. These Jewish people that he's writing to had made some kind of outward profession of faith in Christ.

That profession is mentioned even in this paragraph. Look at verse one, "Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in the heavenly calling, consider or fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession." They had made a confession or a profession of faith in Christ. That confession, I think it's a formal title for what these Jewish people had done to make a clear outward profession of faith in Jesus Christ. I think it probably involved water baptism. Says in Romans 10:9 and 10, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified. And it's with your mouth that you confess and are saved. So these Jewish people had made that confession of Christ. And they had, I believe, been water baptized and baptized in Christ.

Now however, these Jewish people were under tremendous pressure by their surrounding Jewish friends and neighbors, and relatives, and rabbis to renounce their faith in Christ and go back to Old Covenant Judaism. And at the center of Old Covenant Judaism is the law. And the mediator of the law was the towering figure of Moses. They're being tempted to turn their backs on Jesus and go back to Moses. And so these six verses are saying, "don't do it," because Jesus is infinitely greater than Moses. That's what he's getting at. The author compares Jesus with Moses. And why? To show the superiority of Jesus to Moses. It would make no sense whatsoever to retreat to Moses, to turn away from Jesus and go back. It's especially true when we consider that Moses was merely a servant in God's house but Jesus is a son over God's house, ruling over it. And we're going to talk about it.

The Purpose of this Paragraph

This paragraph exists to continue the exhortation of the entire Epistle. The whole letter of Hebrews is to stay close to Jesus and finish the race you've begun. Don't merely start with Jesus, let's go ahead and finish with Jesus. Let's run every day this race with endurance. Day after day in Jesus. That's what this is about. More than anything, he wants these Hebrew Christians to know who they are in Christ and to know how great Christ is. They need to consider themselves, who they are in Christ and they need to consider the greatness of Christ. And so he focuses on them here in verse one it says, "Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in the heavenly calling." Now, whenever you see the word therefore, it should instruct you to look backward in the text.

You never begin a book of the Bible with the word therefore. It's always in the middle in the flow of an argument and so the author having said some things, having established some truth, now based on that, he's going to call them to consider some things. And so we have to look back. So we're looking back and now at Hebrews 3, we're looking back to Hebrews 2. Now what we learned in Hebrews 2 and it proclaim there, of course, Jesus as the captain, the trail blazer of our salvation. He is the author of our salvation. This is the one who defeated death, crushed Satan, who held the power of death and released from captivity all of those who are held in slavery all their lives by fear of death. This greatness, the greatness of Christ and then ended with that enticing and comforting news that Jesus is for us a merciful and faithful high priest and service to God, who made atonement for the sins of the people. And in verse 18, "Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he's able to help people like us and them, who are being tempted." Therefore, because of all of the greatness of Christ and because he is our high priest and because he is able to help us who are being tempted, how could any Christian, therefore, turn away from Jesus? How could any Christian therefore, go back to Moses? That's really the link here.

Understand Who You Are, What You’re Called to Be: Holy Brothers

The real remedy here isn't turning away from Jesus. Now it's getting even closer to Jesus, drawing even closer to consider him more, to call on him more, to meditate on him more. And this first verse calls them holy brothers. Holy brothers. Now, the word "holy" means set apart unto God as His precious possession. Set apart unto God. In the Old Covenant, "holy to the Lord," was actually literally written on things or spoken over significant things in the Old Covenant. For example, a holy plate, a plate, a golden plate was engraved holy to the Lord and it was put on the priest's turban, on his head, as though his head, and really therefore his whole body is holy to the Lord. The priest, the Aaronic priest is holy to the Lord. The annual blood atonement for sin was called, "Most Holy to the Lord." That special blend of incense, whose recipe is carefully described in Exodus 30, was called, "Holy to the Lord," and therefore, no Israelite was permitted to make a special blending of the same recipe and use it for his or her own private use. No, no. It was holy to the Lord. I was for His sacred possession, only for Him.

The Sabbath Day was called a sacred day, set apart and holy to the Lord. This understanding of being holy to the Lord was well established to Jewish people. Above all, the people of God themselves... The people of God themselves were to be God's holy people. They were to be set apart for His personal use. They were to be separate from all of the nations and separate also from their own wicked ways. And so the word "holiness" at its root gives a sense of separation. The people of God separated from the unholy nations, the wicked nations, and they themselves separated from all evil and God's prized and precious possession. Says in Deuteronomy 76, "For you are a people holy to the Lord. The Lord, your God, has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the Earth to be His people, His treasured possession." So the Church of Jesus Christ now in the New Covenant, We are holy to the Lord. We belong to God. We were bought with a price, the blood of Jesus. We are holy to Him. We are holy brothers. And the word "brothers" implies that beautiful sacred family that we are. We are brothers and sisters in the living God. It's not a bunch of strangers now.

We are together with Jesus in the family of God. We have been given the right to be called children of God. How beautiful is that? And so we are members of God's household now. Members of God's household. The end of this little section in verse six, Hebrews 3:6, it says, "We are His house." We, we the people. We are His household and we, holy brothers, we are the ones who share, it says, in a heavenly calling. Now what does this mean to share in a heavenly calling? Well, we share many things together. There's the sense of Koinonia, that sense of sharing or fellowship that we have. In the early church, they shared all things in common, their possessions. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything that they had. But far more significant fellowship is in our spiritual blessings. The things we share spiritually which unite us together.

We share Christ, we share the indwelling Holy Spirit. We share our adoption into the family of God, these things. And here we share, it says, "A heavenly calling." I think about those two witnesses in Revelation 11, you remember those ones that stand during the days of the tribulation and they take on the Antichrist and they're so powerfully preaching Christ and no one can stop them, you remember those two? Awesome ministry. Remember if anyone opposed them, fire came out of their mouths and burned up the enemies of God. I remember hearing John McArthur preach about it, he said, "If God's looking for volunteers, I'd like that job." That would be an awesome job, being one of the two witnesses during the final days. But at the end of their ministry, they were killed. The beast rose up against them, the Antichrist, and killed them, and they died, and they were there in the streets of the city for three days. Then, suddenly, they came to life. And immediately after that, a loud voice from heaven called down to them, "Come up here." And they went up to Heaven in a cloud while their enemies looked on. Now that's a heavenly calling. Amen?

A heavenly calling. "Come up here and live with me." The apostle John himself had the same kind of heavenly calling in Revelation 4, "Come up here and I will show you things which must take place after this." This is the call of God to Heaven, in the future I think. Coupled with the call of God, this heavenly calling is a call of God to live like it now. Amen. A heavenly life now, a holy life now, that's your calling. Philippians calls it "the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." It's an upward call. We're going up. We're improving in our Christian lives. We're becoming more like Jesus, not less. We're not degenerating. We are growing in grace and the knowledge of Christ. It's an upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 4:1 talks about the heavenly calling in this way, it says, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." That's the heavenly calling. It's a future calling that we're going to Heaven, but coupled with a present lifestyle. That's the heavenly calling.

The Remedy: Fix Your Thoughts on Jesus

And now comes that consistent command of the book, the remedy to all evils and all ills. If you're unhappy today, listen to these words, here's the remedy: Fix your thoughts on Jesus. Consider Jesus, meditate on Jesus, feast your heart on Jesus, "the apostle and high priest whom we confess." Again and again, the author wants these suffering, persecuted, downtrodden people to think about Jesus. The entire Epistle began, as you know in Hebrews one, with an extended meditation on the greatness of Jesus, right from the very first paragraph. Remember, in Hebrews 1:3 it says, "The Sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." Right through that first glorious chapter, we're talking about Jesus. We're talking about Jesus and we're not the only ones. God, the father, talking about Jesus. Remember that in Hebrews 1:8, "But about the son, he says, 'your throne, oh, God, lasts forever and ever. Righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.'" That's God, the father, talking about God, the son. It's an amazing thing to think about it, isn't it? God, the father, fixes His thoughts on Jesus too, and He loves him. And so fix your thoughts on Jesus.

And on into chapter 2, we have this meditation on Jesus. "We see Jesus," it says, "who is made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." Notice what it says there in Hebrews 2:9, "we see Jesus… now crowned with glory." Now, how do we do that? How do we see Jesus, now crowned with glory and honor? We can understand how we will see Jesus then, crowned with glory and honor, but in Hebrews 2:9, it says, "we see Jesus now crowned." Well, I tell you it's only by faith. You take the word of God, like Hebrews, a good chapter on Jesus, and just read it and meditate on Jesus. You think about Jesus by the power of the spirit. You feed your mind on Jesus, you fix your thoughts on Jesus. The Greek word here in this verse implies a deep, diligent, rational, spiritual, consideration of Christ. Who he is, what he's achieved, by faith based on the scriptures. That's what you're doing. This alone can feed our souls in our days of trial and keep us strong in Christ. By this alone, dear friends, can we avoid drifting away from Christ. As it said in Hebrews 2:1, "We must pay more careful attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away."

Toward the end of the book, it's going to give us the same recipe again. In Hebrews 12:2, it's going to say, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Very next verse says, again, "Consider him who endured such hardship or opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." Again and again, consider him, fix your eyes on him, we see Jesus. So do it. Use this sermon time well. Think about Jesus. Frankly, it's so blatant as I'm preaching this that if you're thinking about anything else, you are, dear friends, distracted. [chuckle] We are thinking about Jesus today. We're considering him. And what does it call him? It calls him the apostle. It calls Jesus the apostle. What an interesting title to give to Jesus. We know Jesus chose the 12 apostles, sent them out with a mission.

The word "apostle" is just the English version of the Greek verb "apostolo" which means to send off or a sent one, somebody went with a mission. An apostle is literally an authoritative messenger from a king, a legate, let's say, an ambassador, you could imagine an ambassador with a right to represent the head of state. Jesus is that for the kingdom of heaven. He is the kingdom of heaven's ambassador, apostle, come from heaven to earth. And he is the sent one literally. Jesus called himself that in John 10:36. Right in the middle of a thought, just picking up, it says, "What about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world?" Jesus was sent into the world by God the Father. And so, he came into the world to speak the Father's words, an authoritative message from the Father. He is the Father's apostle. And so it says in Hebrews 1:1-2, "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son." That means the son's an apostle, he's sent by God to speak the Father's message.

And Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am... " literally what it says, we'll just leave it there. "I am the I am," "and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak only what the Father has taught me to speak." He is the ultimate apostle from the Father. He only says what the Father told him to say. He's sent him to the world as God's apostle, it also calls him the high priest of our confession. He is the apostle and high priest of our confession. This is the second time now that the Book of Hebrews has called him the high priest, starting to ramp up, starting to heat up now on the theme of high priest, but still not yet what we fully develop. We'll wait till later chapters, but we start to see that Jesus has that ministry like Melchizedek, a high priest in the order of Melchizedek, he is a king and a priest and we'll develop it fully there. But he is our high priest, and he is faithful to the one who appointed him.

The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ

Now, what does that mean that Jesus was faithful? Well, whatever the Father gave him to do, he did. He carried out what the Father had entrusted him. He was faithful to what was given into his hands. And so, Jesus in his high priestly prayer, John 17:4, makes an astonishing and an amazing statement. He says this in John 17:4, he says, "I brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do." Jesus is the only man in history that can say that. I can't even say it for a single day, maybe not even for a single hour. Could you really say, "Lord, for the last hour, I've done everything you wanted me to do"? But Jesus can say that over his whole life work. "I brought you glory on earth, [Father] by completing all the work you gave me to do." That's what he's saying. And again, in John 14:31, "The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what the Father has commanded me to do." He was faithful to the one who appointed him. Faithful to God.

Now, we bring up this idea of Moses. Moses is now brought into the text, brought into the epistle now, we have to deal with Moses. And we have to deal with him carefully because Moses is going to be in heaven. Moses is our brother in Christ. Moses did a good ministry. There's nothing wrong with Moses. And so, we have to honor Moses but honor Jesus more, that's all. And that's exactly what's going on here. And so, in verse 2, "Moses was faithful in all God's house." Jesus "was faithful to the one who appointed him just as Moses was faithful in all God's house." This is God's testimony about Moses. Just stop for a moment. How would you like that to be God's testimony about you? At the end of your life? "He, she, faithful to what I gave them to do." Oh, you should yearn... You should have a holy ambition for that. I want you to say that over my life, "He was faithful. She was faithful to what I entrusted to them to do."

And that's God's testimony right here, "He was faithful." He had called Moses to go back to Pharaoh and deliver the Jews out of Egypt, and Moses did that with great faith and with great courage. Moses boldly confronted Pharaoh with all 10 of the plagues, commanding again and again, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, 'Let my people go...'" God used Moses to do those mighty signs and wonders. God led the Jews boldly through Moses out of Egypt during the first Passover, led the people through the Red Sea, again, with great courage and boldness. Moses was used by God to provide manna from the sky and water from the rock. Daily miracles that kept Israel alive. Moses led the Jews to Mount Sinai and received, as I said, from the finger of God, the tablets on which the 10 Commandments had been written. Moses, then, as time allowed over the next 40 years of wandering the desert, gave to the Jews an incredible legacy, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; written by Moses as they wandered in the desert.

And when the faithless, unbelieving Jews refused to enter the promised land, and it was extended to 40 years, Moses, first of all, interceded for them and prayed that God wouldn't kill them. And then having received that blessing from God, he then led that fractious and rebellious people for 40 years in the desert, caring for them like a nursing mother caring for little infant. He says, "Did I give birth to these people? Do I have to keep looking after them?" There are moments, difficult moments, but he was faithful. He was faithful to do what God want to do. Faithful in all God's house.

And therefore, Moses is rightly revered in Judaism. God appeared to Moses in the flames of the burning bush and chose him as the leader of the people. God had done incredible miracles through Moses, supernatural miracles like no one else in Jewish history. Moses was the one that God had spoken to in some mysterious sense, face to face. Think about Exodus 24, "Then he said to Moses, 'Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance.'" Listen to this, "But Moses alone is to approach the Lord. The others must not come near and the people may not come up with him." What an honor for Moses. He alone was invited right into the very presence of God. In Exodus 33:7-11, says, "Now, Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the Tent of Meeting. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp and whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people, all the people rose and stood at the entrance of their tents and watched him go. And as Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stay at the entrance. When Moses was there, the cloud would come down while the Lord spoke with Moses. And whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshipped as God spoke with Moses." Incredible. The Lord would speak to Moses, it says, face to face as a man speaks with his friend. Exodus 33:11.

God gave a direct testimony concerning his intimacy with Moses in Numbers 12 when Aaron and Miriam began to speak against Moses and say that the Lord had spoken as much through them as they had through him, God said, "I beg to differ." He made a clear distinction in Numbers 12:4-8, "At once the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, 'Come out to the tent of meeting all three of you.' So the three of them came out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and he stood at the entrance to the tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. And when both of them stepped forward, he said, 'Listen to my words.'" Now I want to tell you something. I believe the author of Hebrews, as he's writing chapter three, is thinking about these verses. See if you can see the connection here. "Listen to my words. When a prophet of the Lord is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions. I speak to him in dreams, but this is not true of my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face clearly and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"

So there are two little themes there from Numbers 12. 1) Faithful in all my house,  and 2) he is my servant. And I think the author's pulling those two ideas out and meditating on them. Again, I said, this text is not in any way trying to denigrate Moses. Not at all. Just trying to exalt Jesus as infinitely greater than Moses. When Moses then would speak with God and return to the Jews, his whole face shone radiantly with the absorbed glory of God. He would have to put a veil across his face because they're afraid of him. They're afraid of just being near Moses because of the glory that was shining, fading as it was. In generations to come, then Jews would revere Moses as the greatest figure of their history, and that's the whole problem that the author's trying to address here, revering Moses and denigrating Jesus as a result. Well, how does that happen? Well, it definitely happened.

Think about the time that Jesus healed the man born blind. Do you remember that? There was a man born blind and he was sitting and begging. Jesus crouched down and spat on the ground and made mud with his saliva and he put it on the man's eyes, smeared the mud on the man's eyes and commanded him to go away and wash. And the man went away and washed, then he came home seeing. And he was then arrested by the Jews, the Jewish leaders. They arrested the man, brought him into the Sanhedrin, I guess, into account for what had happened. And as the thing unfolded, they began to become abusive, to hurl insults at this man. In John 9:28-29, "They hurled insults at him and said, 'You are this fellow's disciple. We are disciples of Moses. Now we know that God spoke to Moses but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he came from.'" Now there it is, you see. Moses and Jesus, head to head, and Jesus is nothing. He's denigrated.

That's what these Hebrew professors, their faith in Christ, were being tempted to turn back to. "We know God spoke through Moses but as for this fellow, we don't know where he came from." I love how the man born blind answered, he said, "Now that is remarkable. You don't know where he came from and yet he opened my eyes." Actually, literally in Greek that man said, "Now here is the real wonder. Not so much that God can open the eyes of a man born blind but that you can't see God when he does it. That's the real wonder." It's an amazing statement. That man born blind may be one of my favorite figures in the New Testament. I love him. Look forward to meeting him in heaven.

But it wasn't just this man born blind, there's also Stephen. Remember how Stephen was preaching Christ boldly? And again, they pitted the Christ that Stephen was preaching against Moses who had given them the temple or the Tabernacle which led to the temple. And so they secretly persuaded some men to say, "We have heard Stephen speak words of blasphemy against Moses and against God." That's the attitude that the author to Hebrews is addressing here. We know that God spoke through Moses but as for Jesus, we can leave him behind. Now Moses mediated the old covenant, and that's why the author is mentioning Moses. The old covenant was called the Law of Moses. And Jesus Christ came to give us a higher way. As it says in John 1:17, "The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." Let me tell you right now if you end up in heaven, it's not going to be because of the Law of Moses. It's going to be because of the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. And so that's how much greater Jesus is. Jesus can get you to heaven, Moses can't get you there.

It's a law, it's what it is. The Law of Moses. Law condemns. Grace saves. And grace came through Jesus. And so these Jewish Christians who are being tempted to renounce Christ and go back to Judaism were choosing Moses over Jesus, and that choice was eternally foolish, infinitely foolish.

And so Jesus is greater than Moses as a son is greater than a servant. Look at verse 3, "Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself." He's directly comparing in verse 3, Jesus and Moses, and he says Moses is worthy of honor and I would say that Moses was greater than any other prophet. All the prophets that God sent to Israel in the old covenant, you know what they were? They were basically prosecuting attorneys, like district attorneys. And they went in the name of the law to a rebellious people to bring a lawsuit against them on God's behalf. Alright, that's fine. That's what they did but where did the law come from? Well, it came from Moses.

So Moses is greater than any of the prophets that followed. As Numbers 12 said, Moses is faithful in all my house. When I speak to a prophet now, I'm going to do it with visions and dreams but with Moses, face to face. Saw God's glory, achieved all of these incredible things. A man of action, a man of accomplishment, brought them out of slavery. But, still, merely a house servant really. He's a house servant. Moses was faithful, verse five, as a servant in all God's house testifying to what would be said in the future. The author reiterates Moses' faithfulness, faithful as a servant and a prophet. Testifying to what would be said in the future. What's that? Well, can we sum it up in one word? Jesus. That's what Moses is testifying about the future. Moses is talking about Jesus.

In John chapter five, Jesus deals directly with the Jewish authorities who are there in the name of Moses. And he says, "Do not think I will accuse you before the Father. No, your accuser is Moses on whom your hopes are set." Now that's interesting, isn't it? You're trusting in Moses, he cannot save you. He's going to accuse you. He's not going to save you. If you believe Moses, you would believe me. Listen to this statement, because he wrote about me. [chuckle] Do you realize how arrogant that would be if Jesus isn't the Son of God, the Messiah? Either you believe or you don't believe. And Jesus says very plainly, "He wrote about me but since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"

And so after his resurrection, you remember? Jesus, resurrection, body, disciples, disoriented, dismayed, discouraged, depressed. And Jesus catches up with two of them on the road to Emmaus, you remember that? Wouldn't you love to be one of those two? Wouldn't you love that? To get rebuked by Jesus on Easter morning. What a good thing. You ought to be happy right now and look at you, you're sad and miserable. "How foolish you are," Jesus said to them. "And how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he showed them everything what is written in the scriptures concerning himself."

Well, that's what Hebrews 3:5 means. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house testifying to what would be said in the future about Jesus. It's all about the gospel. But Jesus is worthy of greater honor than Moses. Look at verse three, "Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself." Moses is worthy of great honor but he's still just a creature. That means something created. He's a created being.

Frankly, in verse three, if you read carefully, Moses is portrayed as the house, Jesus as the builder of the house. Later, as I said, he's going to make it clear that the house is all of God's people, but Moses is included. Moses is part of the house. Verse 4, "For every house is built by someone but God is the builder of everything." Moses then was built by God. It's kind of a weird thought, isn't it? Moses was assembled by God. He was assembled where? In his mother's womb. His father was Amram, a descendant of Levi. His mother was Jochebed, Amram's aunt. An interesting story. You can ask them about it when you get to heaven, but there it is. And so, as Moses was growing inside his mother's womb, God was knitting him together. And then he protected him as he was floating in that basket, in the bulrushes there in the Nile. But the scripture reveals that it's Jesus himself that knit Moses together.

It was God through Jesus that all things were made. It is through Jesus that Moses' body held together. It's through Jesus that Moses even exists. It was Jesus himself, I think, if you read carefully, who appeared to Moses in the flames of the burning bush. For wasn't it the Angel of the Lord who did that? And wasn't it Jesus, who was the Angel of the Lord, that led Israel? Remember how God basically said, "I'm going to send my angel ahead of you and he's not going to mess around with you people. He's going to punish you if you don't follow him, so you better follow him." That's what God says about the angel. The angel is Jesus. Jesus then, in effect, is represented by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. That's Jesus. It was Jesus himself, in some mysterious spiritual sense, who was the Rock that gave them drink, it says in Corinthians 1:10. No, He wasn't the rock, but He is the spiritual Rock from which the water flowed. And Jesus gave them the manna that they ate, that Moses just told them where to find it. And so He likens himself to this in John 6, "I tell you the truth, it's not Moses who gives you the bread from heaven, but it's my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." And the people said, "Sir, from now on, give us this bread." Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; he who feeds on Me will never go hungry and he who drinks from Me will never go thirsty."

Jesus is greater than Moses in every way, dear friends. In every way. Jesus is the builder of God's house and He's the authority figure over it. That's how I read it. When I read this section, I read it this way, "Moses was faithful, as a servant in all God's house, testifying what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a Son over God's house." You see, the contrast there is between someone who's under and someone who's over. And Jesus, as the Son, as the only begotten Son, as the heir of everything, He is the ruler of the house. He's the only begotten Son of God.

And so, on the Mount of Transfiguration, Matthew 17, Jesus one day takes with him Peter, James and John, leads them up a high mountain by themselves. And there he is transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. And Peter spoke up at that moment. We've talked about that before. Peter's an interesting man, isn't he? It's time to talk. Mark says he didn't know what he way saying. But he speaks up and says, "Lord, it's good for us to be here. If you wish, we'll make three shelters. One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah." He didn't know what he was saying, that's what the scripture says. "While Peter was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them. And a voice came from the cloud, 'This is My Son, My only Son whom I love. Listen to Him.'"

Notice that the voice from the cloud didn't mention Moses at all. Never said a word about Moses. And when the disciples heard that voice, they fell face down to the ground terrified. But Jesus came and you picture him gently touching their shoulders, telling them to get up. "Don't be afraid," he says. "And when they looked up," the text says, "they saw no one except Jesus." Do you not see the significance of that? The way it's written? Moses and Elijah just disappear. So does every human being, they all just disappear. Just servants, all of them, us too, servants, servants, servants through whom God works. Jesus stands alone to the glory of God the Father. That's what's going on here in this text.

Now, one final word. We are God's house if... If, friends, is why the book was written. It's because there's an if here. You may be part of God's house. You may not be part of God's house. It's not a given. It's not a guarantee, actually. Just because you're a human being doesn't mean you're part of God's house. It's not true that every single human being that lives is part of God's house. That is not true. We are His house. Now, what does that mean? We are the temple or the tabernacle where God dwells by His Spirit, it says in Ephesians. 1 Peter 2 says we're like living stones built up in the house of God. We are living stones in the house. We are the spiritual temple, that is the house. We are the house but only if. There's some uncertainty about this. Well, if what? If we continue in our confession in Christ. You see it? If we continue to profess that Jesus is our Savior. If we hold on to our courage in the hope of which we boast.

The Book of Hebrews is all about keep running, dear friends. Keep running the race. Don't give up. Don't drop out. Don't stop coming to church. Don't stop your quiet time. Don't stop your prayer life. Don't stop your fight against sin. Keep running this race with endurance. We are His house if and only if we continue in Christ. We hold on to our courage in the hope of which we boast. What courage is that? Courage toward God, to enter into the very presence of God boldly through the blood of Jesus. And courage horizontally to a persecuting Christ-hating world. Don't be ashamed of Jesus in this world. Testify to Him. Do it tomorrow at work. Do it to a non-Christian friend or relative or neighbor. Be courageous Christians. Hold on to your courage and hold on to your hope, the hope of your boasting. And what is that hope? You're going to heaven when you die. It's going to be glorious.

You're not looking backward to the land you left. You're looking ahead to the New Jerusalem where you're going. And you've got a strong and vibrant hope that that place is going to be glorious.

What applications? Well, I prayed and I will continue to pray. If there are any lost people here, that you would turn to Christ and look to him now in faith. You're not going to see him physically, you're hearing the word of God now. Jesus took on a human body, shed his blood on the cross, so that if you trust in him, you have eternal life. And Christ is faithful to God's mission, dying on the cross for our sins, and he'll be faithful to save you right to the end if you just trust in him.

Secondly, just understand how great Jesus is. Do you realize he is 100 million times greater than the highest estimation of him that any of us have in this room right now, whoever it is? It might be me, it might be one of you, I don't know, but wherever we've got Jesus, he's 100 million times higher than that. Keep pushing upward in your estimation of Jesus. Keep meditating on him, keep seeing how great he is, how much greater than Moses, how much greater than anyone.

And thirdly, worship Christ based on that estimation, just love him. I won't do it, but I'd love to ask Eric and all those beautiful musicians come and sing to Jesus again. Wouldn't that be awesome? I'm not going to do it, I abused my privileges here but I was just worshipping Jesus. I love that song because it sings to me of Jesus, and makes me sing. We need to worship Christ and fill our hearts with gratitude to him, and with sweetness and joy that comes from contemplating him.

And finally, if I can just urge you as a brother and sister in Christ, embrace your heavenly calling. You are holy to the Lord. Set apart for his precious possession. God is jealous over your affections. He's jealous over your life. Don't give yourself over to idols. Don't sin. Don't lust. Don't covet. Don't gossip and slander. Don't steal. Don't do things that are wicked. Be holy. Embrace your heavenly calling in Christ.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the greatness of Christ. We thank you for the joy that comes to me personally to be able to proclaim Christ, and to feel in my heart the joy that just today, at best, at best, we saw through a glass darkly but someday, we're going to see face to face. And I pray Father, that you would move in us. I pray again for a lost person, a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, someone hearing the gospel for the first time that they would trust in Jesus. And Lord, help the rest of us to know just how great Jesus is, and embrace our heavenly calling in him. In Jesus' name. Amen.

The Famous hymn says, "T'was grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace my fears relieved." Of course that's coming from Amazing Grace, arguably the most popular hymn in the world. One immediately recognizable even to many non-church people. Written by John Newton, I think, as a personal testimony that he was giving of how God saved him. "A wretch," he called himself in that hymn. He was a famous sinner. The ship's captain, where he served as a slave-trading vessel, said he had never heard anyone blaspheme and swear like John Newton. Later, God put those gifts of verbal skill to better use. When he was converted, God transformed that ability but the captain of that ship, the Greyhound, said he invented swears no one had ever heard before. That was John Newton, he was a wretch, he was a wicked man. A blasphemer. But there was a night in March of 1748 while that ship, the Greyhound, was in the North Atlantic that a storm threatened to destroy the entire ship and everybody aboard. And Newton saw a man swept overboard where he had been standing just moments before.

And after hours of the crew bailing and just trying to empty that rapidly filling ship of water and just trying to stay afloat, he offered a desperate suggestion to the captain that might save the ship in some way. Captain ordered that it be done and Newton said, "If this will not do, then Lord have mercy on us all." He said those words. He then returned to the pump where he and another sailor were pumping and lashed himself to it so he wouldn't be swept overboard, and for 11 hours fought the storm and fought to stay alive. And during that time, he says in his later writings, he was thinking again and again about his own words. If this will not do, then the Lord have mercy on us all. And he started thinking about how afraid he was to die. He was afraid to die. He was afraid that after he died, he'd be sent to hell. And he knew that the only thing that could deliver him from death and hell was the mercy of the same Lord that he'd been blaspheming earlier that day. And that was the beginning of his conversion. T'was grace that taught his heart to fear and grace his fears relieved. These fears must be tied to death. To be afraid of death and the judgement that follows. It is appointed unto each one of us to die once and after that to face the judgement.

Some people don't have any idea why the grace of God would teach someone to fear. I remember Phil Driscoll who plays incredible trumpet and sings songs, did his version of Amazing Grace, changed the lyrics a little bit. T'was grace that taught my heart to love and grace my fears relieved. I think the original's better. It is God's grace that teaches us to fear his judgement, to fear death and hell. It is God's grace to us to teach us to fear those things. And I say to you, and I say it tenderly, there are some people sitting here today who do not fear death enough, who ought to fear death immeasurably more than you do. I say it to you tenderly because you are lost. You are not yet converted. You're not ready to face judgement, you're not ready to stand before God. You don't have Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And therefore, you greatly underestimate the danger that death is to you. Greatly underestimate it.

Jesus said this, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that can do nothing to you. I'll tell you who to fear. Fear the one who after the death of the body has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." It is grace to take Jesus' command there to heart, isn't it? And to fear the one who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. But I also say to you tenderly that there are some here who fear death too much and ought not to fear death at all because you are Christians and Jesus has died for you, and he has liberated you from the bondage of slavery to fear of death. And that's what the text is talking about today. It's my delight to proclaim to you your Savior again, and to speak to you what he has achieved for you, and to speak to you Christians and encourage you and say, "Do not fear death ever again. Do not fear death." And so we're going to unfold Hebrews 2:14-18 in a very orderly and logical way. It's not a three-part outline, you notice. But it's a careful stepping through the text.

I just want you to understand where we're heading but basically, we're going to cover this. Jesus became incarnate, he took on a human body, so that he could die, so he could destroy the devil and death, and so he could rescue us from bondage, from slavery to fear of death. So that he could take hold of Abraham's descendants and rescue them and be for us a merciful and faithful high priest, and in that way, step into our temptations and our sufferings when we are tempted and help us at our time of greatest need. So if I could sum all that up, Jesus took on a body to help you in your temptations. That's what it's about. We're going to learn how to invite Jesus, our merciful and high priest into our time of greatest weakness, our time of greatest suffering, that time of temptation. That's what this sermon is about. Let's start at the beginning.

In verse 14, it speaks of the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus taking on a human body. Verse 14, "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity." This is the infinite mystery of the incarnation. The mystery of Christmas. God became man. AW Pink commenting on this verse said this:

"Another thing which makes it so difficult for us to grasp the wonder of the Divine incarnation is that there is nothing else which we can for a moment compare with it; there is no analogy which in any wise resembles it. It stands unique, alone, in all its solitary grandeur. We are thrilled when we think of the angels sent forth to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation: that those wondrous creatures, which so far excel us in wisdom and strength, should have been appointed to be our attendants; that those holy creatures should be commissioned to encamp round about poor sinners; that the courtiers of Heaven should wait upon worms of the earth! Truly, that is a great wonder. But oh my brethren, that wonder pales into utter insignificance and, in comparison, fades away into nothingness, before this far greater wonder—that the Creator of angels should leave His throne on High and descend to this sin-cursed earth; that the very One before whom all the angels bow should, for a season, be made lower than they; that the Lord of glory, who had dwelt in "light unapproachable," should Himself become partaker of "flesh and blood"! This is the wonder of wonders." - Commentary on Hebrews, 131.

We can never get done thinking about the mystery of Christmas. It's an infinite mystery, beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great. He became a man, took on a human body. And so here we have described the fact of the incarnation and unfolded from that its reasons why Jesus became a man. It says since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity. And the children are those that Christ is coming to save. And because they have flesh and blood, speaking there of their physical existence, because they have bodies, because they have a physical existence, not like the angels. The Greek expression says that these children have a fellowship together in flesh and blood. It unites the human race. We are all of us flesh and blood. It doesn't matter what race we come from. We share together this flesh and blood existence. It unites us. And Jesus had to join with us in that he had to become a partaker, a willing partaker of our human nature in order to save us. And so He had to take on a flesh and blood existence.

Strong Family Language

Now, there's a very strong family orientation to Hebrews 2. Lots of family language. I went over that last time that I preached on Hebrews. But just look again at some of the verses. Verse 11 it says, "Both the one who makes men holy, and those who are made holy are of the same family." So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. And then we have here in verse 14, "Since the children have flesh and blood, He shared in their humanity." Verse 17, "For this reason He had to be made like his brothers in every way." This is a family thing. God has in view the family of God with Jesus as our perfect elder brother, and Jesus is a brother to all of those that he's saving. Or we use the language of children since the children have flesh and blood. And He wanted them to become partakers of the divine nature that we should become like God. Isn't that beautiful? We were originally created in the image of God. Sin has marred that image badly. But now redeemed in Christ we are created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. It says in 2 Peter 1 that his precious promises are given to us so that through them, we "may participate in the divine nature."

Now there are some words that can keep you busy at night meditating on them. That we may participate in the divine nature. Become like God. In order for us to become like God, he had to become like us and take on this flesh and blood existence. And this plan was in God's mind before the creation of the world. It says in Romans 8:29, "For those whom God foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." It was God's plan from the beginning that Jesus would be the firstborn brother of a family of brothers and sisters, all of us conformed to his image, that we would be like Jesus. This is what we're predestined for in Jesus. And it's a beautiful thing. And so Hebrews 2 reverses the whole thing and says, what Jesus had to do to make that happen? In order for that to happen, he had to leave his father's throne and then come down to that stable in Bethlehem and take on flesh and blood.

And so he took on this existence and he did it so that he could die. These are the reasons for the incarnation. "Since the children have flesh and blood he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy" the devil. Jesus did it so he could die. You should just marvel at the courage and love of that. He entered the world with his eyes open. Now, of course, once a baby had to learn many things. But before he took on human flesh, he knew very well, he was doing it to die. Now, the Hebrew word for flesh, word is "basar." It's used of both man and beast. We're very similar to the beasts. It says in Genesis 2:7, "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Later in that same chapter, Genesis 2:19, it says, "Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air." Both of us are formed out of the ground. We're very much like each other in this fleshly nature, flesh is muscle, sinews, intestines, vital organs, brains, those kinds of things.

And we are very much like the animals in that regard. It also means we're mortal. We can die. Our flesh can decay in this sin cursed world, not much different than deer that are dying by the side of the road and decaying. So it is with our bodies as well. Mortal bodies. The focus though in the verse is actually on blood, it reverses it. It's interesting that NIV puts it back in the normal order, flesh and blood. But it's actually blood and flesh in the Greek. The emphasis is really on blood. And I think in two senses, one in terms of kinship, family. It says in Act 17:26, in the King James Version it says, "And God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth." We are all of one blood, we're of one race together. And so, Jesus had to partake in that race. He had to be of the same blood as us. But I think even more significant is the fact that that blood had to be poured out for sin to be forgiven. He had to have blood in order to shed the blood for our sins.

Blood for Atonement

It says in Leviticus 17:11, "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." Hebrews later will say in Hebrews 9:22, "without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness." For us to be forgiven, Jesus had to come on from heaven to earth and have blood flowing in his blood vessels, so that he could shed his blood for us. He came to die. And so it says in Romans 3:25, it was Christ whom God put forward as a propitiation. We'll talk more about that in just a moment, but he put forward as a propitiation by his blood. Propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. I think there's also a focus here in Jesus' humanity on suffering. He took on blood and flesh so that he could share in our suffering. The pain that we go through, the pain that all of us endures. No one makes it through here unscathed, friends.

We all go through pain and suffering, and Jesus, in order to become a merciful and faithful high priest had to do it too. He had to go through suffering. And so, he goes through the pain of weariness. Think about Jesus sitting by the Samaritan well, where the woman is about to come, weary as he was from his journey or picture him asleep in the back of the boat on the cushion. He's tired. Or you think about the pain of thirst, how Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink. And why did he do it? Well, first and foremost, he was thirsty. And secondly, he wanted to save her. And then on the cross, he cries out in fulfillment of scripture, but just out of his bodily needy, he cries out, I thirst. He was thirsty. He was also hungry. After fasting 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, it says in Matthew 4, in one of the great understatements, Jesus was hungry. That he was hungry. He went through all the pain that we do. He goes through the pain of temptation, which is I think the point of the passage here in verse 18, Jesus "suffered when he was tempted." And so he's able help those who are going through that kind of suffering.

He knows what fleshly temptation is like. The pain of injury, the flogging that the Roman soldiers gave to him, ripping his back to shreds and certainly, ultimately, the pain of death by crucifixion. Jesus took on flesh and blood so that he could suffer. The atonement could not be worked for us without death. Jesus came into the world to save the children from death. From the very beginning of our sin, there's a link between sin and death. Genesis 2:17, God said, "You may eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you will surely die." That is the death penalty, and it was linked to disobedience, transgression of God's law from the very beginning. We know that the wages of sin is death. And if Jesus is going to save us, he must die. He must die. He must take on that death penalty. And so, we have in verse 17, propitiation. Propitiation by death. Look at verse 17, "Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people."

Now, some of the translations are going to give you atonement there. They do that to reason with us that we don't know the word propitiation, or most people don't know it. Can I tell you? No one is born knowing the word propitiation. Everybody has to study and learn it at some point. If you don't presently know what the word propitiation means, this is your happy day. God has brought you here to learn that word. And not just so you can impress your friends with your knowledge of theology, but so that you can understand your salvation. What is propitiation? Propitiation has to do with the turning aside of the wrath of God by the shedding of a blood sacrifice. That God's wrath is averted because blood was shed on our behalf. That's what propitiation's all about.

Now earlier in last century, liberal theologians thought that the idea of propitiation was far too pagan for the noble high-minded religion of the Bible, which they were crafting or re-crafting. They figured the idea of an angry deity who is then appeased by blood sacrifices is clearly pagan and having nothing to do with the high-minded religion of the Bible so they wanted to do away with it. So they started re-translating the words giving you things like expiation, other things like that. But they were trying to get away from propitiation because it offended them that God would ever be seen to be angry with us. Surely God is never angry with us. We may be angry with God, but he's never angry with us. Friend, that's just not biblical. God's passionate reaction to our sin is wrath, it's anger. He is angry about sin. And he does avert his own wrath by the shedding of the blood of Jesus. That's called propitiation. And so this idea of propitiation, it is a pagan idea. I don't think it originated with the pagans. I think it originated with animal sacrifice that God established at the very beginning after Adam and Eve sinned. God originated it, but then the pagan religions twisted it and perverted it.

You know the story in the Trojan War Legend, JI Packer tells us this of Prince Paris, that he carried off Princess Helen to Troy and the Greeks were going to send their army and go rescue Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. They're going to get her back and they're led by their general, Agamemnon. The problem is, that Poseidon apparently, perhaps with some other of his cohort gods or goddesses, is sending contrary winds and the fleet can't get underway. What does Agamemnon do? He calls for his precious daughter and sacrifices her to the gods. Packer, I think tongue-in-cheek, said the move paid off and the wind subsided and they were able to go.

So JI Packer talks about this idea of pagan propitiation. He says this is how it works,

There are various gods, none enjoying absolute dominion, but each with some power to make life easier or harder for you. Their temper is uniformly uncertain; they take offense at the smallest things—or they get jealous because they feel you are paying too much attention to other gods and other people and not enough to themselves, and then they take it out on you by manipulating circumstances to your heart.

"The only course at that point is to humor and mollify them by an offering. The rule with offerings is the bigger the better, for the gods are inclined to hold out for something sizeable. In this they are cruel and heartless, but they have the advantage, so what can you do? The wise person bows to the inevitable and makes sure to offer something impressive enough to produce the desired result. Human sacrifice, in particular, is expensive but effective. Thus pagan religion appears as a callous commercialism, a  matter of managing and manipulating your gods by cunning bribery. And within paganism propitiation, the appeasing of celestial bad tempers, takes its place as a regular part of life, one of the many irksome necessities that one cannot get on without."  - In My Place Condemned He Stood, 29-30).

Well, that's pagan propitiation. That's not what happened with Jesus. But I tell you this, God had an aggressive wrath against our sin and he appeased that wrath in only one way, by the shedding of Jesus' blood. Hence, the word propitiation in verse 17. JI Packer said, "If I could sum up the New Testament message in three words, sum the whole thing up and get as much as I could into three words, it would be this: Adoption by propitiation." And that's what we have in the text. We are the children of God. We have been adopted by his grace. We are in his family.

How could it be that sinners like us could be adopted as his sons and daughters? Only by one way. By the propitiation that came through the blood of Jesus. Adoption by propitiation, friends, is the gospel. The biggest problem of an unbeliever's life has nothing to do with their finances, has nothing to do with their health, nothing to do with their marriage, nothing to do with their sin habits even. The biggest problem of an unbeliever's life is the wrath of God against them for their sin. In John 3:36, it says, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. But whoever rejects the Son will not see life for God's wrath remains on him." Though he or she may not feel it at all. They may be just going through the ups and downs of their everyday life not feeling at all that the biggest problem of their life is the wrath of God.

Let me give you an illustration. Let's say there's a wealthy couple on the Titanic on a certain night, in 1912. And they're in their expensive luxury berth and they're having an argument; they're going back and forth. They are really getting heated up, they're really focused on their own position, they want to win the argument when suddenly there's a lurch and a screeching sound and all that, and then nothing more after that. What was that? They look at each other. I don't know. Anyway, like I was saying and off they go. And they continue their argument little knowing that their biggest problem is the gash along the side of the ship and the thousands, even hundreds of thousands of gallons of sea water that at that moment are pouring into that doomed ship. So I think that the ship was doomed before everyone on board knew it was doomed. And so it is with us with the wrath of God. The biggest danger of your life, if you're an unbeliever, is the wrath of God against you. You may not see it, you may not feel it. But I'm here as a messenger of the gospel to proclaim it, that God has an aggressive wrath against sin, and if you do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior, that wrath will come down on you for eternity in hell.

But God sent his Son who took on flesh and blood, that he might die as a propitiation for the wrath of God, that he might avert the wrath of God and take it away completely from you, so that you can be free from it forever. And that is the essence of our freedom from slavery to fear of death. We don't fear it anymore because the wrath of God has been removed. So can I just plead with you if you're here in an unsafe state. I don't know who you are. I don't know your hearts. I can't read your minds. I don't know how it stands with you and God. But if you're an unbeliever, the wrath of God is your great danger. Flee to Christ. Come to Christ. He is your only your hope, the only possibility of salvation. This is the propitiation that's proclaimed plainly here.

Jesus took on flesh and blood so that he might propitiate the wrath of God, and so that He could destroy the devil and the fear of death that plagues us. Look at verse 14, "So that by His death, He might destroy him who holds the power of death," that is the devil.

So here we have in some marvelous, mysterious way, a contest between Christ and the devil. Jesus versus the devil. What I would call an infinitely unequal fight. Amen? Infinitely unequal. But there it is. Christ is pitted against the devil here. Hebrews 1 has already proclaimed that Jesus is greater than any angel. It seems possible that Satan was the greatest of all the angels. Filled with his own arrogance and pride, he decided to try take God's place in heaven. He led a rebellion of some of the other angels, they fought in heaven. Michael the archangel and his angels fought, and Satan lost and he was cast down to the earth. I believe all that happened before God made Adam and Eve.

Put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, made them king and queen of the worlds and put them on larger heads with Satan who thought he was king of the world. Satan, I believe was, in some mysterious way, brought to the tree to be judged. But instead he co-opted the whole trial, the court trial turned the thing around, drew in Adam and Eve into his rebellion, and we came under his thrall. We became slaves of sin and death. And so Satan in some way held the power of death. How did he hold it? Well, Jesus said in John 8:44, "He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning. Not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language for he's a liar and the father of lies." So you have to unravel that to figure it out. Satan holds the power of death through his lies, leading to our sin, leading to the death penalty of the judgment of God's law. That's how it works. He uses God's law against us to kill us. And he does that by lying to us. It's lies, sin, death. That's how he holds the power of death.

1 Corinthians 15:56 says "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." What does Satan do? He lies to you. He entices you. Baits you to sin. And then once you've committed sin, he turns around and gets all righteous on you and points the finger and says, "You sinner." And accuses you before the judgement seat of God based on your sin and seeks to use God's law against us to kill us. It would have been effective except for Jesus who stepped in and took the death penalty and crushed to use Satan's own weapon, death, against him by dying in our place.

How Christ’s Death Destroys that Power

I love the story of David's mighty men. You know how they're all listed and there's just little vignettes about each one. I want to choose one of them though, Benaiah, son of Jehoiada. Speaking of him, he struck down a huge Egyptian. Although the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. Stop right there. What courage does that take? Here's this huge Egyptian with a spear, he's like, "Anybody have a club? It's all I need today." But he goes against this man and listen to what it says, "He snatched the spear from the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear." Amen! You read the same thing in Habakkuk 3. Just look it up this afternoon. With his own spear, he was killed. Satan was killed by death, because Jesus died. Amen? And so He destroyed the devil. And in that way, made Satan's own future in the lake of fire certain. The devil knows that his time is short. He's filled with rage because of it. There's nothing that can change it for surely it's not angels he helps. No fallen angel's going to be saved by the death of Jesus, not one. Satan has no redeemer. Satan has no atoning sacrifice. There is no gospel for Satan or any of the fallen angels that fell with him. They're all lost forever.

Do you see the grace of God to us that there even is a gospel for us? But He has come, Jesus, to destroy the devil and his works, and He's snatched from the devil the keys of death and Hades. Amen? Revelation 1:18 says, "I am the living one, I was dead and behold, I'm alive forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and Hades." Jesus has the keys. It is Jesus' to kill and it is Jesus' to raise to life, even eternal life. He holds the keys of death and Hades. And so therefore, He can free us from fear of death. Look at verse 15, "And free those, who all their lives, were held in slavery by their fear of death." The greatest bondage there is, is bondage to sin. Bondage to sin. And Jesus says, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. But if the Son sets you free," What? "You will be free indeed." Amen. Free indeed.

And what was the nature of our bondage? Well, Ephesians 2 says, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you follow the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time. Gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, our flesh, and fulfilling its lust and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But God, because of His great love for us, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved." That is our salvation. We were in bondage to sin, and therefore, in bondage to fear of death. Not everybody's equally afraid of death, some people just because they're young and strong and vigorous and ignorant and haven't been to many funerals, they ain't scared. I've seen the bumper stickers. "I fear nothing." Look, God can make you afraid. We are flesh and blood. What are we? We ought to be afraid of death apart from Christ.

I was reading recently a little biography of Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviator. I don't think I've ever seen a man so afraid to die as this man. He was especially afraid to die of infection. He was mortally afraid of germs so he spent the last few years of his life lying naked in hotel rooms that have been sanitized with tissue boxes on each feet. He gave special instructions to his staff on how to prepare canned peaches. Yes, that's right, prepare canned peaches. You had to take the label off, you had to scour the can until fresh metal showed. You had to basically grind the can down. Disinfect the can, and then you had to open it and pour the contents, the peaches into a bowl without the can touching the bowl. Can touches bowl, I ain't eatin' peaches. He lived in mortal fear of dying by disease. I say he's dead already. That's no life. He lived in bondage to fear of death, and there are all different versions of that bondage, all different versions. Jesus came to set us free. And no Christian ought to live anything like that at all. Don't be afraid of death.

We'll get to that in a moment. But Jesus frees us forever from fear of death. Many Christians have lived boldly unafraid of death. Boldly unafraid. Think of Stephen in Acts 7. Stephen gives that incredible sermon, that awesome message. Sanhedrin didn't like it very well. Actually, they were incensed by it, they were enraged. So they wanted to kill him. And with murderous intent, they get up out of their seats to start to rush at him. "But Stephen," it says, "full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 'Look,' he said, 'I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." At this, they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him."

I tell you in a very beautiful way, different than Howard Hughes, Stephen was already gone. He was already in heaven. Wasn't dead yet but they're stoning him, they're killing him and he says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And then one last thing, one last thing he says, "Lord, please do not lay this sin to their charge." Just like Jesus, and off he goes. Awesome. Many saints have testified that they no longer fear death at all. Charles Spurgeon says that he knows saints that actually talked to death, they say, "I will not fear you death, why should I? You look like a dragon but your sting is gone." For these saints, says Spurgeon, "To die has been so different a thing from what they expected it to be, so light, so joyous. They have been so unloaded of all care. They felt so relieved instead of burdened. They've wondered whether this could be the monster that they had been afraid of all their days. They find it to be a pin's prick when they feared it would be a sword thrust. It is the shutting of the eye on earth and the opening of the eye in heaven."

Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan pastor said this, he was laying on his death bed, he said, "Ah! Is this dying? How have I dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend." Charles Wesley, quoting a Psalm, said, "I shall be satisfied with thy likeness." Satisfied. Satisfied. He just kept saying that over and over. Satisfied. William Everett said just one word for 25 minutes over and over, "Glory, glory, glory." Do you feel that they're already there in some mysterious way, that the deposit through the Holy Spirit had been amply poured out on them at that moment? Poured out on them and they were already in heaven? Every time a child of God dies like that crisis, already one yet another marvelous victory over fear of death.

So, Jesus took on flesh and blood so that he could die, so that he could destroy the devil and death, so that he could free us from fear of death, so that he could take hold of Abraham's descendants. I'm not going to say much about this except I'm going to tell you he doesn't do this for everybody. He doesn't save everybody. We don't believe in universal atonement. We don't believe in universal salvation. There are going to be some people in hell and they ought to fear death right through it and on, and they will when they see what's coming. But it's Abraham's descendants he helps. This is a covenant salvation. And we, whether Jew or Gentile, who follow our Father Abraham's footsteps of faith, who trust in God's promises the way Abraham did, who believe in him and it's credited to him as righteousness, we are adopted into Abraham's spiritual family and he's become for us a spiritual father.

We are descendants of Abraham by faith. Galatians 3 makes this very plain. It says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ." He says if you belong to Christ then you're Abraham's seed, that means Abraham's descendants and heirs according to the promise. You are adopted children of Abraham by faith. Those are the ones he helps. And you know what helps means here? Literally, the Greek word is to grasp or take hold of as if you're drowning. Surely it's not angels he grabs and saves, but it's Abraham's descendants. I picture exact same Greek word, Peter walking on water, remember, seeing the wind and the waves, looks around and beginning to sink cries out, "Lord, save me." And Jesus saves us as we cry out for help, reaches down and takes hold of us.\

So, Jesus took on flesh and blood so that he could die, so that he could destroy the devil and death, so that he could free us from death, so that he could take hold of Abraham's descendants, so he can be for us a merciful and faithful high priest. Look at verse 17, "For this reason, he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God and that he might make propitiation for the sins of the people." Now, this is the first time in the Book of Hebrews that Jesus' priestly ministry is mentioned. It will be abundantly unfolded for us in later chapters so I'm not going to say much about it here. I'm just going to tell you, Jesus is both merciful and faithful. Merciful horizontally to us and faithful to God. He is merciful to you, friends. He shows a great mercy and tenderness and compassion to you. And this is getting right to the pastoral application. He is tender towards you as you suffer.

And so therefore, the final point is, though Jesus can help those suffering in temptation, this is the point of it all, look at verse 18, "because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted."

You already knew it but I'm going to say that based on this text, temptation produces suffering. You already knew that, didn't you? Have any of you ever suffered temptation? It is a bitter thing. Hence, in the Lord's prayer, we ask to avoid it, lead us not into temptation, because it produces suffering. But if you want to live a holy life in this, world you must resolve to suffer. You must resolve to suffer the temptation. It says when you say no to ungodliness, it hurts. It's hard to change your habits. Think of a dieter who has come to the conclusion that he or she needs to lose a significant amount of weight but they're in really, really bad food habits. They've made an idol of food for decades. Their stomachs probably physically too large. And when they reduce their calorie intake and they are sticking to their diet, I tell you, it is physically painful to say no. Amen? Physically painful. But so it is for all sins.

You may be in the habit of gossip or slander, and the Lord's convicted you, that you don't want to lay someone low, throw them under the bus. They may have been unkind to you but you don't want to say things about them behind their back anymore. You don't want to assassinate their character. But you have these habits. And somebody, let's say, is mean to you, they're unkind. And then you've got a sympathetic ear and it's just so comfortable and you're just talking about the things that have been happening to you recently and then... Ugh, no, I'm not going to say anything, I'm not. To God be the glory, I'm going to say no. That is suffering temptation. To stand firm.

Somebody addicted to Internet pornography, they've had habits in this, I've done counseling in this area. And they want to make the change, they know it's destroying their life. They want to make the change. When the time has come to fight the battle, they have to suffer the temptation. Jesus knows what it's like to suffer temptation. He sweat great drops of blood to not give in to the temptation of saying no to his Father. He knows what it's like. He's been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin. I have a bunch of applications, I'm going to throw them all out. There's just one I want to give you. I want to get to the application of this. The Hebrew Christians were being tempted to turn their backs on Jesus. You know why? Because their Jewish friends and neighbors and relatives and rabbis were putting pressure on them, hurting them, confiscating things from them, taking things from their lives. And so they were needing to stand firm in a time of temptation and testing. And the author here, you know what he's doing in these verses? He's giving them Jesus at that moment.

When you are being tempted, call Jesus into that moment. Have Jesus' hand reach down like he did for Peter and pull you up. That's what its all about. The hymn, we were riding back from a wedding yesterday and we were doing our family devotion in the car, I was like, "Sing a hymn." Alright "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." That's the one I chose cause it was in my mind. "All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. O what peace we often forfeit. O what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Listen to the second verse, have we trials and what? Temptations. Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it to the Lord in prayer. That's what this text is about. A merciful and faithful high priest who took on flesh and blood, who died on the cross to deliver you from fear of death, to give you a promise of eternal life, and then stand with you in the fight for holiness. Call on him to be holy. Close with me in prayer.

Some verses just unfold like a cave of treasure or like one of those little toys you get that has all these little secret hidden compartments and you keep learning. It's this cleverly made thing. Made of wood perhaps, with little secret compartments and you have to learn how each one of them opens, and inside each one, there's a gold ring or a silver chain or some new thing. And that's the way I look at this passage that we're going look at today, especially verse 10. I was saying to some of the men as we're praying, as I worked on the sermon this morning, it was 27 minutes on verse 10 alone. So if 27 minutes from now, we're still on verse 10, don't despair, just listen and take it in because it's an astonishing verse. But all of them are magnificent.

And so we're going to learn from this text, the greatness of Christ, the greatness of his salvation that he works for us. But we're going to go immediately right away to the center of the universe. We're going to go right away to the center of everything, and that is to God. God is the focus of verse 10. God's thoughts, what God is doing in salvation, what it was fitting for God to do. God is the center of verse 10, as God as the center of all things. God is the center of the universe. And so the author right away in verse 10 emphasizes God's central role in the universe. "For it was fitting for him, [God, was fitting for him] for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings." So we're going right away to the idea of God and how healthy is it for us to do that.

We talked recently about how we are tempted constantly to drift away from God, away from Christ. We need to know that everything in this universe exists for God. Through God. By God. That God is the center of all things. We are living in God's house. We are playing with God's things. We are eating at God's table. We are sleeping under God's roof. We are breathing God's air. We are wearing God's clothes. This is God's universe that we're in. We are welcome guests as created beings, created in his image. We are adopted sons and daughters through Christ but it's God's universe.

The Essence of Our Sinfulness: Putting Man at the Center

Now, the essence of our sinfulness is to put man at the center of all things and to relegate God increasingly to nothingness. A practical atheism. And here, the word that comes to my mind is the word secular. We live in a secular world, a secular society. And what is the essence of our secular society of secular education in secular schools of secular banter on talk radio of secular perspectives and the news media of secular mentality and political debates? The essence of secular America is one central lesson and is being drummed into us every day. God, if he even exists, is irrelevant. That's the lesson. If he even exists, and it's up to you to decide, you can do what you want in your own little private world but if he even exists, God is irrelevant to this world. Irrelevant to your chemistry midterm. He's irrelevant to who wins the big football game on Saturday afternoon. He's irrelevant to your plans for a career. He's irrelevant to the scenery at Yosemite National Park. Irrelevant to the economic conditions in the United States. God just doesn't matter because I notice he's not really brought up in any of those discussions. He's never mentioned at all. But when you enter the world of the Bible, it's an entirely different issue.

When you step into God's world through the scripture, it's a whole different thing. Amen? You walk in through Genesis 1 and right away it's, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, 'let there be light' and there was light." This is God's universe. And God isn't confused about that, by the way. He knows it's his universe. He wants us to know it too by faith. And so in Romans 11, Eric already quoted it, "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen." And so, a God-centered salvation really is the story of the whole Bible. That's what it's about. God is the alpha and the omega of human salvation. Human sinfulness mars God's universe and God will have it out, and God alone can remedy this pollution and bring us to glory.

God Crafted a God-Honoring Salvation: “It was fitting...”

So, we're talking in verse 10, in Hebrews 2:10 about a God fitting salvation. A salvation that's appropriate for God. It's fitting for God. The author speaks about what's fitting. The fitting nature of God's plan of salvation. It was fitting. It was appropriate. It was well suited to God and to his nature. God can do nothing that violates his nature. He never will. Everything God does lines up well with who he is and what he wills to do. God is never passive, friends. He's never along for the ride. He's never a victim taken where he doesn't want to go. And he's never waiting for man to make the final decision so he'll know what to do. If God wanted to save sinners, and he does, thank God for that. If God wanted to save sinners and bring them to glory, he had to do it in a fitting way.

And so what is the destination of our salvation? It is a fitting destination. It was fitting for God to bring us to a certain destination. And what is it? Glory. I'm going to speak more about this destination in a moment. But it was fitting for that to be the destination of this God-centered salvation, glory, which is God. That we would see the glory of God, and drink it in and immerse ourselves in it. It was fitting that that should be the destination of our salvation. It was fitting to bring many sons to glory. It lined up with the holiness of God. It lined up with the goodness of God to bring us to glory. It was fitting. And not only was the destination of our salvation fitting, it was fitting for God to bring us to glory, the means by which He brought us to glory was fitting. And what are those means? In Hebrews 2:10, it's Christ's suffering. That's what we're talking about here. It was appropriate. It was fitting for God to make Christ suffer in order to bring us to glory. That's very deep, isn't it? That's a profound concept.

The author's point here is, it was especially fitting for God to bring many sons to glory by making Christ perfect through suffering. Look again in verse 10, "For it was fitting for Him, from whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory to perfect the author of their salvation through suffering." So, for God to vindicate his holiness and to vindicate, to put his justice on display, it was appropriate for him to crush his only begotten, his beloved son. It was fitting for Him to do it. That's what the author's saying here. Romans 3:25-26 says, "God presented Him as a propitiation to faith in His blood." That word means a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice that takes away wrath. That's what propitiation means. God presented Christ as a propitiation through faith in His blood. "He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." So it's fitting for God to make Jesus suffer. The perfection of our salvation as it lines up with God's nature, it lines up with his attributes. He's saved us in the most appropriate and fitting way. Amen?

Alright, so let's look more at this destination of our salvation, and that is our glory in bringing... The NIV puts the glory part first. I've been giving you the NAS this morning because it puts God first, and that's what it doesn't agree. But the NIV then right away says, "In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God," etcetera. The focus of salvation here are many sons, and we're going to talk more about the family aspect of salvation in a moment. But we're focused on many sons and in bringing many sons to glory, God is bringing us to glory. The aspect of bringing is a focus on God's activity, God's energy, God's leadership, God's power. God comes to lead us out of a place and bring us to another place.

Picture the exodus. And so He's bringing us to glory. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life as we sang. Isn’t that beautiful? I love that song. I almost broke decorum and said, "Eric, sing it again one more time." Couldn't do it. But I wouldn't have mind if somebody else did it. I would have been happy to sing it. Don't do it, though, please. But anyway. I'd go up and talk to say, "Yeah, sing it again."

But I just love it. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the way we get to glory. There's a journey to be traveled here. We're going to a promised land, and the name of that promised land is glory. It's glory land, friends. That's where we're heading. He's bringing many sons to glory. And there's a richness to that expression, "many sons." Just zero in on the word "many." He's not saving just a few people. He's saving a lavish number of people. There's a multitude greater than anyone could count. It says in Revelations 7 that it is a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe and language and people and nation, standing around the throne, giving praise to the Lamb. And they're dressed in white robes, and they're praising God. It's a lavish, generous amount of the human race that's being saved here, many sons. And the word glory, I think is both a destination and a condition. In heaven, we will both see glory and we will be glory. You almost can't imagine the sights you're going to see. It's beyond imagination, like Paul caught up to the third heaven came back down and said, "Look, inexpressible." It's inexpressible. I can't put it into words.

In one of the songs we sang this morning, it says, "We're going to say goodbye to words. No more words." Hey, look, words are fine. That's what you're listening to right now. This right now, this preaching, this time in the Bible, is the essence of what it means to see through a glass darkly. We're not blind. We're seeing, but we're just seeing through a glass darkly, through nouns and verbs, through preaching, through the Word, through texts and paragraphs. But we will gladly trade it all, and no disrespect to the Word because the Word itself will live forever. But the printed page and this, it's gone for the reality itself. Amen? You're not going to be staring at love letters from your fiancé after you're married, right? It's just, no, you don't. There he is, there she is. We're going to see the bridegroom face to face. All the sights we're going to see. We're going to see glory. Revelation 21, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice coming from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them.'"

That's God saying that, saying, "At last, we get to be together and you get to see my glory." Awesome. Revelation 21:11 and 12, the New Jerusalem, it says shown with the glory of God and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. And it had a great high wall with 12 gates and 12 angels at the gates. And it said later in that chapter, "I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp." And so the entire city of God and the new heavens and the new earth are just gonna be radiant with the glory of God. It's just going to shine with the glory of God through Jesus. It's going to be magnificent. The colors will be beautiful, the proportions perfect in every way. The entire universe will glow, openly glow with the glory of God in bringing many sons to glory. That's what that means, that's where we're heading. A world of glory. God wanted to bring his adopted sons and daughters to the most glorious place imaginable, and that is to him to see his own glory and to worship him forever.

So we will see glory but we're also going to be glory ourselves. Remember, we're talking about what it was fitting for. It was fitting for God in bringing many sons to glory. Friends, it would not be fitting for us to be there and not be glorious too. For us to be there in ugly, wretched, stinking clothes of rebellion and sin, it would not be fitting. We would mar the place, we would be like black holes of darkness sucking the light in and making it disappear. We spent enough time doing that, amen? It's time to be done with that and so we're going to be made glorious ourselves so that we can fit right in. It would not be fitting any other way. And so we must be glorious ourselves, and we will... It says in Matthew 13, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." You're going to just shine with the radiant glory of Jesus. The finished work of your salvation, glorification. You will shine with it, and your own good works and your achievements and that of the whole church will make the place glorious in a marvelous way.

It says again in Revelation 21, "The nations will walk by the light of the glory of God and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it." So the kings are going to bring their own kind of glory into the New Jerusalem, and the glory and the honor of the nations will be brought into it and nothing impure will ever enter it nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And so there will be our glorious deeds, purified by the blood of Jesus, purified by the fire of judgment day, but they'll be there and they will shine with their own unique glory, your own contributions to the glory of that city. The courage of the martyrs will shine in that place. So also the sacrifice of the missionaries who gave up everything to go to a distant land and tell people about Christ. The generosity of those who gave money, and time, and energy, and even a cup of cold water to advance the kingdom of Christ will shine there. Even those simple cups of cold water. That's a good hope for me, friends. I may not be a martyr but I can give a cup of cold water today. Amen? Matthew 10.

Let's have lots of that, but it's just going to shine with the good deeds done by faith. The best sermons preached by Spurgeon, and Luther, and Robert Murray McCheyne, and any of these other great preachers will shine there in a marvelous way. The boldness of George Whitefield's field preaching to the coal miners in Bristol. Nobody had ever done that before, that moment's just going to shine there. And so we're going to see glory and we're going to be glory, and our own holiness is a big part of that. We must be holy, so that if you look at verse 11, don't misunderstand, we're not done with verse 10. You know that, don't you? Okay. We're not. So those of you that are timing, and I hope no one is timing me. Alright.

But we're not done with verse 10, but just look at verse 11, it says, "Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family." So the essence of our glory is our holiness. Our holiness, friends. God is light, and in Him, there's no darkness at all. We must be made holy. And that's what it means to be being brought to glory, we're being sanctified, we're being made progressively more like Jesus. That's what it means to be that we're being brought to glory.

I just see sanctification all over that. I actually believe that sanctification is just a subset of glorification. I say that with all seriousness, meditate on that and tell me what you think, but I think it is because it's just skipped in Romans chapter 8. It says in Romans 8:29-30, "For those whom God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son." That's glory, friends. That we might be glory, conformed to the image of Jesus, that he might be the first born among many brothers. That's that family aspect, we'll get to that in a minute. And those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified he also glorified.

Now, you, systematic theologians say, "What happened to sanctification?" It's in there. It's just called glorification. We are being brought from glory to glory. We're being made ever more glorious by putting sin to death and becoming more like Jesus. That's what it means to bring many sons to glory. And so, it was fitting that God should do that to us. And how does he do it? He does it through Jesus. It was fitting that God through whom and for whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.

Now we're talking about Jesus at last. God's bringing you to glory through Jesus and no other way. There is no other way. And so, we're focusing on Jesus. Now, who is this, this author of our salvation? What an incredible word. The Greek word is archegos.

And so NIV has author of our salvation. So you could picture some great author sitting at a desk and writing an incredible novel, like Leo Tolstoy sitting at his desk there in his farm, in Yasnaya Polyana, in Russia. In 1862, he begins writing War and Peace, crafting arguably the greatest novel in literary history. Sprawling tale of Czarist Russia and Napoleonic invasion told through the eyes of five aristocratic families, 580 different named characters in the story, 580 of them. A complex psychological drama of immense scope and detail. All of it flowing from the mind through the pen of an author, who many have called the greatest author of all time, Leo Tolstoy. Well, he is not the greatest author of all time. Amen? Jesus is the greatest author of all time.

By the way, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought War and Peace. I'm on page two. I'm excited about that. I think my son called it a geek book. But I like historical novels so we'll see. I'll tell you in 12 years how it is.

But Jesus is the author of our salvation, writing it out. Writing all of it out. That's an incredible conception and not just my salvation, but the salvation of that multitude from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation. What a complex tale. Not 580 characters but a multitude greater than anyone could count. And the complexity of weaving their lives together with unbelievers and with culture and language and missionaries, and what a story. What a story. He's the author of our salvation, isn't that awesome? Christ wrote our salvation story. He says in Revelations 22:13, "I am the Alpha and the Omega." Those are letters. Those are Greek letters. I wrote the first letter and I'll write the last letter. I'm the first and the last. I am the beginning and the end. That's who I am. So your life story is salvation in Jesus. That's your story, if you're a Christian. And it was written in Jesus' blood before God said, "Let there be light."

Psalm 139, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." And this verse says it's Jesus that wrote the story, he's the author of your salvation. He comes up with a story line, the plot, the characters, plot, twist, climax; they knew them all. All of that, Jesus wrote it, written in his blood and he had to pay the price for it. So archegos can be translated author, but I don't even think that's the best translation. I don't think that's the best translation of this word. Other versions have captain of our salvation. I like captain, but I like pioneer better. Because both captain and pioneer get at something like what I think the Greek word... The home base of this Greek word is, usually refers to some kind of a hero. A great warrior who's a trailblazer and who through military conquest subdued an area and founded a city. He's then a patriarchal leader who has sons and grandsons. And he's looked on as the founder of the whole city and the surrounding region. That's what archegos tends to be in the Greek. ESV translates it's founder of our salvation. One who established a city in which you could live, pioneer maybe.

So Jesus is our pioneer. He goes on ahead of us boldly. He carves a trail that we must follow if we are to reach the promised land. There's no other way. So we're going to follow Jesus, the trailblazer our salvation. Trailblazer hero has to be a warrior with immense courage for the promised land has to be taken by force. Later in chapter 2, it talks about how he destroyed the one who held the power of death, that is the devil and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. He's a hero. He's a conqueror. He's a fighter, warrior. You could picture the exploits maybe of a Daniel Boone carving his way through the Appalachian Mountains in 1778, blazing the wilderness trail to the fertile soil of Kentucky. He has to fight off the Cherokee and Shawnee and Delaware Indians who don't want settlers in their hunting grounds. With great knowledge and courage, he widens the wilderness trail by felling trees with an ax.

Try chopping down an oak tree with an ax. Just do it like in real life and see what it's like. I've done it. The tree was like this big in diameter, it took me a long time. But these guys were chopping down trees making corduroy roads. And before the end of the 18th century, that wilderness trail that he helped trailblaze was followed by over 200,000 settlers through the Cumberland Gap. He is a kind of an archegos, a warrior pioneer whose courage enables him to establish an ancestral town in enemy territory, where his descendants can flourish. But Jesus is the archegos of our salvation. That's what this word means. The bold pioneer who carves the way and destroys the enemy and founds a city. But now here's the deal. He had to pay for it with his life, friends. He had to suffer and die in order to bring us to glory. That's what verse 10 is talking about. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author or pioneer or captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. Suffering.

Now, what suffering did our pioneer have to endure? Well, the suffering of incarnation, the suffering of temptation, the suffering of rejection, of persecution, of torture and physical death, the suffering of the wrath of God on the cross as our substitute, shedding his blood for us. That suffering. All of it. Well, what does it mean that Jesus is made perfect through suffering? It's a difficult phrase. It was fitting for God to make his son perfect through suffering. Well, it's not like us. We were greatly imperfect, wicked even, and we are made perfect through the salvation work of Jesus. That's not what's happening with Jesus. He was in no way ever anything but holy and perfect. What then does it mean that he was made perfect through suffering? Well, I think what it meant is that he had to live it. He had to do it. He had to actually go through that life. He had to be hungry and thirsty, and he had to be rejected and despised, he had to go through it. He had to live it on the earth, and he had to actually get nailed to the cross and shed his actual blood and die.

And without that, he couldn't have, I think the Hebrew word really is perfected or completed our salvation. He would've been an incomplete Savior without actually suffering. He had to suffer to be our pioneer, that's what I think it means. Had Jesus not suffered incarnation, he could not have shared our humanity and understood the physical nature of our misery; what it was like to be hungry and tired and feel pain and weariness. If Christ had not suffered temptation, he could not have been our sympathetic and merciful high priest who could say, "I understand what it's like to be tempted. I've been tempted in every way just as you are and so, I can be your merciful and faithful high priest." If he had not suffered rejection by his own people, he would not have been able to perfect God's salvation, complex salvation plan for the Jews, which called for them to reject their own Messiah, and then for God to show mercy on them and bring them back and regraft them back into their own olive tree. Read about it in Romans 11.

But he had to go through the suffering of rejection by the Jews. If Christ had not suffered physical torture and death, he could not have destroyed the devil and freed us from our slavery to fear of death. All of it was suffering and he had to go through it. And if he had not suffered the wrath of God, verse 17 says, in order that he might make atonement for the sins of the people, our sins would not be atoned for. But now they are. He's our perfect Savior. Amen? He is the perfect Savior for you and me. And he's been made perfect through suffering, and so, we have atonement for our sins.

Why did he do it? What was his reason for doing? What was the connection to us? Well, here's where: I want to bring out the family ties between us and Jesus. We are of the same family as Jesus. Isn't that incredible when you think about that? This whole section here is saturated in family language. Look at verse 11, "Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family." So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. Verse 12, he says, I will declare your name to my brothers." Verse 13, again, he says, "Here am I and the children God has given me." On verse 14, "since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity." On verse 16, "For surely it's not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants." In verse 17, "For this reason, he had to be made like his brothers in every way."

Go back to verse 16, even though it's not really supposed to be in this sermon because it's supposed to be just on 10 to 13. Is it okay if I look at verse 16 for a minute? Is that alright? Rick said it is, so I can do that. Alright, so look at verse 16. "It's not angels he helps," who does he help? Abraham's family. "Abraham's descendants." He's keeping the promise made to Abraham. You remember that promise? Where God took him out on that starry night and he said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars-if indeed you can count them... So shall your offspring be." Well, we've come to realize in the new covenant that that offspring is not physical, it's not just the physical descendants. Just because you had Abraham as your physical father, it didn't mean you're going to heaven. Romans 9 makes that very plain. Not all Abraham's physical children are the offspring of Abraham. But only those who believe, those who are by faith Abraham's children.

And so, even Galatian believers, Gentile believers, who have trusted in Jesus are engrafted into Abraham's family. They're family members. We are members of Abraham's family, he's our father in faith, it says in Romans 4. And so, there is this family. And so, Jesus in verse 16 of Hebrews 2, he doesn't help angels. What angels would need help? Fallen angels, demons, he doesn't... There's no atonement for demons, they're lost, they're going to hell, there's nothing that's going to happen for them. No gospel for them. But he helps Abraham's descendants, Abraham's family, and that's us. We who have trusted in him. And so, it says in verse 11 that Jesus isn't ashamed of us. Isn't that incredible? I mean, just let that roll around in your mind for a little while. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. Ashamed. That's astonishing.

Could there be anything in us that would make him ashamed? Might there be anything in your history that would make him ashamed to own you as his brother or sister? Romans 6:21 says, "What benefit did you reap at that time from those things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death." There's all kinds of shameful things in our lives. But Jesus is not ashamed to call you brother or sister. Isn't that incredible? He's not ashamed. Welcomes it. On judgement day, he's going to acknowledge you and say, "He's my brother. She's my sister. They're with me." And in you'll go, through Jesus the door, right into heaven. He's not ashamed of you, not ashamed to own you. Do you see now how wrong it would be for you to act ashamed of Jesus now? Have you ever acted ashamed of Jesus? Have you ever been ashamed to say his name? I don't think there's any of us that could say, "I've never been ashamed to say Jesus' name." It's a great sin actually. Jesus said, "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels."

I love sports and I like to watch sports. I think of the great moments on the ball fields and all that but I have to tell you, probably my favorite, favorite moment in sports happened January 30, 2000. And it wasn't even an athletic achievement. The athletic achievements had already occurred. It was Super Bowl 34, Kurt Warner had led the St Louis Rams to a very exciting victory over the Tennessee Titans. I couldn't care less about the Rams or the Titans but I watched the game. You know how it is, this is the Super Bowl. And he had led the Rams on a game winning touchdown drive and then the defense had somehow held off the Titans on the two yard line, the game ended. It was exciting game. And so they get Kurt Warner the MVP. And Mike Tirico of ABC stands there with a microphone in front of his face as 50 million people are watching this interview, I guess, or more. Who knows? And I love this, this is my favorite moment in sports, right here. Mike Tirico, "First things first, Kurt, tell us about that final touchdown pass to Isaac." Kurt Warner's answer, "First things first, Mike, I want to give glory to my Lord and Savior. Thank you, Jesus!" He said it louder than that actually. That's my favorite moment in sports.

Actually, his foundation is called First Things First Foundation. Isn't that awesome? First things first, I couldn't care less about the touchdown to Isaac, let's talk about Jesus. And not just thank God. Look, there's nothing wrong with saying God. God is fine. But let's say Jesus more. Amen? Let's say Jesus a lot. Thank you, Jesus. It's the name that divides us from the unbelievers. Let's say the name then. Let's not be ashamed of the name. And Kurt Warner said it with the greatest boldness I'd ever seen in my life. He did it again when he led the Arizona Cardinals into the Super Bowl. Same thing. He said, "You know what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. Thank you, Jesus." He said the same thing. First time was better though, it was awesome. I mean, he was just so pumped. Been taken from the Hy-Vee convenience store and arena football to be Super Bowl MVP, and he just was overwhelmed more with his salvation than anything. I want to be with people like that forever. Amen? Saying, as strong as we can, "Thank you, Jesus!" And let's say it to our neighbors, and our co-workers, and our unbelieving family, and all these people, and let's not be ashamed to say the name Jesus. It saves people.

Everyone who calls on that name is going to be saved. Let them get all prickly and irritable and frustrated and then... I was like that. I was like that for two years. Boy, did I abuse the guy who led me to Christ. But he kept saying the name Jesus to me. And I eventually called on that name. And so we have fellowship. We're flesh and blood with him and so we share the same family. And Jesus agreed, because the children, verse 14, have flesh and blood. He shared in their humanity in the same family. We're flesh and blood. Like Laban said to Jacob when he came on the journey and he was there and he said, "You are my flesh and blood." And he welcomed him in. That's what Jesus is going to say to you and me. Amen? You are my flesh and blood. You just come right in here. And for Jesus, this was an eternal commitment. An eternal commitment to be flesh and blood with us. Why do I say that? He had to agree to take the body back up again, right? Because without taking the human body back up, it wouldn't be a resurrection. He had to be human before and after. He had to take up the body, you see?

And so he said after the resurrection, "Look at my hands and my feet, it is I myself, touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have." And so Jesus shares with us in our flesh and blood. He's also a sharer with us in our life of faith. We relate to God only by faith. Remember I said, "We see through a glass darkly. We see him only by faith." And so Jesus is like us in that as well. Or was in his time on earth. Faith is temporary for us and it was for him, but look at verse 13, it says, "And again I will put my trust in him." It's a strange little verse. I had the hardest time when I first went through Hebrews carefully and I was memorizing scriptures and looking, I was like, "What is this here for? I will put my trust in Him." It's right in the middle of nowhere. I'm telling you, the author to Hebrews is a genius. His knowledge of the Bible is deep and real and he assumes a lot.

And if you're not tracking him on Isaiah 8:17, that's your problem, not his. He's moving right on. What is going on in Isaiah 8:17? That's what it's a quote of. Well, Isaiah the prophet, living in a time of great danger when the Assyrians were about to invade, and it seemed like God was hiding his face from Israel, said, "I'm going to trust God despite the fact, it seems, you're hiding your face from Israel." This is what 8:17 says, Isaiah 8:17, "I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in him." Jesus said that on the cross. Now, in what way was God hiding his face from Jesus at the cross? Well, you know in what way. He said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why are you hiding your face from me? And so he put his trust in God. He entrusted himself to God. It says in 1 Peter 2:23, "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats, instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." He trusted his life to God, he trusted his work on the cross to God. He put his trust in God.

And so when he calls out in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." And I think if you could just add more things, "Father, into your hands I commit this atoning work. Do something with it. I will put my trust in Him." That's what he said. And he's like us in that. He's made like a sinner, really. For whom God is hiding His face, he trust in God anyway, on the cross. And as a result, he loses none of his children.

Again, he says, "Here am I and the children God has given me." Isn't that beautiful? You are a child given to Jesus. God the Father gave the elect to Jesus, the children. He said, "Here, save them." And in effect, when it's all done, you know what's going to happen? He's going to stand with all of those children, all of his elect, all the ones he saved and says, "Here am I and the ones you gave me. I didn't lose any of them. I saved them all."

And so he says in John 17:6, "I have revealed you to those whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours, you gave them to me, and they have obeyed your word." And again, John 18:9, Jesus said, "I have not lost one of those you have given me." And again he says in John 6:39, "This is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day." And so he says in Hebrews 2:13, "Here am I and all the children you gave me." 100%. Isn't that comforting? If you're God's child through Jesus right now, he's going to someday present you to God and say, "Here they are, all of them. I'm not going to lose any of them."

And so what is the consummation of our salvation? It's worship. He says in verse 12, "I will declare Your name to My brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises." We have here this great assembly of worship. We're going to a worship time. We're going to an awesome worship time, that's where we're heading. And so, again and again in the Book of Psalms, there's this great assembly that's pictured, assembly of worship. And so in the congregation, in the assembly, he says, "Here are my children, all of them are here." And "I will declare your name to my brothers and in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises." The author of Hebrews describes that to Jesus. Jesus says that. This is the best and maybe even only clear verse in the entire Bible on Jesus singing. Aren't you looking forward to hearing Jesus sing at the wedding banquet of the Lamb? The bridegroom stands up and starts to sing, and the topic of his song, the praise of his Father. He's going to sing God's praise in front of us. Isn't that awesome? Isn't that awesome? !

Like Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, sings Narnia into existence and the magician's nephew, he just sings. And as he sings and the song changes in lilts, different parts of Narnia start getting created. That's how CS Lewis pictured creation, Aslan the lion, the Christ-like lion singing and creation coming. Well, it's going to be the end of the story then redemption is done and Jesus is going to rise at the wedding banquet and he's going to sing the praise of God. Isn't that cool? I think that's just an awesome thing. And we will be there and we will join in, and sing a new song, praising God. And we will worship Him forever.

What application can we take from this? We'll come to Christ, come to Christ now. It could be God brought you here today to hear this message, Jesus shed his blood. You've heard everything you need. I've been very clear about the cross. Very clear about faith. The need for repentance and faith. Apart from Him you're lost. But perhaps you're not lost. God brought you here today. All you need to do is look to Jesus by faith and put your trust in him, like the text says.

Trust in him and your sins will be forgiven. And you will be welcomed as a child of God. As many as received him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. And you'll be one of those that he'll speak of, saying, "Here am I and the children God has given me." For those of you that are already believers, just understand the fellowship of suffering that Jesus has with you. He went through suffering so that he could help you in suffering. And you may be going through suffering right now. You may be going through psychological suffering, emotional, financial suffering, suffering with sin, temptation. Jesus knows and understands. Now, isn't it sweet that our present sufferings aren't even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us? Isn't that wonderful? But it's still suffering. And Jesus can help you in your suffering because he's suffered too.

And thirdly, anticipate heavenly worship. Picture Christ singing. Can I speak a word to cool teenage boys now for a moment, who don't like to sing? Because it's not cool and none of their friends are singing. Jesus sings, friends. Jesus is cool. You should sing too, from your heart. Don't be embarrassed to sing. We should sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and praise God as Jesus did. So sing. Sing when you're grieving. Sing when you're hurting. Sing when you're suffering. Sing in anticipation of hearing Jesus sing over you. Fourth, be God-centered in your outlook. Fight secularism. Fight it. God matters to everything. At all times, God matters. And be willing to proclaim the name of Jesus in this secular world. Be willing to offend people with Jesus. And don't listen to any Satan back talk to you about "Well, you weren't loving, you weren't sensitive." Look, say the name of Jesus, say it boldly, say it like you're not ashamed of him because he's not ashamed of you.

And then finally, meditate on Jesus as the author of your salvation. If you're a literary kind of person, author, you'll like that. If you're more of a military history or kind of thing, go with Pioneer and Captain. But either way, just know this, Jesus is saving you and he's bringing you to glory and nothing's going to stop him. Close with me in prayer.

This probably is my favorite time of year. I love the low humidity and the piercingly blue skies I saw yesterday. I was standing out in the yard with my daughter and we were just looking around at the sky and how fiercely blue it is. Don't you love this time of year? Maybe I'm alone in that, I don't know, but I just love to see the changing seasons, the leaves turning. I'm not excited about the fact they're about to descend under my lawn for the 12th consecutive year, and I'll have to clean them up, but I do love this time of year.

And as we were standing out there, , I was just thinking about the gift of vision and what a beautiful thing this world is that He's made. And how the light just streams into our eyes and gives us the picture of the world around us. And it occurs to me as I stand before you and preach today, I desire to be somewhat of an eye doctor, a spiritual eye physician, to help you to see what ordinarily we would not see. Because there is physical vision and then there is spiritual vision, and we need to see what we do not see. We need to see spiritually what we cannot see physically. And this text, Hebrews 2:5-9, talks about what we do not see and what we see, and the difference between what ought to be or what will be someday and what is now. And so "At present," the text says, "We do not see everything subjected to Him."  The "Him" is first and foremost Jesus. What is subjected is humanity under Him. We'll talk about that, but we don't see everything the way it should be. We do not see everything subjected.

Things are in disarray, things are in chaos it seems. There is pain and misery and suffering, we'll talk about that. But then the next verse says, "But we see Jesus." And so therefore, it just occurs to me that my job, my responsibility is to enable you to see Jesus today. That's what I'm here for, to be somewhat of an eye physician. Sometimes it just happens by prayer. Remember how Elisha with his servant, they're in Dothan and surrounded by the Aramean army, and he's like, "Don't worry about it. There's more on our side than on theirs. We're fine." "I don't get it," says the servant. "I don't see anything but trouble today." "Oh, Lord, open his eyes. Open his eyes." And his eyes were open and he saw chariots of fire. The hosts, the heavenly hosts surrounding them and everything was fine.

And so today, it's about spiritual vision. It's about being for me a spiritual eye doctor. We have some skilled physicians in this church, one in particular, a good friend of mine, an excellent eye doctor, and he's able with incredible technology to just shape the way that some people see, what had been blurry is suddenly brought into sharp focus. What a gift that is. May that happen today by the word of God. May we see Jesus today by the word of God. And if that's my privilege today, if that's my responsibility, what a gift that is to me. That I actually get to be up here and to proclaim Jesus to you, so that as a result of this time together, you see Jesus more clearly than you did before. What a gift that is.

Now what is the context of Hebrews 2:5-9? Well, remember I believe that the author is writing to some Jews who had made a profession of faith in Christ, but who are now under pressure. The world was squeezing on them, specifically I think the Jewish world. Squeezing on these Jewish people to renounce their confession of Christ. Give it up and come back to what they had grown up with, what they had always known, Judaism. Come back to Christless Judaism. Old covenant Judaism as they understood it, without Jesus of Nazareth, come back to that. The only way you can do that though is to renounce Jesus because he's come now, he's been clearly proclaimed. They've heard the gospel, they said they believed it, they probably had been baptized, we'll talk about all that, but they've made a profession of faith and now they are being tempted, they are under pressure, I think, from Jewish friends and family and neighbors, rabbis, authority figures to renounce Christ and go back to the old ways.

And so they are suffering in the world, they are getting beaten on, and they do not see everything arranged under Jesus. And so the author wants to give them Jesus, the spiritual vision of Jesus. That which we cannot do physically. It says in 1 Peter, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him." So it's all about faith today and things that do not appear as they should be or as they will be. Of a world to come, it mentions in verse 5, about this world to come, a world that isn't here yet and that we can only see by faith. That's what we're about today. And so this author is talking about what is but ought not to be, what will be but isn't yet, and how appearances can be deceiving, how what you see may not be really what's going on. And how through it all we need to see the promises of God of a future world that's going to be submitted to Christ, everything under Christ, and of Christ at the right hand of Almighty God in glory, reigning in glory. You need to see that today.

And even though we are not first century Jews under persecution from rabbis and Jewish neighbors to go back to old covenant Judaism, we need to see Jesus today too, don't we? And so Hebrews 2:5-9 speaks to us. And what the author's going to do is he's going to be bringing in Psalm 8. Magnificent psalm, and he's going to be meditating a little bit on a portion of Psalm 8, and he just does this understanding the whole world view of Psalm 8. And so we have to do a little work on Psalm 8 because what he's doing is he's going back through the vision, the portal of Psalm 8 to look at how man was established in this world and how Jesus came in effect to reclaim our position of glory and status in this world through his redemptive work.

And so, man's original place through the vision of Psalm 8 is a throne of glory. It's a testimony really to man's surprising glory. As we look at Psalm 8, you don't have to turn there but you know the psalm and I'll just be quoting parts of it. The central issue of Psalm 8 is the central issue of the universe and the central issue of the Bible, God's glory. And so Psalm 8:1 begins, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth." The great glory of God spread out over all the worlds. How majestic is your name. And then the Psalm ends that way, Psalm 8 in verse nine, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth."

But a secondary issue in Psalm 8 is man's apparent smallness in light of the immensity of God's glory. "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of us? The son of man that you care for him?" What are we that you should even notice us? How immense is the cosmos? How infinite it seems and how great the number of stars. How vast they are. And what are we? What is man that you are even mindful of him? And yet, despite all the appearance of man's immense smallness, the Psalm says, "You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet," it says. Well, that's a bit surprising. It's not what you would think.

When we think about angels, angels are clearly more powerful than we are. Clearly. Angels dwell in heaven but we are dwelling here on earth. Angels see the face of God and we do not. Angels shine with the glory, a heavenly glory of God. We do not. Angels display supernatural power and we do not. So what is man in the light of angelic power and glory? And yet God, in creation, gave us a throne.

So the author to Hebrews here in Hebrews 2 introduces Psalm 8 and quotes it in a rather curious way. Verse 6 says, "There is a place where someone has testified: 'What is man that you are mindful of him, the a son of man that you care for him?'" Now, before you want to get after the author to Hebrews as though he doesn't know the Bible very well. Look, let me tell you something, the author to Hebrews knows Old Testament scripture better than you will in 10 lifetimes. He knows exactly who wrote Psalm 8. He's not confused about that nor has he forgotten it. He's always doing something, this author, this brilliant, genius author of the Book of Hebrews. He's always at something and you know what he's doing right now? Minimizing man and maximizing God. Does it really matter to my argument who wrote Psalm 8? Now, it will matter in Hebrews 4 that David wrote Psalm 95 so he's going to quote David as the author of Psalm 95. He'll talk about David. So he knows all about David and his authorship of the Psalms but here he just says, "There's a place where someone has testified: 'What is man that you are mindful of him?'" So he's pushing David to the background and saying, "Just someone wrote this." And Psalm 8 makes the point the author to Hebrews wants to make here in Hebrews 2, and that is, that God entrusted to man a place of glory and honor and creation. You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.

By the word of God, man was made a little lower than the angels. He made him ruler, it says in Psalm 8:6-8, "You made them ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet, all flocks and herds, beasts of the field, birds of the air, and the fish of the sea. All that swim in the path of the seas." Man was put over all that. Made a little lower than the angels. Crowned with glory and honor.

Specifically, I think being created in the image of God and then given this position of rulership over the planet earth. And he did not give this position of honor and glory to angels even though they are stronger and more powerful. Look at verse 5, "It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come about which we are speaking." The key issue then here is the world to come, and I'm going to talk more about the world to come, what it is, and Christ's rule over it, though man was originally given a place of glory and honor in this world.

So what is the glory of man? Of the human race? Rulership over the world. Genesis 1, this is our charter of rulership over the earth. Verses 26-28, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' And so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'" That's our charter as a human race, male and female in the image of God, rulership over all of these species. And so, I think we could look at it that Adam and Eve were in some way, originally invested with royal authority like a king and a queen, they were walking through their domain. Definitely under God, but they were like a king and a queen on the earth.

And they were to begin in Eden, and then they were to move out from Eden through the four rivers that flowed out of the head water that came from Eden: The Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, the Euphrates, carrying them to rest of the world so that they could see the glory of the God on the earth. And they would discover various species of plants and animals, of birds, and fish, and insects, and reptiles, and geology, all of the gold and onyx, and all of the things that there was to see in the earth, they would discover them. And they would fill the world and they would subdue it, and they would rule over it for the glory of God. And that honor, that glory and honor was given to man and not to angels.

But what is man's present situation? What is our present disgrace? Well, we've been stripped of that glory. We've been stripped of it. We lost our position of glory. Adam fell into sin, joining Satan in his rebellion against God. We joined Satan's rebellion against God.  And I think we handed over the keys of the planet to him when we did it. God had commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but Adam disobeyed God and was driven from the Garden of Eden. The ground under Adam's feet was cursed because of Adam's sin. And man and nature began a somewhat adversarial relationship. God said to Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you'll eat the plants of the field. And by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

I get the image of Adam wrestling every day with the earth, and in the end, the earth wins, because Adam was going to die. And so, we have been in a great measure stripped of the glory and honor of our position in the world.

Furthermore, God actually assigned to an angel the responsibility to keep man out of Eden lest they eat from the tree of life and live forever. And so, there was an angel with a sword, flaming sword flashing back and forth. The Apostle Paul speaks of the cursing of nature and the groaning of the earth. In Romans 8:20-22, it says, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope... " Oh, those are sweet words. That's the world to come that the author is talking about here, but, "in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. "We know," says Paul, "that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to this present time."

That is what we're talking about. We do not see everything subjected to Christ. We see a world seemingly at war with itself and with us. The author focuses on the word "everything." Look at verses 7-8, "You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet. In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him." He's really emphasizing the everything aspect, everything under Jesus. "Yet at present, we do not see everything under him." We don't see it. Humanity has been stripped of its position of glory in the world.

And so, at present, we see tremendous suffering in the world. Let's just talk about natural disasters for a moment. Do you realize how many significant natural disasters there have been in the last 10 years? I didn't really realize until I did some research. One earthquake after another. And you can forget them, they just happen one after the other, and you can forget them. Do you remember that on January 26, 2001, there was an earthquake in Gujarat, India, killing 12,000 people. If you live in that vicinity then, and survived it, you'd remember that earthquake. Or the next month, another earthquake hit El Salvador. There was an earthquake in Algeria in 2003, killing 2200 people.

A huge earthquake in Iran in 2003, also day after Christmas, killing over 40,000 people. I think many of us certainly remember exactly a year later, December 26, 2004, with the Indian Ocean tsunami, that 9.3 on the Richter scale earthquake in the middle of the Indian Ocean that caused a terrible tsunami, that took out, it seems as close to a quarter of a million people, in 2004. 2005 Kashmir earthquake killed 80,000 people. 2008, there was an earthquake in China, Southwest China, Wenchuan earthquake, killing 69,000 people. I think we in America, we certainly remember all the hurricanes that struck the gulf coast region one after another. Certainly, Hurricane Katrina, we all remember that one but then came Rita and after that, Hurricane Ike. All of it hitting, more or less, the same part of our country. And the beginning of this year on January 12, an earthquake in Haiti killed almost a quarter of a million people and the country's still reeling from it. Still reeling. 2010 also in July, in Pakistan, there were terrible floods, heavy monsoon rains in various regions of Pakistan, displacing as many as 21 million people. Displacing 21 million people from their homes. They generally feel that the world has under-responded because it doesn't seem to be on the radar screen.

This is the world that we live in. Droughts, famines, earthquakes, plagues, endemics, it's a world seemingly at war with itself. We do not at present see everything under him, it says. At present, instead, we see suffering and death. And Hebrew Christians who were going through persecution, well, they understood God's original purpose in creation as well as the author to Hebrews did. They knew the Genesis story as well as he did. In the gospel, the power of Christ is clearly proclaimed to bring everything together under one head, with Christ ruling over everything and everything at peace and orderly under his feet.

We've already seen it in Hebrews 1:13, "To which of the angels did God ever say, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." I'm going to put everything under you. Christ as God overall, He's able to crush all of His enemies under His feet, but at present, we do not see this power openly and obviously. Not only is nature making life miserable for all humanity, unbelievers are specifically making life miserable for Christians. So it doesn't seem like Jesus' enemies are being handled very well. They seem to have the upper hand in one country after another. And so, the author later in this book, in Hebrews 10 says, "Remember those earlier days after you had receive the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution. At other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and you joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." That's a hard time, friends. That's a very, very hard time. And so the author to Hebrews is ministering to these hurting people who are suffering in a world that seems to want to chew them up and spit them out.

How can you say everything's going to be under Jesus' feet? Doesn't seem that way. And He's trying to give them a vision by faith, of what will be. In speaking of the world to come, that's what he's talking about. Things are not as they should be and the only solution for us now, first and foremost, friends, this morning, right now, is to see Jesus. Amen?

Look at verse 9, "But we see Jesus." And that you would have a spiritual vision of Jesus that is so compelling and so powerful, based on scripture that you can face the earthquakes and famines and dangers and persecutions and say, "It's true that at present we do not see everything's subject to Him, but someday we will." Amen? Some day, it's coming, and by faith, we're looking forward to that day. That's what the author is doing here, he's saying, "Let's look at Jesus." And if you look at Jesus, things in His life weren't always as they should have been, it seems. Things were not as they appeared to be either. Jesus was not who He appeared to be to His enemies. And we have to start that story by understanding Jesus' original glory.

Just how glorious was Jesus before He came to earth? How magnificent, how great, was the glory of the second person of the trinity, before He took on human flesh? Well there are lots of testimonies to it, but none better than Isaiah 6. "In the year that King Uzziah died," Isaiah wrote, "I saw the Lord, seated on his throne, high and exalted. And the train of His robe filled the temple. And above Him were seraphs." Those are angels, bright, burning angels. "Each with six wings: with two wings, they covered their faces." I've often meditated on that. Because of the greater glory of Jesus. "With two wings they covered their feet, and with two, they were flying. And they were calling to one another, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory.' And at the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke." That's the greatness of Jesus. And if you wonder whether it's Jesus or not, as a Christian, you don't need to wonder, but Apostle John told us it was. In John 12:41 it says, "Isaiah saw Jesus' glory and spoke about Him."

So we know that's Jesus. That's the greatness of his glory. But He laid all of that aside and took on a human body. He took on humiliation, really. We see Jesus' humility in incarnation. So the night that Jesus was born, all the angels gathered to celebrate it and worship Him. Apparently, Jesus had become a little lower than the angels. Seems like a lot lower than the angels. So if you're one of the shepherds that night, here are two experiences. You have an experience with angels and you have an experience with Jesus. The angels come with heavenly glory. Bright, shining glory in the middle of the night and you're terrified. Never seen anything like it. One angel lights up the whole place. And then an army of angels come and they give glory and praise to God. Glory to God in the highest. And peace to those on whom his favor rest. And this awesome glory, and then they go back up in Heaven and then the angel they're all gone. And then it's dark again. And then the shepherds say " Well, let's go see this child that's born that the angels spoke about." And they're going to go see a greater glory. Right?

So they go into Bethlehem, the city of David. And they go into Bethlehem and they find a cave or a stable or something, we don't know. But a place where animals are kept and what do they see? They see a baby. A poor Jewish couple and a baby. And that's it. What a contrast, the angels are looking awesome and Jesus isn't really looking awesome. He's looking actually quite weak. He's actually laid in a manger box, I mean, basic mothering classes. You just don't put a baby where the animals feed. But there was no other place. It isn't a scene of great power and glory, it's a scene of humiliation. Angels glorious, seems far greater than Jesus. But appearances can be deceiving. All of those angels were worshipping God for sending his son into the world. That's what they were doing. They knew who was the greater. There was no doubt in their mind as to who was the greater.

And God was doing a great thing by sending his son into the world, "In the likeness of sinful flesh" it says in Roman's eight. And so we see appearances can be deceiving and we can only see Jesus by faith. Even if you had been one of the shepherds that night it's only by faith you can really see Jesus to know who he is. And so there are examples of this from Jesus' life, for example, Jesus' humiliation in suffering.

In the desert of temptation, Jesus fasted for 40 days out in the desert. And at the end of the 40 days in one of the great understatements in the New Testament, he was hungry. Well, he was definitely hungry, and of course, the devil came and pounded on him and tempted him severely, he responded with scripture though weakened by the fasting and at the end of the ordeal, Jesus depleted physically. You just see him, just on the ground. The Father dispatched angels to come minister to him. Says in Matthew 4:11, the devil left him and angels came and attended him.

Now you remember when Elijah was running for his life? Jezebel wanted to kill him? And Elijah was exhausted, he'd done the whole Mount Carmel thing, fighting the prophets of Baal and Asher and all that. And then he runs miles ahead of the rainstorm that's coming and he does all this and then finds out Jezebel wants to kill him. Big surprise on that one. But it seemed a surprise to Elijah and he's just wiped out, he's done. He's like "I just want to die." And he's out in the desert laying under a broom tree and God dispatches an angel to make a little baked cake and a jar of water. He says "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you."

Well, here's Jesus about like that and actually, He sends several angels to minister to Jesus. Alright, freeze frame. There you are in the desert, here are these angels and here is this human being. Who's greater? Appearances can be deceiving, friends. Jesus was made for a little while, a little lower than the angels, and the angels are helping him because of his suffering. Or another example, in the Garden of Gethsemane. You're in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus and the Lord, I believe, God the Father opens up in Jesus' minds eye, and in his soul and in a very mysterious way what it will be like to drink the Cup of God's Wrath. To be under the Wrath of Almighty God for our sins, what will it be like to be our sins substitute and he is, I think, literally knocked to the ground.

Not surprised about the thing itself but just the magnitude of it in his humanity. Overwhelmed, and the intensity is so great that drops of blood are flowing out of his sweat pores. There's a medical condition in which that can happen and that was happening to Jesus. If you had been there at that moment and then God it says dispatched an angel from Heaven in Luke 22:43. An angel from Heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. Who's the greater and who's the less at that moment? Angel, this mighty powerful being, Jesus perhaps close to death, right there from heart seizure, heart attack or something. Right there in the Garden of Gethsemane and angels putting him back together physically so that he is able to get up and go do what he is determined to do. Who's greater? Appearances can be deceiving. Jesus was made for a little while lower than the angels.

But they knew exactly who was the greater and what he had come to do. Angels are immortal, they cannot die. Jesus died, took on flesh and blood and died on the cross. Look at verse 9. "We see Jesus who is made a little lower than the angels now crowned with glory and honor. Why? "Because he suffered death so that by the Grace of God, he might taste death for everyone." So as Jesus' lifeless, bloody body was taken down off the cross, gently wrapped by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, he was the very picture of human weakness and frailty. Death itself. No holy angel has ever stooped so low. Jesus seemed to be far below the holy angels more at that moment than any other time in his life. He was below the angels but appearances can be deceiving. Jesus was still the Son of God. Almighty God. And on the third day, God raised him from the dead in glory and power.

 Okay, so how does this all connect to us? How does it connect to us as believers in Christ? How did it connect to the first century Jewish believers in Christ? Well, Jesus' glory will be our glory.  He is the Son of Man who fulfills God's original purpose for man and that is ruling in glory over the earth.

And so look again at verse 9. "We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death so that by the grace of God, He might taste death for everyone." God's gracious purpose then is to restore fallen man to glory. We had traded in the keys of the kingdom to Satan, so he could rebel against God, Jesus came and won the kingdom back for us. Amen? He came and got it back for us, as a man, as the Son of Man, He came and did that. And now, He is crowned with glory and honor. We see Jesus, it says, now crowned with glory and honor. How do you do that? Well, more on that in a moment, but hopefully, it's already happening in your heart. Do you see him? Crowned with glory and honor at the right hand of God, do you see it by faith? We see Jesus crowned with glory and honor seated at the right hand of Almighty God, ruling over heaven and earth.

The angels now veil their sight before Him as they did before his incarnation. And why? Why do we see that? Because He suffered death. There's a logical connection between the greatness of His glory now and the fact that He was willing to die in the cross then. It's the same connection you see in Philippians. Philippians chapter two, Jesus who being in very nature, God did consider equality with God something to be grasped but made Himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. The next word is vital, theologically. Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place. Do you see that? There's a link, both in Hebrews two and in Philippians two, to Jesus' willingness to die and the greatness of His glory in heaven. Therefore because He did it, because He was willing to go to the cross for you and me, how great is His glory? How great is His Honor? And how great is the passion of God the Father when he said, "Sit at my right hand. I'm going to make all of your enemies a footstool for your feet." That is the greatness of Jesus. Because He suffered death for us. So that by the grace of God, He could taste death for everyone.

And what does that mean for everyone? Well, for all of the children. For all of the elect sons and daughters of the living God. That's who He tasted death for. But look at verse 10, "in bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God through whom and for whom everything exists should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering." By the way, how foolish was I to think I could do one sermon on Hebrews 2:5-18. I thought I could get the whole chapter in one sermon, are you kidding me? How long do you folks want to be here today?

We're not even really doing verse 10. This is not really doing verse 10. You know we're not doing verse 10 right now. But I still want to borrow a little bit from next week and talk about what Jesus was trying to do. He's trying to bring many sons to glory. That's what He's trying to do. And the only way to do that was to suffer, to suffer, to suffer death, to taste death for the sons He's bringing to glory. That's who He tasted death for. For us. And He does it to make us holy. Verse 11, "Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are the same family." And so Jesus is unashamed to call us brothers. How sweet is that? And so that's what He's doing. He's doing a kingdom of holiness, a kingdom of glory. And so now, everything is subject to Jesus as our head. Jesus is crowned with glory and honor, siting at a throne in the head of the universe. God, Ephesians 1:22, placed all things under His feet, appointed Him to be head of everything for the church. That's not in the future, that's now.

He is now on His throne, everything is under Him. God appointed Him. Even though we don't see everything like that, it's going to be someday. And that's the beauty of it. And so this world to come, look at verse five again, the world to come is what we're talking about. It is not to angels that He has subjected the world to come. About which we are speaking. That world is the future world. The future world, that's where we're going friends. So when you hear about natural disasters and earthquakes, famines, heat waves, even other issues, global warming and typhoons, all of that kind of stuff... You need to be like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Hebrews 11 says, they were living in tents in the promised land, and all of these great heroes, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised. Listen to this.This is so incredible. "They didn't receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them at a distance.

Those verses exploded in my mind this morning. I said I have to write a whole different sermon but I don't have time so I'm just going to zero in on this, they saw them from a distance, what? They saw the new heaven and new earth from a distance. They didn't get it while they lived but they saw it while they lived. Do you see it friends? Do you see the new heaven and new earth? Do you see the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband, Jesus on his throne, everything in order under Him. No more strife, no more conflicts, no more typhoons or earthquakes or mud slides or any of that again. All of it brought into order under Jesus. Can you see it now in your mind's eye? They saw it and welcomed it at a distance.

Verse 16 of that same chapter, "They were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God because He has prepared a city for them." That's our future, the world to come. We're going to reign like kings and queens. We're being given as an inheritance a kingdom. Come, you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom, that kingdom prepared for you, kings and queens we'll be. And on Jesus' thigh and on His robe when He returns to bring it about, it's going to say, king of what? King of kings and Lord of lords. You will be the kings and the lords. Jesus will be the King of kings, ruling over you and me. But we haven't come into our inheritance yet, have we? Isn't it powerful how Paul rebukes the Corinthian church in first Corinthians four? It says, "Already you've become rich, already you've become kings, and that without us." We missed it. "How I wish you really had become kings, so we could be kings with you. For it seems to me that God's put us Apostles on display at the end of a procession like men condemned to die in an arena…" That's what we're experiencing now. But look at you, you're already into your heavenly inheritance. How did that happen, did we miss it?"

He's really rebuking the Corinthians there for their triumphalistic way of living. We are meant to suffer now, and meant to trust now, and live in tents now, and look at a distance now toward a heavenly country that's coming, but we don't have it yet. And so what can we do? Well, see Jesus, look at him, see him by faith now. If you're lost, you've never trusted in Christ, see him now, dead on the cross, bloody, why did he die? For you. Think that, say, "He died for my sins. I have broken the law of God, Jesus died in my place, the death penalty I deserved." Trust in him. God raised him from the dead so that you could live forever.

See him and then, if you're a believer, see him some more, see him more and more. Feed on the word of God, saturate your mind in the word of God. And think, not just about the past; Jesus dead on the cross, then risen, ascending, but think about the future world, the world to come about which we are speaking.

By the way, verse 5, do you speak about the world to come? I'd like to talk about it more, what do you say? Let's talk more about the world to come. There's an application for you. Let's talk more about the world to come, where Jesus is going to reign on his throne and everything will be orderly under him. Close with me in prayer, please.

For me, personally, the summer of 1983 was a critical summer in my development as a Christian. In the fall of 1982, I gave my life to Christ through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ at MIT. And then I went on a summer project at Hampton Beach the following summer in 1983. And so the summer of 1983, I was doing beach evangelism. I learned how to do contact evangelism that summer. We read a book by David Bryant called "In the Gap." And I learned about missions, about praying for unreached people groups, and became aware of the missionary call of Christ on my life. I learned to work at a job, a secular job, as a Christian, and be able to put my faith into practice in some challenging work situations. That was the summer I did all that. That was also the summer I almost died in the Atlantic Ocean. Funny now, but it wasn't funny then.

There was a big storm, not quite a hurricane, but it whipped the ocean into a frenzy. And it looked like Hawaii, like the pipeline, Waikiki Beach, something like that. And I should have known something. My friend, Chaz Mortenson, and I, we should have known something, that in the middle of the summer, middle of the week, there was not a single person swimming. We should have thought something at that point. There's no one swimming here today, except the two of us, as we did some incredible, awesome body surfing, best of my life. Almost paid for it with my life, but the best of my life. And we were just riding these waves in, and just one wave after another, and just having a great time, until I noticed that we were getting pulled gradually and inexorably out to sea. Much further along and further down the beach, than when we started. And I said, "Uh oh." And I called over to Chaz, and I said, "We need to start going back in." And he had already seen that danger. We were in some kind of a riptide. I don't know how long it took for us to get back to the beach. I have no idea. It felt like an hour. Probably, it was like 10 minutes. But we rode a wave in, and then swam like crazy to fight the current, and then rode the next wave in. In this way, in little steps, we finally made it back to the beach exhausted.

And this became, in the years that followed, a picture to me of the issue that's in front of us in the text today. And that is the powerful forces on my soul, causing me to drift away from Jesus. And the author in Hebrews 2:1 says, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." Is it possible to drift little by little, further and further away from an active, healthy, vibrant walk with Christ, our hearts becoming gradually hardened to the things of God and the dangers of sin? The Book of Hebrews says that not only is it possible, but it's the great danger of our Christian lives. In my opinion, the whole book was written as a warning to us, who are in the church, to look after our souls in our walk with Christ. And here we have, very plainly and clearly, the first of several significant warnings in the Book of Hebrews to us as Christians.

And what's in front of us, as we look at this, is the greatness of our salvation. Remember that the central message of the Book of Hebrews is that a superior mediator, Jesus Christ, greater than all other mediators, greater than all other figures in Old Testament history, this great figure, Jesus Christ, has brought us a superior covenant, the New Covenant, which results in a superior life, a life of complete forgiveness for sins, and a fruitfulness before God, of free access into the very throne room of God, a better life. This is what we have in the New Covenant.

And it talks, in Verse Three, about, "Such a great salvation," such a great salvation. Now, in our culture, the word 'great' is used too much. We have it all the time. It's used for everything. It's used for natural features, like the Great Lakes, or the Great Barrier Reef, or the great white shark. In history, there's Alexander the Great, and the Great War, World War I. In literature, you have "Great Gatsby" and "Great Expectations," which I didn't think were so great, but I got through that book, somehow survived. Someone thought they were great. Dickens, I guess. But we have that word all the time. In commercial life, you can go for a great haircut to Great Clips.

Or you can search on Google to find great wedding gifts or a great vacation spot. Perhaps, in no aspect of American life is the word so overused, as in sports. The "100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time," or Muhammad Ali calling himself, "The greatest of all times." Once, I was watching a basketball game, in which a star player scored a lot of points in one, in the fourth quarter, and won a key basketball game. And the announcer said, "You are watching what true greatness is all about." And, as a Christian, I was offended by that. I was watching a basketball game. You want to know what true greatness is all about? Look to the cross. Look to Jesus Christ, to this great salvation. The word 'great' is overblown in our lives, but it is actually an understatement, when it comes to our salvation. Amen?

It is such a great salvation that we have. And that's what we have before us in verse Three. We've already seen the greatness of the Savior. It really begins with just the greatness of Jesus. Although, it does mention that He provided a purification for sins, it really just focuses on just how great He is, as the second person of the Trinity. Verse one of our passage says, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard." And the 'therefore' points us back to the 14 verses of chapter 1. Because Jesus is so great, because of all we've seen of Jesus, these truths. We have a great salvation given by an infinitely great Savior, Jesus, the final Word, God's final Word to the human race.

"In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He's spoken to us in His Son," Jesus, the final Word of God, greater than all the prophets. He is the heir of all things. And through Him, God made the universe. And He is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of His being. He sustains all things by His powerful Word. He is the one who provided purification for sins and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven.

And so, for the rest of the chapter, the author compares Him to the angels, and He's greater than all the angels. He's inherited a name greater than theirs. Angels are merely servants of God's people, servants of God. But Jesus, the Son, is God on His throne. "Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever. Righteousness will be the scepter of your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness, and therefore, God, your God has set you above your companions, by anointing you with the oil of joy." Jesus is the one who will roll up the present universe like a garment and throw them away, but will establish the new Heavens and the new Earth. How great is this person of Jesus Christ? And He is the one that brings us a great salvation, an infinitely great answer to the problem of sin. Hebrews 1:3, "After He had provided purification for sins…" He sat down, His work finished. I'll talk more about that later, in the Book of Hebrews, but a finished work once for all, sat down at the right hand of God.

Sin's power over us is broken by our rescue, our transfer from Satan's dark kingdom into the Kingdom of Jesus. Sin's practice gradually being eradicated in our lives by the indwelling spirit, and by the instruction of the Word, like this very morning. Little by little, we're learning new habits of righteousness, and unlearning old habits of wickedness and sin. One day, in glorification, it will all be finished, and we'll be done with sin forever, and we'll be done with these mortal bodies forever. We will be in resurrection bodies, surrounded by glorious beings and worshipping a glorious God. That's a great salvation, friends, magnificent salvation, justification, sanctification, glorification. How marvelous is that?

This is our great salvation, but it also arouses, from us or around us, great enemies. Satan is the enemy of our souls, the enemy of our salvation. And the world system that he has set up attacks us spiritually every day, makes it hard for us to make progress in the Christian life. And our own internal sin nature, the enemy within the walls betraying us day after day, though in our minds, we love God's law, but in our flesh, we yearn to rebel against Him. These enemies make it so very, very difficult for us, in our salvation. We have a great danger and it's listed right here in verse One, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away."

We come to this potent image of drifting away. I can tell you, as a pastor, there are few things sadder than this, and that's watching somebody drift away spiritually. It's of the essence of pastoral ministry. It's grievous to me. I've seen it more times than I can count. How many people were doing well at one point, and then, give it a few years, or even a few months, and they're not doing well anymore? And you try to reach out, you try to persuade them. You meet with them, you pray for them. You do all these kinds of things, but still, they drift away. It reminds me of that problem in the infant stages of an infant, failure to thrive. It's not gaining weight. There's no direct problem, it seems, but it's just anemic. It's not thriving, and it just gets weaker and weaker, until finally, it dies. And you just see it happen, and there's nothing, it seems, that you can do to stop it. It's very sad and it's happened. We've seen it again and again.

So, we have this image here of drifting away. The Greek word is a picture of a flowing system, like a river, if you could imagine, with a strong current. And you could throw a twig out, and the current just causes it to just float away from you, very, very quickly. The image I get is of a sailboat that's not properly moored to the dock, out on the ocean. The rope is just laying across. Somebody got distracted. They didn't tie it to the... They didn't moor it well. The little ebbs and flows, the rising and falling of the little chop in the wave, it doesn't make much of an impact immediately. You wouldn't even notice. Came back in five minutes, if you were attentive, you might notice that the rope had slid a little bit down the dock, been a little bit of movement, but not much. But if you were to go away and come back in 10 hours, rising and falling of the tide, and all that, the boat is gone. It's just gone. There's a sense of something drifting away.

There are actually two different ways to translate this verse and it depends on which translation you have. NIV has the sense of something drifting away, someone drifting away from Christ, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." So, here's Jesus, and we're just drifting further, and further, and further away from Jesus. KJV turns it around and says, "Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at anytime we should let them slip from us." It's a matter of perspective, but I have the feeling that Christ and the Gospel are there, and they're not moving. In any case, we are the ones moving further and further away. But from the perspective, these things that we once cherished are drifting away from us.

The second image is not one of a sailboat. I get one, an image of an earthquake victim that's down in the basement of a crushed building, like in Port-Au-Prince, and they can't move. And they've received a number of small cuts and wounds, which could be attended to, if they were able to move, and get some treatment. But they're pinned. They're paralyzed under some pilings, or some cinder blocks, and they just can't move. And they're watching themselves bleed out, and their life blood flowing, flowing, flowing, away from them, out of their arm or leg, until they're dead. Either way, you see the danger here: Either something drifting away from you or you drifting away from Christ. Either way, it's a deadly problem. And so these things that we have heard, it mentions in verse One, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard," or, "The things which we have heard," are the Gospel truths about Christ. It's the doctrine of the Gospel, biblical doctrine.

The idea is that we should be careful not to let these precious truths bleed out of our lives, little by little, so that they are gone from us. We've lost them. Joshua 1:8 says, positively, "Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth." It's just like the Word, just bleeding out and it's gone.

This is a great danger, friends. It's a great danger, and I've seen it again and again. I yearn, I'm pleading with you to get your attention here. I want you to look to yourselves. I want you to look in the mirror of the Word and say, "Am I drifting from Christ? Is there evidence that I'm drifting from Jesus? Am I further away from Him, than I was a year ago? Am I less zealous for Him, than I was a year ago? What is the direction of my life?" I want you to look at yourselves through the mirror of the Word. That's what I want. And I'm going to do the same myself. The Book of Hebrews, as I mentioned, is the ultimate warning book of the Bible. And the warnings are going to get more severe, as we go on in the Book of Hebrews.

The great danger here, is for you to blow it off, say, "It'll never happen to me. I don't need to hear this. Besides, I believe in, 'Once saved, always saved.' I believe in that, and so I don't think I need to heed these warnings in the Book of Hebrews. It doesn't apply to me." As a matter of fact, one very well known, and ordinarily reliable teacher of the Word of God, took this approach, even on this passage. He said this, "To whom is this warning directed? It cannot be directed to Christians." He wrote, "They can never be in danger of neglecting salvation, since they already have it. They can neglect growth and discipleship, but they cannot neglect salvation." Friends, I hope you're well enough trained to know that salvation comes to you in stages. We don't have it all yet. And if we're in the middle stage called 'sanctification,' our sense of assurance and certitude that we began with justification, is based on how sanctification's going. And if sin is just ravaging your life, how do you know you're justified? If you're living like a slave to sin, how can you know?

I tell you, if you're not growing, you're drifting. If you're not growing, you're drifting. You're going to keep... You're going to make progress toward Christ-likeness everyday or you're going to drift. Now, this man that I referred to, if I told you his name, you'd know it, but I won't say it. But I tell you, that if you take that approach to Hebrews, you'll miss the whole point of the whole book. It's written to Christians, because we need the warnings. The warnings accomplish the final salvation. And we Christians, we do well to heed the warnings, and take them seriously, and not blow them off. If you think drifting away from Christ can never happen to you, beware. 1 Corinthians 10:12, "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall." What does, "Take heed," mean, except, how about read the Book of Hebrews and take its warning seriously? "Take heed," that's what it says.

What Causes Drifting?

Now, what causes this drifting? Well, the immediate answer, right in the verse, is neglect of the Gospel. Neglect of the Gospel. So the opposite, we have to pay more careful attention. That's the remedy. We'll get to that. The opposite is the truth. The one who neglects the Gospel is the one who's drifting away. Or in verse three, "How should we escape, if we ignore such a great salvation?" It's a sense of ignoring the things of the soul. It certainly could refer to someone who's heard the claims of the Gospel, but has not yet made a commitment to Christ. I don't think that's the home base of these verses. He speaks in this language, "We must pay more careful... Into what we have heard, our great salvation." He's speaking like one of the group.

And so what causes it? Well, I'm going to say this later, and develop it a little bit later, but there is a voluntary drifting, and there's an involuntary drifting. Involuntary drifting is just, you get wrapped up with the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth. You're just not aware of what's happening. And little, by little, by little, you're just not where you used to be. You're not making an active choice at that moment, "I'm going to turn my back on Jesus," but you are making little choices to not follow Christ, little choices, and that's where it becomes voluntary.

Hebrews 3:13 speaks of the hardening process due to sin's deceitfulness. We'll get to that next chapter, but sin is deceitful. It's not honest with us and it's not telling us everywhere that it's at work in our lives. We're not always aware. And so there's this hardening. What is the hardening? Well, the opposite is a yieldedness, a soft heart, a yielded spirit. When the Holy Spirit speaks to you through the Word, as it says in Hebrews 3:7-8, "As the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'" It's like you hear Him speak, and He's prompting you, and telling you what to do, and you are digging in your heels. You're being stiff-necked, like the Jews in the Old Testament. You're not yielded to Him. Your heart is hard, like Pharaoh. You're not yielding to what God's saying and sin does that. It has the power to harden your heart.

What Are Some Markers Along the Way?

Well, what are some tragic milestones along the way of someone drifting from Jesus? When I was out in the Atlantic Ocean, I started noticing the hotel where we first were. We wouldn't go to that hotel, but that's where we went in and started swimming. And it was diagonal down the beach. That was a marker and I knew that we had drifted a lot at that point. What are the markers? Well, how about a loss of that initial joy over salvation? Remember in the Parable of the Hidden Treasure? In his joy, he hides a treasure, and then sells everything that he has. I mean anything, everything for Jesus. That's how it is, the devotion of those early times with Jesus. And you love Him so much, and you want to worship Him. And you want to follow Him, and you're just so excited. But then there's a loss of that: Not so excited, not so yearning to be with Jesus, not so thrilled over the Word, not so excited about corporate worship, not so thrilled to sing hymns or spiritual songs, like you used to.

And with that comes a gradual lessening of spiritual disciplines: Not spending as much time in prayer, not meeting as faithfully with the Lord in your quiet time, not reading as much, hurrying through it. And then a gradual lowering of standards of personal holiness. And why? Because your hungry heart wants to be happy, looking for something. And Jesus isn't doing it for you as much anymore, so you start to look toward the world, you start to look to other things. And so you start to lower your standards on holiness, so you can get some things from the world, growing hunger and thirst then, for worldly pleasures, and developing of habits in that direction. And with that, of course, a gradual lessening of spiritual disciplines, correspondingly.

And then irritation with spiritual disciplines starts to creep in. "What a burden," you say, like in that Book of Malachi, "That you have to go do this, you have to go to church, or you have to pray, or do these disciplined things." And it starts to feel like a burden to you, not so eager to do it. And along with that, comes a critical spirit to those that probably are doing better than you spiritually. So excited, the new converts or even old ones, that have walked well with the Lord. And you just don't like being around them. Well, they annoy you. They irritate you a bit and it starts to become a burden to just be with them.

And so Sunday morning isn't something you're really thrilled about, and start to be jealous of those people you pass on Sunday morning. They're out there unconcerned about church attendance." Oh, that I were free. Play golf like that guy or garden like that woman." And that these thoughts start creeping in, and at that point, you're pretty much ripe for changing habits on worship attendance, going from 52 times a year, to 50, to 48, to 46. And it starts 'til... You're bleeding out. You don't even know it's happening, but little by little, you're drifting. You're not where you used to be.

Along with that, comes a growing irritability in life, in general. You're not as characterized by the fruit of the Spirit anymore. Those worldly things are not really making you happy. Maybe you think, "If I do a little more of them, they'll make me happy, but this level hasn't made me happy." And so fruit of the spirit does not really characterize you much. And you have spasms of conviction. Your conscience smites you. You make some changes. You turn over a new leaf a little bit, but it isn't really availing, because you haven't gone to the root of the issue. Those are some markers along the way.

And when might it happen? Anytime. Times of prosperity, when things are going well, you can start drifting. Times of struggle, when there's an illness in the family, or might be persecution, or things going on, that can be a time when you start drifting away. Satan's at it all the time. Times of temptation are times of drifting away.

Alright, so what is the remedy? Verse One, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away." As I said, what we have heard is the Gospel. "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets, at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son." It's what God is speaking. It's what we've heard. The Word of God, the Gospel.

Jesus is the Gospel and He is God's final Word to the human race. And I would say, more specifically, the words of the Gospel. Remember, Romans 10:17 says, "Faith comes by hearing and the hearing by the Word of Christ." And so your faith came initially by hearing with faith, hearing the Word with faith. And so your faith then gets bolstered, and strengthened, by hearing the Word with faith. Focus on what you have heard. It is by hearing the Word that your faith is renewed and given a new feast, so it gets vibrant and strong again. It's the Word.

Colossians 2:6-7, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught." Colossians 2:6-7 is saying that the way you started is the way you make progress. It's Christ. It's the Word of the cross. It's taking it in, hearing with faith. That's how you make progress. And it says, "We must pay attention." The remedy is paying attention, consider, give full heed to what's going on. Consider who's speaking to you, God. Consider carefully the matter of this message, the gravity of it, the weight of it. Allow the Gospel's seriousness and power to rest heavily on your mind.

The opposite of following this advice would be look on as a light thing, ignore it, blow it off. And it says, actually, we must pay, literally, more excellent attention to what we have heard. Pay more excellent attention. It intensifies it. Consider the matter of eternity, of Heaven and hell. Consider the Word of God and all of its power, its truth, its demands, its promises. Consider Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, did signs, and wonders, and miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit, preached like no man had ever preached, so much that those who are sent to arrest him came back, and said, "No one ever spoke like this man."

This is the one who walked on water, who stilled the waves with His voice, who fed the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, who raised Lazarus from the dead on the fourth day. This is the one who is our substitute, who agreed in the Garden of Gethsemane to drink hell for you and me, and went and did it, who died on the cross, whose blood was shed, who stood in our place under the wrath of God, and then died, but on the third day, God raised Him from the dead. Consider these things. And for 40 days, He was with the church, instructing and teaching them, and then He ascended to Heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God Almighty. At that place, He is interceding for you every day, praying for you. And from that place, He will come back to judge the living and the dead. Consider these things. Pay more careful attention to them. Get a sense of a proper appraisal of them.

Have you ever heard of Christie's of London? It's an art appraisal house and they have some of these famous art auctions, all time... Ming vase sold for a high price at Christie's. Well, who is Christie? Well, what they are, they hire the best art appraisers in the world, for something like 60 different categories. It's amazing. Antique Swiss pocket watches? Christie's is your place. The experts in the world are there. Or Rembrandt paintings. In order to develop that kind of expertise in appraisal, you have to know the history of the art, the history of the individual, like Rembrandt, you're studying. You can look at something and know right away, if it's a forgery, but more than that, you can say, "This is definitely Rembrandt, but not one of his better pieces." Why? "Well, this is what we see."

We need to be appraisers of the Gospel. Not judges or critics of it, I'm not saying that, but just students of it. Pay more excellent attention to what you've heard. Diligently study, so that you do not drift away.

And we have an obligation here, friends, to take this remedy. "We must pay more careful attention, therefore." We must, because Jesus is great. That's what the 'therefore' means to me. Because of the greatness of Jesus, we must pay more careful attention to what we have heard. It's an obligation. And we have to take this remedy. We have to take this remedy.

I remember when we were in Haiti, one of the doctors gave a sick woman a prescription to be taken down to the pharmacy. And she took that prescription, and rolled it up, and put it in an amulet, and put it around her neck. Of course, Haiti is rife with voodoo and all kinds of mystical practices, but several days later, she came back, and she wasn't any better. Imagine our surprise, when we found out that she hadn't taken the written prescription down to the pharmacy to get the medication she needed. And even that wouldn't have been enough, she needed to take them. Here's your prescription: This is what you need to do, to not drift away, but you need to take the prescription. Don't write it on a strip of paper and put it around your neck. You need to actually do what it says.

Go home this afternoon and pay more careful attention to what you have heard. Do it again tomorrow, until you know that you're not drifting. And why? Because God told us how great this salvation is, that was first proclaimed to us by the Lord. And God testified to it "By signs, wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to His will." Jesus was the first proclaimer of this Gospel. He stood up at the synagogue in Nazareth and they found that scroll in Isaiah, where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to heal all those that are sick in Zion, to rescue the captives." And he said, "Today, in your hearing, this Scripture is fulfilled." Jesus Christ preached this Gospel first, and then God testified to it by signs, wonders, and various miracles.

He said, "This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him." Those are the apostles, I believe. And so the apostles heard Jesus, and then after Jesus ascended to Heaven, then they testified concerning it. It says in 1 John 1, "That which we have, which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim to you, concerning the Word of life." The apostles were eyewitnesses, and they handled these holy things, and they were with Jesus, and ate with Him, and saw Him. And saw Him in His resurrection, then they proclaimed. God testified by signs, and wonders, and various miracles. God, the Father, endued Christ with more wonder-working power than anyone else in history. Jesus did a river of miracles, showing the worth and value of the salvation that He came to bring. The blind saw, the lame walked, those who had leprosy were cured. The deaf heard, the dead were raised, and good news was preached to the poor. Those miracles accredited Jesus, testified to it.

And so it was also, with the apostles. They were able to do great signs and wonders. Acts 2:43, it says, "Everyone was filled with awe, and many signs, and wonders, and miraculous signs were done by the apostles." In Acts 3, Peter and John healed a lame man at the temple gate called Beautiful. Acts 4, they prayed for power to do more miracles and more healing, "Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders." Acts 5, again, the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all of these served to testify to the Gospel, that it's true. It's coming from God. This is really God testifying through Jesus and through the apostles, that this is the true salvation message. And therefore, to ignore it, or to drift away from it, is worthy of great punishment.

The author gives us a note of punishment here. Look at verse 2-3, "For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, then how shall we escape, if we ignore such a great salvation?" The Old Covenant had its penalties for disobedience... The message spoken by angels is the Old Covenant. And if you broke the Mosaic Law, in many cases, you died. The murderer was to be put to death. The adulterer was to be put to death. The blasphemer was to be put to death. The Sabbath breaker was to be put to death. It was just the death knell that came from the law. Administer death. It was a terrifying thing.

The author deals with it later in Hebrews 12, he says, "You have not come to a mountain that can be touched, Sinai, and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast with such a voice speaking words, that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: 'If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.' The sight was so terrifying, that Moses said, 'I'm trembling with fear.' "

Well, the author's saying that he Old Covenant was binding. You couldn't blow it off and it had the death penalty connected with it. How much greater, then, are we worthy of punishment, if we neglect such a great salvation, the New Covenant in Jesus? That's physical death. We're dealing here with eternal death. We're dealing with the issue of hell, eternity apart from God. The Law of Moses didn't consign anyone to hell; it just killed them physically. But failure to come to Christ results in eternity in hell.

In summation, we must pay more careful attention to the Gospel message about Christ, so that we do not drift away from Him. If we drift away, the punishment is more severe than we can possibly imagine. But paying more excellent attention to the Gospel is the remedy to this spiritual sickness.

Application: First and foremost, all I can say is come to Christ. It could be that God sovereignly brought you here and you have never made a commitment to Christ. It's one thing to drift away from Christ, it's another thing never to have come. And it could be that God brought you, for such a time as this, to hear the Gospel. You've heard of Christ crucified, now I'm making a direct appeal to you: Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus and you'll find full forgiveness for your sins. You'll find everything you need at the cross. You'll find a welcome. God, the Father, like the father of the prodigal son, standing at the foot of the driveway, saying, "Welcome home." And all of your sins will be forgiven. Purification for sin, available through the blood of Jesus.

But I'm mindful of the fact, that most of you who have come here today would call yourselves Christians. And that's why I say that this message is for you. Please don't drift away from Jesus. Please grow. Please feed your souls everyday on the Word of God. Please keep coming to church. And if you should move to another place, then find a good church, and go to that church. And I'm not getting legalistic here on church attendance. I know that there's some Sundays that you physically can't be there. I understand that. I'm just asking, when you don't go to church, what is the reason? Look at the reason. Test your hearts and see. And look at those milestones I listed. Are they happening to you? Are you drifting? Are you further from Jesus, than you were five years ago, ten years ago, five months ago? And if so, then repent, as it says in the Letter to the Church at Ephesus in Revelation 2. Turn around, you've forsaken your first love. Turn around, repent, and do the things you did at first. Go back and have those quiet times again. Be excited for Christian fellowship. Look at the sins that are in your life, that have drained your spiritual strength, and put them to death. They're killing you. They're waging war against your soul, it says in the Book of 1 Peter. Put them to death.

And watch out for involuntary drifting. American lifestyle, it's a busy life. Corrie ten Boom said, "Beware of the barrenness of a busy life." Any of you, that are able to testify to that? "The barrenness of a busy life." Watch out for that.

And finally, watch out for each other. See if anybody you know is drifting. It's not just the work of the elders, friends. We don't always know. Sometimes, we're among the last to know. Shepherd each other, love each other, ask questions. "How are you doing spiritually?" Take responsibility for each other's spiritual health. We'll talk more about that, much more in Chapter Three. But I'm just saying, please, notice each other, and say, "How are you doing? I haven't seen you in awhile. Are things going okay?" Many of you do that so beautifully, but keep doing it. Close with me in prayer, if you will.

All over the world, countries that have kings and emperors are certain to surround those august personages, kings, queens, emperors with trappings of their position in the nation, with regalia, with crowns, and thrones, and scepters, and all of these kinds of things that let the nation know how significant that individual is. In Kenya, the President had what was called the Maasai stick, an elder man's stick that he would carry around as a symbol of his authority over the nation, and he would carry it with him whenever he went out in public. When we were in Beijing, we saw the Forbidden City, which is a series of walls, and doors, in concentric courtyards, and all of that which you had to go through to get to the Emperor of China. And there was a sense of the greatness of this august person that you are eventually, hopefully, going to get to see. The same thing with the Queen of England as she wears her crown and her ermine robe, holds her scepter as symbol of her rule over the United Kingdom, over the British Empire.

But I think that no physical throne can ever come close to the glory of Christ's throne. As I did research on this, the most dramatic throne I could find was that of Shah Jahan from the 17th century in the Mughal Empire of India, the same one who built the Taj Mahal. He had to have the best throne too. And so 2,500 pounds of gold, multiple, huge diamonds like the Cullinan Diamond, which was just the largest cut diamond in the world. The Timur Ruby, 283 carats. It was called the Peacock Throne because it had two large peacocks, symbolically, artistically presented with the throne in between, 12 steps leading up to it. It doesn't exist anymore. It was plundered for all of its gold, and its gems, and all that. But I heard it was magnificent and beautiful. But is there any throne like that of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Is there any throne as glorious as that described in Hebrews chapter 1, the glory of Christ's throne? Solomon's throne isn't greater than it. Solomon had a magnificent throne, a majestic throne made, described in 1 Kings 10. The throne was inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. It had six steps and its back had a rounded top, it says. On both sides of the seat were armrests with a lion standing beside each of them. And there were 12 lions, two on each of the six steps going up. So you're surrounded by lions as you went up to see Solomon. Nothing like it had ever been made for any kingdom, it said. But we have in our text today described the most glorious throne in the universe, and that is the King of kings, the throne of the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. And even better, we have God the Father speaking and addressing the reign of His Son. We get to kind of stand in the council of the Trinity and hear the Father speaking about the Son.

And about the Son he says, "Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, and therefore, God your God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." This throne will radiate with the glory of God for all eternity, and all of the new heavens and the new Earth will shine with that glory. In Revelation 22:3 and 4, it says, "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him and they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads." And so today, we're looking for a second week at the greatness of Jesus Christ, and specifically His greatness and contrast with that of the angels. Last week, we saw how Jesus is greater than the angels in a number of ways. I'll review it briefly but we're going to extend it right to the end of the chapter today. And we have to ask again, why does this passage exist? Why did the Lord inspire the author of Hebrews to write Hebrews chapter one?

Jesus, A Superior Mediator, Bringing a Superior Covenant, for a Superior Life

I believe that the Book of Hebrews is written to some Jewish people who had made an outward profession of faith in Christ, who had confessed Christ to be their Savior, had begun to assemble together with other Christian people. But under pressure from Jewish family and friends, and neighbors, and rabbis in Jewish culture, some of them were being tempted to turn their backs on Jesus, to turn their backs on new covenant worship, and go back to the old covenant without Jesus, to turn their backs on Christ. And so the author is going to give us the greatness of Christ right away. And I don't think we could ever do better than that in our lives. Amen.

Just focus on the greatness, the majesty of Jesus, every single day. And the overall purpose of the whole book of Hebrews, it was a letter of exhortation, of warning, perhaps, concerning the greatness of our mediator, Jesus Christ, a superior mediator to any mediator that came before, who brings to us a superior covenant, the new covenant, which is a better covenant than the old covenant, fulfills it, and supersedes it, and makes it obsolete, resulting in a superior life, a life of intimate relationship with the Almighty God in which we have access to the throne room of God, intimate access with Him. A life of complete forgiveness, of cleansed consciences, of a purified life, and a fruitful life, a life of faith. That's what this book is about. And so we saw two weeks ago, Hebrews 1:1-3, those magnificent verses with which this whole epistle starts.

"In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son whom He appointed heir of all things and through whom He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being. He sustains all things by His powerful word. And when He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven."

So that was two weeks ago, the majesty of Christ. Last week, we saw how the author then continued and connected that through verse four to the rest of this chapter one, verse four. Look at it. "So He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs." So immediately, the author is bringing in the angels. And I want to cross the rest of the chapter, and on into chapter two we can see how the author is continually bringing Jesus back to the angels, and showing that Jesus is greater than the angels.

And this might not make a lot of sense to you. Why would you do that? Why would you compare Jesus to angels? We talked about that because I think, primarily, just going to the heart of the matter, I think the author is going to tell us at the beginning of chapter two that the Old Covenant was mediated to us by the angels. The angels brought the Old Covenant. They are glorious spiritual supernatural beings who bring an incredibly important message, a binding Covenant that if you disobeyed its strictures, you are worthy of death. But he makes a how much greater argument then if the Son of God comes and brings us a New Covenant that supersedes the old one, how worthy of death would we be? How worthy of eternal punishment if we neglect such a great salvation, that's the argument he's making here and we'll get to that, God willing, next week on Hebrews two.

Review: Christ Greater Because of His Name

But so we see that Christ is greater than the angels and we saw that He is greater than the angels because of His name, He has inherited a name that's superior to theirs, and that name is Son of God. "For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you'?" Okay, so He is the Son of God, or again, "I will be His Father and He will be my son." So we talked about that. The name, Son of God, is greater than servant of God, which the angels are servants. In verse 14, we talked about last week, "Are not all angels ministering servants, sent to serve those who inherit salvation?"

Review: Christ Greater Because He Is Worshiped

We saw also that Christ is greater than angels because He is worshipped, the angels worship Him, all of them do. And again, verse 6, when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, "Let all God's angels worship Him." So He wants all of the angels covering their faces, down on their faces before the Son, then how great must the Son be if all the angels worship Him?

Review: Christ Greater Because of His Nature

And Christ, we saw, also is greater because of His nature. Look again at verse seven, and speaking of the angels, He says, "He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire." So we saw that, first and foremost, the angels are created beings, and there's just an infinite gap between the Creator and the creature. Creator's infinitely greater than the creature, and angels are creatures, they're created things, just like us, we are created things, but Jesus is not a created being. So He's eternally begotten Son of God. Angels are servants for Christ as the ruler, a theme that we're going to see more in chapter three. Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house but Jesus is faithful as a Son over God's house, so there's a sense of servant and then the one in authority. Angels are winds and flames of fire but Jesus is God. And so Jesus is greater because of His nature.

And now today we're going to see how Jesus is greater because of His throne, look at verse 8. "But about the Son, He says, 'Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom'" So the central issue of the universe, and I've said this a number of times before, the central issue of the universe and the central issue of your life is the throne of God, the throne of God, the throne of Almighty God. Psalm 103 verse 19, "The Lord has established His throne in heaven, His kingdom rules over all." The prophets had visions of the throne of God. Isaiah 6:1, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the lord seated on His throne, high and exalted and the train of His robe filled the temple." Or again, Ezekiel 1:26 says that above the expanse over their heads, over the cherubim's heads, high over the cherubim, wheels within wheels, eyes on the rims of the wheels, fire moving back and forth amongst these heavenly beings, and high above them was an expanse and high above the expanse, ever higher and higher, is a throne and above on the throne is someone seated there. It's the vision that God gave to begin Ezekiel's ministry.

And so also the apostle John, how the apostle John was invited with a voice saying, "Come up here." There was "a door standing open in heaven." and he was in the spirit and went through the door, and the first thing he saw was a throne, an emerald throne, surrounded by a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Just an incredible vision of the throne of God, and as the vision continues in the book of Revelation, concentric circles, concentric circles around that throne. The throne's the center of everything, everything. When it says that God's throne rules over all, it means that nothing in the universe happens apart from the will of God. Jesus said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father." Is it about sparrows that God is concerned? Yes, but so much more. So it's an argument from the more surprising to the less surprising, if God cares about sparrows falling to the ground, then He cares about the planets and stars and everything in your life and all of the flow of human histories, over everything, from the smallest to the greatest, that's the throne of God. Interestingly, in all the visions you have of the throne, there's always a man seated on it, a vision or an image of a man. And so this, I believe, is the projection of the Son of God as He reveals God the Father to us.

God the Father has no body. He's a spirit, but He projects or presents to us through Jesus His son, and so He can say, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." And so the image of a man seated on a throne should make us think of the Son of God as He reveals the greatness of God on His throne. But here, in verse 8, God the Father speaks of Christ and of His throne, and in an amazing way.

First of all, we just get a sense of the doctrine of Scripture from the book of Hebrews. What Scripture says, God says. This is just a Psalm, but there's no such thing as just a Psalm, now is there? This is God speaking through the Psalm. Later the author is going to talk about this, saying "the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword." We're hearing the voice of God when we hear the scriptures, that's how you should think. And so, God the Father is speaking here through the Psalm, and about the Son He says, who's the 'He' in the sentence? It's Almighty God, it's the God the Father, God the Creator, God the Ruler, God the Judge is speaking. He's speaking about His own son, and what does He say about His son? "Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever…" God the Father is not jealous at all, about God the Son. Not in the least, He celebrates His greatness, He celebrates His glory. Jesus, the implication is, would have nothing except what the Father gave Him.

There's always that sense of Jesus communicating, "Everything I have has come to me through the Father." Can you even imagine Jesus saying, "Well, I have something that I didn't get from the Father"? I can't even imagine that! And so He says, "All authority in heaven and Earth has been given to me." "Well, who gave it to you?" "God the Father, my Father gave it to me. Everything has been entrusted to me by the Father." And so that's how He sees it. The vision in Daniel seven of the Son of Man, there's the Ancient of Days, seated on His throne, a river of fire flowing from the throne out, judging the world and 100 million angels around, ready to serve Almighty God, the Ancient of Days, seated on His throne. And then, into His presence, coming on the clouds of heaven comes one like a Son of Man. He comes into the presence of the Ancient of Days and receives from Him, authority, glory, and sovereign power. It's given to Him by the one on the throne, it's given to Him by Almighty God. Jesus doesn't get anything, except that the Father gives it to Him. So we have an amazing glimpse at an inter-trinitarian conversation. From eternity past, God has existed in three persons, whom we identify as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All human relationships, whether marriage, or brother to brother, sister to sister, church relationships, neighbors, all human relationships are based on the inter-trinitarian, interpersonal relationship.

We're patterned after it, because we're created in the image of God, and when we're fully redeemed, we're done with our salvation process, we will be as one in heaven with each other, as the Father and the Son are one. Aren't you looking forward to that? Oh, I'm looking forward to that. No more strife, no more conflict, no more disagreements... Not that I ever have any strife or conflict or disagreements in my life. Not that that ever... Oh, come on, it happens! Happens to all of us. But friends, it's temporary in Christ. Amen! Hallelujah! It's temporary. In heaven, we'll be as one as the Father and the Son are one. And no jealousy at all between the Father and the Son. And God the Father thinks thoughts about His Son, and He speaks to the Son, and other times He speaks about the Son. Like in the mount of transfiguration, "This is my Son, my beloved Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased." He's not talking to Jesus, He's talking about Jesus, to His bewildered disciples, Peter, John and James, up there. "Listen to Him." Peter, stop talking, stop talking, listen to Him. That's what He's saying, that's another sermon for another day. But the thing is God the Father's speaking about the Son, talking about Him, communicating about Him. He loves the Son.

God the Father Calls His Son, 'God'

And here, God the Father calls His Son, God. That's powerful, isn't it? "Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever," because He is God. And the Father is not ashamed to proclaim him God, because He is God. Now, this is a vital issue in the controversy of Christianity with Judaism. The Jews, who had made a profession of faith in Christ are now being tempted to go over to Judaism, the very issue is going to be a rejection of the deity of Christ. That's what they're going to have to do to do it. They're going to have to turn their backs on Jesus as God. And that is the essence of our disagreement with our Jewish neighbors and friends, and co-workers. We disagree on this very issue, we believe that Jesus is God and we worship Him. But what this verse says is that God the Father believes it too. And we are not heretics in proclaiming the deity of Christ, because Almighty God says it. How could we deny the deity of Christ when God Himself says to Jesus, "Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever. Righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom."

So, if Almighty God delights in calling Him God, then how could we shrink back? Remember how Jesus' enemies were about to stone Him? Jesus said, "I have shown you many good works from the Father, for which of these are you stoning me?" "We're not stoning you for any of these, but for blasphemy! Because you, a mere man, claim to be God." It's a charge that went right to the end of His time with the Jews. When the high priest charged Him under oath, "Are you claiming to be God the Son?" Something they could not accept. But the author to Hebrews makes it fundamental here in Hebrews chapter 1.

And notice also the attributes of Christ's character and of Christ's throne. Jesus' reign is based on His attributes, not in some outward show of luxury or some cut diamonds or rubies or some gold, 2500 pounds of gold, or peacocks on either side, or lions going up the stairs. None of those trappings. What do we have here? We have two attributes in particular. The eternity of the throne of God and the righteousness of it. These are two attributes.

Christ’s Throne is Eternal

Christ's throne is eternal, and Christ's throne is righteous. First, an eternal throne, "Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever." I tell you, this is not merely a prediction from the omniscient God. He's not merely making a prediction that His throne will last forever and ever. He is making a sovereign decree that it will.

Look at Psalm 2, all you have to... Don't turn there, but just as you listen. Psalm 2, and there the psalmist says, "'I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.' I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, 'You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.  You will rule them with an iron scepter.' That's the decree of God. It's not merely a prediction now. It's a decree. God is going to make it happen with His sovereign power.

And Isaiah said it would be an eternal throne. Isaiah 9:7, "Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, He will reign on David's throne, and over His kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." So God is zealous, He's burning like a fire. Imagine the sun, burning burning burning burning. The zeal of God is burning for His son, for His throne to last forever and ever. He's going to achieve eternity with it.

The prophet Daniel foresaw the eternal nature of Christ's throne, in interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel chapter two. A stone cut out, but not by human hands, struck the statue, the kingdoms of the world and of men, and caused them to crumble down until they became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer and the wind blew them all away without leaving a trace. But the rock that was cut out, but not by human hands, became a huge mountain that filled the whole world. Then when Daniel interpreted the dream, he said, "The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end but will itself endure forever." It is an eternal throne, dear friends, eternal, it will last forever and ever.

Mary was told the same thing about her son. Imagine this being told to you… Imagine you women being told by Gabriel, "Your son will sit on a throne that will last forever and ever." So Gabriel told Mary, "He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father, David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, His kingdom will never end." This is stated so many times in the New Testament that we don't need to repeat it again. Human thrones, by contrast, are characterized by their brevity.

The most you can be President of the United States is eight years, two four-year terms. The average length of a reign for a Jewish king after Solomon in the northern kingdom, there were 19 kings in Israel, their average length of reign was 12 and a half years. There were 19 kings in Judah, the average length of their reign was 20 and a half years. Altogether the average length of a reign of a king after Solomon was 16 and a half years. Not a single monarch in all of human history has ever reigned for 100 years, not one. The longest undisputed reign in history was a king of Swaziland who died in 1982 after a reign of 82 years and nine months. That's the longest undisputed reign in human history, 82 years. Can you imagine reigning for 82 years? I'm sure he was glad to lay it down when the time came. It's not for no reason that Shakespeare said, "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." The average length of reign in the English, over the English throne, over a thousand years, has been 20 years.

But Jesus will reign forever and ever. His kingdom will never end. So it's an eternal throne.

Christ’s Throne is  Righteous

It's also a righteous throne. And no different again from the descriptions of God's throne in Psalm 97:2, "Clouds and thick darkness surround Him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne." Everything Jesus does in reigning on the throne displays His righteous character, perfectly corresponding to His own righteous character. So many earthly thrones are characterized by injustice, oppression, corruption. It's not for no reason that Lord Acton said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," except in one case, and that's Jesus. His reign doesn't corrupt His character, it displays His character, it displays His righteousness, the perfection of His nature. Jesus cannot be corrupted by His power, He is righteous in everything He does.

In Isaiah 11 it says of Him, "He will not judge by what He sees with His eyes or decide by what He hears with His ears, but with righteousness He will judge the needy, with justice He will give decisions for the poor of the Earth. He will strike the Earth with the rod of His mouth; with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be His belt and faithfulness the sash around His waist." And so we see righteousness and eternity as the foundation of Christ's throne.

Look what else, we see a display of Christ's heart. Verse 9, The Father speaking to the Son says, "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness." This is the essence of human character. Go right to the heart of the matter. Who are you? Who are you? What kind of man are you? What kind of woman are you? What kind of boy or girl are you? We go to the heart of the matter, and it all comes down to this, what do you love and what do you hate? That's who you are, it's the essence of your being. Henry Scougal, in his book "The Life of God in the Soul of Man" said this, "The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love."

The worth and excellency of Jesus' soul is found in this one verse, He loves righteousness and hates wickedness. And by the way, you can't just love righteousness. You have to both love righteousness and hate wickedness, you can't just be positive. What's that radio station? Positive, uplifting K-Love. Okay, listen, there's a time for being positive and uplifting. But you have to both love righteousness and hate wickedness. You have to be a warrior against wickedness, and start with your own. Put sin to death by the power of the Spirit. That's what we must do. But Christ does love righteousness and hate wickedness. And for this reason, He is greater than the angels because He rules them with the perfect righteousness and justice. And He's greater because of His anointing.

"You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, and therefore God your God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." The anointing ceremony in Israel identified the king for the nation. Identified the king, was a symbolic act. Saul for example, a very tall man, a head taller than any of his fellows. But other than that, very ordinary, it seems. He was a son of Kish, a Benjamite. He was chosen by God to be the first king of Israel. Samuel the prophet, was commanded by God to anoint him with oil as a form of identification for the nation. 1 Samuel 10:1, "Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on Saul's head and kissed him, saying, 'Has not the Lord anointed you leader over His inheritance?'"

And so in 1 Samuel, from then on, again and again, Saul is called the Lord's anointed. He's called the Lord's anointed. And from then on, kings of the Jews were anointed with oil as well, for example, Saul's successor, David, was also anointed with oil by Samuel. In 1 Samuel 16, "Samuel sent and had David brought in, and he was ruddy with a fine appearance and handsome features. And the Lord said, 'Rise and anoint him, he is the one.' So Samuel took the oil, the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power." I think there's a link then between the anointing with oil and the coming of the Holy Spirit. It's being saturated in the Spirit that's really being symbolized there. The idea is, "Not by power nor by might but by My Spirit, should you rule," says the Lord.

And so when the Spirit comes upon a man, then he's equipped and able to reign. But Christ is the fulfillment of all of this anointing. He is the anointed one. The word, the Hebrew word for anointed one is mashiach, from which we get messiah. And then the Greek form Christ, is just the same word, the idea of the anointed one. So Jesus Christ means Jesus the anointed one. Hebrews 1 gives us the basis of the anointing. The word 'therefore' tells why God anointed Him. Why did God anoint Jesus? Because He loves righteousness and hates wickedness. Therefore, God anoints Him. And with what does He anoint Him? With the oil of joy. What is that? Whatever it is, I want some. What do you think?

I'd like to go get some oil of joy and be anointed with it. Well, dear friends in Christ, someday you'll be saturated in the oil of joy. I mean you will be swimming in a river of delights. You'll be at the right hand of Almighty God. And in His presence, there are eternal pleasures forevermore. Jesus enjoys being the Son of God. He enjoys ruling on His throne. It's not a burden to Him. He delights in saving you, He delights in interceding for you, He is filled with joy because He's in the presence of His Father. And it was for this joy that Jesus died. We should fix our thoughts on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning the shame and sat down at the right hand of God.

What joy? The joy of sitting on a perfect throne, reigning over perfect people in a perfect world. What could be better than that? And it's for that joy that Jesus shed His blood. The cross itself, wrath, and misery, and shame, and suffering. But it was for joy that He did it. And so He's anointed with the oil of joy in the presence of God. And therefore He's superior to all of His companions. I think that just means angels and men. Superior to all angels, superior to all men. He is above all of His companions, anointed with the oil of joy.

And Christ is also greater because of His active rule over creation. Look at verses 10-12, he also says, "In the beginning, oh Lord, you laid the foundations of the Earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but You remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe, like a garment, they will be changed. But You remain the same and your years will never end."

29:55 S1: Now, we've already seen at the beginning of this chapter that Christ is the Creator. It is through Christ that God the Father made the universe, verse 2, "through whom He made the universe." And it says that God also, through Jesus, upholds the universe, that Christ upholds the universe, verse 3, by His powerful word. But here however, it directly ascribes to Jesus, the creation of the Earth and the heavens.

Notice that the verse begins with the same formula. "He also says," do you see that? In verse 10, "He also says," who is the He? Again, it's God the Father. God the Father is speaking again. He's talking about His Son. What does God the Father say about the Son here? Well, He also says, "In the beginning, oh Lord, you laid the foundations of the Earth." So that's God the Father giving to Jesus credit for laying the foundations of the Earth. And again, note it, He calls him Lord. A marvelous thing.

And what does it mean that it says "in the beginning"? That brings us immediately back to Genesis 1:1, doesn't it? "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth." But here God the Father's ascribing it to Jesus. "In the beginning, oh Lord, you laid the foundations of the Earth." And what does that mean, laid the foundation of the Earth? It pictures stability, doesn't it? Rock solid. He laid the foundations of the Earth.

As though Jesus were somehow a master craftsman, building a structure, and it's solid. It says in Psalm 104 verse 5, "He set the Earth on its foundations, it can never be moved." And it's a solid stage on which redemptive history unfolds. It's the Earth and it's not going to be moved till the Lord removes it. And He's also credited with the crafting of the heavens, as the work of Jesus' hands, as in Psalm 8:3-4. "When I consider the Heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you're mindful of him, the Son of Man that you care for him?"

But in Hebrews it ascribes that to Jesus. "In the beginning, oh Lord, you laid the foundations of the Earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands." It's Jesus who made them. The cosmos is immense, the stars are innumerable. Have you ever gone out, maybe in the mountains, you have to get away from the city, get away from the humidity. Get into the cooler, dryer climes and look out and you can see the milky way, that milky cloud of stars just going across like a band? And you see just vivid stars up there, you could almost read by them maybe.

And there's just this sense of the beauty, like diamonds they are up in the sky and so many. So many of them and magnificent. But Hebrews 1 ascribes the creation of all of them to Jesus. Christ is superior to the creation because they're only temporary. Now that'll boggle your mind. They're all temporary. They look really kind of like they're going to last forever. But they won't. They are temporary but Jesus is eternal. Christ is superior to the creations for this very reason. The verse clearly predicts the end of the universe.

Modern cosmologists, they go back and forth on where we're heading. I mean, what an inane discussion. None of them are going to be there, they just want to be right, having been dead for millennia. But they want to be right about it. Will the universe keep expanding? Will it stop at some point and kind of fold back in on itself? Will it oscillate like a big slinky, you know, back and forth, back and forth, oscillating, back and forth? Or will it collapse in on itself, the reversal of the Big Bang? Let them ruminate, we already know what's going to happen. Bible-believing Christians already know.

Just go to Hebrews 1. He's going to roll them up like a robe, like a garment they're going to be changed. They are going to perish. That's what it says. If you want more details, read in 2 Peter 3, verse 10, "The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire, and the Earth and everything in it will be laid bare." Verse 12 of that same chapter, "That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat."

Revelation 6:13-14, "The stars in the sky fell to the Earth as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place." All of that's going to happen but Jesus remains the same, and His years will never end. Oh, the greatness of Christ, the greatness of Christ! Greater than the stars, greater than the galaxies, greater than the Earth and the mountains and the ocean! Jesus remains the same, He never changes!

But this world, the universe, is going to be changed. And, may I say, greatly improved, the new heavens and the new Earth. I heard somebody say earlier today, "I am hungry to go, I can't wait to go there." I am hungry for that, aren't you? I want to be there. Christ never changes, ever.

Finally, Christ is greater because of His destiny. Look at verse 13, "To which of the angels did God ever say, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'" God rewards Christ with a position to sit at His right hand. Christ alone has this right. He alone has this privilege because of His perfect character, because He is God the Son, because He is sinless and pure and because He finished God's mission. He sits down with God on the throne, ruling with God, at His right hand. The image of sitting is that Christ finished His work, He had provided purification for sins. It's done. Once for all. We'll get into that later in this book. But once for all, it's done.

And now, God the Father is going to work on behalf of God the Son. "Sit at my right hand," He says, "until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." Oh, what a fearsome verse that is. Oh, can I warn you, tenderly? Don't be God's enemy on this point. How could you fight Almighty God concerning whether you have become a Christian or not, whether you have worshipped Jesus or not, whether you have trusted in Christ or not? Oh, don't be Christ's enemy. What does it mean that He'll make His enemies a footstool for your feet? Joshua had the Israelites put their feet on the necks of all their prostrate enemies. It's a picture of complete submission, domination. Well, I think all of us are going to submit to Jesus, one way or another, Amen? "Before me," it says in Isaiah, "Every knee will bow, by me every tongue will swear." And so, in Philippians that's ascribed to Jesus, oh, we'll be down there. But we are those that do it now by faith, Amen? We're not His enemies anymore. Isn't it good when Jesus has the power to turn His enemies into His own children? Like with Saul of Tarsus, and the thief on the cross? Just like that, He can change them.

And so, we go out, we do evangelism, we witness because we want the enemies of God (at one time, we were enemies) to be rescued and brought over into the kingdom of God and not be His enemies anymore, not have the wrath of God abiding on us anymore. But, other than that, Jesus' Jewish enemies said to Him, "Aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?" What an insulting thing to say. "You're a bastard and you're demon-possessed." And Jesus' answer is very insightful, and into His character, "'I am not possessed by a demon,' said Jesus, 'but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I'm not seeking glory for myself but there is someone who seeks it and He is the judge.'"

Who is it that seeks Jesus' honor? It's God the Father. And you can't measure the zeal that He has concerning that, it's a fire, our God is a consuming fire, and we cannot be His enemies on this issue. We must worship Jesus as the Son, and fall down, and as Psalm 2 says, "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry with... for His wrath can flare up in a moment." God the Father will make all of Jesus' enemies submit to Him. There's a good way for that to happen. Just repent and believe the Gospel, Amen! This universe is temporary, friends, your life is temporary here in this world. Eternity is eternal, come to Christ therefore, trust in Him.

Now, we have an opportunity to meditate on these things as we prepare for the Lord's Supper. This is a sweet time for me, a very significant time when we celebrate the Lord's Supper together. I believe that through the Holy Spirit, we can have an encounter with the living God, but I say this to you, if you're already believers in Christ and you've testified to that by water baptism, you're welcome to the table, but if you're not, don't come, don't come. The Bible says you'll eat and drink judgment on yourself. Instead, do something better: Repent of your sins and trust in Jesus. And all of us, while we're getting ready for the table, let's just worship Jesus based on the things we've learned today, let's worship Jesus for the greatness of His character and His justice, and His holiness, the eternity of His kingdom, His scepter and His heart that loves righteousness and hates wickedness.

And what do you say? We resolve in our hearts to grow more and more toward Christ-like character, so we love righteousness the way He does and hate wickedness the way He does as well. Let's put sin to death by the power of the Spirit. And if you're aware, as you're preparing for the Lord's Supper, of any sin in your life, you're aware of patterns that are dishonoring to God, your consciences is violated, just know there is a cleansing for conscience through the blood of Jesus. So, I'm going to close in prayer, then we'll go to the Lord's Supper.

Father, thank you for this time we've had around the Word. And now, as we go to the table, I pray that You would send forth Your Holy Spirit, help us to partake in a manner worthy of the Lord. We praise You for the opportunity to be here today and to hear You speak to us, help us to love Jesus by the power of the Spirit. And now, just send forth Your Holy Spirit to make the bread and the juice become for us a spiritual encounter with Jesus, dead on the cross, raised from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, coming again in glory. I ask this through Jesus and for His glory, Amen.

I wonder how our corporate worship would be transformed if God gave us the eyes of faith to see what's going on in the invisible spiritual realms in this room right now? If you could see angels and demons battling it out on more or less equal terms, the kind of warfare swirling around our heads, perhaps it would leave you powerless, breathless on the ground in terror and amazement, and wonder. The Prophet Daniel had a vision of a heavenly warrior that left him on the ground literally unable to breathe. He was standing on the banks of the Tigris River when suddenly an awesome being came and stood before him. This messenger was a radiant being dressed in linen with a golden belt around his waist. Daniel 10:6 describes him, "His body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude."

The men who were with Daniel couldn't see this messenger but they fled in terror from an invisible presence. Daniel himself fell to the ground as if in some kind of a mysterious deep sleep, he was breathless, he was trembling violently. And though the messenger commanded him to stand, he was physically unable to do so for long, he literally had no strength whatsoever in his legs. He said, "I am overcome with anguish because of the vision, my Lord, and I am helpless. How can I your servant talk with you, my Lord? My strength is gone and I can hardly breathe."

Now, this awesome being was an angel. If you saw such a being, I think you would be tempted, like Daniel, to fall on the ground and call him my Lord, which he does twice, or like the apostle John was on the Isle of Patmos, twice falling down to worship the angel that brought him the revelation. And twice the angel had to tell him the same thing, "Do not do it. I'm a fellow servant with you… Worship God." Twice, Revelation 19 and Revelation 22.

Angels are fellow servants with us but they are glorious, holy, exalted, heavenly beings. And were we not better instructed and could we see them with our own eyes, we would be tempted to fall on the ground and worship them. But the holy angels would all instruct us in the same way, "Do not do it, worship God," worship Christ for Jesus is immeasurably greater than any angel. Now, in Hebrews 1, the author's point is to teach us that Christ is immeasurably, infinitely greater than all angels.

So why does this passage exist? When I think why would the author begin his epistle this way comparing Jesus to angels and saying that Jesus is greater than angels? Well, remember the overall book of Hebrews was written to Jewish people who had made some kind of profession of faith in Christ, but who are under relentless pressure from their Jewish friends and family and neighbors and rabbis to give up their profession of faith in Christ and go back to old covenant religion. They are in danger of going back to Judaism, back to the synagogue, giving up Jesus. And so the author begins with a glorious display of Christ as God, as Creator, and sustainer of the universe. And he's doing this so that they will worship Jesus and so that they will not go back to the old covenant, forsaking the new covenant. So his strategy is to declare right from the beginning the greatness of Christ so that they will not turn their backs on Him and forsake Him. And so Jesus is the superior mediator. The superior mediator, Christ, who brings a superior covenant, the new covenant, resulting in a superior life. Christian life of complete forgiveness, purification in the sight of God and power to serve God. That's what this epistle is about.

Now, last week we saw in Hebrews 1:1-3 how he starts so powerfully with the radiance and the greatness of Christ as God and in His office as final Prophet, Priest and King to the Jewish people and to the world. "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His son whom He appointed heir of all things and through whom He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. And after He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven." If I'm not careful, I'm just going to preach last week's sermon all over again, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but there's more to learn, isn't there? Because the author goes on from there, he links these three verses to this statement. Verse four, "So He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs." So, he's linking what he just told us about Jesus to the issue of angels.

Three Goals of the Author

And you may wonder why, why specifically does the author want to show the superiority of Christ to the angels? I believe it's because the angels brought the old covenant to the Jews. Now, if an angel, a holy angel, came from heaven and gave you a message, how seriously would you take that message? If you learn anything from John the Baptist's father Zechariah's example, you better believe it and do what it says or he might do something to you as Gabriel struck him dumb until John was finally born. But you would take that message very seriously, wouldn't you? If an angel came down from heaven and gave you a message. How much more then if the Son of God does it? That God Himself in the person of His Son comes and gives you not a message, but a whole new covenant by which we are welcomed in the presence of God. How seriously should we take that?

And so the author's purpose here is to exalt Christ anyway, so that we'll worship Him. So we'll give ourselves fully because we're creative for that. But specifically to compare Christ to angels and show that Christ is infinitely above angels so that we'll not worship angels, but that so we will esteem the new covenant that was given to us by Christ as superior to that that the angels gave, the old covenant.

And so who are these angels, what do they do? In verse 4, Christ is compared, a direct comparison to angels. "Christ is as much superior to the angels, as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs." So we're going to talk about angels today because that's what the author is doing. He's comparing Jesus to angels. Again, verse 5, "For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my son?'" Verse 6, "Let all God's angels worship Him." The angels are commanded to worship Christ.

In verse 7, the angels are established as servants, mere servants. Also again in verse 14, they're called servants. Verses 7 and 8 shows a direct comparison between Christ and these servants. Verse 7 says, "'He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire,' but about the Son, He says, 'Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever.'" Jesus enthroned as God over all things, angels merely servants. In verse 9 it says that God has set Jesus above His companions. So in the context that's at least talking about angels, He is above the angels, set above them. And then in verses 13 and 14, again, a direct comparison with the angels, "To which of the angels did God ever say, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'?" He's comparing them to angels and verse 14, "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" So right straight through and frankly on into chapter two, he's comparing Jesus to the angels.

So who are angels? Well, angels are created beings, so they're creatures, they're created beings. They are spiritual in nature, which we'll discuss this morning, without flesh and bones. They are able, however, to take visible form, looking like human beings, so skillfully that you can actually entertain angels without knowing it. So the author of the Hebrews at the end of chapter 13 says, "Show hospitality to strangers," never know it might be an angel. So they are able to do that, they are, they often appear supernaturally with radiant glory shining around them. It's all in what they want to do. If they want to put you on the ground, they'll put you on the ground. If they want to appear to you, and you don't even know it's them, they can do that too. Whatever God wills.

They're highly intelligent, with powerful emotions. They are inquisitive. They're frequently asking what is God up to, what is He doing? So they're not omniscient, they don't know everything, but they're very well informed. They know what's going on, as much as God's revealed to them. They do not marry, they are unable to procreate. They do not die, they are immortal. There is a fixed number of them, and that number is huge, at least 100 million. A large number, a large percentage of angels rebelled with Satan, and were thrown from heaven. Revelation 12 tells that story, thrown to the earth, and they became what we call demons, as we saw on the sermon on hell a number of weeks ago, in which Jesus said, "Depart from me, ye who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." So the devil, who was himself an angel, led some angels astray. Those angels who were not led astray are called in 1 Timothy, elect angels. So they're chosen by God not to fall. So election extends not just to humans, but to angels.

They are highly organized. There are archangels, which means ruler angels, and there are lesser beings. And there are probably greater levels of angelic power and glory than that. They're clearly more powerful than human beings, for one angel moved the stone in front of Jesus' tomb. Rolled it back and sat on it, it's one of my favorite angel moments in the Bible. As the soldiers become like dead men, laying on the ground before him. He's not too troubled with them. I could say a lot of things right now like, "You want a piece of me? Come and get it," that kind of thing, but he could have handled if there were 1000 Roman soldiers, it would not have mattered. Powerful, and able to move with astonishing speed, frequently depicted as having wings, even six wings.

Alright, what do they do? Well, they're created especially to serve God and His people, they are both spectators and participants in redemptive history. They are observers in the book of Revelation. They note the events that are going on on earth and talk about it. They're dispatched by God to pour out wrath and rescue believers who do other key tasks. They were especially involved in the life of Christ, celebrating at the time of His birth, ministering to Him in the time of His humiliation, both in His fasting in the desert and then in Gethsemane, announcing Christ's resurrection to the women and to the apostles, especially active in the life of Christ.

Now, how are they especially relevant to the book of Hebrews? Well, I think I've already told you. Look at Hebrews 2:1-3, there it says, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard," that's the gospel, the new covenant, "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away; for if the message spoken by angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how should we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?" And so the author is implying, he doesn't directly say it, but implying the angels brought the old covenant.

Stephen says this same thing, and so does is Paul. Stephen in Acts 7 says, to the Jews who are opposing him, "You who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it." So the law is the law of Moses that came through angels. And then Paul says in Galatians 3:19, "The law was put into effect through the angels by a mediator." So the angels brought it to the mediator, the mediator is Moses, then Moses gave it to the people. Jesus is going to be compared to Moses in chapter 3. By the way, Jesus is greater than Moses too. And so the author is saying the angels brought us the Old Covenant, how much more then should we pay careful attention and not ignore this great salvation? That's what he's saying.

So Jesus, the greater messenger, brings us a greater covenant. Now, Christ was sent by God to bring us this new covenant. The angels are not mentioned as bringing the old covenant, in the Old Testament you don't see it. There is one verse that could be translated that way, but really get all of this from the New Testament, that's the only way we know it. And we think that, possibly, the angels are more active in bringing Scripture than we think. For example, wasn't it the angels or an angel that brought John the book of Revelation? For it says in Revelation 1:1, "A revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show His servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John," who wrote it down for us. And so the angels were given this kind of role.

Alright, so how then is Christ greater than the angels? Well, right away the author says in verse 4, He's greater because of His name. And so He became "as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs." In that famous Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet, remember how Juliet was frustrated by the fact that the man she wanted to marry had the name, Montague, and she was a Capulet. Remember the two families were feuding and they couldn't marry. They couldn't get together because of this name Montague. What's in a name? She says that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so why do I have to worry about his last name? Well, it's all very beautiful, but it's not very simple that way, is it? Names mean something. With the name comes a history, with the name comes a heritage. When we come to the theology and the person of God, God's name is everything. In the Hebrew mindset, the name represented the person, his attributes, his nature, his position, his achievements. Says in Proverbs 22:1, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." So God then in redemptive history puts everything into making a name for Himself.

Daniel in 9:15 prays this, "Now, oh Lord, our God, who brought Your people out of Egypt, for the mighty hand and who made for Yourself a name that endures to this day." So God gained a reputation for Himself when He brought the Jews out of Egypt. And God links our salvation from our own sins to this. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." And the word Lord there in Romans 10 refers to Jesus. And Jesus steps into the name of God and makes God's attributes and His intentions and His person come alive incarnate before us. We have seen His glory and then you see what Jesus did, how He lived a sinner's life, how He died an atoning death and how He was raised from the dead on the third day. And if you call on that name, though you are a wretched sinner, though you have sinned greatly, you'll be forgiven. If you trust in that name, if you call on the name of the Lord, you will be saved. And that's true all over the world. So God makes much of His name to save sinners like you and me.

Jesus Received the Name "Son"

So what name is it that he has received, that the angels didn't? Well, what does it say? "So He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs, for to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my son…'?" Well, there is the name. The name is Son of God, that's the name that Jesus has and none of the angels do. "You are my son, today I have begotten you," or today I have become Your Father or again, "I will be His Father and He will be my son." Christ named son of God then, perfectly sums up all of His transcendent greatness and He is as much exalted over the angels as the name that He has received is exalted over theirs. They are angels which just means messengers, Jesus is Son, He is Son of God, He's the heir. And so the author speaks of Christ inheriting a name. He inherited the name Son of God, something He inherited from His Heavenly Father and it is, Christ's name, is the greatest name in all history.

Philippians 2, Jesus was willing to turn His back on all that heavenly glory and became a human being. He became a servant and He humbled himself even to the point of dying on a cross. "Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should 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' name is the greatest name there is. Son of God, infinitely above all created beings. So the author asks a rhetorical question; "For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my son, today I have become your father?'" The answer is clearly none. None of the angels received such a statement from God. There are more than 100 million angels and not one of them received such a statement or were begotten as the only Son of God.

The implication in this is that there are some angels that are greater than others. There are some ranks or orders of angels that are higher than others. For to which of any of them did God say, even the highest angel was never called Son of God. Michael the archangel in Daniel 10:13 is called one of the chief princes. That implies there are more than one of these ruler angels. So he's one of the chief princes. So to which of even the highest order of angels did God ever say, "You are my son"? None. And He is, I believe the eternally begotten Son of God. Now here, the mystery of godliness is great. Christ has eternally existed. He is no created beings, against the Jehovah's Witnesses' false teaching, that Jesus is a created being. He is no created being, He has forever existed and He has forever been God. But there is some question as to whether He has been forever Son, God the Son.

People ask because it says, "Today I have begotten you," as though at a certain decisive moment, Jesus became Son. Now, I believe the mystery of godliness is great but that Jesus never changes. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. And our creed, the Nicene Creed, teaches that He is eternally begotten as God the Son. It says, "I believe in one God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Begotten of the Father before all worlds. God of god, Light of light, very God of very god, begotten not made. Being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made." Sometimes the translation of the creed reads, "eternally begotten of the Father."

Now, the word "begotten" comes from the Greek, "monogenes," which means only generated or only begotten one. John 1:14 says, "And the word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. And we've seen His glory. Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." Now, the concept is that Jesus was eternally begotten of the Father. But some focus on a decisive moment and I think there is a decisive moment concerning this issue of His sonship. And I think it has to do with the declaration of Jesus as Son. God speaking it to the universe. God declaring it to us so that we will know who He is. "For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my son…'?" There's a declaration here in redemptive history.

And when did that happen? I think first and foremost it happened at Jesus' incarnation. We know from biology to have a human baby, you have to have 46 chromosomes, 23 of them come from the father and 23 from the mother. Mary was a virgin. The Angel Gabriel came and announced to her that she would be with child and give birth to a son. "And Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be since I am a virgin?' And the angel answered and said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the holy child shall be called the Son of God.'" So at that moment, the supplying of the missing 23 chromosomes in a miraculous sort of way, meant that Jesus had God as His own father. And so I think that's the decisiveness of this statement, "Today I have begotten you." Meaning, today I have declared to the world that You are My Son.

Second quote emphasizes the same truth, "Or again, I will be His father and He will be My Son." This is quoting from the Davidic Covenant in 2 Samuel 7. When God promised to David that he would have a son, who would always forever reign on the throne. "I will be His Father and He will be My Son." The only way that Jesus could be both son of God and son of David, is by this incarnation, by the virgin conception inside Mary's body. Now, no angel ever had that honor, dear friends. It's utterly unique in history. Only Jesus received this blessing of being the only begotten son of God. Amazingly though, the Apostle Paul links it to Jesus' resurrection.

In Pisidian Antioch, he's there preaching in the synagogue and he says this in Acts 13, "We tell you the good news. What God promised our fathers, He has fulfilled for us their children by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm, 'You are my son. Today I have begotten you.'" Now, isn't that fascinating? When Jesus was conceived inside the virgin Mary, "You are my Son. Today I have begotten you." And then when He again takes on a human body, the statement again made, "You are My Son. Today I have begotten You." And from this point and forever, He will be human, forever the begotten Son of God. Both of them linked to Jesus being a human being. But none of the angels ever had such an honor and the glory to be called the Son of God.

Secondly, Christ is greater because He is worshipped. Look at verse 6, "And again when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, 'Let all God's angels worship Him.'" God the Father commands the angels. They're merely servants. They are glorious, yes. They are powerful but they are merely servants. They do what they're told. When God, the Father, commands them to do something, they must obey. Here, God the Father, commands all of His angels to worship His Son. What an incredible moment that is in redemptive history. The word here used is firstborn, "When God brings his firstborn... " Greek is "prototokos." It's also used in Colossians 1, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." And again in 1:18: "He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead." So again, incarnation and resurrection both used with that word, firstborn. So then in everything, He might have the supremacy.

So, how did it work? Back in those days, in Bible days, there were patriarchal families. The father was the head of the whole family. But his firstborn stood as his heir and stood to receive all of the father's possessions and his position of leadership over the family. Jesus is the heir, and He is the first born over the whole family. And so, God, when He brings His first born into the world says, "Let all God's angels worship Him." Now, this is amazing because God is jealous over His worship, isn't He? He says in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:2 and following, "I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other Gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven or earth or under the earth or in the waters beneath. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." God will have us worship nothing but Himself. Again Isaiah 42:8, "I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols." And again in Matthew 4, when the devil comes and tempts Jesus says, "I'll give you the whole world if you just bow down and worship me." Jesus says, "Away from me, Satan. For it is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only."

But here, amazingly, God commands all of His angels to worship His Son. There is no jealousy in the Trinity, dear friends. The Father is happy to have you worship Jesus. So, why don't you go ahead and do it? Amen! Do it. Do it right now while I'm preaching about Jesus. Just in your heart, esteem Him greatly. Love Him more than you ever have before. Just worship Him and the Father will be honored. He's not jealous of this because Jesus is God. And so it is not a violation of that first commandment, to worship Him. Let all God's angels worship Him. He wants all of creation to celebrate His Son, spreads it widely. Let everyone worship Him. And that's evangelism, by the way, too. Let all human beings worship My Son. And so when you go out as evangelists, you go out in the name of worship, go out there and just compel them to worship. Tell them great things about Jesus and let them worship. And if they won't worship, you go ahead and worship anyway. That's what evangelism is.

Now, what is the timing of this? Well, it all has to do with how you translate the verse and where you put the word "again." The NIV puts it at the beginning, it says, "And again when He brings His first born into the world, He says let all God's angels worship Him." But the NASB puts it later in the sentence. Such as, "And when God, again, brings His first born into the world, He says let all God's angels worship Him." Does that make a difference? Well, yes it does. It makes a difference because in that case if the "again" were later in the sentence, it would be talking about the second coming of Christ. When God again brings His first born into the world, He's going to command the angels then, "Let all the angels worship Him." And so, they will.

The first time when Jesus came into the world, the angels were there and they were worshipping, right? There was an angel and the shepherds were watching their fields at night. And then an angel came and the glory of the Lord shone all around them and they were sore afraid. I love the KJV on that one. Just stick with, "They were sore afraid." That means really afraid. Glory shining and then the angel said the good news that Christ was born in the city of David. And then, "Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.'" So, that's it. When the Lord brought His first born into the world, all of God's angels were there. But, technically, they weren't worshipping Jesus at that moment; they were worshipping God. I think they were worshipping Him. But could it be that it's referring to the second coming of Christ? When all of God's angels will be there, when the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His throne in heavenly glory. And all the angels will be there.

In Revelation chapter five, it takes up this story after Jesus takes the title deed of the earth in His hand and He sits on the throne with God the Father and rules over the earth. This is what it says in Revelation 5, "Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders and in a loud voice they sang, 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.'" Well, there's no doubt Who the angels are worshipping there, the Lamb who was slain. They are clearly worshipping Him. Either way, I think they're worshipping at the beginning. They just worship all the time. They've been worshipping Jesus. I'm just trying to get the verse right. So you won't even trouble about where the "again" happens. You were never worried about it. But I am troubled by it. Is it at the beginning or the end? Does it really matter? All God's angels are worshipping Jesus. And we ought to too. That's the author's clear implication.

Christ is also greater, because of His nature. Look at verse 7. "And speaking of the angels, He says, 'He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire.'" Angels are mere created beings. They're creatures. Creature means that which is created. And they are creatures. He makes His angels. They're crafted, they're shaped, they're created. He makes His angels. And speaks here of their nature and of their office, what are they like and what are they called to do. Jesus is greater in both senses. As their nature, they're created beings or creatures. Concerning their office, they are servants.

Tozer, speaking of the infinite gap between God and all creatures, said this. This is in The Knowledge of the Holy.

"Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other in the scale of created things, are nevertheless one in that they are alike created. They both belong in the category of that which-is-not-God and are separated from God by infinitude itself."

So Jesus is infinitely greater than the highest angel, because He's creator, and they're creature. It also speaks of God's ownership. He makes His angels. They are His, He made them, He can do what He wants with them, they belong to Him. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, made each one of those 100 million angels. Each one of them. Crafted them specially. I think they are each one unique, just like each human being is unique.

And so God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit sustains each one of those holy angels. In Him, each one of them lives and moves and has its being. Each one. And why? Because the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. Jesus upholds the angels and keeps them alive. Now, two angels have names in the Bible, Gabriel and Michael. Luke 1:19 "I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God," so he has a special job, and he knows what his task is. Michael in Daniel 12:1, is the great prince who protects the Jewish people and who fights for them. So they have roles and names. It would be, I think, unhelpful speculation to go beyond this, in the area of names and roles and all that. Though others have done so in spades, dear friends. You want to know about angels? Just go on the internet. And venture into the world of new age mysticism, and start finding out how many angels' names there are.

Catholic theology, medieval theology accepted the apocryphal book of Tobit, so you get a third name, Raphael, from an angel there. Cults like the Mormons add the angel Moroni, who gave Joseph Smith the Book of Mormon. And one terrible website I went to gave dozens of angel's names with astonishing extra statements about what this or that angel did. One angel, with a specific name which I shall not utter here, was believed to have created the tree of life. I thought God did that. Anyway, another angel with a specific name, which I will not utter here, is tasked, get this, with the responsibility of helping people to love themselves so they can love others better. And if you can learn the names of each of these angels, then you'll do better in your life. This website told us calling an angel's name is asking this angelic energy to make itself known to you. Sounds like old polytheism to me. A pantheon of deities male and female, that can kind of come and help you.

However, the fact that two angels are named, and that the title archangels, at least in there, does give us a sense of differentiation and specialization among the angels, all 100 million of them. But they are merely servants and Christ is the ruler. And speaking of the angels, verse 70, "He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire." Then in verse 14, "Are not all angels ministering servants, sent to serve those who inherit salvation."

The clear contrast is put together between Jesus and Christ as you look at verse 7 and 8. In speaking of the angels He says "'He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire,' but about the Son He says 'Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever.'" Do you see the contrast? We'll talk about that verse next week, but they're servants, He's on a throne. He's ruling. In verse 14, the author makes a special point that angels are sent to serve us and to help us. To minister to those who are going to inherit salvation. So by bringing the Scripture to Moses at Sinai, or to John on the island of Patmos, they were serving the church. By protecting the people of God from satanic attack, as Michael did in Daniel 12, angels have served the church. By warring against Satan generally, defeating his demonic army, casting down all those demons from Heaven to the Earth, angels were serving the church. By bringing messages, revelations, dreams, answers to prayers, angels did for Daniel, Joseph, Mary, Peter, Philip and others, angels have served the church. By providing food and drink for the suffering like Elijah, who was just at the end of his rope, fleeing from Jezebel, lying wanting to die in the desert, God sent an angel to feed him and give him some water, angels have served the church. By enabling Peter the Apostle to escape prison when King Herod wanted to kill him, angels have served the church. And then by going and killing King Herod and striking him so he was eaten with worms and died, angels have served the church.

In the future when angels are dispatched as in the Book of Revelation, to pour out specific aspects of the wrath of God on the persecuting world, angels will be serving the church. When Christ comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will send out His angels in heavenly glory and they will gather the elect from one end of the heavens to the other, and angels will serve the church then. Boy, aren't you looking forward to that! That is the rapture, friends. And God will send you an angel to come and get you.

And when Christ the judge condemns the reprobates, the wicked, and dispatches them to hell and commands "Tie them hand and foot and throw them outside into the darkness," it will be angels that will weed out of Christ's kingdom everything that causes sin and all those who do evil, throw them in the fiery furnace. Are not all angels ministering spirits, sent to serve those who inherit salvation? They are spiritual beings. They're likened to winds and fire. A wind is a very spiritual thing, isn't it? Jesus likens the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the wind. "The wind," John 3:8, "blows where it wishes. You hear it sound but you can't tell where it comes from and where it's going, and so it is with everyone born of the spirit."

As a matter of fact, the Hebrew word for spirit and wind are the same. And you have to tell from context whether it's to be translated spirit or wind, it's "ruah." It's just, I love saying that, just like I studied Hebrew, "ruah." So you can do that, when you do that sound, it just sounds like breath, doesn't it. And so the wind blows. And so the Psalm 104 that this was translated from could be translated, "He makes His angels spirits, His servants flames of fire." But winds, I think, a better translation. Wind is frequently seen to be like the secret power of God affecting Earth in ways that we can't control, powerful. So the wind comes along and the wind moves the water of Noah's flood off the earth and dries the earth. God sends a wind to do that.

Or He brings locusts to destroy Egypt during the plague, and then sends a wind to remove them. And then He sends a wind to make a way through the Red Sea and then the wind stops and the way closes back down on Pharaoh and his army. He brings quail with wind. It's this wind coming all the time. And here it says, "He makes His angels winds." Sometimes the angels are even directly linked to weather like in Revelation 7:1, "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or the sea or on any tree." So the angels are up there kind of holding back the wind. There's more stuff going on than we know about, dear friends. And there's more things in the Bible than you thought there was. But the angels are winds.

They're doing a spiritual work often invisible, but making a great effect. And so also they're likened to flames of fire. Have you ever sat like at a campfire and just watched the fire like for entertainment? Or like on a Christmas eve, you're watching the fire and it's fun to watch. It's mysterious to me. I can't figure it out. The flames are dancing and moving in there. They're shaped in a certain way. I found out, I didn't know this, but I found out that they're shaped in that characteristic kind of point at the top because of gravity, gravity is pulling on the gases and makes a point at the top. Wow! I didn't know that.

Angels are like flames of fire. They're spiritual beings. So much so it says in Isaiah 6 that the angels, they're called seraphim, which literally means "burning ones," radiating with a burning glory, but yet they're covering their faces before Jesus. He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire.

Now, next time we'll talk about how Christ is also greater because of His throne, because of His anointing, because of His rule over creation, and because of His destiny.

What applications can we take from this? First and foremost, I already said it before, but I'll say it again, come to Christ. No angel can save you. No angel ever had flesh and blood to die on a cross for you. You and I are sinners. We have flesh and blood and with our bodies we have violated laws. But the Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all, and Jesus shed His blood. His body was nailed to the Cross that we might live forever, that our sins might be forgiven. If you simply trust in Him, this is your hope. You may have come here feeling defiled and your conscience defiled, it says in Hebrews 1:3, "After Jesus had provided purification for sins," Jesus can purify your conscience and make you feel free again, and clean again. Only Jesus can do that, come to Christ.

And second of all, let's understand the author's point here. The New Covenant is greater than the old. So we would be foolish to shrink away from Jesus. We'd be foolish to drift away, that's exactly where he's going into chapter two. We must pay more careful attention. Therefore, because Jesus is greater than angels, we must pay more careful attention to the message He brought, pay careful attention to the Gospel. Don't drift away from Jesus. Get closer to Jesus than you've ever been in your life. Spend more time praying to Him. Spend more time asking Him to forgive you for sins. Spend more time reading His word and saturating your mind in the greatness of Christ. Worship Him more freely. Stay with Christ. Don't forsake the new covenant. And worship Him, Christ, for His infinite greatness.

If you saw the angel that Daniel saw in Daniel 10 then the angel were to fall on his face and cover his face before Jesus, wouldn't that give you a sense of the greatness of Jesus? Jesus is great and we should worship Him. And meditate, finally, on the sonship of Christ. He became a son, He took on flesh and blood, so that you could trust in Him as a faithful high priest who was tempted in every way just as you are. Who knows what you're going through, yet was without sin, and Who can usher you right into the very presence of God. Trust this flesh and blood Mediator who is of the same family as you to usher you right into the presence of God so that you can receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Close with me in prayer now.

Today I get to declare the greatness and the glory of the one that called me out of darkness into His wonderful light. I get to speak it, you get to listen to it and you get to rejoice in it too. Isn't that marvelous? We're going to celebrate Jesus today. That's what the text is all about. I believe as I said at the 9Marks Conference two days ago. I had a responsibility of speaking on the topic of preaching Christ from the Old Testament. And I just said it's my duty and responsibility in every text to get to Jesus. Every text. But may I say to you it's sometimes easier than others. And concerning this text, if you can't get to Jesus from this text you ought not to be preaching. This is all about Jesus and the greatness and the glories of Christ. It's my desire that God will just make Jesus shine radiantly in your hearts.

I have a number of hobbies. One of my hobbies is I like collecting engagement stories. I like to find out from married couples how they got engaged. Some of them are pretty ordinary and that's fine, it works. A couple got engaged and they get married, and that's fine. Some of them are astonishing, amazing. What some of these guys have done to come up with the way to propose to their soon to be fiancée. I had a friend that I met at seminary who was... This is definitely the riskiest proposal I've ever heard. He put the diamond ring in a very expensive conch shell and just put it on a beach in Northern California and had a friend watch it from behind a bush while he went and got his soon-to-be fiancée and as the sun was setting, they were just walking along the beach and there was this incredible conch shell. And she picked it up and the ring fell right into her hand, not into the sand at their feet where with a flashlight they're rummaging for three hours trying to find it, but right into her hand. Tears coming down, she puts it on her finger and they're engaged. Isn't that exciting? That's fantastic. I mean he swung for the fences and he hit a home run.

All right. That was the boldest I ever heard. The most cowardly I ever heard was a man who put his proposal… He taped it on a cassette tape and he had his soon-to-be fiancée play the tape in the tape player in the car there while he got something out of the trunk. And the engagement ring, the diamond ring was in the glove compartment and she listened to the proposal and he came around a minute or two later and all was well. She was wearing the ring. She was smiling. Everything was good.  Wow. I said to him, "You weren't even there. When you got engaged you weren't even there."

When I was engaged I know it all worked out well. I'm glad. Oh, how our wives have to put up with us. But isn't it interesting though, it's always a diamond ring. I wondered where that tradition came from, and I didn't really track that down, but why is it always a diamond? And maybe it's because of it's the hardest substance that we know. It's unchanging. It's just still looks the same decade after decade. And also just with the skill of a jeweler it can just capture light and cause it to just radiate brilliantly. It's just beautiful to look at. And so it's a beautiful unchanging thing. Maybe that's why it's always a diamond. And I didn't realize this, but it wasn't until the late 15th century that jewelers knew how to grind facets on diamonds in perfectly symmetrical patterns in a way that would ideally capture the available light and just cause the gem to shine radiantly and brilliantly.

And it was a Belgian man in particular in 1475 that discovered that diamond dust is able to cut diamond. It's the only thing that can. And so he captured, he made these grinding wheels with diamond dust and olive oil and then started grinding facets, and he worked with it until he came to the realization that perfectly symmetrical pattern that we're well familiar with now, was the best for making the gem come alive with fire, with light, with brilliance. And he was the only one in the world that could do it and a particular nobleman, the Duke of Burgundy paid him 3,000 ducats of gold to make three perfect diamonds, and there are only three in the world like it. Now we're used to it, but it's still the kind of thing you're looking for when you go for a diamond. You're looking for the cut and the facets and how skillfully they're done. And I think as I look at the text of it that's what I thought of. I thought of a brilliant diamond and these various facets that capture the light of God and cause the light of God to come to our hearts radiantly, beautifully.

And the diamond is Jesus, and the facets are different aspects of Jesus in His ministry, in his personality there. Some of which are revealed in this text today. Not all of them, but some come alive and are just radiant. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to look at facets of Jesus today and we're going to see how he brings the glory of God just radiantly in our hearts. My goal is simple. I want you to love Jesus more than you've ever done before as a result of the sermon. I want your heart to be captured by Jesus. I want you to know that Jesus is enough. I want you to stop being idolaters. Because if you say in any practical way or any actual way, "Jesus is not enough" you're an idolater. But if Jesus is really enough for you, then you can be joyful and content in any and every situation that Jesus brings into your life and it's He that's doing it. We're going to talk about that today. The sun is the radiance of God's glory. And we're going to discuss how he is that.

Context in Hebrews

Now in the context this is the beginning of the Book of Hebrews, we did a whole overview of Hebrews last week, but this is the beginning, these are the first words. There's no introduction here, there's no Paul and apostle of Christ Jesus or any of these kind of things. The author, whoever he is, just gets right to Jesus. You see that? I mean just immediately we get right to Jesus. Why? Well because I believe these Jewish professors of faith in Christ were under tremendous pressure from their unbelieving Jewish family and friends and neighbors to turn their backs on Jesus and come back to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To forsake Jesus particularly. And renounce Him as the Messiah, and come back to the God that they had always known. And so the author is getting right to business, and even with these three verses, how can you forsake this one? How can you forsake the one who is God's final word to the human race in these last days. The one who is the son of God, who radiates with the light of God, and shines God for it, and through whom God made the universe and sustains it, and who alone provided purification for sins and who is, at the present, sitting at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty.

How can you turn your back on Jesus and go back to anything at all? God will not have it. It can't be like that ever again. It is Jesus now. And it will be Jesus for all eternity. That's what He's doing, you see the context? So right away we are given Jesus. And though we are not Jewish professors of faith in Christ who are under pressure from our Jewish neighbors and friends to relinquish Christ, I tell you, you are under tremendous pressure every day to turn your back on Jesus. Every single day, so we need to hear this too, don't we? And that's what this text is all about.

So let's look at these various facets. This flamingly brilliant radiance of God's glory shining through Jesus, a stone with this morning's text, eight facets, Jesus's glory, as the final profit from God, the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, the Heir of all things, the Display of God's glory, the Sustainer of the universe, the Final Priest and the King on His throne. That should be enough for us, don't you think? Tell me, do you think I'm going to get through all this today? I must. I must. We have new things to do next week, so let's go forward.

The God Who Speaks

The first facet I see is the glory of Christ as the Final Prophet. "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His son." First of all, God speaks. The God that we worship, He speaks. Francis Schaeffer 1972 wrote a book entitled "He is There and He is Not Silent." It's foundational, it's fundamental to the Christian faith that God exists and He's not silent. The fact is that God is a communicating God, He speaks and we listen. Says, in Isaiah 1:2, "Hear all Heavens. Listen o earth for the Lord has spoken." From the beginning God spoke and created, the universe came into being by the spoken word of God. By the word of His power, all worlds came to be. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Seven times in Genesis 1, God speaks and some new aspect of creation springs into being. But most significantly I think to us, God has chosen to communicate to us, human beings. In words. He's talking to us. And He did that from the start. In Genesis 2, He clearly communicated His will to Adam, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die." God spoke that. In Genesis 3, God speaks words of judgement on the serpent and on Eve and on Adam for what they had done. God speaks judgement, and in Genesis chapter 4, God speaks a warning to Cain who is angry with God and with his brother because God didn't accept his offering and He speaks a warning to him. He warns him not to sin. Then He speaks judgement over him when he does sin.

In Genesis chapter 6, God speaks to Noah and tells him that a flood is coming and that he is to build an arch to save his family, and Noah obeys God, and so on through. God is a God who speaks, He communicates, He speaks words and His words have power.

How God Spoken Then: To the Fathers, at Many Times and in Various Ways

Well, how did God speak then? Well it says, "In the past, God spoke to our forefathers…" He spoke to our forefathers. So I think the author to the Hebrews was Jewish and was connecting himself to that ancestry that the Jews hold so dear. That ancestry that descendant from Abraham, the forefathers, the Jews, their Jewish lineage and ancestry. God spoke to the forefathers in the past in the era of the old covenant. And He did so through the prophets, God's spokesmen. They are intermediaries between God. They went and got the Word of God and brought it down, and we heard from the prophets, and the prophets told us what God was saying.

It says "at many times and in various ways." Sometimes it would be an audible voice, like when the entire nation of Israel was assembled at the base of Mt. Sinai and God spoke out of a terrifying cloud and storm and spoke the Ten Commandments, and they heard. They heard the voice of God and they were so terrified that they asked Moses to go and hear and speak from then on, and that was how the office of prophet really got established in the nation of Israel. "We don't want to hear this great voice anymore unless we hear and die."

But Elijah on Mount Horeb was up in that cave fleeing from Jezebel, you remember, and God spoke to him in a still, small voice. Quiet little voice. So just the range of the voice of God, simplest most common way is just, "The word of the Lord came to so and so and they spoke to Jeremiah or to a different... One of the prophets." Or he would speak in dreams and visions like in Daniel 7:1, "In the first year of Belshazzar King of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying on his bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream." Or in Ezekiel 1:1, "In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month of the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God…" That's Ezekiel. And sometimes God spoke in symbols. He used symbols with prophets. Like He had Jeremiah look and he saw an almond branch. "What do you see, Jeremiah?" "I see an almond branch." It's a symbol that God is watching, because it sounds like the word for watching. And so God's watching over the Jews to see what they're doing.

Or then He shows him a pot boiling, boiling pot with boiling water. And it's tipping away from the north and it's pouring out. And God was using a symbol to say that judgement, the Babylonians, were going to come from the north like boiling water pouring over the land. He showed Amos a basket of ripe fruit and said that he time for judgment is ripe on the house of Israel. He commands Hosea to marry a prostitute as a symbol of the fact that Israel had been unfaithful to God. He had Ezekiel draw a picture of the city of Jerusalem and then build little siege ramps and siege works against that little tablet of clay that he had built. So it was symbolizing the siege that was coming on Jerusalem. And then He had him get an iron skillet and put it between him and his face, saying that God has turned his face away from the people, and he will not rescue them. And many times and in various ways.

 Sometimes by providence, by God just doing things, he would communicate. Like, for example, when the Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines, you remember that? And it was brought into the Temple of Dagon to show that Dagon had triumphed over Yahweh. No he hadn't. God had a message that day for the people. Because the next day they found Dagon on his face before the Ark. You remember that story? Isn't that great? Like, "Oh, somebody didn't secure the idol very well. Let's nail it down and get it back up." No, no. You got it right. Let's try it part two. This time it fell down and it's decapitated and it's hands have been cut off. "Okay, we get it." It wasn't long before the Philistines were sending the Ark back. This is a great and terrifying God, and the people of Israel heard that story, didn't they. And they feared God greatly. God communicated through providence. Or when Uzzah grabbed hold of the Ark, and he was struck dead, didn't God communicate in that way? "You can't grab hold of me. You have to follow my laws or you're going to die."

Poetry, parables, paradox, mysteries, history, proverbs, commands, promises. At many times and in various ways.

God’s Final Word to the Human Race: His Son

But in these last days, He has spoken to us literally in his Son. That's literally what it says. "He has spoken to us in His Son." These last days, friends, we are in the last days. It refers to the unfolding of redemptive history, and there is nothing left now except the end of the world. That's the next thing that's coming. We're in the last days now. And in these last days, God has spoken to us in His Son. God's final word, then, to the human race is Jesus. I'm not saying the apostles didn't come after and say some things and reveal some things. I'm not saying that. But Jesus is still God's final word. You understand what I'm saying? He is God's final word to the human race. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us and we have seen His glory, glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." Jesus becoming flesh is God's word to the human race.

Michael Card, who's one of my favorite Christian recording artists, singers, we've had the privilege of having him twice here and one of my favorite songs of his is The Final Word. It's a Christmas song about the incarnation. This is what Michael Card wrote,

You and me we use so very many clumsy words.
The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard. When the Father’s Wisdom wanted to communicate His love, He spoke it in one final perfect Word.

He spoke the Incarnation and then so was born the Son.
His final word was Jesus, He needed no other one.
Spoke flesh and blood so He could bleed and make a way Divine. And so was born the baby who would die to make it mine.

 Isn't that powerful? Jesus is in fact God's final word to you and me. There's nothing more to say. And literally, as I said, the author's saying he has spoken in His Son. I'm not saying that Jesus's words, like in the red letter addition of the Bible aren't important. They are. No one ever spoke like Jesus. But that's not all of what God was saying in Jesus. Just his being here, his Emmanuel, his being with us, he's speaking. God is speaking to us. "The Word became flesh… and we beheld his glory."

So just watching Jesus was seeing a message from God. Jesus's manner, his facial expressions, his actions, his gestures. All of it was a display of the glory of God. And he spoke most clearly through the cross and the empty tomb, amen? That's the clearest message he ever spoke in Jesus.

When Jesus was dying on the cross, God was speaking to the human race of His own holiness, of His own hatred of sin, of His own justice, and upholding the law. Of His mercy and His compassion to us, as lost sinners. Of the fact that we lost sinners can do nothing to save ourselves. It had to come to that, it's the only way. And the fact that in the resurrection, it was effective, forgiveness is ours. Triumph and victory over sin and death are ours. We can have it, and we will not really die. Even if we sleep, we will live forever. The resurrection is ours, the victory is ours. God is speaking in us, to you, and me, the Gospel.

The Superiority of Christ to the Prophets

And at the beginning, here, I think the author is giving us the superiority of Christ to the prophets. Christ is greater than all the prophets, greater than all of them. His message is greater. It's a better message, a better covenant. The rest of the chapter, the author is going to establish the superiority of Jesus to the angels, angels and prophets together, the mediators of the old covenant. So he's getting very quickly to his real point, the new covenant's better than the old covenant. And Jesus is the better messenger. He's better than the prophets, that's what he's saying here. The prophets spoke in the past. Jesus speaks now, that's what he's saying. The prophets spoke to the fathers. Jesus is speaking to us, now. The prophets spoke at many times, and in various ways, but Jesus speaks to us once for all time at the cross. That's what the author is saying, that's the first brilliant facet.

The second brilliant facet is the glory of Jesus as the Son of God. "In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son." The title "Son of God" is greater than the title given to any prophet. No prophet ever could have that title, "Son of God" or "God the Son," never. A prophet was merely a servant, a messenger of God. He was commanded by God to speak, and he could speak only what God commanded him to say. He was a sinner, like all of those who listened to him. But Jesus is the Son of God. We're going to get to this next week in verses 4-5, but this is the very thing the author does immediately after this. "So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs." What name is that? "For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you." The superior name is the name 'Son.' He is the Son of God, and so we see the glory of Jesus in this title, Son.

John 3:16, He is the only begotten son. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." He's the only begotten Son, and the love relationship between the Father and the Son is overwhelming and powerful. It is intimately, infinitely intimate and deep. It's beyond our ability to comprehend. At Jesus's baptism, as Jesus was being baptized, a voice came from heaven, says in Mark's Gospel that the heavens were ripped open. And it's like, God had something to say. And what did He have to say? "This is my son whom I love, with Him I am well pleased." That's what God wanted to say at Jesus's baptism. From eternity past, God has been loving His son. The father has been loving His Son. Before the foundation of the world, He loved him. And on into eternity future, he will love His Son. And we find our salvation in the center of that love, because we're in Jesus, we are loved. That's the love. If you're not in Jesus, you're not loved. But if you're in Jesus, you're loved like the Father loves His own Son. "As the father has loved me, so have I loved you," Jesus said. And so Jonathan Edwards said this, "The infinite happiness of the Father consists in his enjoyment of His Son."

That's what makes the father really happy is enjoyment that He gets of his only begotten Son. And he delights in saving us so that we become an image made after Him, that we are redeemed into the image of His son, so that he loves us as He loved Jesus, the first born among many brothers. The intimacy and perfection of their relationship, as I've said, is incalculable. John 1:18, "no one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him," or explained, and made Him known. What an interesting phrase that is, "in the bosom of the Father." I don't know what to make of it, but something like, Jesus is in God's heart. You remember at the last part of the Gospel, at the last supper, you remember when the apostle or the disciple whom Jesus loved, (we know it's John cause he never mentions himself). But he's there at the last supper, and he puts his head on Jesus's chest. Do you remember that, just lays his head on Jesus's chest, his head right there? I get the sense of that between Jesus and the Father. He's in the bosom of the Father. He loves his Father, and the Father loves Him, an intimate, powerful relationship. Perfect intimacy, John 5:20, "For the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He's doing," everything.

Well, this includes labor on the universe. And so the third facet is Jesus as Creator of the universe. Verse 2, "Through whom He made the universe." The Father made the universe through the Son. Now the Greek word translated universe here, in the NIV, is sometimes translated ages, like eons...

So it's more than just length, width and height. It's also eras and eons, ages. He made everything through the Son. Through whom all things were made. Without Him nothing was made that has been made. Colossians 1:16: "For by Him all things were created. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him."

So what are these prepositions? They're difficult. Through whom He made the universe. By whom He made the universe. For whom He made the universe. All of those things are true. They all teach us different things. I don't know how to conceive of this, but I guess the best way I can think of it is that the Father willed to create the universe and Jesus was the way He did it. It's through Jesus that it got done. That's the best I can make of it.

Jesus is the Word of God and through Jesus the universe exists. God spoke and Jesus was the Word He spoke. And so in some mysterious and powerful way, the Father and the Son labored together making the universe. Making light, making the sky, making the dry land. Making the trees and the vegetation and the seed-bearing plants. Making the sun and the moon and the stars. Making the fish and the birds. Making the animals and then making man in their image.

You get the feeling of the intra-Trinitarian conversation. "Let us make man in our image after our likeness." And so together they make the universe, Father and the Son. And the Father and the Son delight in their intimate working relationship. "The son, [John 5] can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son also does. For the Father loves his Son and shows Him all he does. So they're working together

Recently a number of weeks ago, I went over to that Raleigh IMAX there with my kids, and we went and saw this thing on the Hubble Space Telescope, the repair of the space telescope from a year ago and just an awesome, a huge screen and just huge sound and it was just awesome. And it was just through the Hubble really… We were taking a tour of outer space and we're going along this corridor to the constellation Orion, and in Orion's belt, there's this certain place that these Hubble scientists are telling us is the birthplace of new stars. Well I don't know what all that is. All I'm saying is that they're there. The stars had to come from somewhere. Maybe they're still being made. But the Bible tells me that the Father's making them through the Son. Everything that gets made gets made from the Father through the Son, and that's awesome. So I was having a time of worship there in the IMAX. I don't know if anyone else was other than my family, but we were having a good time worshipping the Father's creation of these stars.

Now in Isaiah 40-49… Isaiah the Prophet is fiercely monotheistic, because he's fighting against the idolatry of Israel. Fiercely monotheistic. There is one God, and there is only one God and everything else is an idol. There are no other gods. There is no one like God. No one can even be compared to God. And one of the things that Isaiah points out is that God alone made the universe. There was no one with Him, no one helping Him, no one at all.

And so he says in Isaiah 44:24 "I am the Lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, " no one was with me. What does that have to do with this passage? Well if Jesus isn't God, then how do you put all that together? I don't understand how Jehovah's Witnesses and friends and neighbors, how they say Jesus is a created being. There's an infinite gap between the Creator and the created. Jesus is God the Creator, that's what it's saying. And the only way we can put it together is with the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit together making the universe.

Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, John 1 all teach that Jesus created all things. Only way you can put that together is say Jesus is God.

The fourth glorious facet is the glory of Christ as the Heir of all things. I reversed the order a little bit, but you'll understand why. First the creation and then Christ appointed Heir of all things. What does this mean that He is heir? Well heir is the one, in that patriarchal system you had the father the patriarch of the family, and then one of his sons would be chosen to be the firstborn in that position.

Generally it was literally the first born, but it didn't have to be, and it would be one who would be designated as the heir. And the father would give everything to the first born. The heir would be beloved of his father, would grow up. The father would cherish the heir and train him in all the things he should do, the ways he should go, and there would be two key issues coming from being heir and that would be authority and ownership. You would be the authority in the family when the father was gone, and you would own everything that the father owned. It would all go to you. And if there were other brothers involved, they would get their father's wealth mediated through the first born. See what I'm saying?

I think this is precisely why Joseph's brothers hated him for that coat he was wearing, remember? Because Jacob gave him a coat, and I think it was symbolic of his status as firstborn in the family. I really think Jacob was still wresting with what Laban did wedding night when he thought he was marrying Rachel and he got Leah. And it's like he was waiting for Rachel to give him a son, and finally Rachel did and it was Joseph. And Joseph was in his mind firstborn, and his brothers hated him. Another story, another time. But he was the heir of Jacob. Jesus is the Heir of the Father, and He's heir of all things, and He has absolute authority over all things, and He will inherit all things. It's all His.

Only one difference, the Father is not going to die. Father is around forever, and so is the Son, and the Son is the Heir. And so Jesus says, "All authority in heaven and earth, has been given to me." God placed all things under His feet, He is the Heir. What that also means is that He has ownership of the universe, everything belongs to His. By the way, which makes Satan's temptation so laughable, "See this little world, that's all mine I can give it to anyone I want." Satan, what a misconception, you're going to hell. Jesus owns everything, and he can give it to whoever He wants. And so if you're in Christ guess what you are, you are heir of the world. Read it in Romans 4, it is through faith that Abraham received the promise that he would be heir of the world. Isn’t that awesome? And so we're going to get good stuff through Jesus.

But it all comes through Jesus and no other place. Only unlike Joseph's brothers, we're not jealous of Jesus, we're praising God for Him as Heir of all things and we're going to get a glorious inheritance if we suffer with Jesus. Because it says in Romans 8:17, "Now, if we are children, then we are heirs. Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory."

The fifth glorious facet, is the glory of Christ as the perfect display of God. The Son is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of His being. He is the radiance, the bright shining-ness of God's glory. The only analogy I can come to with this, is the analogy of the sun and the solar system. And the sun shines in the sky 93 million miles away, this raging inferno of fusion released energy, and light and radiation, all kinds of stuff, the sun 93 million miles away. And it's awesome, and its power, seemingly limitless in its resources, it's like God to us in some sense. I'm not worshipping, I'm just saying it's an analogy. And we can't do anything to affect the sun, we can't change the sun, we can't get close to the sun. It is just overwhelming and powerful. But the sun mediates itself to us by light, and heat and radiation. You go out there on a sunny day, the whole world is glowing, don't you love the fall when the leaves are just radiating and it's just so beautiful and then the light coming from the sun.

And life comes from that light, photosynthesis is always coming from the sun across 93 million miles. Light, radiation, heat coming in, that's how we relate to the sun. Jesus is that intermediary between the Father and us. He brings the Father right to us. And there is one text, and I've quoted it before, but it's the best to me that explains this. In John 14:8-9 Philip said, "Lord show us the Father, and it will be enough for us." And Jesus said, "don't you know me Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father." Jesus is not the Father, but Jesus came to show us the Father. And for Philip to say, "Show us the Father," is like, "Haven't you been watching me? That's what I'm here for, it's to show you the Father." "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

And He is the exact representation of His being. The Greek word is character, which relates to a signet ring, engraved in golden ring, let's say. And the governor or a king, or a nobleman would have a signet ring, and when he wanted to write out some commands for some that were at a remote distance, he wanted them to know his will. He would write a letter and then he would seal it with sealing wax, and put his signet ring in that sealing wax. And the mark in the wax was the exact representation of what was in his ring. It represented him, it represented his authority. That's the word that the author uses. There's an exact representation of the Father and the Son. The same attributes, the same purposes, the same plans, the same everything. Jesus is as righteous is His Father, He's as holy as His Father, He's as powerful as His Father, He's as loving as His Father. He's as wrath-filled as His Father.

They're the same being in their character and essence, just different persons in the Trinity. And some day, we're going to live in a world that will be only radiated with the glory of God mediated through Jesus. We're going to be in the new heavens, and in the new earth. There will be no need for sun, or moon or stars for the glory of God will give that city light, and the lamb will be its lamp. Beautiful.

The sixth facet is the glory of Christ as the Sustainer of the universe. Verse 3, "Sustaining all things by His powerful word." The universe, as I said before, was created by God to be a needy universe. The universe needs God every moment. That Him, I need the every hour, it is an understatement. The universe needs God every instant to keep existing. God created it that way, He did not create an independent universe.

Deists, in the 18th century, posited a universe that God created by some physical principles, scientific principles that just kind of run in a mindless machine sort of way. And God just lets the universe run on like that. That's not the God of the Bible, dear friends. Not only does God regularly interfere and do miracles, and do all kinds of stuff and mess things up from the human point of view and step in to time and do things. Not only does God do that, but the Bible actually reveals He is constantly holding the very atoms of the universe together. And if he didn't, it would stop existing. And Jesus is the way by which the Father holds everything together. In Him, Colossians 1, "In Him, all things hold together." Every atom holds together by Jesus. This obviously has profound ethical implications.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, He was in some mysterious way holding the cross physically together and the nails that were holding them up there. He was willing to die, you understand that? I don't either, but anyway, you know generally He willed to die and He held the universe together in order to die. What that means is He will exert effort to keep the universe together in ways that bring Himself and others great pain to achieve His purposes. You may never hear a clearer message on the sovereignty of God over all things than this right here, right now at this moment.

Jesus held Hitler's body together while he was making all those horrendous decisions. It is Jesus that holds air molecules together while typhoons and hurricanes destroy property and end human life. It is Jesus that holds bullets together in war zones and during drive by shootings that results in innocent little babies dying. He holds them together, and He will sustain the existence of human souls for all eternity. We preached on hell a few weeks ago, there is no annihilation. He wills to hold their souls together keep them conscious and alive.

You can't escape from Jesus anywhere you turn in the universe nor should you desire to because everything He does is good and right and wise. But He holds everything, He sustains the universe by His powerful Word. At every moment you continue to exist because Jesus wills it. That pew you're sitting on, been sitting on for so long now, such a long time, Jesus is holding it together. He wills to keep you up off the floor and He probably wills to keep you to the end of the sermon, but you'll have to decide that. But He wills all of the things that happen to you in your life. I know there's wickedness and evil in the world, and He does not will the violation of His laws and commandments and will bring people like Hitler to judgement for what they do. I'm just saying He sustains the universe, that's what I'm saying.

For in Him we live and move and have our being. And you know that He could will Satan out of existence anytime He wants, no effort from Him. He would stop willing Satan to exist. They're not equals, He can shot him down anytime He wants. He chooses not to. And why? For His own glory, for His own purposes. To win a greater more valiant triumph over him at the end. We've described that in talking about the second coming of Christ.

Seventh facet is the glory of Christ as the Final Priest. "After He had provided purification for sins…" Why does this matter to you? Well you heard in my prayer, they're two categories of people listening to me today. Either those who are completely pure in God's sight from all of your sins through faith in Jesus. After He had provided purification. One of the messages of Hebrews is once for all time purified. Isn't that beautiful? You are pure in God's sight if you're a Christian. Away then with the guilty conscience, away with it. And away with the sins that defile our conscience too. Amen. Away with it all. After He provided purification from sins, He wills that you be completely pure, not just in standing before God, but just never to sin again. And He is working out a salvation whereby you will be completely pure. And He provides it once for all.

Sin is a great polluter, it defiles us, pollution. You guys remember in 1969 when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio burned? You remember that? Because it had all this filth being poured into it and it was on fire. That was a significant moment in the history of environmental concern in the US. How shameful is it that a river that 100, 200 years before you could get down on your hands and knees and drink from was now literally burning because of industrial pollution. That's disgusting, just disgusting. Disgusting that people just usually throw trash out of their windows on the streets and the highways and they were disgusting. I remember in the '60s and early '70s you see trash everywhere.

But I tell you there's no pollution as great as that of a soul that sins before God without the forgiveness of Jesus. It's defiled, it's polluted and only Jesus can purify your sins. And so there's is a second category I'm speaking to today. You who have never come to faith in Christ you stand now presently polluted, impure in God's sight because of your sins. I'm no better than you in and of myself and neither is any Christian, but know this you can be instantly made pure if you just come to Jesus. If you just come to Jesus you can be immediately cleansed of all your sins and forgiveness will be yours.

Final facet is the glory of Christ as King on the throne. After he had provided purification for sins, He sat down with the right hand of the majesty in heaven and from that position, He wields that authority I talked about earlier. From the right hand of God, He intercedes for us, pleading for us, Romans 8. From the right hand of God. From the right hand of God He is enjoying pleasures forevermore, in the presence of God. At the right hand of God from that place He will come back to judge living and the dead. And since then we have been raised with Christ; we should set out hearts on things above, not on earthly things; where Christ is seated where? At the right hand of God. It says that again and again. Maybe 10 times in the New Testament talks about Jesus seated at the right hand of God. From that place, He will watch all of his enemies made a foot stool for his feet, the right hand of God. And the final authority is He will rule over heaven and earth from the throne of God at God's right hand forevermore.

What applications will come to Christ only in Jesus can you receive full purification for your sins, I've already said that. Don't leave this place in an unconverted polluted state. You don't need to. Just look to Jesus, He will cleanse you of all your sins.

And I speak now to Christians. Maybe you came in here with a guilty conscience. Maybe you have reasons for feeling guilty. You've sinned. You've violated God's laws. You've lusted. You've coveted. You've been angry. You've not been faithful to love your spouse and submit to your spouse, or to obey your parents. You've violated God's law in some way. But full forgiveness is poured out on you as you stand in grace. Romans 5:1 says, "Since we have been justified through faith. We have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and access by faith into this grace in which we are now standing." We're standing in a shower of grace, and you are forgiven.

And as Jesus said, "Go and sin no more." And as you look at these, my final application is, can you just worship Jesus? Can Jesus be enough for you in the midst of your trial? And enough for you in the midst of your financial struggle, in the midst of your job problem, in the midst of your relational trouble and your family, in the midst of your health problem, in the midst of your loneliness, you've lost a loved one? Can Jesus be enough for you? Worship Jesus. Go through these attributes. Go through these facets, and let each one glow in your mind and say, "Thank you, Jesus. I praise you that you are God's final word. I want to hear what you have to say to me. I thank you that you're the Creator of the universe. Everything I see is coming from you. Thank you, Jesus." Just be a worshiper of Jesus today. Close with me in prayer.