The Book of Hebrews 2:14-19 Like his Brethren

Good morning. We're going to continue our study of the book of Hebrews here with chapter 2, 14-18 as Randy read for us here. And one of the things I want to tell you is this passage both starts and finishes. Okay, well that didn't get anything. Let's see here. So Hebrews 2, 14-18 starts some topics that will be expanded upon later. Ah, does that make some more sense?

It starts topics that will be expanded upon later, sometimes for chapters to come. So that's part one. We're going to point out what's being started as we go through this passage here, and where that topic will be covered in more detail later on. And typically, it's for many chapters from this point forward. And so we'll see that, and we'll point those out to you.

This passage also finishes. a two chapter long theme of angels and makes a critical contrast. One of the things we pointed out earlier is that chapter 1 and chapter 2 each have multiple references to angels always in the plural and by the way never by name. So never singular angel and never naming an angel particularly. But angels are repeatedly referred to in these first two chapters and then not again until the last two. In the last two chapters we're going to see angels mentioned again, but it will be somewhat in application to everyday life. Now, the devil who is the head of fallen angels is only here, and by that I mean only here at this passage out of the entire book of Hebrews.

There are those in Christianity, and I could almost say Christendom, who make a lot of Satan. That is, they go around and, boy, everything is about binding Satan and rebuking him and all this sort of thing. And what's very interesting is this book of Hebrews does not give a whole lot of credit to Satan. As a matter of fact, we could say this, Satan doesn't know your address. Satan is not all-knowing. Satan is not all-powerful. He is not omnipresent. He is a limited spiritual being, unlike God, who is an infinite spiritual being. So that raises this question. Is Jesus carrying out an arm-wrestling competition with Satan? Is it pretty even, and we just happen to know it turns out in God's favor? Is that the way it works? We're going to answer that question, but not right now.

Okay. So now, the next slide, there are sons, brethren, and children. We who believe, and we saw in last week's passage, are sons of God the Father. We are Christ's brethren. Now get that. You are Christ's brothers. We are brethren. and God's children. So that's in Hebrews 2, last week's passage 10, 12, and 13. So we have a relationship to God, we pointed out last week, such that we are sons of the Father, we are brethren to Christ, we are God's children. We are close family. And not even slightly distantly related. God has no grandchildren. Okay? Just doesn't happen. God has no grandchildren. There are no nephews or grandnephews or nieces or anything of the sort. God the Father has sons and Christ has brethren.

It's that close and no more distant than that. We are definitely close family. on into the rolling ages of eternity. If you're a believer here today, you are a close family with God the Father and Christ. You are sons of God the Father and brethren to Christ. And it's going to be that way forever. The next thing we would point out, in order for God to bring about so that we are sons, brethren, and children, God through Christ had to intervene.

This happened, this came about, that we have this close family relationship because God did something. It wasn't an accident, it was intentional. It was something that God had in mind from the beginning. That is why Christ came as a human being like us, born of Mary.

When Jesus was born of Mary, it isn't just a sweet story about a little Jewish baby being born in humble circumstances. it was something that had to be in order for God to do what he needed to do through Christ so Hebrews 2.14 has this thought therefore since the children share in flesh and blood he himself likewise also partook of the same so we have a question before us would it be possible could it have been that Christ would take our sins, yours and mine, upon himself on the cross? Would it be possible that we were identified with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating? Would it be possible if Christ were born a panda?

I see head shaking. I hear no. Let's try something else. If Christ were born a giraffe, is that going to work? Is that going to fly? No? Probably not. Let me try something else. I hear a lamb. Does that fix it? Not quite. As biblical as it might seem, no. He couldn't be born a lamb and really pull this off. He had to come only as a human being. That's the only thing that's going to work.

He had to come as a human being in order for him to bring all of us in relationship to the Father as sons, not fellow giraffes. Not fellow pandas or lambs. and as His children. In order for us to have relationship with Him, He had to have been born as a man. He had to come as a human being like us in order for us to be identified with Christ so as to share a spiritual history from His death to His seeding in the heavenlies in Christ.

Christ couldn't simply remain as the Divine Son and pull this off and just stay there in the heavenlies. Couldn't do that. He could not have come as any other kind of creature. Not a lamb, as biblical as that might sound. Not, in fact, anything else. Christ had to, in order to take our sins upon himself, Christ had to have been born a man so that there was comparable penalty payment. Absolutely required. no panda or giraffe or lamb, as cute as they are, would do.

Now, we actually said, this was last fall, there are at least six things that happened on the cross, and I'm adding to that number, by the way, every few months. Oh, that's something else. So I say at a minimum, right? In fact, I think before we're done with Hebrews, I'm going to add to this. So we'll see that in a minute here.

There were six things, at a minimum, that happened on the cross as Christ was crucified and died on that day that he died in addition to the things said to the people on that day like today you will be with me in paradise and those six things are Christ died in our place he died for our sins Christ's death made the devil powerless Christ's death confirmed Israel's new covenant Christ paid the bride price for us Christ paid the price of a slave or a flock, and lastly, we're identified with his crucifixion and with his death. Those six things, at a minimum, and I believe there's actually even more as I study it, took place.

It's this one here that Hebrews chapter 2 in this passage is telling us. For everyone who believes, Christ's death made the devil powerless. For everyone who believes, Christ made the devil powerless. It's not true for those who don't believe. Let's start where this thing begins.

In Genesis chapter 2, 16 and 17, the Lord God had created everything in the Garden of Eden and placed Adam there. And the Lord said these words. The Lord commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." So, what happens in the very next chapter, Genesis 3-4, the serpent says to the woman, you surely will what?

Not die! Uh-oh! Problem! Notice that Satan's very point of deception has to do with death. There's really no danger you're going to die if you eat that. God isn't telling you the truth, I am. So that's what Satan is doing here. Satan comes with something initially that's a deception, now it's an outright lie.

And it has to do with death. Death is the issue. Because he most certainly wants to trap people on that point. Here in Hebrews 2, 14 and 15, I put in the definite articles where the original Greek has that, and it reads this way, Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that through the death he might render powerless him who had the power of the death, that is, the devil. The death. And he might free those who, through fear of death, were subject to slavery all their lives.

So Satan had the power of death, but he didn't have power over death. Do you see the difference? Satan has the power of death, but not power over death. And his power was broken in the spiritual death that took place on the cross. That's what this passage is telling us. Did Satan get anything out of this cross event? No, he lost something. He lost a power over those who believe.

Spiritual death is ended in our eternal position and need not have power in our daily condition. Eternally, for those who believe, the power of death is cut off. As we walk day by day in fellowship with the Lord, in our daily condition, the power of death is cut off. Physical death is not the final end anymore. Physical death is not the final end anymore In Revelation 1 17 and 18.

Here is the Apostle John not having seen Christ for decades John is writing that he sees Christ now in a vision. This is when I saw him I fell at his feet like a dead man and he placed His right hand on me saying do not be afraid I am the first and the last which by the way is a quote from Something God said in the book of Isaiah and the living one and I was dead and behold I'm alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and Hades is Satan in charge of hell No Does Satan have the keys of death and Hades? No, okay Christ is the one who has them. Is he going to go? Whoops. I lost him No, hey, that's not going to happen So here we have it very clearly, Christ is the one who has the keys.

Now, slavery to the fear of death. Any worldview other than the truth as revealed in God's word will yield slavery to death and to that fear of death. Here's, for example, atheism. Only the material world exists and will leave one to believe that death is the end. I live this life as a material accident, a biochemical, biophysical process, and it all comes apart when I die, and that's it. That's atheism.

Interestingly, Psalm 14.1 says, The fool has said in his heart there is no God. So on that, we say God doesn't believe in atheists. God doesn't believe in atheists. I'll tell a little story here. Some years ago, Nancy and I went to this little college here. in the Bay Area, and I had taken a philosophy class.

At the end of the class, the instructor had an oral exam question for each of the students, and he gave a different question to each one. When he got to me, he said, Mr. Peterman, it's apparent from your papers that you believe in God. You have four minutes to tell us what difference that makes in your life.

So I did. At the end of the class, a fellow came up to me that I really had not had any contact with, and he said, Hi, I'm Vince. I'm an atheist. I said, that's fine. Would you like to get together for dinner? Let's talk about it. So we did. He came up, and I cooked something, and he lived through it. And so we chatted the evening, and he didn't go away sick, which is amazing.

But I made no arrangements to get together with him again. A year later, I was in evening service at church, and I looked over, there's Vince. I couldn't wait for the service to get over. I have no idea what they taught. Because I ran over afterwards, Vince, what are you doing here?

You're an atheist. He said, correction, I'm a former atheist. So here is one who realized, nah, I'm a fool if I say there is no God. How about reincarnation? Hinduism and and Buddhism in great part teach this reincarnation that you just have multiple many many many reincarnations however there is in reincarnation a teaching of karma you heard of that and what karma says is that the things that you do and don't do will get carried over and how you are rebirthed beyond and there is absolutely zero grace in karma You will, without any exception, have whatever you did judged upon you in the next reincarnation.

No grace. None. Agnosticism doesn't know what lies the other side of death's door. I don't know. An aggressive agnostic will say, I can't know. I don't know. So there is misbelief, there is mistaken belief, there is ignorance, there is I don't know. All of them are a mistake, and we could go on to many other viewpoints. The truth is, however, that we who are believers are not under those mistaken understandings, and death need not leave us afraid. The devil is made powerless by the cross work of Christ for all those who believe. Only believers have a true understanding of what death is and only Christ has victory over death.

Only! I have a picture here of Dick Hillis. He went home to be with the Lord in 2005. I will count him as a friend. I visited him in his later years when he looked more like this. Anyway, Dick tells a story. He had gone on a China Inland Mission. He had gone into China and was there about a year, only about age 21. when the communist chinese were coming in with the cultural revolution and uh... they were of course you know threatening christians uh... a couple of the missionaries that had gone in uh... and were friends of dick had been beheaded uh... so christians and missionaries especially were losing their lives and what the communist chinese wanted was they wanted names of the other christians so that they could do them in And so they came to Dick and they said, you will give us the names.

You will give us the names of the other Christians that you know and the other missionaries. And he said, no, I will not. And so the lieutenant pulled his pistol and stuck it right at Dick's head. He says, if you do not give me those names, I will blow your brains out. You know what Dick said?

That's all you can do. Not going to hurt me. You're going to put me right into eternity. I'll be with the Lord. That's all you can do. Dick understood, and he lived well beyond the time of this event that I'm telling you about. The devil cannot deceive believers, unless they allow themselves to be deceived, as he does those who do not believe regarding death. We no longer have the wool pulled over our eyes. We no longer have to stand in deception. Christ has the answers we need about what's on the other side of death's door. Christ has the answers we need about what's on the other side of death's door. And that matters a lot. The devil is made powerless. Just like Dick Hill is. You want to blow my brains out? That's all you can do. That'll be it. You won't get your answers either way. I'm not telling you. And he didn't.

So now we come to the question. Are Jesus and the devil in a very closely matched arm wrestling competition? And the answer is no. It's told right here the devil already lost. The devil already lost. There is no ongoing competition. Christ isn't just on a close neck and neck kind of competition here. The devil has already lost and it happened at the cross. It happened at the cross.

Now, another thing that we get out of this passage here, verse 16, there is no help given to angels. And you might think, oh, heaven, really? Well, angels do not have any help from God, is what this is saying, and let's talk about what that means. Those angels who fell, that is those who decided, Revelation 12 says it's about a third of the angels decided against the Lord, do not have any plan of salvation available to them by any revelation that we have.

We have no knowledge of any plan of salvation available to them. As a matter of fact, in the book of Matthew, There is a man who is possessed by demons, and the demons panic, come running up to Jesus and say, you're not going to start torturing us yet, are you? They know what the outcome is going to be. There is no plan of salvation. They can't believe and get saved, and not an option. Those that did not fall, the two-thirds who stayed faithful to the Lord, We're created as sufficient beings, but there is one thing that we see that they have a capacity for, is angels can learn.

Ephesians, I don't have it on here, Ephesians 3.10, go look it up sometime.

Ephesians 3.10, when God wants to teach the angels about his wisdom, he says, look at my church.

So you and I are walking angel college. You got that? You and I are walking angel college. God teaches the angels, they can learn, about his wisdom by saying, look at my church and how I've dealt with them. Then you'll know what my wisdom is like. So remember that as you go about this week. You're walking angel college. The angels are learning from you. God does help the one who is by faith a descendant of Abraham.

Galatians 3.7 says that we are by faith, not by genetics, not by genealogy, we are by faith sons of Abraham. Remember we said a son of is like in character and close in relationship to. We said that last week. We are like in character and close in relationship to Abraham in terms of faith. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. If you believe God, it's credited to you as righteousness. Okay? Sons of Abraham by faith.

We are helped in salvation by faith, and we are helped once saved in this life and forever. God helps us in salvation. God helps us once we're saved, and God helps us on into eternity. The angels don't get help. We get lots of it. Matter of fact, God gives us so much help. It's called grace. God gives us so much help that it's going to take forever for Him to show it all to us. We're just barely scratching the surface here.

Christ was made like us so that we might be like Him. You get that? Christ was made like us so that we might be like Him. Christ was made like us. Why? So that we might be like Him. That's why you're being conformed into the image of Christ, Romans 8, 28, and 29, and that's a good thing. That's why you're being transformed, 2 Corinthians 3, 18, into the image of Christ. Two different processes to the same end, that you end up being like Him. Christ was made a man, a human being, so that we might be like Him.

We who believe are made and are being made, that's the conformed and transformed, in every way like Christ except for His deity. That is why 1 John will say, we shall be like Him except for that deity and we will see Him as He is. There will come a day When every single believer here will look to the Lord and we will be made like Him in every respect but His deity. We will share His history in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. Right now we're seeded with Him, but we're being conformed, transformed, ultimately to be fulfilled when we see Him face to face.

Just as the high priest in the Jewish sacrificial system was a man who represented other human beings before God. This is a good general distinction to get. A high priest or a priest represents humans before God. A prophet represents God before humans. See the distinction there? And we're going to see mention of both of those here in this book. So here's the high priest who represents other humans before God. Christ is a man who represents us before God. That is going on right now. That's going on right now. Christ is our High Priest and that is a message we're going to see ahead in Hebrews, who represents us before God, who is both merciful and faithful.

And by the way, we're going to see in chapter 3, that word faithful is going to continue to have significance, but it won't be as a high priest, it'll be something else. And we'll see that as we get to that passage. Christ as the High Priest will be a key theme from this point on into chapter 9. So we've got all the chapters ahead up until chapter 9 with Christ as High Priest being a critical theme through most of those chapters.

One of the key differences we'll find here is unlike the repetitive sacrifices of the Old Testament temple and sacrificial system, We've had endless sacrifices that never got the job done. Sacrifices and sacrifices and sacrifices. Can you imagine the young Jewish kids? How many times do we have to do this? Again. again and and you will have to continue to do this and do this and do this and you'll have to keep sacrificing and coming back here and and we'll keep slaughtering the lambs and slaughtering the goats and slaughtering the bulls and we'll keep doing it again and again it never gets the job done but Hebrews chapter 7 through 10 will tell us that Christ was our sacrifice and repeatedly saying once for all once done perpetually valid Christ is a sacrifice once for all. Christ was God's Lamb, the Lamb of God, who once for all sacrificed himself.

Ah, now this word, propitiation. Propiti-what? Does that have anything to do with being in favor of pitching tents? No. It has nothing to do with that. Propitiation is a word that is rarely used in everyday speech. You go to the grocery store and the checker, he's talking about, here's the flour, and here's the apples, and here's the onions, and you've got a case of propitiation, right? No. You just hardly ever hear this word.

It means dealing with sin to the total satisfaction of God's character. God is satisfied entirely in His character. That is propitiation. The character of holiness. God cannot simply abide sin. It must be dealt with. It must be dealt with. Righteousness. God is absolutely righteous. One oops and you've got unrighteousness.

And God has a complete sense of justice. Absolute and total sense of justice. For Christ to take upon himself the sins of the whole world, as intensely unpleasant as that was for both the Father and the Son, it did satisfy God's character of holiness and righteousness and justice. Those aspects of God's character were completely met by Christ's sacrifice on the cross. His death for your sins and mine.

So that's propitiation. Christ, unlike the high priests of the temple system, Christ offers up the completed sacrifice himself. So here is the high priest. Offering up his sacrifice not as a repeated thing as a once-done perpetually valid thing That's sufficient once for all once done always valid Now temptation verse 18 has this When Christ came as a man he was subject to temptations by Satan himself Okay, that's this devil that we talked about earlier, right? I Matthew 4, 1-11, and other passages have that account.

He endured them all, and he remained faithful through it all. As a man, and as one who has endured temptation like ourselves, Christ is qualified to come to our aid as we are tempted. Of course, none of you have ever been tempted, right? Probably not, right? His grace and His life and who we are in Him are sufficient for all things. Sufficient for every temptation. He does indeed come to our aid. Does indeed come to our aid.

Now one of the points of contrast that we'll have here is what we see of Christ in these verses compares to no angel of heaven. No angel of heaven was ever born of a woman. Doesn't happen. And one of the points we made earlier, when people die, they don't turn into angels.

One other thing, you know, you'll have songs and things like, you know, some guy write a song and he'll call his girlfriend or, you know, something like that. You know, angel face. And one of the points we made is that, you know, one of the things the angels did very commonly in both the Old and New Testaments when they appeared to a human being, the angel said, don't be afraid, right? So if a gal has an angel face, that's probably not a good thing.

Okay. No angel of heaven will ever act as our heavenly high priest. Not one. Having been God's once for all sacrifice. No angel will sacrifice for you and me. No angel could take upon himself the sins of the whole world and satisfy God. No angel of heaven was nor ever will be the complete and total satisfaction of God's holy, righteous, and just character. Not going to happen. Didn't. Never will. No angel of heaven can come to our aid like Christ can. No angel of heaven can come to our aid like Christ can.

Hebrews 4, 14-16 reads this way, Therefore, since we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things, as we are, yet without sin.

Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And one brief little thing here, Hebrews 13, 9. It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. Grace is not just what you get on the cross where you're saved by grace. Grace is strengthening. Grace is strengthening. One of the things we see here in the book of Hebrews, from beginning to end, we are going to continue to learn things about the character of grace. And grace will continue to amaze us. On to the very last verses in the last chapter. And as this passage called us to, let's right now draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. And let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that as Christ satisfied your character completely, as Christ paid the price and is now our High Priest and offers up a sacrifice not repeatedly, not ad infinitum, but rather a once-for-all sacrifice himself. We thank you for that most amazing grace. We thank you for that price paid that we never could. We thank you for the complete satisfaction of your character. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.