[Text: Hebrews 2:5-18] “One Origin”

How do you feel when you meet someone new only to find out that y’all are from the same place, have experienced the same things and are heading in the same direction? Don’t you immediately feel connected to that new friend?

[Read Hebrews 2:5-18 and Pray – Father, what God is like you, so close to His people? In Christ you have not just come near to us, but you have become one of us in order to rescue us. Give and strengthen the gift of faith in us, O Spirit, so that we in every circumstance would look to Jesus and say, “I will put my trust in him.” Amen.]

In a way that surprised me, the best story to illustrate this passage is the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17. Contrary to what many of us learned when we were kids, that story is not about us overcoming the giants we face – fear, death, temptation, weakness – by facing them as warriors, by “being like David.” If that is how you think of that story, then hear now that that is not how you will conquer. Listen again to that story and understand: you will conquer, Christians, but only because your champion has gone out and fought for you.

The Israelites and the Philistines stood facing each other on opposite hills. As was common at different times in history, the Philistines had a champion, the giant Goliath, who came out from among his people and issued this challenge. He said, “Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your subjects. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our subjects and serve us.” The idea is reasonable; the armies send out their best to fight and a tremendous numbers of lives and limbs are spared. But it was risky, too. The consequences of losing were tremendous. You lose, you become a slave. And all of the warriors of Israel, including Israel’s king, Saul, heard the challenge.

Now, our political leaders sit at a table and direct wars well away from the front lines but the kings of old were expected to be warriors. They led the charges, their swords were supposed to be covered in the blood of their people’s enemies. But the Scriptures tell us, “(w)hen Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.” After all, Goliath was a giant. The spear he meant to throw through the heart of Israel’s champion had a head alone that weighed 15 pounds. For forty days, each morning the giant came and shouted his challenge to Israel. And each morning King Saul, who was supposed to be the champion of his people, was enslaved by fear and stayed in his tent.

But then David arrived. David had just been anointed king by Samuel. And although he had not yet ascended to the throne, what we see in this story is David already fulfilling the office of the king, already acting as the champion Israel desperately needed.

David showed up to visit his brothers who were in the army. And when he heard the Philistine’s challenge, he willingly accepted it, telling Saul the king, “Yahweh, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear [while I was a shepherd] will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” (17:37) And without sword or shield, but “in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel,” David fought Goliath and killed him and cut off his head with Goliath’s own weapon.

David had come to his brothers. He was one of them. But he stepped out from among his brothers to fight for them; to face death for them. They had been too afraid to even think of fighting the giant but, in the end, they learned they could trust in the God who had given them a brother who was also their champion. And they conquered in him. That, too, is the message of Hebrews, only in Jesus we see the fullness of which David’s victory was only a shadow and type.

That’s good news for us because I am not a giant-killer and we are not kings. Like David’s brothers, we are afraid because we are not what we were made to be. In the beginning, we were made in the image of God. In Genesis 1:28, God gave mankind dominion over His dominion, putting all things in subjection to us. We were meant to rule lovingly and selflessly and benevolently and righteously as God’s representatives in this world.

But we didn’t. We rebelled. We fell and so, instead of having dominion we became slaves to our sin. Instead of ruling, we became subjects to the Enemy of God. Instead of enjoying eternal life lived in intimacy with our Creator, we became fearful of the consequence of sin: death. Death – more so than taxes - death has been the common denominator in the human experience ever since Adam fell. Death is no respecter of wealth or culture or intellect or social standing or educational advancement. It is in every culture’s songs, stories, dreams, and fears because death is such a part of the human experience. The fear of death is underneath every anxiety, behind every phobia. In a very real and threatening way, the fear of death was the essence of what these Hebrew Christians were experiencing, hiding together in their little house church, afraid that every knock at their door was the Roman guard come to take them away.

In Hebrews 2, the pastor speaks to his friends and to all of us who have been subjects of death – that horrible, relationship severing enemy of humanity – he speaks to us who have been subjects of death ever since we were born, telling us of the God who put on flesh and identified himself with us in every way, even suffering death, so that he could deliver us from our slavery.

We’re going to look at the two emphases of this section – Jesus our brother and Jesus our champion – to hear the reason why we can endure in our faith in Jesus and why we can live confidently in Jesus no matter what circumstances we face.

It all starts in 2:5 as the pastor takes us back to the Old Testament. He shows us how Jesus is the first fully human man the world had seen since the Fall. In chapter 1, the pastor told us that we have every reason to hope in the Son of God because He is fully God. Now, he’s telling us that we have every reason to hope in Jesus because he is fully human, too. He has so fully identified with us in our humanity that he calls himself our brother.

We see it as the pastor quotes Psalm 8, going back to that creation mandate where God gave mankind dominion over all His creation. But he understands that we in our sin can’t rule in the way we were supposed to rule. So, he makes it very clear that this passage is really only fulfilled in the Son, God Incarnate – who is fully God and fully man. The Son of God is the fullness of what you and I were meant to be. The Son, temporarily made a little lower than the angels in the incarnation, is crowned with the glory and honor and rule that we sinners lost at the Fall. And there isn’t anything that will be outside of his control.

Now, the pastor wasn’t being naïve or simplistic. He knew what his friends were facing. He knew their helplessness and fear in the face of powerful enemies and temptations. But he reminds them of the time in which they live – the already/not yet of the Son’s reign. And they are called to believe it – to see it – with the eyes of faith.

In v. 8 he says, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” He saw things weren’t how they were supposed to be. But the pastor saw more and he wanted his friends to see it too. He says in v. 9, “But we see him….” With the eyes of faith the pastor looks and sees the Son, who was humbled for a moment’s time but has passed through it to glory and honor. And for the first time he writes the name of their hope. He does not call him the Son because that is the title of his transcendence. He says, “(w)e see…Jesus,” because that is the name of our God in his immanence. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. And our pastor wants us to see how it was that Jesus the man passed through to the glory and honor God intends for his people. It was, v.9 tells us, “because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

This is the beauty of the incarnation. When God acted to rescue us, fulfilling the promises He’d made all throughout the Story of Redemption, He did it by identifying with us so fully that there was no part of the human experience he would not endure. But where our death is merely the consequence of our sin, Christ tasted death because he was doing the will of God.[1]

And “it was fitting,” verse 10 says, that he would suffer for us. The only way he could succeed in “bringing many sons to glory” was to be made “perfect through suffering.”

When someone says to you in your suffering, “I know what you’re going through,” have you ever thought, “No…no you don’t.”? But Jesus does. The suffering of death and loss? Yes. The suffering of loneliness? Yes. The suffering of guilt? He bore all of yours and mine on the cross, so, yes. There is a comfort in the knowledge of Jesus’ full identification with us that is much better experienced than explained. And that identification is what the pastor is reveling in throughout this section. He says that we who are sanctified (that is “set apart for holy service”) have the same origin as he who sanctifies us. Our common humanity, Jesus’ entering into our suffering, his full sharing of our situation is the very reason why he is not ashamed to call us brothers.

We hear it so clearly from Jesus’ own lips in John 17 that we read earlier. You hear the delight your brother has in you and the great love with which he loves you as he himself says of you, “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)

The reality of Jesus as our brother is such a thing of beauty. He is fully God; with all power and authority. And he is fully man, with flesh and blood because we have flesh and blood; sympathetic to us in our weakness. Verse 17 says, “…he had to be made like us in every respect…to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

This is the heart of it. If Jesus is not our brother, if Jesus is not fully man with flesh and blood, if Jesus is not fully identified with humanity then he cannot be our rescuer and his death cannot atone for our sin. If Jesus is not our brother, then his fight with death and victory over it cannot free us from the master that enslaved us after the Fall.

But as it is, Jesus our brother has become our champion – and we are free. He leads us into the glory God means His children to enjoy forever.

In verse 10, the pastor calls Jesus the “founder of…salvation” for the children of God. The word “founder” here is a faithful translation, but in the context of the passage as a whole, another emphasis is brought forward. Like David fighting for his brothers long ago, Jesus steps forward from among us as a “champion” to do battle with the enemy of God and men – the devil, to whom our sin had enslaved us.

We see the fight in vv. 14-15:

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

One commentator puts it wonderfully:

“Jesus is depicted as the champion who came to the aid of the oppressed people of God. He identified himself with them as their representative. He became locked in mortal combat with the fearsome adversary who held the power of death. He overthrew the devil in order to release those whom this evil tyrant had enslaved. Jesus is the champion who secured the deliverance of his people through the sufferings he endured.”[2]

For a champion to fight for a people, he has to be one of those people. A hired gun, a mercenary isn’t enough. The champion needs to be bound, flesh and blood, to his people so that his victory is truly their victory.

So, Jesus, our brother, sharing in our flesh and blood, is our champion and he brings his brothers – the “many sons” of v. 10 who are the children of God – he brings his brothers “to glory.” And our “glory” is nothing less than the full restoration of humanity God intended for us in the beginning. That means, in Jesus, you are now more fully human than you ever were before. It mean that Jesus is actually reversing the effects of the Fall, removing the curse from us and making us the way we’re supposed to be – a reality that has begun but will be complete in the world to come. As the apostle John wrote, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) That is what it means to be the brothers and sisters of Jesus. We look like him. Our lives look like his life.

And the reality of our identification with Jesus is seen when we believe and endure in the words of Jesus, our brother, when he said of God the Father in v. 13, “I will put my trust in him.” Jesus trusted his God and Father even though the Father led him into suffering. And you and I are counted as Jesus’ own brothers – and he is counted as our champion – when we look in faith to Jesus, the God-man, believing that he is fully God and fully man who came to rescue us from death by his death on the cross.

And if, by faith, we are counted as Jesus’ own brothers, should we be surprised if we enter into glory the same way Jesus entered his glory – through suffering? And if we suffer like he suffered, will he not help his brothers who trust in him? The pastor knows he will and tell us so in vv. 16 and 18. He is able to help us in our weakness. He is able to help us when we are tempted to go back and to escape suffering by running away from God’s way of perfecting his children. That was the temptation faced by the pastor’s friends here. Suffering had come and running away into unbelief was, human speaking, the only sane thing to do. So, too, when we are faced with situations where running away from God is easy and enduring in faith seems crazy, the temptation is always to take the easy way – the way of lust instead of purity, the way of anger instead of compassion, the way of control instead of surrender, the way of “safety” instead of the way of faith.

When suffering that kind of temptation, look to Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39-42), asking the Father for some other way than the cross of suffering to rescue us. And listen to the Father’s answer, “…it was fitting that he…should make the champion of their salvation perfect through suffering.” And listen to the response of Jesus, “…not as I will…but your will be done.” Do you hear in that the cry of faith in the midst of suffering, the same cry that you and I are to echo in whatever circumstances surround us and threaten us? The tearful cry “not my will, but yours be done” is the same in essence as “I will put my trust in him.”

Look, I’m not saying that we are supposed to enjoy suffering. But if we suffer while trusting in Jesus then we don’t have to be afraid of it. And he himself will help us endure in the midst of it because he understands what we are going through. He knows the strength of temptation because of his humanity. And he knows the full strength of temptation to run away from God because, as C.S. Lewis put it, only a man who has resisted to the end of temptation knows the full power. I don’t know the severity of that battle because I give in so easily in my weakness. But Jesus the warrior has endured and, so, he can help me endure.

And if you are facing the fear of death, He knows that pain, too. But he knows what is on the other side because he himself is crowned now with the glory and honor he means to give to you, brothers and sisters of Jesus. He will help you endure, too, and although he will not lead you away from suffering, he will use it to perfect you just as he himself was perfected through suffering. The perfection he gained was not a completion or a filling up of what was lacking. His perfection was that of a high priest being consecrated for his work, which is why he was able to make atonement for our sin through his priestly sacrifice of himself.

And you, too, will be perfected, consecrated through suffering for his sake as God conforms you to the image of His Son, your brother, making you fit, in him, to serve God now and in the age to come as a kingdom of priests, proclaiming the excellencies of your brother and champion, who “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of…the beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13)

Jesus has come, brothers and sisters, and identified with his people in every way, taking to himself flesh and blood like us and even suffering death like us. He is our brother and through his death, he has become our champion as well, defeating death with his own weapon. Our brother has rescued us not just from the threat of slavery, but from the reality of slavery. So, we can look to him in faith and say with him to our faithful God, “I will put my trust in him.”

[Transitioning to the Lord’s Supper]

Jesus fully identified with us by taking to himself flesh and blood like ours. And in his death, he gave his flesh and blood to atone for our sin. If you are having a hard time believing that and if weakness threatens to lead you away from him, then see now just how sincere Jesus is about helping you endure. In this meal he again gives himself to you, his own flesh and blood, feeding you by his Spirit to strengthen you. For in this meal the death of your brother is held forth. Here is the body of your fallen champion who triumphed over death by death so that you could be free from the guilt and power of sin. Receive it believing in him, knowing that death could not hold him and he now lives and is helping you endure.

[Pray]

[Benediction]

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:20-21)

[1] William Lane, Hebrews: A Call to Commitment, 50.

[2] Lane, Hebrews, 48.