There’s a story almost everyone has heard, sometimes without even realizing it. The story involves a group of shepherds who are out in the fields, watching over their sheep. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, an angel appears in the sky, shining with the glory of God.

The shepherds are, quite understandably, terrified.

That story is told in Luke 2, and we’ll come back to it in a minute. But it’s not the only story in the Bible like this. Almost every time we see an angel appear in the Bible, the people who see them are terrified.

Why were they so afraid? The Bible isn’t super explicit about what angels look like—and certain angels are described in different ways, often in ways that don’t even make a lot of sense, as if the author was struggling to find words to describe what he had seen.

We know a few things about them from the Bible, though. Angels exist, for one: they are real beings. Angels are spiritual beings created by God—so they’re not physical, or at least rarely take on physical form. Angels are servants of God. Lastly, angels are incredibly powerful: and not only are they powerful, but when an angel is sent by God, they often shine with God’s glory, like we see in Luke.

It would be hard for a first-century believer to imagine any being more powerful than an angel.

That being said, let’s go back to the story in Luke 2. ‌

The shepherds see the angel; they are terrified. The angel tells them not to be afraid, and then he tells them that in the nearby town of Bethlehem, a Savior has been born. He is the Christ, the Messiah that the Jewish people have so long been waiting for, the one who would save them.

Then all of a sudden there’s not only one angel, but a multitude of angels praising God.

So the shepherds run to Bethlehem, to find this Messiah baby the angel had announced to them.

Now, if you were one of the shepherds, what could you reasonably expect to find in this place you’re going? Something amazing, right? The person who makes the announcements at a wedding—the one who tells everyone where to sit, where to park their cars, what time drinks will be served—is not more important than the bride. That person won’t be dressed as beautifully as the bride.

So if a multitude of angels were the ones announcing the birth of this Savior, what must this child be like?!

I don’t know what they were expecting, but we do know what they found.

They found…a baby.

A very ordinary-looking baby, with two ordinary-looking parents. The shepherds weren’t terrified of the baby like they were the angels. Even more, they found this baby lying in a manger, a feeding trough for animals. Hardly what one could call glorious—certainly not more glorious than the angels.

And yet, this baby was more glorious than the angels, and still is.

This is what the author of the letter to the Hebrews insists upon in the second part of chapter 1.

Last week, in v. 1-3, we saw that God has revealed himself perfectly in his Son—Jesus Christ, this baby born in the manger, who grew up, lived a sinless life, died to make purification for our sins, and is now seated at the right hand of God. Now, beginning in v. 4, we see the author deepening his argument even further by making one contrast after another, between these two incredible categories: the Son on one side, and angels on the other.

Jesus is the Son (v. 4-7)‌

The author lays it on thick right out of the gate. The first reason Christ is superior to the angels is his relationship with the Father. V. 4:

[The Son has] become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,

today I have begotten you”?

Or again,

“I will be to him a father,

and he shall be to me a son”?

6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,

“Let all God’s angels worship him.”

7 Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,

and his ministers a flame of fire.”

If you’re looking in your Bibles and you see certain verses put in a different format (for example, italicized or with regular line breaks), that’s the translator’s way of telling you that these are quotes from the Old Testament. In these quotes (mostly from the psalms) we see God speaking of the Messiah.

Which of the angels can say they have been called “sons” of God? None of them.

In addition, he says, the angels worship this Son, this firstborn that God brings into the world. They are naturally subservient to him.

The angels are powerful beings who serve God, but they are not worthy of worship. The Son, however, is. He commands the angels, and gives them the power to fulfill his commands.

Now this may all seem fairly obvious to us today; but remember the time in which the author is writing. The people to whom he is writing were contemporaries of Christ. They may not have all seen him (though some of them had), but this is being written only about thirty years after Christ’s death and resurrection. It would be like someone writing to us about Princess Diana. They have accepted Christ and they believe in him, but they still remember when he was around. It would have been hard to grasp just how glorious Jesus is.

That’s why he compares Christ with the angels: these are beings his readers also believe in, and which  inspired awe and wonder and fear. And these incredible beings, he says, are subservient to Christ, because Christ is the Son. He has a filial relationship with God the Father that none of the angels have.

Jesus is Eternal (v. 8-12)

The second reason Christ is superior to the angels is because he is eternal and unchanging. V. 7 again:

7 Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,

and his ministers a flame of fire.”

8 But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

9  You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

10 And,

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,

and the heavens are the work of your hands;

11  they will perish, but you remain;

they will all wear out like a garment,

12  like a robe you will roll them up,

like a garment they will be changed.

But you are the same,

and your years will have no end.”

Remember what we read last week, in v. 2? Through the Son, God created the world—that is, everything that exists that is not God himself. He created everything—including the angels.

It’s important to remember that in order to be eternal, it has to go in both directions. We have received eternal life if we have faith in Christ, but we ourselves are not eternal, because we had a beginning. The same thing applies to the angels. They are not gods; the one God created them.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—the one true God—is the only being in existence who is truly eternal: he has no beginning and he has no end.

How is this possible if we just said that the Son was born? It’s a tricky question. He was born as a human being at a certain point in time, yes; but he existed an eternity before that. That’s why theologians like to use the word “incarnate” to describe Jesus Christ. He is God, and he always has been, but at just the right time he took on human flesh.‌

Think about that. For as long as angels have existed, there is an eternity before that, that they never saw. But that baby in the manger… He had seen it.

Not only is Christ eternal, he is unchanging. V. 12:

…like a robe you will roll them [the earth and the heavens] up,

like a garment they will be changed.

But you are the same,

and your years will have no end.”

Saying that Christ is “unchanging” is also an incredible thing to say about someone who lived an eternity as God, and then became something else. But that word “became” is a bit misleading; Christ didn’t stop being God just because he took on human flesh. When he took on our human nature, he did something he had never done before, but he was still the same God he had always been, and he still is that God today.

Christ never changes. He is still the same powerful, wise, sovereign, joyful God he has always been. And he’s the one holding us.

Jesus is Victorious (v. 13-14)

Lastly, Christ is superior to the angels because of the victory he has purchased. V. 13:

13 And to which of the angels has he ever said,

“Sit at my right hand

until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?

14 Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?

V. 13 quotes Psalm 110:1, a prophecy in which we see God speaking to the Messiah, the Christ. Christ is seated at the right hand of God, the position of ultimate authority. All things are under His feet, and He is waiting for the time when His enemies will be fully defeated.

The angels, though we do see them fight battles in the Bible, can claim no such victory for themselves. Their victory is not their own, but God’s, because he gives them the power and means to fight for him. They are not the champions; rather, they are “ministering spirits”. They serve God, yes; but the author mentions a surprising thing when he says that they also minister to us—to all those who have inherited salvation, as he says in v. 14.

Now we need to take a second here. In modern Christianity, we have been conditioned to feel like everything we’re doing on this earth is for us. It sneaks in, in subtle ways, in the words to the songs we sing together, in the prayers we hear one another pray. We’ve been conditioned to think of ourselves as precious to God. And while that is true, it’s possible that we have become desensitized to the wonder of that truth.

So it’s worthwhile, when we read this, to remember what we’re talking about. When people encountered angels in the Bible, they were petrified. That level of power and glory and beauty was just too much to handle. If we had to stand next to an angel today, and answer the question, “Who is more important? You or the angel?”, not a single person here would say, “Me. I’m more important.” We’d be struggling just to stay on our feet.

That’s why v. 14 should hit us hard. Since v. 4, the author has been comparing Christ to the angels, saying, “Christ is way up here, and the angels, for all their power, are far below him.” Where do we fit on that scale? If you just look at what we bring to the table, we’re far below the angels. We have no supernatural power of our own. We bring with us our weakness, our failures, our sin.

And yet, God has sent the angels to serve us. He has given us a place of honor even above the angels, adopted us as his sons and daughters. I think that is why he talks about our “inheriting salvation”, and not simply “receiving” it; I think it’s a deliberate callback to v. 2 and 4, when he talks about the Son inheriting all things, inheriting the greatest of all names, because of his filial relationship to the Father. Strangers are not heirs; sons and daughters are heirs.

Christ has inherited all things because he is the Son of the Father, and we have inherited salvation because we have been adopted as God’s sons and daughters.

The angels, for all of their beauty and power, have not received this; they have not “inherited salvation.” The apostle Peter tells us that the grace we have received from God is something “into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1.12). It might be easy to look at angels and think, How amazing would it be to be one of them? To serve in the presence of God, to be given this incredible power?

But the angels look at us and say, How amazing would it be to be one of them? To be able to experience the unmerited grace and the mercy of God, to receive the gift of the Son who died for them and the Spirit who lives in them?

The Son of God, who is infinitely greater than the most amazing beings in creation, made purification for our sins. He gave us a perfect revelation of who God is. He lived, died and was raised to apply his work to us.

I hope you can see what the author is doing with this masterful exposition of the greatness of the Son of God—all these descriptions and comparisons are there to fire up our imaginations, to shock us with just how great Christ is. And we need to be shocked—we need to be wide awake—or we will never respond to these truths as we should.

Do Not Neglect Your Salvation (2.1-4)

So what is the appropriate response to these truths?

The author gives us a clear answer at the beginning of chapter 2—since we have received such grace from God, since the Son has taken up his rightful place of victory and authority, and since he has made us heirs of the salvation he built for us:

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, 4 while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

This is an argument from lesser to greater: Christ is clearly greater than the angels. When the author talks about “the message declared by angels,” he’s talking about the law; it is the Old Testament. This is a little mysterious, but we see in a number of places—namely, Deuteronomy 33.2, Acts 7.53 and Galatians 3.19—that angels were involved in the transmission of the law to God’s people.‌

What exactly was their involvement? I’m not sure, but that’s not the author’s point. His point is that everything we see in the Old Testament proved to be true. When God said he would do something, he did it. When God said that every transgression or disobedience would receive a just retribution, he was telling the truth. And if this message, declared by the angels, was reliable, how much more is the good news that the Son of God himself has declared to us, that was passed on by those who heard him firsthand, and which God proved through the signs and wonders he performed in the church?

If what the angels said proved to be true, how much more trustworthy is what the Son of God has said?

He says all of this to hammer one point home: We must pay even closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it… How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Now of course this can make some people uneasy, because the author is writing to Christians here. Is he saying that Christians who have been genuinely and truly saved by faith in Jesus Christ today can suddenly be not saved tomorrow?

No, he’s not saying that. He’s doing two things here that we see over and over again in the Bible.

First, he’s using a warning to protect us. God often does this in the Bible; he speaks to us like a parent speaks to a child. A parent of a toddler will constantly say things like, “Don’t put your hand in the fire. If you put your hand in the fire, you’ll get burned.” On the one hand, that’s true—if the kid puts his hand in the fire, he’ll get burned. But the reason we say that isn’t because it’s going to happen. We say it to keep that from happening. Loanne and I said it to Jack and Zadie when they were little—and thank the Lord, neither of them have ever stuck their hand into an open flame. They’ve never been burned.

God constantly uses warnings, not to paralyze us with fear of failure, but to protect us from failure. He’s giving us this warning to help us realize that maybe there are areas of our lives where we’ve started to drift, where we’ve started to neglect our salvation. And he’s telling us, “Watch out. Don’t do that. Pay attention to what you’ve heard. Be alert.”

But that’s not all he’s doing. He’s also saying these things to wake us up. The author of this book is also aware that whenever you’re addressing a church, you’ll have people in the crowd who are genuine believers, who have placed their faith in Christ and are committed to following him.

But you also have people who aren’t there yet. You have some who are present, but who don’t yet believe; and you have some who are pretending to believe, but who aren’t actually disciples of Christ. They’re not following him, they’re not living for him. They know how to pretend because they’ve been in the church for long enough. They know the lingo, they understand how to wear that mask.

But they’re still wearing a mask.‌

To these people, he’s saying the same thing: he wants to wake them up. You know what you need to know; you’ve heard what you need to hear. But since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Our Lord and Savior is infinitely high above every power, every authority, every servant of God in the heavenly places. He reigns over all things, he has authority over all things, and he is coming back to judge the living and the dead. He lived, died and was raised to save his people—and if you neglect this salvation, you will not escape.

To all of these different types of people who might be reading this book—to every person in this room—he’s saying the same thing: don’t neglect your salvation. Pay even closer attention to what you have heard. If there’s any area of drift, stop drifting—come back. If you have neglected salvation so far, stop. If you keep going down that road, you will not escape.

This may seem like a strange tone for an Advent service, but this is what Advent is about.

We will never feel the immediacy of that call until we have understood the beauty and the power and the greatness of the Son of God. Every time we see Jesus do anything in the gospels, every time we see a Christmas tree and remember what we actually celebrate at this time of year, our minds should be blown. We will never fully enjoy Christmas until we realize that this is what we are celebrating. This incredible, glorious Son of God, who is infinitely high above the angels, is the little baby born in Bethlehem—this little baby whom the angels worshiped, and who was given for us.

This season is anything but light; it is anything but simply festive. This season is a reminder of the greatest power in the universe, whom we are allowed to know. So all of the things that come with this holiday—every decoration, every meal, every present—should bring to the front of our mind this simple call: Don’t stop listening to him. Pay attention to what you have heard. Don’t neglect your salvation. Follow him.