If You Hear His Voice (Hebrews 3.7-4.16)

This Advent season, we’ve been looking at the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews to celebrate our Savior, and we’ll be ending that series today. We have a lot to see.

But what have we seen so far?

We saw, first, that Christ is the revelation of God: when God wanted us to know what he is like, he sent Jesus. We saw after this that Christ is supreme above all things, worthy of more honor than the angels, reigning over all creation. After that, we saw what kind of a King he is: a King who humbled himself, who came down to the people over whom he would reign, so that he might understand what it is like to be one of us, and that he might take our sin on himself and reconcile us to God.

And finally, last week, the author compared and contrasted Jesus and another faithful servant of God, Moses, showing that as faithful as Moses was, Jesus is worthy of even more glory and honor. So after comparing and contrasting Moses and Jesus, he now starts to compare and contrast the different ways of responding to them both. (Keep your Bibles open in front of you—we’ll be skipping around a bit in these chapters.)

Hardness and Unbelief: Israel in the Wilderness

He quotes Psalm 95, which spoke about how the people of Israel acted when they were in the wilderness, after God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. V. 7:

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

8  do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

on the day of testing in the wilderness,

9  where your fathers put me to the test

and saw my works for forty years.

10  Therefore I was provoked with that generation,

and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;

they have not known my ways.’

11  As I swore in my wrath,

‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”

The people were promised rest if they followed God. Rest from their labors under slavery in Egypt, yes, but more deeply, rest from the uncertainty of living outside of God. The foundation of God’s covenant with his people was this promise: “If you obey my commandments, you will be my people, and I will be your God.” The culmination of this rest was to come when God’s people entered the Promised Land of Canaan—a land where they could live and prosper.

But we were in Exodus all year—what happened? What did we see over and over again? God leads them out of Egypt with miraculous signs…and they’re afraid of not having water. He delivers them from the Pharaoh…and they’re afraid of not having food. He frees them from slavery…and they make a false god to worship. Their hearts were hardened against God. As a consequence, the generation that left Egypt didn’t go into the rest of the Promised Land. They died in the desert, and it was their children who finally went in and took the land.

The question is, what was at the root of this “rebellion”? What hardened the people’s hearts against God?

The author tells us in v. 19:

19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Now if you know the story, this might seem really confusing. The people of Israel who wandered in the desert for forty years obviously believed in God; they had seen him act with their own eyes. They saw everything he did in Egypt; they walked across the Red Sea, on dry land, as God separated it. They saw his glory descend on the mountain, and then on the tabernacle.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that God existed.

And we could say the same thing about ourselves. Look again at v. 7, where we started. He starts the verse with “Therefore”—that is, based on everything I’ve just said, “do not harden your hearts.” Well, what did he say just before that? In v. 6, we read: And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

In other words, he’s talking to Christians here, or at least people who claim to be. He’s talking to people who more than likely believe in God.

But he knows that in any church there are people who claim to be Christians but who aren’t really living for God. And he knows that even those who have faith in Christ need stern warnings to wake us up on a regular basis. Like the people of Israel, who had seen God at work, who had come close to him, who had no doubt that God existed and was powerful.

So where did they go wrong? They clearly believed in God. So how was it that they didn’t enter the rest of the Promised Land “because of unbelief”?

The answer is deceptively simple. In the Bible, “belief” is more than what we usually mean by that word. It’s not just a matter of being “sure” of something. It’s not a matter of intellectual assent. It’s not only—it’s not even mainly—a matter of conviction.

It’s a matter of trust.

The people of Israel believed in God, but they didn’t trust him. They didn’t trust him to be the God he said he was. He had given them promises and warnings: promises for obedience, warnings for disobedience. They believed he existed, but they didn’t believe his promises or his warnings. When he spoke to them, they didn’t take him at his word.

This is a sobering thought: it is possible to believe in God without believing in God. Belief is more than conviction, more than certainty. Belief is trust in God and allegiance to God. Belief says, “I’m putting all my chips in on you, even if I still have questions.” There may be parts of our minds that have a hard time grasping or accepting certain things; but despite that uncertainty, we still make the choice to trust in the eighty percent we are certain of.

And the people of Israel wandering in the desert didn’t do that. They believed in God, but they didn’t trust him. They believed without believing.

That is the counterexample the author gives us, to show us what not to do. And he takes these two chapters to not only give us a negative example, but to positively show us what we are to do. If unbelief looks like this, what does actual belief look like?

This text seems to give us a lot of information, and it can be a little confusing to get through, because the author seems to go in circles a bit. But that’s actually telling us something. The author repeats himself over and over again, because there are a certain number of things he wants us to really focus on.

The first thing he wants us to focus on is the goal.

1. The Goal Is Rest.

The goal is rest—we see it repeated nine times in these two chapters.

For the people of Israel in the wilderness, the “rest” they were looking for was the Promised Land of Canaan. But that is obviously short term, and those who rebelled against God lost even that.

But, he says in 4.10,

there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

The Sabbath was the one day every week when the people of God were commanded to put down their tools and do no regular work. When Christ fulfilled the law of Moses, that law was no longer binding for us, but the author reminds us of the Sabbath because there is another rest that is waiting for all of God’s people. It is the rest that is waiting for us at the end of our lives, the rest that we will enjoy forever with Christ after his return.

This is the goal.

And we are called to work hard to enter it. 4.11:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

So the goal is rest, and secondly:

2. The Time Is Now.

Look at how often the author tells us that there is a specific time for us to act, and that time is now. In 3.7, the author quotes Psalm 95:

TODAY, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

3.13:

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “TODAY…”

3.15, again quoting Psalm 95:

TODAY, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

And again, in 4.7:

…again he appoints a certain day, “TODAY,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “TODAY, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

He says it more clearly than I ever could.

The author wants us to understand the urgency of the call he’s making here. He is exhorting his readers to perseverance; his goal is that those who read his words will enter the rest he’s talking about.

It’s not too late, he says. As long as it is today, it’s not too late.

So many people wait so long to truly do the work God has given them to do, because they think there is always time. But that’s just not the case. Today is the only day we ever know we have—and we don’t even know how much longer “today” will last for us.

Right now, it’s not too late. Don’t wait any longer.

So the goal is rest, and the time is now. We have to move, and we have to move toward a specific destination. The question is, how do we do it?

3. Listen to His Voice.

Chapter 3, verse 7 once again:

“Today, IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, 8  do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

We see the same thing in v. 15, and again in chapter 4, verse 7.

God is speaking to us, brothers and sisters. How do we hear his voice?

Well, we saw part of the answer to this question at the beginning of our series, at the beginning of this letter. Chapter 1, verse 1:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…

We hear God’s voice by listening to his Son.

But by saying that, the author isn’t comparing good and bad. He’s not saying, “Now that we have Jesus, whatever God spoke through the prophets can be ignored.” He’s talking about a progression in God’s revelation to humanity, but that past revelation is still vital.

Look at 4.11 again:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

That is the command—those are our marching orders: strive to enter your rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience that felled the people of Israel in the desert.

And right on the heels of that, we see the means God has given us to strive (I put the verse on the screen because I want everyone to see that these two go together.). V. 12:

12 FOR the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

We try to hear God in so many places, in so many ways. And some of us are so desperate to hear his voice that we’ll start imagining we hear him speaking to us in every ray of sunshine, in every singing bird…all the while forgetting that God already has spoken to us, he already has made his voice heard, through the Scriptures.

Now of course God does speak to us through the world he created, in our thoughts and in our hearts, but necessarily those things are subjective, and subject to error. Sometimes I might think God has spoken to me, when in fact it was just what I happened to be thinking at the time. (Two people can say they heard God speak to them, but he’s telling them both two contradictory things. At least one of them is wrong.)

How can I have real, objective certainty that God has really spoken to me? I go to his Word. As John Piper said once, “If you want to hear God’s voice, read the Bible aloud.”

Exposing ourselves to the living and active Word of God is a long and arduous process, because it’s not enough to just land on a verse and pluck it up for ourselves. We need to take the time to prayerfully learn this book inside and out, to know what the whole Bible says about different subjects. It takes time, and it’s less immediately gratifying.

But when we do—when we strive with the tools God has given us, when we allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate the words he inspired in Scripture—we will set down roots that go deep into the bedrock of our salvation. Because when we set ourselves in front of this Word, we expose ourselves to a surgeon’s scalpel. God’s Word cuts deep: it pierces to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It exposes all of us.

We are called to let the Word of God cut us deep, to let it excise what needs excising, repair what needs repairing. We are called to listen to his voice.

And when we do, we are called to a specific response.

4. Come to Jesus Together.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…

Do you remember why the Israelites in the desert didn’t get to enter the Promised Land? Chapter 3, verse 19 again:

So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

We saw before what belief entails. It’s not about intellectual assent. It’s not mainly about conviction or certainty. It’s about trust.

And here is why I love this text. It may be tempting for us to take these things the author is saying for us personally. And we should do so; every step I take toward Christ is a decision I have to make.

But I’m not alone on this road, and this text makes that abundantly clear. Chapter 3, verse 12 again:

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

We see it again in chapter 4, verse 11:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

His language is subtly suggestive: reading this naturally, we would have expected him to say, Let us strive to enter that rest, so that we may not fall by the same sort of disobedience.

But that’s not what he says. He says: so that NO ONE may fall.

It’s a subtle reminder that he’s not speaking to his readers as individuals here, but as a body—he’s talking to us, not me. We exhort one another every day, so that NONE OF US may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We strive to enter that rest, so that NO ONE may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

The image here is not of a single person climbing up a mountain, but rather of a group of people carrying one another up. Someone will start to fall, and those in front and behind will grab an elbow and keep him on his feet.

We strive together, in order to persevere together.

This is very difficult for some people to accept, either because they’re too proud to accept that they need help, or because they’ve been burned one too many times and have a hard time trusting others. And even if we don’t have a problem with the idea of needing one another now, there will come a time when it will feel so much easier to just drop the hands of the people next to me and go the rest of the way on my own. It’s often harder to go together than it is to go alone.

So we need a really solid reason to believe this, to believe that not only must we work to enter God’s rest, but that we must do it in such a way that, Lord willing, no one falls by the same sort of disobedience the Israelites showed.

What is that reason? V. 11 again:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword…

Simply put, the Word of God tells us that belief is a community project. We strive together, we exhort one another, to enter the rest that God has promised us, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

So what does that look like?

It actually looks a lot like what I’m doing right now. I know that many of you are exhausted at the end of this year (and there are several people I’m thinking of who aren’t here today). I know that some of you are doing fine, but you’ll soon need a reminder to get you back on track. I know that others among you are wounded, grieving, suffering.

And I know that some of you are pretending. You know exactly what to say, you know exactly what to do, to give the impression that you believe in God. But you believe without believing. You’ve hardened your hearts, and slowly but surely, you’re falling into the same trap as the Israelites in the desert.

Whatever the reason, you need help—the same help I myself need just as often as anyone.

The stakes are simply too great for us to drop anchor here.

So where do we turn, in order to head towards the rest that is promised to us? We turn toward our great High Priest. Chapter 4, verse 14:

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus knows what it’s like to be us. That’s why he came. He was tempted in every way as we are. He understands, and he has sympathy for us. Jesus has not abandoned us; he has not abandoned you. He is a good High-Priest, a perfect High-Priest, and even if your situation seems desperate, you can still today hold fast your confession and come to him. Believe in him. Trust him.

…Now of course, if you take the opportunity to speak like this to someone else, the way they respond is up to them. The person in front of you, who will need to hear these things, may wake up and strive to enter that rest, or he may harden himself even further. The important thing is that we seize the opportunity, today, and that we be there to help our brother or sister stay on their feet.

Belief is a community project.

And for all of the many things going on in our church—for everything we’ve had on our plates this past year, and everything that’s coming this next year—this is the only project that really matters.

Consider Christ (Hebrews 3.1-6)

Every time Christmas comes around, we tell the story. Mary and Joseph making the long trek to Bethlehem, Mary giving birth in less-than-ideal conditions, and then the wonder of this thing: God himself, born as a human boy. And every time we tell this story, I can’t help but think of when my own kids were born.

Their births were both incredible in their own ways, but it is a peculiar experience to have your first child. When Jack was born, it was after a very long and very difficult delivery. They almost had to rush Loanne into an emergency C-section because it was so bad. So when Jack finally came out, I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I cried so much I made the nurses cry.

Now, that in itself doesn’t mean much: I cry a lot. Remember that Apple commercial a few years ago, the one where the soldier in Afghanistan was watching the birth of his kid over FaceTime? Complete meltdown for me. The fact that I was overcome with emotion isn’t that surprising.

Even so—and this is the experience of just about every parent ever, even those who manage to contain their emotions better than I did—when I held that little guy for the first time, I knew two things: first, that starting from this moment my life had fundamentally changed in ways I couldn’t control or predict; and second, that I would do anything for this kid. Anything. Meeting this child necessarily brought with it a number of acts that I would definitely perform.

If this is true about us when we become a parent, or when we find a husband or a wife, or when we’re adopted into a loving family after being without one, then it is infinitely more true about us when we find our Savior and our Lord, the Creator of all things.

If you remember the story, in Luke chapter 2, when the shepherds finally found the baby lying in the manger, they went out from there celebrating, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard. When Jesus later approached the disciples in the gospels, they were so shaken by their encounter with him that they left everything to follow him.

Jesus is the one human being who changes everything for those who meet him.

The first two chapters of Hebrews have been a long description of why Jesus Christ should provoke such a profound and intense reaction in all of us—why Jesus Christ should leave none of us indifferent.

We see that Jesus is the perfect revelation of God himself: through Jesus, we see who God is and what he is like. We see Jesus compared to angels, these powerful beings known and respected by early Christians: Jesus is infinitely greater than the angels, in his majesty, and in his relationship to God the Father. And last week, we saw the kind of ruler and King he is: a King who lowers himself to be with his people, to take on our humanity and to take our punishment in our place.

We have one more brief comparison to see today, but most of all, today and next week, we’re going to see how we respond to him. Once we have found our Lord and King and Creator, what is the only appropriate response?

We see it in chapter 3.

Jesus and Moses

We see Jesus compared to Moses at the beginning of chapter 3. If you know your Bible at all, you know that Moses was revered by the Israelites and the early Jews: he was a standard for what it looked like to be a faithful servant of God.

Why is Jesus compared to Moses here, and not someone like Abraham or David? Those two men will come in later, but I think the author talks about Moses because of the rest of what he says in this passage. Abraham was at the beginning: he was the forefather of the people of Israel, but there wasn’t really a people when he was around. David came later—he was the greatest king of a kingdom that already existed.

Moses got in on the ground floor. Moses was integral in building the people of Israel, so to speak, in making it what it became. What we’ll see later on is that Jesus is building something too.

Let’s read v. 1-4:

Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)

What we see here is fairly obvious, so we won’t need to spend a lot of time on it. After comparing Jesus to angels, saying he is more glorious and powerful and majestic than they are, he now compares Jesus to Moses.

He gives us one similarity between the two men, and that is that they were both faithful to the task God had given to them. Moses wasn’t perfect—we know he didn’t enter the promised land with the people of Israel because he lost his temper and disobeyed God—but he was, by and large, a faithful servant of God.

But as faithful as Moses was, the author says that Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses.

Why? Because Moses was a servant, and Jesus is the King he served.

The example the author uses is a good one. He says in v. 3, For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright is well known for his gorgeous and unusual buildings. In the town in Florida where Loanne and I met, there is a college called Florida Southern College (it’s where Loanne did her studies), and the buildings of that college were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s a strange place—not everyone is a fan of the style of the buildings on campus—but the architecture of Florida Southern is still renowned in the town. Not because the buildings themselves are magnificent, but because they were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.

Every house is built by someone, the author says in v. 4, but the builder of all things is God.

The ministry of Moses, as revered as it was, wasn’t really Moses’s ministry at all. It was God’s ministry, God’s work—he was building the house.

That’s the first thing: when people look back at the ministry of Moses, they shouldn’t be impressed by Moses, but by God who was working through Moses. And the implication, which we saw in chapter 1, is that Jesus is this “God”, the builder of all things.

The second comparison, we see in v. 5-6:

5 Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son.

It’s similar to what we saw in chapter 1, when Jesus was compared to the angels. Moses was faithful, absolutely; but he was faithful as a servant. Jesus was faithful too, but his faithfulness was of a different sort; he was faithful as a son.

So in these verses, it’s not the quality of the work that is compared, but the role of the person doing the work. Moses was a servant; Jesus is a son. Moses “testified to the things that were to be spoken later”; he was getting things ready for what was to come. Jesus is “what was to come.” Everything Moses did was getting the people ready for Jesus.

I said before that I think the author used Moses as a point of comparison here because of what he was doing: the author says he was serving to “build the house” that God wanted to build. This “house”, of course, isn’t a literal building, but God’s people, the family we talked about last week. We know this because we see in the second half of v. 6:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

It shouldn’t escape our attention that there is a condition attached to this privileged place we hold: IF INDEED we hold fast… That is, there is a certain way to respond to Christ that shows that we are his house.

To come back to Frank Lloyd Wright: he has a very distinct style. If you know his work, you can take one look at a building and know it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, because of the characteristics of that building.

In the same way, there is a certain way of living that shows we are “God’s house”; there are certain ways of responding to Christ that show we are his people.

Our Response to Jesus

There are lots of examples we could give, but in today’s text, the author gives us three.

We see the first appropriate response in v. 1:

Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus…

It seems obvious to say it, but it’s not as obvious as we might think. Commands are given because not all of us will instinctively follow them. Some of us would never consider Jesus if we weren’t told to do so.

Here’s what I mean. How often do we spend time just thinking about who Jesus is? We consider what he can do for us, absolutely. But how often do we just consider him? Who he is, and what he does? How much of our mental energy is spent on just contemplating our Savior?

I hope quite a lot, but I suspect the answer to that question is, not too much.

Now why should we consider Jesus? The author tells us in v. 1: we consider Jesus because he is “the apostle and high priest of our confession.”

He is an “apostle”—not in the same way the other apostles are; the word “apostle” simply means one who is sent. Jesus was sent by God, to show us who God is. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, we saw in chapter 1, verse 3. Jesus was sent by God to show us who God is.

Second, he is “the high priest of our confession.” Remember what we saw last week? The high priest’s job was to stand as intermediary between God and man. That’s what Jesus did. By taking on our human nature, he is able to represent human beings. He took our place, lived our life and died our death, so that he might stand in the presence of God the Father and say, “These people’s sins have been covered. Your wrath against them has been satisfied.”

When we consider Jesus, we consider everything we saw in the first two chapters: his majesty and glory which is so high above that of the angels; his humility and lowliness that makes him a King worth following. And now, his faithfulness to the task God gave him. Faithfulness through every temptation, faithfulness through every struggle, faithfulness even to death.

Third, he is the builder, and we are his house. Of course that’s a metaphor, so let’s put it more plainly: if we want to know who we are, we need to consider our Creator and Savior. We are the house he is building, but how are we to have any idea what we’re supposed to look like if we don’t know the Builder? A disciple is someone who follows and learns from and imitates a master. How can we know how to live like our Master if we don’t consider our Master?

Consider Jesus. That is the first way we respond to Jesus.

Here is the second way; we see it in v. 6:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence…

Isn’t it interesting that he speaks about confidence? We might expect him to talk about purity or obedience—because those things absolutely play a part, as we’ll see next week. But for now, he shows us that the proper response to Christ is confidence: not in ourselves, but in him.

So many Christians today live their Christian lives like they’re walking on eggshells, always questioning whether or not they’re doing the right thing. Of course there is a place for such questioning—we should be making sure we’re following Christ as we ought to.

But there is a kind of self-examination that often does more harm than good. Ask yourself this: When I examine myself, when I question my behavior or my motives, am I afraid? Do I examine myself with fear in the pit of my stomach, wondering what will happen if I don’t measure up? What will happen if I learn that I’ve made a mistake?

I say this with all the love in my heart: you don’t measure up. I don’t measure up. None of us do. We will make mistakes; we do every day. Our ability to do the right thing is not the basis of our confidence.

Followers of Christ are meant to be a men and women full of confidence—not in ourselves, but in our Savior. That means that when we examine ourselves, we should feel confidence, not worry. When we examine ourselves, maybe we will see things that don’t measure up. Maybe we will see things that need to change.

But when we see things that need to change, even as we grieve over our sin, we are confident, because Christ is our Savior, and because of who he is and what he has done, we can change. The fact that we’re imperfect doesn’t mean that our salvation is in jeopardy; it means that Jesus still has the opportunity to make us more like him. And he promises to do just that. We have been predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, Paul tells us in Romans 8.

We can wonder; we can question; but we don’t have to worry. We hold fast our confidence.

The final way we respond to Jesus in this text is similar. V. 6 again:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

This is a good step beyond simple confidence.

First of all, we boast in something: we boast in our hope.

I’ve said this before, but hope in the Bible isn’t hope the way we usually think of it. It’s not like when we say, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” with no real certainty that it will happen, since it’s Paris and it’s winter.

I told you last Sunday that my brother got married a couple weeks ago. Hope in the Bible is closer to what my brother felt standing at the front of that church, waiting for the doors to open in the back and reveal his bride. The doors aren’t open yet, but he knows she’s right there, on the other side, waiting to come to him. It is the anticipation of what we can’t see yet.

This thing we can’t see yet, but that we know is coming, is the fulfillment of the work Christ has done. We have this hope: that one day, Christ will return, and on that day he will rid the world of sin and all its effects; he will raise us from the dead as he was raised from the dead, ridding our bodies of death and decay and sin; and we will live forever with him in the new heavens and the new earth, perfectly fulfilled in him as his people.

And this hope doesn’t leave us indifferent. It leaves us confident, as we saw before, but even more than that: it leaves us proud. We boast in our hope.

This may sound strange because of the high price the Bible places on humility—but again, it’s not pride in ourselves. We’re not proud of our own accomplishments. We’re proud of our brother, Jesus Christ, who lived died and was raised to give us this hope.

We’re proud of this incredible message we have been given to proclaim to the world—what an opportunity we have, to tell people how they can be free to live as they were created to live: forever, and perfect in that forever.

We’re proud of the God who knows all things and sees all things, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who knows better than we do how we can be happy.

So many Christians lived ashamed of their faith. When they have the opportunity to speak about Christ, they hesitate, because they’re embarrassed. I’m as guilty of this as anyone; it’s hard to be proud of something that everyone else sees as ridiculous.

But is it ridiculous? Do we have a reason to be ashamed? Absolutely not. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1.18: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

We have no reason to be ashamed. We are proud of our Savior. We boast in our hope.

Conclusion

I said earlier that when I held my kids for the first time, I was overcome with emotion. But I wasn’t just emotional; I was also determined. I looked them in the eyes, and I made them promises to live a certain way, not because it was his duty, but because I grasped the incredible gift I’d been given when they were born.

In the same way, when we know who Jesus is, and what he has done, we are driven to respond.

We consider our Savior. We think about him, we learn about him, we meditate on him. This Christmas, when we gather for meals or to exchange gifts, we remember that every light, every gift wrapping, every flavor in every food is about him. We wonder at the miracle of his coming: God made man, to save men and women from all nations, throughout all history. We remember the complexities of his character and the greatness of his glory, and that when we see him, we see God himself.

We hold fast our confidence. We don’t live our lives in fear. Christians who understand their Savior are necessarily confident, because they know that their place with God and their salvation does not depend on themselves. If we’re confident in ourselves, we will absolutely crash and burn, because we can’t live up to that confidence. But if we are confident in him, we are on rock-solid ground. We can wonder and examine ourselves, but we don’t have to worry. If we have repented of our sin and placed our faith in Christ, we are safe; he will not let us go.

And finally, we hold fast our boasting in our hope. We have received an incredible gift. This is what we try to tell our kids at Christmas, because the gifts under the tree can quickly become a consumerist feast. But we give gifts to remember the ultimate gift we have received—and it’s not a gift that “belongs” to us. It’s not a gift that came to us because we did something right, or belonged to the right tribe, or understood the right thing. Jesus Christ is a gift that was freely given to us by God, and it is a gift that is meant to be shared.

So we are not ashamed. For the rest of the world, it may seem like folly, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. We contemplate the majesty of the Son of God, and then we rush away from the manger, celebrating him to anyone who will take the time to listen to us.

This is how we respond to the Son of God.

Why Christ Came (Hebrews 2.5-18)

You all know that Christmas is almost here, and most of you probably know that Christmas is the day that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. We all know the scene: the baby in the manger, the parents watching (usually way more peacefully than new parents are, ever), maybe the shepherds and the animals gathered around. The baby is always clean and sleeping and looks just perfect.

It can seem like something out of a fairy tale, rather than something that really happened—much less something that actually makes a difference in our lives today.

But it did, and it does.

We’ve been preparing for Christmas by looking at the first couple chapters of the book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, the second part of the Bible. So far we’ve seen that the baby Jesus in the manger wasn’t just a baby who would grow up to be a good teacher or an influential leader. The author tells us that Jesus, that baby born in Bethlehem, is God himself. When God took on a human nature and came into this world as a human being, he has made himself visible to us. Jesus is the perfect expression of who God is, because he is God.

And then last week we saw that because of what Christ did, he has taken up his place of supreme authority over all things. So we are called to listen to him, to hold tight to the good news he has given us.

All that is important. But if you’re coming to this fresh, those may not be the first questions in your mind. You come to church for a Christmas service, and you’re expecting we’re going to tell the nice story we were talking about—the story of baby Jesus. That’s not what we’re going to do this morning, at least not exactly.

Instead, we’re going to continue in chapter 2 of Hebrews, to answer the question, as clearly as possible: Why did Jesus come?

The text gives us four different answers to the question. It tells us that:

1. Jesus came to rule;

2. Jesus came to make a family;

3. Jesus came to defeat sin and death; and

4. Jesus came to be our faithful High Priest.

Jesus Came to Rule (v. 5-9)

The first thing we see here is that Christ came to rule. Not over a country, or a city, but over everything. And if you look at what the author says here, this isn’t a future goal Christ has established for himself—this is something that has already happened. V. 5:

5 For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 It has been testified somewhere,

“What is man, that you are mindful of him,

or the son of man, that you care for him?

7  You made him for a little while lower than the angels;

you have crowned him with glory and honor,

8  putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

So you notice that every time the author talks about the world—both this world and “the world to come,” that is, heaven—being put “in subjection to” Jesus, he doesn’t put it in the future, but in the past. Jesus is already ruling over all things.

The thing is, though, if you look around at the world, it’s pretty hard to see that. It doesn’t look like Jesus is ruling. And the author told us this was the case. At the end of v. 8, he says, At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. That is, at this point, he is ruling over a world that doesn’t know its King. A world that doesn’t recognize its King.

I’ll never forget the first time I read Psalm 8, which is quoted in v. 6-8, and realized that it’s not actually about us. I’d grown up in church, and I’d always heard that psalm being used as a way to reassure us, that God actually cares for us.

God does care for us, but Psalm 8 isn’t about us, and the author makes that connection here.

When he came to rule, the Son of God could have come down, guns blazing, to make the world get into line and do what he wants. But he didn’t do that. We don’t see everything in subjection to him yet; what do we see instead?

We see a King who was for a little while made “lower than the angels.” We see a King who, instead of waiting for us to reach him, came down to us. We see a King who went to live in the slums with his people. We see a King who made himself small.

That sounds like an unusual way to put something “in subjection” to you. But it’s not—you might fear someone who was powerful and huge and domineering, but you won’t love them. You won’t trust them. You won’t be drawn to them. Jesus is not a King who strong-arms people into following him. He is a King who is so humble, once we know him we love to follow him.

He came to rule in that way, for all eternity.

Jesus Came to Make a Family (v. 9-13)

The second reason Jesus came was to make a family. Let’s read v. 9 again:

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. 11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, 12 saying,

“I will tell of your name to my brothers;

in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

13 And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again,

“Behold, I and the children God has given me.”

Do you see it? It’s Jesus talking in v. 13, when he says, “Look—I and the children God has given me.”

This is the incredible truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ: through what Jesus did for us, God has adopted all those who placed their faith in Christ as his sons and daughters.

It’s hard for most of us to feel the incredible weight of the grace that is adoption.

My younger brother Jared got married last weekend to a wonderful woman named Desiree. The wedding began as all weddings do—the groom was up front, the bridal party came in and took their places. Next would be the moment where everyone would stand up to watch the bride make her entrance.

But instead, the pastor (who happens to be our dad) asked everyone to stay in their seats. He said that normally at a wedding, the bride would be walked down the aisle with her father—but that today, Desiree would be walking down the aisle alone. He explained that when Desiree was little, her mother died suddenly, and seven years later, Desiree’s father abandoned her and her sisters. They grew up in foster care and benefited from the support of some wonderful caregivers, who were present at the wedding. But Desiree was never adopted; she’s been without parents for most of her life.

My father pointed out her former caregivers in the seats, had them stand so that everyone could see them. Then this happened:

I have heard very few stories in the last several years that illustrate this point better. Desirée, who was abandoned by her only living parent, feels the weight of her adoption by God so keenly that it wasn’t sad for her to walk down the aisle unescorted. It was a privilege—because God is her Father, and he was faithful to her. She is no longer an orphan.

This is what the author means when he says we have become “children” of God, “brothers” of Christ. This is how we are brought into Psalm 8, that we talked about earlier. We have been adopted by God, brought into his family by the finished work of Jesus. The Son of God took on humanity, in order that “he who sanctifies” (that is, Jesus, who makes people holy) and “those who are sanctified” all have one source. We share humanity with him—and that is why he is not ashamed to call us brothers. He made us his family, and he brought us along with him, into his heavenly reign.

Jesus came to make a family.

Jesus Came to Defeat Death (v. 14-15)

Third—Jesus came to defeat death. V. 14:

14 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, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

We need to realize that the fear of death drives so much of what we do on a day-to-day basis. We want to live, but we know our time is limited. So what do we do?

We either ignore the reality of our death, and waste our time on unimportant things until it’s too late; or we try to amass as much happiness for ourselves as we can, to make the most of the time that we have, because we know it’s limited. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, trying to be as happy as we can, but we try to find it in a million different things—in marriage, or kids, or our career, or our hobbies, or our friends—a million things that will ultimately disappoint us, because none of it will last.

It’s no accident that the author calls this a kind of slavery. It’s a vicious cycle that we follow because we don’t see any other way.

But Jesus did.

Because human beings had sinned against God, we are all separated from him. God himself is the source of our life—so separation from God means a slow and steady death, and then condemnation for our rebellion against him.

But if a human being could live a perfect life, then he wouldn’t be separated from God. And if that human being could die, actually pas through death, and then come back from the dead better than he was before… Well, that human being could make it possible for any of us to do the same. It would neutralize the threat.

That’s what Jesus did. He lived a perfect life, the life we should have lived; he took our sins on himself and was punished for those sins in our place; he died, a real, human death, after suffering all the wrath of God against our sin; and then he came back, glorified and made perfect.

And the wonderful thing is, he did it for us. He went through that for us. He actually preceded us in death, and came out the other side, so he can say to us, “Don’t worry. Trust me, and it will be okay.” If we lay hold of Christ, we can live without the fear of dying—without this fear that dictates everything we do. We can live, for the first time, and forever, absolutely free.

Christ came to defeat death.

Jesus Came to Be Our Faithful High Priest (v. 16-18)

Lastly: Jesus came to be our faithful high priest. V. 16:

16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

(That is, all those who belong to his family.)

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 the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Why is this such good news? We saw that sin leads to death; sin also leads to fear and guilt. Because we can hear that at least theoretically, Christ saved us… But now I’m tempted to sin again. I’m trying to fight, but it’s really hard. That struggle makes me feel ashamed, and afraid, because I’m terrified that I can’t resist the temptation, and if I fail, how could God still love me?

When we feel that way—and all of us will, at some point—we need someone in our corner.

When you are going through a hard time, nothing is more reassuring, more calming, more helpful, than talking to someone who knows exactly what you’re going through. Even if they don’t have any real advice to give you, it’s just wonderful to know that someone understands, that they’re not looking down on you, and they have your back.

This is what Christ does for us now. He was made like us in every respect: when he was born, it was in a real human body, subject to the same weaknesses and temptations as we are. He resisted those temptations until the end, so he knows how hard it is. He gets it.

You see, Christ didn’t just come to die; he came to live.

He died so that our sin might be done away with, paid for, once and for all. And he lived so that he might understand why living as a weak human being is difficult—that he might be “a merciful and faithful high priest.”

The high priest, for the Israelites, was the intermediary between God and man. He was the person who would come to make sacrifices before God. Those sacrifices would temporarily cleanse the people of their sin, so they could keep on being the people of God. Every time the high priest would go into the temple to offer sacrifices, he would essentially say to God, “You see? Their sin is taken care of. They are still your people.”

But the high priest for the Israelites wasn’t a perfect priest, because he was a sinner too, and every high priest would eventually die—it wasn’t a permanent solution.

But now, Jesus Christ stands as a perfect high priest. A high priest who permanently stands before God and says, “You see? Your wrath has already been poured out on this person’s sin.” (That’s what the word “propitiation” means in v. 17—it’s a sacrifice that satisfies the wrath of God and his demand for justice.) Jesus is a high priest who understands what it’s like to be tempted. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Conclusion

So think back to the story you know—the baby, lying in a manger. At that point in time, it would have been hard to anticipate what that baby would grow up to be. Even Mary, who had heard from the angel that the child would be miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit, and that he would be “holy, the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1.30-35), didn’t really know exactly what he would be like.

What would you expect of a baby who was also the Son of God? What would you expect him to be like when he grew up? You might expect him to grow up to be incredibly handsome, very strong—a great warrior who would free his people from Roman occupation and after, rule over them.

But that’s not exactly what ended up happening.

He did come to rule—but his reign would be totally different from what you’d expect of the Son of God. It wasn’t earned through military victory or through might, but through humility and sacrifice.

He did come to rule—but he came to rule over a family, not subjects. He came to bring a great many brothers and sisters by his side, that he might share the benefits of his reign with them.

He did come to rule—but it was unacceptable that his rule be temporary, over subjects who will one day be separated from him. And it was unacceptable that his rule be forever contested and rebelled against. So he took on the sin that separated us from him, the sin that brought death, and he defeated them on the cross.

He did come to rule—but he didn’t ask his subjects to do anything that he hadn’t already done himself. So he lived the life we live: a hard life, a life of suffering, a life of struggle with temptation and weakness. He is a ruler who knows what it’s like not to be strong, so he is a compassionate advocate for us.

He did come to rule—but he came to rule over an eternal family, an eternal kingdom. He tasted death for all of us, and came out on the other side, alive and well, so that we might know we don’t have to fear death—which means we don’t have to be enslaved by fear.

Chapter 2 of this book begins with these words:

The first chapter of this book spoke of the superiority of Christ—his power and his greatness and his glory. The resounding message is, You’d better not resist him. Don’t neglect such a great salvation.

But then following that, in tchapter 2, we see the author speaking of the kind of authority Christ wields: his authority is humble, and loving, and sacrificial, and compassionate.

That changes the message a good deal, doesn’t it? Instead of simply saying, Don’t neglect such a great salvation, the author says, Why would you WANT to? It’s hard to follow and obey a dictator… But a loving, gracious, caring King? Why wouldn’t we want a King like that?

Christ is a good King, who gave himself for his people, who loves us and who is trustworthy and compassionate. So I would invite you, this Christmas season, to follow him. Do not neglect such a great salvation.

Every time you see a manger scene, every time you see a Christmas tree, every time you see a gift or a decoration, realize that all of these superficial things are actually calling you to a much higher joy than anything this world can offer. Come to your King.

Christ Superior to Angels (Hebrews 1.5-2.4)

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.

A Concrete God (Hebrews 1.1-3)

My godfather’s name was Bill. He was a single man almost all of his life, and then in his seventies he met a woman named Nancy. He met Nancy, of all places, online. They chatted on Facebook for months. They had long conversations, but it was always through chat. (They lived far away from each other, and couldn’t afford all the long-distance phone calls.) After almost a year of chatting online, Bill and Nancy decided to get married.

They had never met in person, but they felt they had known each other for years. The first time they met was the day before their wedding.

I got the opportunity to see them both a couple of times before Bill died a few years ago. It was strange for me, because I had always only known him as a single man. But he was happier than I had ever seen him, now that he had found Nancy. I was asking about their experience, seeing each other for the first time in person, getting to know one another in person, and said it must have been strange.

But both of them agreed that it was exactly as they had expected, only better. They already knew enough about one another to know they loved each other and wanted to be together. And everything they saw when they finally met only confirmed and deepened that love, and made it even more real.

Now here’s why I’m saying this. I just spent the last three weeks in the U.S. And already, when I landed in the States three weeks ago, people had already put up Christmas decorations. My parents already had a Christmas tree in their living room. A lot of people expect a lot of things this time of year, and it’s easy to get distracted with the decorations and the gifts and the meals, especially if Christmas was a big deal in your home when you were young, like it was in my home.

But the real reason we celebrate this whole season isn’t because of all of these things, no matter how fun they may be. We celebrate this season because of the dynamic we saw between Bill and Nancy.

In the Old Testament, at least to a certain extent, we see God in the abstract. He made himself known through his laws, through the miraculous things he did, through his people, and through the prophets who spoke for him.

But no one ever got to see God himself. Even Moses only got the briefest glimpse of him, and even then, only in part.

And for the longest time, it seemed like that would be the way it would always be. The prophets had promised that a day would come when God would send the Messiah, this warrior-like figure who would conquer sin and free his people. But even then, no one quite understood what that would look like. They waited for hundreds of years for the arrival of this Messiah, but when he finally came, most of them didn’t recognize him, because he’s not at all what they expected.

But that fact—the unexpected nature of who Christ is—does not change this simple reality: Christ is how God has revealed himself. Not just his law, not just his will—himself. God is no longer abstract. He is concrete—visible and tangible and present.

So for this Advent season, that’s all we’re going to be seeing. We’re going to be looking at the first three chapters of the letters to the Hebrews. In these chapters, the author goes into great detail about this one main idea: in Christ, God has made himself fully known.

Context

Before we get started though, let’s give ourselves some context for what we’ll be seeing.

The book of Hebrews is sort of unusual. We don’t know exactly who the author is (I’m partial to Paul, but several people think it’s Apollos or Barnabas); it was finally decided it should be in the canon of the Bible because it is perfectly coherent with the other books. What makes it even more interesting is its structure: it’s structured more like a sermon than a letter, so a lot of people consider it a “sermonic letter”—a sermon that was written down and then sent out in letter form.

As far as the first audience goes, the traditional title “to the Hebrews” lets us know only that the original recipients were Jewish Christians. (Which makes perfect sense as you read the letter, because it is constantly drawing from the Old Testament; everything we just saw in the book of Exodus will be extremely helpful here.)

So let’s just read the text together—we’ll just be in the first three verses of chapter 1 today—and this will serve as a brief introduction to what we’ll be seeing these coming weeks.

Then and Now (v. 1-2a)

Hebrews 1.1-2:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…

There is a lot to see here. First of all, we need to see that the author is intentionally making several distinctions.

First, there’s a distinction of time. It begins with “Long ago, at many times and in many ways”. But in v. 2, he says, “but in these last days”. Jewish Christians grew up with a profound attachment to the past, to their history. The author wants them to know that God’s revelation is not just a thing of the past; it is present, it is actual, it is here.

Second, there’s a distinction of to whom God is making his revelation known. V. 1: Long ago, God spoke to our fathers (our ancestors). But in v. 2: In these last days, he has spoken TO US. The Jewish Christians revered their ancestors—it’s easy to believe God would have spoken to them, because they were these incredible, outsized figures. But no, the author says—God hasn’t only spoken to them; he’s spoken to us.

Third, there’s a distinction of through whom this revelation has come. V. 1: God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. (In biblical thought, whenever you talked about “the prophets,” you weren’t just talking about the prophets mentioned in the stories, but the actual authors of all of the Old Testament books.) The prophets were God’s spokesmen, his ambassadors to the world, making known God’s will and God’s Word.

But now, he says in v. 2, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.

We don’t ever see Christ’s name in this passage, but it will become clear later on that Jesus Christ is the “Son” the author is referring to. A long time ago, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But now, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.

So there are a couple of questions that immediately spring to mind. The first is simple: Did God change his plans? He spoke for centuries through the prophets, then the prophets went silent for four hundred years. So it’s easy to assume that God’s revelation is finished, it’s all done. And if God was going to speak again, it would be reasonable to assume that he would do so through more prophets, since he had spoken through the prophets in the past.

So did God change his plan? If we keep reading, we’ll see that no, the Son isn’t a change of plan. Rather, he is the fulfillment of everything the prophets were pointing to.

Now this may have been a bit disconcerting for Jewish Christians. I just got back from a three-week trip to the U.S. for fundraising. We planned that trip, and the events that we did there, for several weeks. And I won’t lie, when I finally got there, and arrived at these events that were the culmination of these plans, it was a little nerve-wracking. What if it doesn’t succeed the way we hoped it would? What if the right people don’t hear the message we’re trying to send? What if the right people don’t respond? When you talk about the culmination of a plan, it can be scary, because if the plan doesn’t succeed…what’s left?

So the second question the author implicitly asks—the question he’ll spend the rest of this letter answering—is a simple one. If God spoke to our fathers in the past through the prophets, and now he’s spoken to us by the Son… How is the Son better? How is Jesus Christ better than everything that came before him? How is he better than the prophets? than angels? than Moses?

That is what we see in the following verses.

The Son: Revelation of God (v. 2-3)

V. 2 again:

…but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…

So let’s just work our way through this real quickly. What does the author say about the Son, by way of introduction?

First, he says that he is “the Son”. Whose Son? Well, he is God’s Son. That isn’t to suggest that God was there before the Son, or that he made the Son. This is tricky, and we won’t go into great detail, but this is the way the Bible talks about God: that there is one God, who has always existed in three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. The Son, the second person of the Trinity, became a human being and lived as a man named Jesus at the beginning of the first century A.D. He lived a perfect, sinless life, died and was raised again, and is now seated at the right hand of God. That’s who we’re talking about when we talk about the Son.

Second, the Son was appointed by God to be “the heir of all things.” When we think of an “heir,” we don’t usually think of someone who’s inheriting something small. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning that someone would be the heir of 30€ in a checking account and a mountain of debt. If you say, “He’s the heir of his father’s media empire,” that means something different.

The Son, we see, is “the heir of all things.” Not a few things, not even a vast fortune—ALL THINGS. Things in heaven and things on earth. Every corner of creation, every person, place or thing that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist… All of it belongs to him.

And that makes sense, because we see thirdly that the Son is the agent of the creation of all things: through [him God] also created the world. You remember, back in Genesis 1, when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light? When God said, “Let there be light,” the Son is the one who flipped the switch. When God said, Let there be animals and plants and mountains and rivers and stars and, finally, people, Christ is the one who made those things.

Next, we see in v. 3 that he is “the radiance of the glory of God.” The glory of God is everything that God is, all of his attributes, made visible. It’s often metaphorically described as light.

It’s a little hard to picture this, but we can see it if we read the gospels. Jesus looked like an ordinary man, he talked like other men do. He learned a trade, he had skin and hair, in every respect he looked and sounded like us. And yet, during his ministry, what do we see? People gravitated toward him—even those who didn’t like him. They couldn’t help but be drawn to him. When they looked at him—not necessarily what he looked like, but what he was like—they could immediately tell that he was different from other men.

Why? Because, as we see next, the Son is “the exact imprint of [God’s] nature”. All of God’s character, all of his attributes, everything God is, was perfectly represented in Christ. People were drawn to Christ because he showed them what God was like. God’s nature was perfectly displayed in this man’s actions, in his words, in his character.

Now here’s where it gets crazy. Up until now we could say that what the author has said about Christ is relegated to the past. These are the things people saw when they looked at Jesus during his earthly ministry. But now we start to see Christ as he is now.

The author tells us that he “upholds the universe by the word of his power”. Think about this for a minute. Everybody, put your hand on your heart; do it until you can feel your heartbeat. (And if you can’t feel your heartbeat, we do have medical professionals here who can help.) Take a minute.

Now think about this. Every time your heart takes a beat, it’s because the Son is telling your heart to take a beat. Every time you take a breath, it’s because the Son is telling your lungs to keep breathing. Every time the wind blows, every time the sun rises and sets, every time a wave lands on the short, every time a bird manages to stay in the sky, it is because the Son is upholding all of those things by his powerful word. If he chose to do so, with a single word he could cause all of creation to stop. To just not be anymore.

Remember when Paul talked about rejoicing in the Lord always, about giving thanks in every circumstance? We just celebrated Thanksgiving together as a church. Some of you may feel like you don’t have a lot to be thankful for. But if your heart is still beating, if your lungs are still breathing, it is because Christ is making it happen. We always have reason to be thankful. We always have reasons to rejoice.

Next, we see that the Son made purification for sins. If you were paying attention during our series on Exodus, you know what this means. Humanity has rebelled against God; every individual person alive has rebelled against God. Humanity is totally and completely infected by sin. Our sin means that we can’t live with God; but the fact that we were created in his image means we can’t live without him either.

So God gave the Israelites a system of purification, a means of paying for the sin they’ve committed, at least for a little while. The priest would figuratively place their sin on an animal, and they would sacrifice the animal, who would essentially receive the punishment for that sin.

The problem, of course, is that for every sin that is paid for, there’s a whole lot more waiting just around the corner, so they had to offer those sacrifices again, and again, and again.

But the Son “made purification for sins” once and for all. He took all of the sin of all of God’s people throughout all history on himself, and he was crucified, and on the cross he absorbed all of God’s wrath against our sin. He acted as our priest, and our sacrifice—something no other human being was ever able to do. Only a perfectly sinless man could be the sacrifice for sinful people, and only God himself could absorb God’s wrath against sin. That is what the Son did.

And consequently, lastly, “he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”. This means two things. First of all, it means that his purification for sin actually worked. The work of salvation has been completed, and there is nothing else for him to do to save his people—the work is done. And secondly, it means that since he has taken care of sin, the Son has now taken his rightful place, the place of supreme authority over all things.

Now obviously, that is a lot to digest in just two short verses.

1. Christ owns everything (even if we can’t see it yet).

2. Christ is at the origin of everything.

3. Christ is a perfect picture of God’s attributes.

4. Christ is a perfect picture of God’s character.

5. Christ keeps every molecule in movement.

6. Christ paid for the sins of his people, and thus:

7. Christ took up his throne to reign.

That is God, in a nutshell. When God wanted to fully reveal himself, he did it through his Son, who did all these things, and who continues to do these things and be this Savior.

If this is who God is, then we see so many of our common ideas about God have to be thrown out the window.

Like the idea that there are some parts of the world that didn’t come from him. The idea of a randomly generating universe is off the table if Christ is the perfect image of God.

Also the idea that you can see God’s attributes or character any other way. You can see some of God’s character by looking at creation, but you cannot go into the mountains and commune with nature and meet God in the process. You can go out there and get a hint of God, the way you can walk by a bakery and get a whiff of the bread that’s baking inside. But you cannot fully know God without knowing Christ.

Also the idea that there is anything in this world outside of his control. Christ upholds all things by the word of his power. A lot of things happen in this world that we do not understand; but nothing takes place outside of Christ’s sovereign will.

Also the idea that when he died, Christ made salvation possible for us, but that in order to be really saved, we need to be the ones to make it happen. There is a lot for us to do once we have been forgiven and saved of our sin, absolutely. But none of those things make us saved. We obey God’s commands not to be saved, but because we are saved. Christ has made purification for our sins, and we cannot add to that purification one bit. It is finished.

And finally, the idea that there are parts of the world or our lives that are “God’s territory”, and other parts that are ours. “God, you can have my Sundays and my social life, but my finances and my sexuality… I’m going to hang on to those.” It doesn’t work that way. Christ owns everything. God owns everything. Christ reigns over everything. There is no area of this world or of our lives over which he does not get to have his say.

Conclusion

This is our God.

But I’m not naïve; I’ve been doing this for a while now, so I know that some of you have already checked out on me. I know that some of you are listening to everything I’m saying and hearing it as if it’s just a story.

Don’t think I’m judging you for that; I completely understand. Sometimes I have a hard time thinking otherwise too. It can feel as if things have changed a bit since the author of Hebrews wrote this book. It can feel like God is once again abstract to us, because we weren’t there when these things happened, we don’t see Christ today.

But guess what? The people who read this letter for the first time… Chances are none of them had actually seen Christ in the flesh either. Maybe a few of the older ones did, but most of them had never seen him.

So what God does it say that Christ is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature, if none of us actually get to see him?

It’s a good question, and we find the answer in the fact that these things were written down for us. The author of this letter, and of all the other letters, and the gospels, and the book of Acts, wrote these things down, and believed they were enough.

We often say how much we would have loved to be with Christ like the disciples were. But this is a truth we may have a hard time believing: we see him better today than they did back then.

The disciples saw aspects of Jesus we don’t get to see, of course. They saw him when he was relaxed, they saw him laugh, they heard what his voice sounds like. But the opposite is also true. The disciples didn’t get to see all of Jesus that we see.

They weren’t with him twenty-four hours a day. And even when they were, they were were definitely moments when they were looking away, or thinking of something else, or simply misunderstanding what they were seeing.

But in the Bible, we have statements of intent. We have every vital moment recorded. We have descriptions of Christ’s feelings and attitudes and desires—things the disciples would only have been privy to if he had told them (which he didn’t always).

Do you remember what Jesus told his disciples in John 16.7? He told them it was better for them that he go away, because if he goes away, the Holy Spirit will come and live in and with God’s people. The Spirit takes these words that he inspired and anchors them in our hearts in a way that not even a physically present Christ could do.

This sounds complicated, but it’s very easy to understand. Think of the person you know best in the world—your wife, your husband, your brother or sister, your best friend. No matter how close you are to that person, you are still limited in your knowledge of them. You’re not with them every second of every day. You don’t get to read their thoughts; you don’t always know exactly how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking at every second. By definition, you’re outside of them.

Christ’s being not physically present means that his Holy Spirit is permanently present with us and in us. And that means that we have a 24/7 interpreter of Christ living inside of us. Every time we pick up the Bible and read these words about Christ inspired by the Spirit, we see Christ better than his disciples ever did. In the Holy Spirit-inspired descriptions of Christ we find in the Bible—in his words, acts and character, recorded for us—we have as clear a picture of him as we need.

In Christ as he is described for us in this book, we see God.

Now this is always important for us to know, but it can be particularly important at this time of year, because you walk outside, and you see Christmas lights. You walk in front of Printemps or Galéries Lafayette and you see the windows with all of the animations. We’re going to pick up a Christmas tree and decorate the apartment this week. If you have kids, the kids are going to be enamored with the decorations and the presents and the fun of it all. Family dinners, church events—even if Christmas is a hard time for you, there are so many distractions at this time of year.

But the center of our faith, the center of our very existence, is the truth that God has revealed himself to humanity, and he has done it in Christ. In Christ, we see God. In Christ, we can know God. In Christ, we can be united to God.

So before we even get into the swing of this season, that is what we need to keep in our minds. The truth we celebrate at Christmas is the truth we celebrate every day of every year of our lives, the truth we will celebrate for the rest of eternity.

In Christ, we see God.