Hebrews 2:10-13
Well, good evening, turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 2 as we are continuing our study of a pastor’s exhortation to his church. And as we have seen, obviously this is not just any pastor, not just any exhortation. It’s not a typical sermon for a Sunday morning. This pastor is making use of a prophetic gift to write this word of exhortation, and this one is superintended by the Holy Spirit to guarantee its inerrancy, its infallibility, and its inclusion in the record of the New Testament.
So, this is quite a remarkable sermon to a congregation. It’s facing a remarkably difficult challenge. As we’ve been saying, this church is situated in Rome and they are there during the reign of Nero’s terror. They are experiencing an uptick in severity of persecution against Christians and some of the congregants of this church who had experienced the edict of Claudius, the emperor who expelled the Jews, and a controversy around someone named Christus. They are reluctant now to face another several decades, probably of loss and privation, alienation, in this case, a very real potential of martyrdom.
So, their pastor, he is away for some unknown reason to us, but he writes back to his church before he can get there and be with them himself. He writes to bolster their faith and to solidify their loyalty to Christ. He’s exhorting them and times in the letter, he’s admonishing them, even chastening them some to encourage them so they’ll stand firm and stay put and continue in the faith.
So, in view of the final and highest act of God’s revelation in these last days, which we’ve seen in chapter 1 in the opening, God spoke in his son, and in view of his identity and qualities that we saw in chapter 1, that from verses 5 to 14, he’s begotten, pre-eminent, anointed as king. He’s the eternal Lord, the exalted savior.
In light of all those things in the opening of the book, let’s look again at Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1 to 4. “For this reason we must pay closer attention to what we’ve heard, lest, we drift away. For if the words spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every trespass and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? That salvation, first spoken by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.”
So, he ends that little section of exhortation, the first exhortation in the letter so far, but he ends that section speaking about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And he’s speaking about that as evidence of the son’s exalted position, as Hebrews 1:3 says, that “Having accomplished the cleansing for sins,” he “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”. And so there he sits in triumph. He’s exalted on high and here by the evidence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he’s inaugurated this new age, the new age of renewal and restoration and the recovery of mankind’s place of dominion.
And this is not a new thing to readers of the Bible. It’s as old as Genesis 1, but it’s reflected upon in Psalm 8. And that’s what he quotes in the next section. We’ll keep reading. “For He did not subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we’re speaking. But one has testified somewhere, saying,
“‘What is man, that you remember him, or the Son of Man, that you are concerned about him? You’ve made him for a little while lower than the angels; you’ve crowned Him with glory and honor, and have appointed Him over the works of your hands; you have put all things in subjection under His feet.’ For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him.”
Stop there for a minute. The original intent of God for mankind and the original design of God in making mankind in his own image was to give mankind dominion over all creation. So how does this match the reality in which this congregation is living? How plausible to them does God’s original intention and design seem to them at the end of the first century in Rome, as they’re living beneath the dark and cruel ominous shadow of Nero? Where is this supposed victory, triumph, restoration of dominion for mankind?
I don’t know if you’ve ever felt a tension like that, as maybe you wonder about God’s tolerance of evil in the world. Maybe you think about suffering, especially the suffering of the innocent and the suffering of children. I certainly think about that a lot. Plenty of news stories seemingly every single day coming in that remind us of evil and remind us of the effects of sin, the consequences of sin, and how destructive it is in the lives of people and especially the young and the innocent.
Maybe for you it’s about the pain of a personal loss, or maybe it’s the crushing weight of shame or disappointment or failed hopes and expectations. Maybe you feel offended at repeated injustices and wrongs that never seem to be righted, sinners who seem to succeed and who are never brought to justice.
All kinds of questions like that are hovering around in the background in this letter and in the minds of the congregation receiving this letter from their pastor. Questions like this are troubling this congregation. They’re living through it. This is not a, an academic issue for them. It’s a lived reality. And therefore, that’s what informs this pastor’s exhortation, his instruction, and even at times, his admonition.
We get a glimpse of that when the pastor acknowledges how his people are feeling right there in the middle of verse 8. “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.” He’s acknowledging, look, I understand what you’re seeing and what you’re living through right in front of you and that the pressures that you’re under. I get that.
He’s not excusing any sin because of it, but he is acknowledging that, that is in the background. He’s not there to deny reality. Instead, like a genuine pastor, he’s there to help them interpret reality accurately and correctly and according to God’s revealed will.
Look at verse 9 of chapter 2. “We see him who was made for a little while lower than the angels – Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.” As 21st century Christians living in this part of the world, not that part of the world very far removed from what their lived experience was, we rejoice in those words and we see in those words gospel truth and rejoicing and satisfaction.
But for these Hebrew Christians coming from a Jewish background, living where they were in Rome, you might say, ghettoized in their own kind of culture, in little pockets of Jewish neighborhoods in the large city of Rome, they’re in close proximity to their kin, their kind.
Influenced by Jewish family and friends and business partners and clients and customers, some people found this gospel about a crucified Messiah kind of hard to take comfort in in the moment, and even it became for them a source of scorn and contempt. You may remember the first century attitude toward a message about a crucified Christ, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:23, is “to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness.”
So, identifying with the church of Jesus Christ wasn’t helping their temporal situation at all. It wasn’t easing their suffering. In fact, the more they spoke of it, the worse it seemed to get for them. I don’t know if any of you have experienced something like that. Have you noticed that the more you speak the truth, or the more you live for the truth, the worse it gets for you?
And I wanted to know, how does that settle in your mind? Does it tempt you to doubt? Does it discourage you? Does it hearten you? This congregation is experiencing a lot of this and more, and it’s getting more difficult, not less, and, and then more challenging for them to keep opening their mouths and keep speaking, keep identifying with this church.
But instead of telling his congregation that God’s plan is about the gospel and about suffering and about the shame and the reproach that they will bear for Christ in a crucified Messiah. Instead of telling his congregation that this plan of God in sending his son who is to be honored and rejoiced in, who is triumphant and glorious, that he would put him instead through humiliation and suffering and even bring him to the point of death.
Instead of telling his congregation, listen guys, this is just a necessary concession after the fall. It’s just a necessary thing. Or you know what? Congregation church, you understand this had to be the plan because God is bound by legal requirement to sacrifice his son for the sins of sinners who can’t help themselves, even though that’s a true statement.
Instead of giving them some infralapsarian scheme that portrays God as reacting to the bitter disappointment of the fall, making a plan after that, the pastor says, listen, this is God’s plan all along. From the very beginning. He wants his church to understand that the suffering and the reproach of Christ and the humiliation that took him to the cross was not only necessary and not only legal, but it was absolutely fitting and appropriate and good, even beautiful. He intends to show them how fitting the plan of God is, how perfect it is, how beautiful.
One commentator puts it this way. He says, “This is his way, the pastor’s way. This is his way of showing how the offense of the cross is the beauty of redemption that ravishes the soul.” I love that word. The beauty of redemption that ravishes the soul is found in the offense of the cross. The shameful offense of the cross.
So how can any of this dreadful plan of suffering and death and torture and cross and crucifixion and piercing and nailing to the cross and all that, how can any of that be portrayed as beautiful, let alone using words like fitting and appropriate? How is this God’s plan A, because here’s the point: if being perfected by means of suffering was God’s plan A for his son.
Then what must we surmise about the sufferings that we have to endure? They are also fitting and appropriate and good and even beautiful, fitting. Alot riding on this interpretation, if we need to understand these verses ahead of us 10 to 13, a lot, a lot riding on this to understand how this is God’s plan A. To understand how it’s a good and fitting and beautiful plan.
And I’ll give you four points to walk us through this section, verses 10 to 13. And it’s going to start this way. It was fitting for Jesus to suffer. And here are the points coming: to glorify us, to sanctify us, to identify with us, and to edify us. So, to glorify, sanctify, identify and edify us. All those are good things that God is doing, but he’s doing it through the path of suffering and shame. The humiliation of Christ is ultimately for our good, to glorify us, sanctify us, identify with us, and edify us.
So here’s point number one. It was fitting for Jesus to suffer to glorify us. And this is verse 10. “It was fitting for Him” and that him refers to God in this context. Fitting for him, that is, for God, “for whom are all things and through whom are all things.” Again, that’s referring here to God, “in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.” It’s fitting for him to do this.
The original design of God in making mankind in his own image was to give mankind dominion over all creation.” Travis Allen
The suffering of Jesus that culminated in a dreaded cross of the crucified Christ, this is not a reactive plan B. It was fitting for God. It was appropriate for him for whom and through whom are all things. In other words, that’s affirming his sovereign right, his prerogative as God. And it was fitting for him to perfect the author of their salvation and the word author there it could be translated leader or ruler.
Really the most appropriate translation of that word is the word pioneer. He’s the one who goes before, he goes into uncharted territory and he leads people, brings them with him. But he’s the pioneer. He’s the first one to go through the trouble, the first one to face the difficulty. So, it was fitting for God to perfect the pioneer of their salvation through suffering.
And here’s the question for you. Does it confuse anyone to say that? How is it that God needed to perfect the perfect son of God? In what sense did he need to be perfected? Is he not already perfect? It’s not the divine nature that required any perfecting, just to make this clear.
It’s the human nature that required a perfecting, and again, not in regard to some sinner defect, but in the sense of being formed and molded into the proper shape to take up the role to which God called him to be the pioneer of salvation, the one who leads God’s people into glorification. So there’s a perfecting and a completing that needs to take place, and that was taking place through his life.
Now, we could say a whole lot more about this. Believe me, we could teach whole sections of theology on this, but we’re moving ahead. We want to ask though, what is this concept of fittingness, “For it was fitting for Him,” that is, for God, “in bringing many sins to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.” What is this concept of fittingness or appropriateness?
This is one of the chief aspects of true beauty, that which is fitting and that which is appropriate. We can understand this in a visual sense of beauty. We might say the true beauty demonstrates qualities of like symmetry and orderliness, proportionality. In other words, if things match or are lined up and in their right places aren’t misshapen, but they’re well proportioned, we see them as beautiful. We see that as fitting and appropriate.
So, beauty is not merely a subjective thing as someone would have you believe, that it’s subject to relativistic opinion. The so-called eye of the beholder is what deems something beautiful or not. True beauty has objective properties created by God and then found throughout the natural and the supernatural world.
In fact, theological truths such as the one before us are also displays of the beauty of God and the beauty of his will, the beauty of his intention in properties, theologically speaking and redemptively speaking, of symmetry and orderliness and proportionality, or in the word of our pastor, fitting, fittingness.
But having clarified some of those points, notice the purpose that makes suffering a fitting way to perfect him. “In bringing many sons to glory”, or in glorifying many sons. The son descended, so to speak, to take on humanity, becoming incarnate in Jesus. So, as it were, he dove down into the muck where we are, into this sinful life, sinful world where we live.
He entered into a state not of sin, but in his humanity. And he entered into a condition of humiliation, and we can see he even went into abject humiliation so that he might suffer death for all of us in order that he might ascend again to where he was, having completed his mission, to take the place of honor and glory at God’s right hand.
So, there’s a coming down and then a symmetry in him going back up. There is a fitting symmetry of his suffering to glory on the other side. We started in glory, entered into suffering, and need to be brought out of the suffering and brought back up into glory. And that’s the symmetry for us, and that’s what he’s accomplished for us. All of this.
I won’t read it because of time, but if you just jot down Philippians 2:5 to 9, that’s exactly what you’re seeing there in Christ. So, the son came down to us. He lived through the sufferings of his humiliation, the season of his humiliation, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it here. He says you’ve made him, “for a little while lower than the angels.” That is to speak of his humiliation as a temporary and a short thing, a short life for him. To go through this humiliation in order that he might ascend to where he was before, but now to bring us with him.
The arc of that story is a thing of theological, poetic and narrative beauty. So, this is going to serve to encourage a beleaguered and anxious and vacillating congregation of Hebrew Christians to see their current sufferings as bad as they may be and as bad as they may get; they are not only momentary and light affliction, but they are working in them an eternal weight of glory that’s incomparable to the weight of any of their current sufferings. So, it’s fitting for him to suffer, to glorify them, to bring them with him.
Let’s move on to a second point. Fitting for Jesus to suffer, number two: to sanctify us. It says therefore, “Both He who sanctifies” that is referring to Jesus Christ, “and those who are being sanctified are all of one.” Here’s another strong affirmation of the deity of the son in Hebrews. The Old Testament identifies the sanctifier as none other than Yahweh in Exodus 31:13. Leviticus 20 verse 8, 21 verse 8, and 22 verse 32, says, “I am Yahweh who sanctifies you.” So again, he, Jesus being the one who sanctifies and Yahweh being the one in the Old Testament who sanctifies makes them one. It’s another strong affirmation of deity.
Let’s come to the point. This line, the beginning of verse 11, sets up what’s ahead in verses 14 to 18 about Christ’s high priestly ministry, that he comes to sanctify us. “He gives help to the seed of Abraham” in verse 16. He made a “propitiation for our sins” in verse 17. He comes to our aid when we’re tempted in verse 18. So, we have a great high priest who suffered what we’ve suffered, and yet he “has now passed through the heavens”, Hebrews 4:14 And we can “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace”, Hebrews 4:16, “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
He came down to where we were to suffer and endure what we’ve endured and to suffer it with total perfection in total righteousness so that we can receive mercy and find grace from him to help us in time of need. So not only does this pertain to his high priest in ministry where he’s praying for us at the father’s right hand.
He visits us with mercy and grace when we need him, because he’s suffered, because he has passed every test, because he’s resisted every temptation, because he kept the law of God fully and perfectly, because he fulfilled all divine righteousness, even to the point of death. Therefore, God highly exalted him and God granted him the privilege and the prerogative to send the Holy Spirit.
This promise of the father to sanctify his people. So, it’s by the Holy Spirit, also known as the “Spirit of holiness”, Romans 1:4, by his Spirit that he sanctifies us. So, he sends his Spirit into each and every one of his people to, from the inside out, make us holy.
There is a sanctifying and a setting apart of us to God in a general sense of speaking about our positional sanctification. But then there is a practical sanctification that’s taking place too, a progressive sanctification that happens by the Holy Spirit. But it took him coming through suffering. It took him being tempted in all points as we are and yet without sin, in order to perfect Jesus, to be our sanctifier, in order to make him the sanctifier of God’s people. So, it’s fitting for him to glorify us and sanctify us.
We come to a third point. It was fitting for Jesus to suffer to, to identify with us. Getting back to a verse 11, “both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers”. There’s the identity.
He had to be perfected through suffering in order to identify with us in no closer identity than this, but to raise us up to the level of a fraternal love, to make us more than subjects of his, even though we are subjects of his, but we are siblings of his. He identifies with us. And it took the suffering, joining humanity in our fallen condition, so coming into a humiliation and having to endure that in order to help his brothers to be made like one of us in order that we might be made like him.
Philip Hughes says, “That the fact that Jesus took on flesh and blood, it’s an act of total identification for our everlasting redemption.” And he says this, “Though he had every cause to be ashamed of us and to abandon us to the judgement we justly deserve, he compassionately abased himself in order that we might be raised to glory.” That’s what he does for his brothers. That’s how he treats his family.
There is no way really to overstate how beautiful this is and what condescension of love we see in this text, what tenderness and kindness that he shows. He’d never engage in a total identification with us if there was no guarantee that we would be holy as God is holy. He’d never engage in a total identification if there’d never be a salvation and a sanctification and a glorification of us. It’s a package deal that God promised him, and for Jesus, it’s a deal that required him to trust God’s promises about us too.
So, he believed God for his own role, Jesus in his humanity, he believed God for the promises about raising the Messiah, that he would not remain abandoned to the grave, but that he would be raised up and exalted. He believed God for those things. He also believed God for us. He believed God that he would be able to accomplish the redemption he was sent to accomplish and do it to the uttermost.
Believing God is what he did for the fourth point, it was fitting for Jesus to suffer to edify us. Final verses in the section, verses 12 to 13. “He’s not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will recount your name to my brothers, in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in Him.’ And again, ‘Behold, I and the children whom God has given me.’”
The pastor is, we’ve seen already in first chapter, he’s apt to cite the Old Testament, quote different passages from the Old Testament. He’s proof texting in a sense, but he’s also porting in all the interpretive context from that proof text. So, he’s not yanking things out of context and throwing them into fit. He’s actually giving us what is a thoroughly exegeted and well understood text from Scripture.
And so, he’s citing here in these verses, 12 to 13. He’s citing short portions of Psalm 22 in Isaiah 8. He’s freighting in with those verses, with each quotation the fuller context of those texts, rightly interpreted, helps us observe how Jesus lived an exemplary life of faith, one that we can emulate by grace. So, he’s edifying us. He intends to edify us. He had to be made like us to edify us.
We can learn how by trusting in God. Jesus looked beyond his present trouble. He endured all affliction and suffering and even the worst suffering on the cross. He, he bore our sins and his body on the cross. He suffered the full wrath of God for our sins. And all this he did by faith. All this he did eyeing a future hope, putting his expectation that God is faithful and God will do what he said he would do.
The humiliation of Christ is ultimately for our good, to glorify us, sanctify us, identify with us, and edify us.” Travis Allen
Taking those verses one at a time. Start with verse 12. “He’s not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will recount your name to my brothers, in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise.’” Now that comes from Psalm 22. It’s the first line in the second half, second main section of Psalm 22. It’s that messianic Psalm that predicts all the suffering of Jesus at the cross. You know what else it’s famous for? Well, you’re about to find out.
This is how we think about Psalm 22, because it was from the cross that Jesus famously quoted the first line of Psalm 22. It’s known as the cry of dereliction. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Remember that. Atheists, all kinds of unbelievers, mock that cry of anguish saying, see, he denied God on the cross. They are ignorant of the rich significance of that line, that statement there on the cross is an expression of his steadfast faith.
Jesus is not denying God when he quotes Psalm 22:1, rather in a very real human sense of dereliction, dereliction just meaning a sense of abandonment, he intended to draw everyone there present at the cross, draw them back to Psalm 22 to see the full context. He intends to all those who ponder the cross ever since to go back to the entirety of the Psalm, which is Messianic, and it is all about the cross in the first half.
The Psalm is actually written in two parts. It has two sections. The first is all about the Messiah’s humiliation. It, it speaks of his career that culminates in the cross. And there’s such specificity of predictive prophetic detail in that first part of Psalm 22. It is incredible. It’s amazing. It is certainly divine revelation.
But the second half of Psalm 22 is all about the Messiah’s glorification, all about his triumph and his exaltation. So just as Jesus, in fact, you might want to turn back there so we can read a little bit of that. But just as Jesus cited the first verse of Psalm 22 from the cross, in order to draw everyone’s attention to Psalm 22 verses 1 through 21 and let them contemplate what’s happening at the cross.
It’s not just about that first verse. It’s not just the cry of dereliction. It’s about the whole context. It’s about the meaning of the cross. He wants them to take up their Bibles and read. So, here the pastor following the Lord’s example, he cites the first line of the second half of Psalm 22, and here’s what that says. “I will surely recount Your name to My brothers; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.
“You who fear Yahweh, praise Him; all you, seed of Jacob, glorify him and stand in awe of him, All you seed of Israel.” You see how he’s left the humiliation behind? You see how he’s left the cross behind? Verse 24, “For He has not despised and He has not abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; And he has not hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard.
“Of You is my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him. The afflicted will eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise Yahweh. May your heart live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to Yahweh, And all the families of the nations will worship before You. For the kingdom is Yahweh’s And He rules over the nations.
“All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, All those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep his soul alive. Their seed will serve Him; It will be recounted about the Lord to the coming generation. They will come and will declare His righteousness To a people who will be born, that He has done it.”
What is the sense you get from those verses from Psalm 22? How does that edify and instruct and encourage these Hebrews as they’re facing their own trouble? Again, it’s Philip Hughes who speaks of the pastor, citing Psalm 22:2, he says, “As to emphasize effectively that humanity assumed by the Son made him truly one with us in weakness and temptation. And in the experience of that, it displayed that perfect dependence on God essential to realize the full potential of his manhood. And this is the genuineness of his brotherhood with us, genuineness in his identity with us.”
That’s true, but there’s also this joyful anticipation in Psalm 22 that’s spoken of there. As he looks forward, he looks beyond the suffering, and he looks to the other side of the suffering and what it will accomplish not only for himself in his own exaltation, but in bringing many sons to glory.
That we’re all there with him. You might say he’s there with his friends. He’s there with his brethren, the sons and daughters of his father. We’re all together in that great congregation, that great company, where, according to Hebrews 2, he leads us in singing. He leads us in singing.
We come to verse 13. We expect the pastor to follow the same pattern in citing and quoting from Isaiah 8, which he does. “And again, ‘I will put my trust in Him.’ And again, ‘Behold, I and the children whom God has given me.’” When the pastor says, “And again,” to break up the thoughts there, he’s trying to cite two quotations to make two different points.
And so that’s what the end, again, kind of breaks it up so he can make different points even though he’s in both texts citing Isaiah 8. But we’ll take them together as we read from the text. The context, if you want to go to Isaiah 8, the context there is the coming Assyrian invasion and the children that are referred to in, “I and the children whom God has given me,” in its original context is Isaiah speaking of his own two children, Maher-shalal-hash-baz and Shear-jashub. Those are a mighty mouthful.
But their names are meant as prophetic signs to Israel. And the first is a sign of warning of judgement. The second is a sign of the promise of salvation. Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Anybody remember what that means? Speedy to the spoil, hasten to the prey. Shear-jashub means a remnant shall return. These are prophetic names. They’re speaking in the time of the Assyrian invasion, Isaiah and his two sons, the disciples around Isaiah. These represent a very small remnant of believers in the time of great unfaithfulness in Israel, small remnant of faithful believers. And they’re standing firm against the overwhelmingly ungodly culture around them. They put their trust in God. They hope in him. They rejoice in one another’s company and fellowship and friendship. That’s the background here.
So, what Isaiah lived through, is what Christ lived through is what these Roman Christians live through, is what we live through. I hope you’re understanding, there’s a continuity from start to finish in Scripture that in a fallen world, the faithful will be a remnant and those who are true believers will be small in number, but very, very tight, beloved brethren, family loving to be together.
Listen to this coming from Isaiah and we’ll start reading in verse 11. The quotations come from 17 and 18, but starting in verse 11. “For thus Yahweh spoke to me with a strong hand and disciplined me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, ‘You are not to say, “It is a conspiracy!” In regard to all that this people call a conspiracy; And you are not to fear what they fear, and you shall not tremble.
“It is Yahweh of hosts, whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, And He shall be your cause of trembling. Then He shall become a sanctuary; But to both the houses of Israel, a stone to strike and a rock to stumble over, And a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many will stumble over them; Then they will fall and be broken; They will even be snared and caught.’
“Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait for Yahweh who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; and I will hope in Him. Behold, I and the children whom Yahweh has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from Yahweh of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.”
Again I’ll ask you, what sense do you get from those verses? How do you read them? How do they strike you? And how do those verses edify and instruct and encourage these Hebrews as they’re facing again, as they’re facing their own trouble? The truth is something that will hearten believers, but for the unbelievers, it’s a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
We’re always going to be outnumbered, outgunned, overwhelmed in this world. But we’re not alone. And there’s a God whose word can withstand bad cultures, hostile people, hypocritical religion, and Assyrian invaders as well. And God’s word emerges pristine and clear and unshakeable.
The two sons that Isaiah brings with him hasten to the plunder and speedy to the prey. That’s one son with a promise of judgement for those who reject. And the other son about the faithfulness to a remnant is the other son that God blesses. Blessing and rejection both will be fulfilled. And for the remnant we will be blessed.
We will come into our eternal reward. Christ has gone ahead of us and he has demonstrated the faithfulness. There’s an exaltation in that and there’s a glorification as he comes through faithfully. So, when our exalted Lord, who is in heaven, in his place at the father’s right hand, having accomplished our redemption.
What the writer to the Hebrews is pointing out, what the pastor’s pointing out is the way he came through this time of humiliation and suffering was with an eye on the prize, a look ahead with anticipation of the fulfillment of his hope, of the joy that was before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame.
He walked in confident trust, he believed God, he feared God. That’s what he commends to us. That’s how he edifies us as he looks behind him and says, follow along with me, walk as I walked, do as I did, you’ll be blessed and the outcome as I have entered into blessing as well.
That’s the point of these verses in this text. It’s fitting for our Lord Jesus then to suffer and to glorify us, sanctify us, identify with us and edify us. And may God use all of this to encourage our hearts as well, even though what we’re experiencing is not the suffering and the persecution as the Roman Christians went through.
May God do his perfect will and whatever suffering he brings to us. But if we look to Christ in his example, that’s what we follow. And his Spirit lives within us to do all that he intends to do in us, to sanctify, glorify, identify, and edify us.
Let’s pray. Our Father, thank you so much for this text in Hebrews, a very short look at a very deep passage, and we’re grateful for what you’ve given us and what you’ve given us to contemplate and to encourage our hearts. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ that he would stoop to identify with us and not be ashamed to call us his brethren, even though there’s much cause to be ashamed because of our sins, because of our failures, because of our unfaithfulness.
And yet because he was perfect in his redemption, all of that is forgiven. All of that is separated as far as the east is from the west. And now he accepts us. We are accepted by the Father in him, in the beloved. We thank you father, for this perfect plan of redemption. We thank you for the encouragement that it brings to us. Please keep us faithful in Jesus’ name, Amen.