Hebrews 2:5-9
All right, good evening, everyone. We are in Hebrews chapter 2, so you could turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 2:5 through 9. And we’ll continue our study of this pastor’s exhortation to some in his congregation, or even maybe perhaps many in his congregation, who were feeling weak and discouraged, facing difficult, a difficult season in their lives, and they were in need of strengthening.
Last time we looked at the exhortation section, which was Hebrews 2:1 to 4, a section that had as its main message, do not neglect, so great a salvation, which is said there in verse 3. And the greatness of that salvation was something far beyond the glory of the law. And that’s evident in several things that we see in verses 3 and 4.
There’s a greatness of the salvation in the fact that it has a greater messenger of that salvation who is the Lord himself. The preachers of that salvation are the Lord’s apostles. And the corroboration of that great salvation is God himself who testified by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.
At the end of our time, last time we noted the difference between the corroborating testimony of God that came through signs and wonders and power, that testimony corroborated at Sinai. We contrasted that with his corroborating testimony in the gospel.
But on the one hand we saw at Sinai a destructive power; destructive power demonstrations that terrified the people. But then on the other hand, there’s a constructive form of power in the demonstrations that were in the gospel. In Hebrews 2:4, the signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts.
There were in Christ, in his ministry, there were regenerative miracles. There were miracles that were creative miracles, you know, fish and the loaves and you know, regenerative miracles of congenital blindness and deafness and lame and all those kind of things, which, kind of, was pointing back to the power of God in the original creation.
So when we say, like at Sinai, wrath, power, thunder, lightning, fire, terrifying, but we also need to go back a little further to Genesis 1 and see the goodness and the kindness of God and the variety of God in everything that he provided in the earth was all there.
And it’s through the fall and sin, where man needed to be; his sin needed to be exposed, so that he could see what his real problem is and not think it’s about, you know, upbringing. You know, the culture I was raised in. It doesn’t have anything to do with that. It has to do with the sin in the heart.
So “law came through Moses,” John 1, “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” So you see a difference in the power and the effect of that power of God being displayed at Sinai and in Christ and the gospel and his apostles. We’re going to see those kinds of differences here in Hebrews 2.
There’s a later exhortation passage where the pastor refers to these manifestations. You look at verse 4, Hebrews 2. “God testified with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.”
There’s a later passage where the pastor is referring to those same manifestations of gracious supernatural power, which is God coming and blessing, and he refers to them as the heavenly gift. In Hebrews 6:4. He says also, the readers have tasted, this is the expression, “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.”
So there’s a valid question of concern for a church whose members are living in the belly of the beast in Rome. They’re living under the dark abiding shadow of this anti-Christian emperor with his arbitrariness, his murderous whims.
And a valid question that they could be asking even as they read this is: If we’re supposed to pay much closer attention lest we drift away and if it’s the case that we’re not to neglect so great a salvation which was preached by the Lord, confirmed by his apostles and reliable witnesses, corroborated by all these amazing signs and wonders and miracles and power and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Well, where are they now? Where are they now when we most need them?
We could really use a few of those powers of the age to come to unseat Nero and cast him off the throne. All those powers that God revealed then, we could really use them showing up now. So why the burst of supernatural activity then, but only momentary? Now we’re back to the same old oppression and cruelty and sin. Why so difficult?
If you’ve ever wondered similar things in your Christian life, you’re in the company with the members of this congregation who are reading this. You’re also in David’s company. We’re in Psalm 8, and we’ll see a little bit later as we go back to that. But the pastor is about to help us understand this, help us to solve this little dilemma.
He reminds us here in Hebrews 2:5 to 9. He reminds us of what we know. He acknowledges what we experience or what we see with our eyes and then he calls us to fix our attention on what we believe.
So with that in mind, look at the verses there. Let’s read Hebrews 2:5 through 9. “For He did not subject to angels the world to come concerning which we are 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’VE PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET, and then the writer, the author, draws out the implication of that to make it explicit.
“For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him.” But then this, “but now we do not yet see all things subjected to Him.” It’s acknowledging the tension, but verse 9, “But we do 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.”
That section, those verses connect back to the pastor’s earlier point about the son’s superiority over the angels in chapter 1, verse 5. And having kind of worked through that section that we did in chapter 1, verses 5 to 14, to see the son’s superiority over the angels throughout the Old Testament Scripture.
He’s taken a brief pause in verses 1 to 4, to give a timely exhortation, but now he returns to his point and he moves the ball forward just a little bit more to demonstrate how the son is the firstborn over all creation. And this section ends at verse 18.
So let’s keep on reading. “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings. For 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, saying, ‘I WILL RECOUNT YOUR NAME TO MY BROTHERS, AND IN THE MIDST OF THE ASSEMBLY I WILL SINGYOUR PRAISE.”
“And again, ‘I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM.’ And again, ‘BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME.’ Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
“For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like his brothers in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He’s able to come to the help of those who are tempted.”
That ends the first major section in Hebrews, and it’s all about the firstborn, the status of the son. And here in our passage that we’re going to cover tonight, verses 5 to 9, he starts with Psalm 8, and then he starts to work out the theological implications of Psalm 8 with Jesus as the second Adam.
So we’re going to be in this section for another week or two. Tonight, we’re going to begin with, as I said, Hebrews 2:5 to 9, and we’ll work through those verses using three points. I’ve already mentioned them, but let me mention them again.
What we know, verses 5 through 8, if we split eight, verse 8 into three sections A, B, and C. The verse 5 through verse 8b, that’s what we know; that’s the first point. And then secondly, what we see verse 8c, and then third, what we believe, that’s 8c through verse 9.
So what do we know? This is the first point, what we know. What do we know? We know that God made man to exercise dominion. God made man to exercise dominion. That is his original design in creation. Man, not angels, but man was made to exercise dominion. Look back at verse 5, “For he did not subject to angels the world to come concerning which we are speaking.”
The verb there that’s going to be repeated throughout this text is the verb, subject. It’s hypotasso, it means to put into submission and it can be put in the, in the active form, the passive form. A lot here, it’s put into the active form of subjecting something to somebody else.
It’s basically, if we, as the elders, we want to assign somebody a certain role or a certain function or a ministry, we’re going to say we’re going to subject a certain group of people, say Sunday School workers, to work under this particular minister, and they’re going to report to that minister. We’re going to subject them to this minister.
The world from the very beginning in God’s original design was meant to be subjected to Adam to mankind, everything in the world subjected to him. But here it says he didn’t subject to angels the world to come. That’s he’s pointing to the future, not to the past. He’s mentioned the powers of the age to come in verse 4, and the pastor acknowledges tacitly, but clearly, he is speaking about the world to come.
And the world to come is the oikoumene, is the term. It refers to the inhabited world. So it’s not talking about just mankind. It’s not talking about the eternal state. It’s really what talking about what we call the millennial kingdom, the inhabited populated earth.
Oikoumene that we live in now, an economy we live in now; that’s an inhabited world with authorities and powers and different divisions of labor and different divisions of wealth and different divisions of governance. But then there is a world to come, as well.
And that world, the world, the one to come is still future to us. And he’s saying here very clearly, it’s not subject to angels. Now why would that idea, that it’s not going to be subject to angels, enter into any of his readers minds? Because the clear implication is the world that was, the world prior to the coming of Christ was subject to angels.
And just how was the world prior to Christs’ advent subject to angels, you ask? Thank you for asking. As I said, the word, world, that the pastor uses, oikoumene, refers to the earth as an inhabited area. It includes all the creatures of the earth, refers to the birds of the heavens, the fish in the sea.
He, the pastor, reminds us of what we know.. what we see with our eyes and then he calls us to fix our attention on what we believe.” Travis Allen
It also refers to an administrative area. So it could be used in the sense of like the administration of the Roman Empire, the organization, the management, the administration of the resources for efficiency and for benefit, taxation and war fighting, and all the things that the Roman Empire did.
Oikoumene is the word; kind of similar to the idea, there’s a certain branch of this similar to the idea of economy, and that’s actually transliterated directly from the Greek word oikoumene, economy. What the pastor is really alluding to here, for his readers, and the illusion is enough, because the readers already believe this. It’s us that need to be read into this.
Many of these readers are ethnically, culturally Jewish. But he’s making a distinction between two economies, between two administrations. There’s an old economy under the law symbolized by Sinai, served by Moses. But, and here’s the point, it was an economy that they all acknowledged was administered by angels.
We’ve talked about this before, but angels administrated the bringing of the law to Moses. They were involved in executing some of God’s judgments on the earth. You think about in Egypt, angels are involved in executing those judgments.
The judgment on the firstborn very explicitly. In Hezekiah’s day, the judgment on the Assyrians in one night. One Angel, 185,000 Assyrian soldiers dead at the hand of one angel. Angels are involved in judgments. Angels are involved in administrations.
F.F. Bruce points to the Septuagint, of the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:8 that, he says, “is early biblical evidence of the angelic government of the world. In that verse it says when the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the boundaries of the peoples, and then this according to the number of the angels of God.”
That’s in the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 32:8. He goes on to explain this. F.F. Bruce says, “This reading implies that the administration of the various nations had been parceled out among a corresponding number of angelic powers. At the later time, this implication becomes explicit. In Daniel, for example, we meet the angelic Prince of Persia and Prince of Greece, Daniel 10:20. Michael is the great Prince who champions the people of Israel, Daniel 10:21 and 12:1.
“And in a number of places,” Bruce goes on to say, “some at least of these angelic governors are portrayed as hostile principalities and powers, as alluded to in Ephesians 6:12, the world rulers of this darkness.”
All this angelology was understood by the Jews at this time and in fact, it comes up a couple different times in Stevens’ sermon before the Sanhedrin that got him killed. Angels are involved in the administration of the giving of the law. Angels are involved in the administration of human government, invisibly so, but none the less they’re there.
That is the old economy that he’s referring to here, and that old economy is passing away. The new economy, the new economy that was instituted, the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ, initiates a new order.
And I think it gives new meaning or new elaboration on the sense in Matthew 28, when Jesus said to his disciples up on the mount, Matthew 28:18, “All authority has been given to me in heaven on earth.” And when he went and preached to the spirits now in prison, and when he preached to the angelic powers, his triumph, he’s saying, I’m in charge, I’m in charge.
There’s a new order, and even this new order, which we call new, we see it as new, because of the advent of Jesus Christ. It’s really not a new idea at all. It’s an old ancient idea from the perspective of biblical revelation, because from the very start we know that God made man, not angels, to exercise dominion.
To prove it, the pastor calls forth David as a witness from the familiar beloved Psalm 8. He quotes in this section Hebrews 2:6 through 8. He quotes from Psalm 8:4 through 6 from the Septuagint version of it, and starting with this in verse 6. “But one has testified somewhere.”
Now he’s not an ignorant pastor. He knows who wrote Psalm 8. It literally says someone somewhere says, he’s just obscuring David’s authorship here. It’s a well-known authorship. So his obscuring of David’s authorship is rhetorical. He knows who wrote Psalm 8, that it was David. He knows everybody in his church knows who wrote Psalm 8, that it was David.
But by obscuring David’s authorship, he’s accenting and accentuating divine authority. These aren’t the mere musings of a man, a shepherd boy in a field looking up at the stars in the sky and just kind of waxing poetic about what he sees up there. This is actually the solemn testimony, and the word is diamarturomai. So martureo is the verb for, testify. This is dia with a preposition on the front of it which intensifies it.
This is solemn testimony of God. “One has testified somewhere saying, “WHAT IS MAN THAT YOU REMEMBER HIM OR THE SON OF MAN THAT YOU’RE CONCERNED ABOUT HIM.” Son of Man, here is not referring to Christ. The Son of man, it’s just a parallelism between “what is man that you remember him or the Son of Man that you’re concerned about him.” It’s just in a way of emphasis and poetic emphasis.
But even in this question that David asks, “What is man that you remember him, the Son of man that you’re concerned about.” And David is alluding here even to the wondering reflection that’s common to all of us in a fallen state. It’s explicit, actually, that David is musing and pondering this in a fallen condition in Psalm 8:2, where David speaks there of God’s adversaries.
David speaks there about the enemy, the revengeful and God ordains praise, bypasses the enemy, the revengeful, and he ordains praise through the mouth of babes and infants. But he says these adversaries, the enemy, the revengeful, they, they will one day cease.
So not all is right as David writes Psalm 8. He’s pondering all this and in his pondering in Psalm 8, he goes back in his mind to Genesis 1, to reflect on God’s original design. Hebrews 2:7, you have made him, mankind, the Son of Man, “You’ve made him for a little while lower than the angels.”
That rendering is from the Septuagint and the difference is that instead of, “You made him for a little while lower than the angels,” in the Hebrew; it’s you’ve made him a little less than God and “crowned him with glory and honor.” And there’s also no hint of, little while.
There’s no comparison with angels in the original Hebrew. To be made less than God is actually no slight on us at all. And to be made less than God isn’t, just for a little while, it’s what we are; his creature’s finite; he being infinite.
So David in this verse is actually speaking of man’s co-regency with God. “You’ve made him a little less than God and you’ve crowned him with glory and honor and have appointed him over the works of your hands, and you’ve put all things in subjection under his feet.”
The writer to the Hebrews, the pastor here, by quoting David and citing David, he’s citing what we already know. He’s laying down a foundation of truth, biblical truth. David is reflecting on God’s original intent in making man his original design for mankind to be crowned with glory and honor and to rule as Co-Regent with God and to exercise dominion over all creation.
Then after the quotation from Psalm 8, the pastor goes a little further to heighten the tension by drawing attention to the implication of that last line. Look at Hebrews 2:8, middle of the verse, “for in subjecting all things to himself he left nothing that is not subject.”
Okay. Hebrews 8 has like three times, he’s using that word hypotasso, to subject something to somebody’s power. So scripture is explicitly clear. We know it. The pastor is being explicitly clear, and he points back to David who is being explicitly clear. And David goes back to Genesis 1, which is explicitly clear, that God made man to exercise dominion. Man, not angels, but man.
As we come to a second point for tonight, by which the pastor is wisely acknowledging the tension that’s felt by his flock. What is it that we, number 2, point two, what do we see? This is what we see. What do we see? Things are pretty messed up verse 8. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. Boy, if there was any understatement in the Bible, that’s it.
God created man to rule, exercise dominion, be a Co-Regent. That’s not what we’re seeing, is it? David, Psalm 8, verses 6 to 8, he says, “you make him to rule over the works of your hands. You put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the animals of the field and the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea and whatever passes through the paths of the Seas,” all of it is under your dominion.
Now, doesn’t that contradict what our eyes see? Doesn’t that contradict what we actually experience in life? I mean, are the animals in subjection to us? There’s some friends over here that went up to Estes Park and trying to get pictures with elk and such.
And we were telling stories. Don’t go too near those wild animals. They will pierce you through and just as quickly as look at you, get up on their hind feet and smash you with their hooves. They’re dangerous. It’s not how it’s meant to be.
What is wrong with the earth? John Calvin says, “wild beasts ferociously attack us. Those who ought to be awed by our presence are dreaded by us. Some never obey us.” Sounds like a pet I’ve had before. “Others can hardly be trained to submit, and they do us harm in various ways. The earth, answer is not our expectations, and cultivating it, the sky, the air, the sea, and other things are often adverse to us.”
That idea is as ancient as Job. Remember Job 41, when God showed up and start answering Job’s complaints? He said, Job, do you have power? Okay, you don’t have power. Let’s settle that. Then you just gonna need to trust me, Job, that’s your issue.
But let me illustrate. Draw it out. Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook? He’s talking about a great sea creature, monster. “Can you press down its tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it make any supplications to you? Is Leviathan going to bow down and pray to you, Job?” No.
“Or will he speak to you soft words? Will it cut a covenant with you? Will you take it for a slave forever? Will you play with it as with a bird? Or will you bind it for your young women? Will the traders bargain over? Will they divide it among the merchants? Can you fill its skin with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? Go ahead, place your hand on it. Remember the battle, that you will not do that again.”
I love the coy way that Scripture speaks. We all know this. Something is wrong. Something’s wrong with the world. We can all see it clearly. We all experience it. We all live with it. We’re fallen and everything around us has fallen as well.
This is why God assigned the pre-Christ economy, to be administrated by angels, to be administrated under the Law and under the fear of the law and the threat of the law, because of the unruliness of sinners, who are utterly ruined by sin, stubborn, rebellious, fixed in their sinning.
The Law revealed God’s standard of righteousness to us, a righteousness that Adam departed from the very start, leaving us all in his guilt and suffering, in his sinful condition. And because we’re all guilty, we’re languishing in sin, aren’t we?
God created man to rule, exercise dominion, be a Co-Regent.” Travis Allen
We’re subject to, as Hebrews 2:14 says, we’re subject “to him who has the power of death, that is the devil.” We’re enslaved to the fear of death. We know by instinct, by this kind of innate religious instinct, not only are we guilty, but we’re going to face judgment.
The law came with frightening signs of supernatural terror to punctuate its threats, remind us of its warnings, which the pastor summarized in verse 2, “that the word spoken through angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense.”
Remember we talked about that as external transgression and internal kind of attitude of disobedience. The law ferrets it out, gets in and exposes and holds us accountable to every single thing. But the law, the administration of angels was temporary. It was not the end goal. It was a means to an end.
As Galatians 3:24 says, “the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith.” So this leads to a third point, a final point, what we believe. Number three: what we believe. Notice in Hebrews 2, the two uses of the verb, see; once at the end of verse 8 and again here at the beginning of verse 9.
Those verbs for, see, are actually two different verbs, and they can be used as synonyms, often are. But here, in such close proximity to one another and because of what it is that is seen in each case, these verbs are conveying different ideas.
When the pastor says in verse 8, “we do not yet see all things subjected to him,” that’s the verb horao, and that has to do with what we can perceive by physical sight. In verse 9, when he says, “but we do see him,” he’s referring obviously to Jesus who is risen and ascended. So these readers aren’t physically seeing him with their eyes, are they?
He’s far beyond our ability to perceive him by means of physical sight. So the seeing in verse 9, this is about spiritual perception, and indeed it’s a different word. The first one is harao. That one is blepo, which can have the sense of spiritual perception.
In other words, he’s referring here to what we see by faith, what we see through the eyes of faith, what we believe. So what do we believe? Here’s what we believe. We believe God sent Jesus to save, to restore the original design for human dominion, but rather than a fallible representative in the likeness of Adam, we have a perfect representative in the person of Jesus the Christ.
Look at verse 9, but we do see, blepo, by spiritual perception, “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.”
So bear in mind here, the pastor’s not trying to read Christ back into Psalm 8 and then deny Psalm 8 its original intent. That’s not what’s going on here. This is not evidence of some redemptive historical hermeneutic or sometimes called a Christological hermeneutic, which is really a a way of subverting the Old Testament authors original intent, to insert a new and updated meaning that’s supposedly demanded by New Testament revelation.
That’s not what he’s doing. He’s not doing violence to what Psalm 8 actually means. Reformed exegete, John Calvin, he’s no lightweight. He said this, “The meaning of David is this, Oh Lord, thou hast raised man to such a dignity that it differs but little from the divine or angelic honor, for he has set a ruler over the whole world. This meaning the apostle did not intend to overthrow nor to turn to something else.”
Okay, so then what is the pastor doing here with Psalm 8? And what we see in Hebrews 2 is a clear connection to Jesus. What’s the argument? The pastor is demonstrating skillfully by a theological and gospel reasoning that Jesus is the better Adam. He’s not only the firstborn over all creation, he’s first born of the church, and he is the new representative of a new humanity and the ruler of a new order, a new administration.
So what Adam failed to do, which is alluded to in Psalm 8:2, that there are enemies and adversaries. It’s stated clearly in Hebrews 2:8 Well now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. So what does that mean? Genesis 1 will never come to fruition. Genesis 2 will never come to fruition.
Now what’s the plan? Well, the plan is for the Son of God to enter into this fallen world and to take on humanity in the incarnation, to be born of a woman and born under the law, Galatians 4:4, And that’s what it means to say that “He was made a little lower than the angels.”
For a time, he’s born in an inferior position, you could say to the angels. He’s subject to their administration of a world ruled by law. That connects back to Psalm 8:5. But it’s only for a little while that Jesus suffered humiliation at the hands of sinners. It’s only for a little while.
And he bore their guilt to the cross. Because he died, he bore their sins in his body on the cross, and he perfectly fulfilled God’s plan for his humiliation. Because of that, he now escapes the humiliation, and he’s crowned with glory and honor. And that fulfills Psalm 8:5, and that fulfills Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.
Thus, as Calvin says, “The author only bids us to consider the abasement of Christ, which appeared for a short time, and then the glory with which he is perpetually crowned. And this he does more by alluding to expressions than by explaining what David understood.”
What he’s trying to say there is the pastor is not trying to go and unseat David’s original intent, he’s just trying to develop theologically from the implications of Psalm 8 and Genesis chapter 1.
So going back to Hebrews 2:9, notice the purpose clause there at the end of the verse. Jesus, because of the suffering of death, is crowned with glory and honor. And by the way, that will never change. He’s crowned with glory and honor from the time he rose from the dead forevermore.
That’s not being reversed, “so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.” That’s a purpose clause. So that and to taste death doesn’t mean he just put his tongue in the goblet, got a little taste of it. That’s not what he’s saying. To taste death is a idiom that means he experienced it, and he experienced it in its full and deadly bitterness, drinking the bitter cup.
What does he mean when he says, “he tasted death for everyone?” It doesn’t support the false doctrine of universalism that all are saved in the end. It doesn’t support a universal atonement. The preposition hyper here with a genitive indicates not universality here, but substitution.
He tasted death for all those and only those for whom he acted as a substitute. So this is what he’s trying to point to here. He tasted death. In fact, take the word everyone, which is one word for us, divide it into two, every one, because, the one is the emphasis here. It’s showing personal substitution, individual substitution, person by person substitution, gracious, hopeful.
Pastor has a lot more to say and we don’t have time for it now, but we will come back to in weeks to come. So what the pastor has said here, you remember I said it in the context of a church that’s struggling, a church that’s feeling fearful, anxious.
They see all around them as they look at their news feeds, as they read their papers, as they look at their phones. They don’t have phones. I’m just kidding. But as they look at all that, they see everything’s getting darker and darker and worse and worse for Christians. And they think it’s all coming on us, because of our identification with Christ, with this church.
I can still be a good Christian and just slink on over to the synagogue, because they’re not proclaiming Christ like this group is, this assembly is. I can duck, I can avoid the trouble. And the pastor, to encourage them, gives them this. And this is just the start of it. I understand.
So how does this address the concerns of the pastor’s congregation? How does his line of reasoning assist in strengthening these Christians to stay put? How does it give him hope even when the circumstances around them look really dire, grave even.
When I use the word grave, it’s not hyperbolic. These people died. These people died under Nero’s persecution. What the pastor is doing here is he’s broadening out the perspective and saying, look, this whole plan in place, that you’re seeing unfolding in Christ and his ministry and his exaltation, it goes back to Genesis 1.
That’s been set in the foundation of God’s creation of heaven and earth from the very beginning, that there will be man exercising dominion on the earth. And that is my original design. And that is going to be restored in this new order under Christ.
So just stick with it. Don’t let circumstances around you, turn you away from faithfulness, standing firm, sticking with it and being with this precious congregation. I have no doubt under a pastor like that guy, that’s where I’d want to be.
I don’t care if I’m, you know, being arrested and thrown in jail. I’d, I’m like, that’s my church right there. I’m not going anywhere. That’s what we know. That’s what we see. And we see things around us as well that are unsettling and troubling, but we always come back to what we believe.
And now having reasserted what it is we believe, the pastor proceeds on the basis of faith. And he argues and develops his argument from faith to proceed with some great encouragement, drawing out some profound implications of the truth that we all believe.
Our Father, we do thank you for once again for this faithful pastor in Hebrews and how he is a pastor to us tonight and has been in the Sunday nights as we go through the the letter to the Hebrews, his letter of exhortation to the Hebrews.
We thank you that they’re going through difficult times and whatever times we’re going through, that can be called difficult. Whether things are uncertain in our politics in this nation as we’re so grateful for our, our system of government, our Constitution, three branches of government, how everything is structured and organized, all of it being set there because of a, an acknowledgement of truths that come directly from Scripture about the nature of man and the corrupting effect of power and fallen man.
We’re, we’re grateful for all that. And yet we do see, we have a, a volatile shifting of power from term to term and from administration to administration. And though we have a bit of reprieve under the current administration, we know that that can all change, then the next vote and things can become very difficult, as we’ve seen before.
And so we just asked Lord that you would help us not to to live our lives by headlines, but do we live our lives by what’s written in Genesis to Revelation. It’s stabilizing. It’s keeps us steadfast, faithful. Not weary in, in well doing, but instead pressing on to be faithful in our ministry to you and our love for one another. Please help us to do that. And please use what we’ve learned tonight to further strengthen us and encourage our hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.