Where Christ is, that's the throne
of God. He reigns on the throne of glory.
And that throne, where Christ is, is our sanctuary. It's our
dwelling place. We dwell with Him there. It's
our place of safety. It's the throne of grace. It's
the throne of grace and mercy because the blood of Christ was
applied to the mercy seat. And that's where it is. The blood
of Christ Himself. And Christ Himself sits on the
throne. He is everything. He's our Mediator. He's our Offering. He's our High Priest. He's our
King. He's everything on the throne. In the book of Hebrews
you can summarize it in those kinds of terms. It's a glorious
high throne. It's all about Christ's conquest,
His triumph over sin and our enemies, and His reigning on
the throne of glory as our mediator. So, that's one of the themes
in the book of Hebrews. Another huge theme in the book
of Hebrews is the superiority of Christ to everything else.
Primarily, the Old Covenant. or the covenant of works, primarily
the covenant that was given to the Israelites on Sinai. That
covenant is called the Old Covenant. And the covenant in Jesus Christ
is the New Covenant. There's so many contrasts. In
fact, turn to 2 Corinthians 3. I'm not going to try to push
it here. If we don't get through this, we'll go back to it next
week. But look at 2 Corinthians 3.
This chapter, if you were to take And sometimes it's good
to do this. You write a column heading and
call it the old covenant and write another column heading
right next to it and call it the new covenant. And then in
each row. write these different things
that the Old Covenant has. The Old Covenant was given as
ten letters. They call them Ten Commandments.
Each letter of the Hebrew in the Ten Commandments were just
letters. And so he talks about letters in 2 Corinthians 3. And
he talks about the fact that they were written on tables of
stone. But in 2 Corinthians 3, we don't
have letters written on stone. We have the gospel written on
our hearts. And in those days, in Moses'
day, the letters were written in stone by the finger of God.
But they were written on stone. In these days, in the New Covenant,
God has written the Gospel, the Word of Christ, on our hearts,
not by the finger of God, but by the Spirit of God. In the
Old Covenant, if you read through this, was a ministration of condemnation. It told you what you were guilty
of and the sentence of that death. In the New Covenant, it's a ministration
of righteousness. Everything God requires is provided
in Christ. And it's a ministration of life.
Because the reward of Christ's obedience is life. So, you see
these things that are... In the Old Covenant, Moses hid
his face because the glory that shone on his face when he descended
from Sinai, he had to hide from the children of Israel so they
wouldn't be afraid of him. And he left the veil on even
after the glory faded from his face. But in the New Covenant,
we don't look at a veil covering a man's face. We look into the
Gospel and we see the object there, which is the Lord Jesus
Christ, and His glory never fades. And so, the Law, the Old Covenant,
was a fading glory. The New Covenant is an eternal
glory. It never fades. It's in Christ.
And so, all these things are true, and you can see the contrast
between them. In the Old Covenant, Moses ascended
up the mountain to receive the Law from God. And Allah put conditions
on men they had to fulfill in order to have life and continue
life. In the New Covenant, Christ comes down from heaven. He who
is with the Father comes and reveals the Father to His people,
and He Himself meets every condition required by God. It's amazing. It's amazing. And so, this is
what you see in 2 Corinthians 3, and you can go through there.
It's the Spirit versus the letter. It's a remaining glory versus
a fading glory. It's righteousness instead of
condemnation. Life instead of death. It's our
hearts instead of stone. It's the Spirit instead of the
finger of God. So, all these things, it's what
remains instead of what's done away. All those things are true
of the Old and the New Covenant. Now, that's another huge theme
in the book of Hebrews. And as we talked last week, Hebrews
chapter 6 says this, let us go on to perfection. Because the
perfection that Christ established for us is a completed, a finished,
an accomplished, a fulfilled covenant. It's not a covenant
that He met partially. He didn't do part of the work
of salvation. He did it all. And He didn't
do it in such a way that it places conditions on us. It's not a
conditional salvation. All the conditions of our salvation
have already been met by the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it's neither
partial nor conditional, and it's not temporary. In those
days, the obedience had to be rendered every day. They had
to keep obeying in order to live. But Christ's obedience was once
offered for sin, and He established by that an everlasting righteousness,
and the consequence, the reward of that is everlasting life.
So all these things are summarized in that word perfection. And
the book of Hebrews uses it throughout Hebrews, the word perfect and
perfection and full age. These things are used prolifically
throughout the book. So you see these things. You
see these things throughout. Christ on a glorious high throne
because He has completed the work God gave Him to do. He has
fulfilled the will of God. He has glorified His Father.
in carrying out all that was on his father's heart, because
it was on his heart too. And then so you see him on the
throne. You see Christ is superior to
everything in the book of Hebrews. Angels, Moses, Aaron, Joshua,
the tabernacle. the sacrifices, the priesthood,
everything. He replaces it all and fulfills
it all. And then you see these other
things, like the old covenant compared to the new, and the
perfection versus the unfinished, the partial, the conditional,
and the temporary. But if you look at the first
chapter of Hebrews, and we're not going to go through that
today specifically, What you see there is that in these last
days, and when it says the last days in the book of Hebrews,
he's referring to the gospel age. And by last days, he means
this is the final message. He doesn't have something to
follow this. This is the full revelation. This is the completeness
of what God has has given to His people from the beginning
of time. This is the gospel which in heaven
will be used to judge men and angels. It will be used to glorify
God that He has fulfilled it in His Son. And this is not only
the final message, but it's the complete message, it's the full
message. And it's the message given by
God in His Son, and actually brought by His Son, and it's
about His Son. So in these last days, God has
spoken to us in and by His Son. He's the message and He's the
messenger. And then He says here, He's the heir of all things.
The heir, the one who inherits it all. God gave everything to
the Lord Jesus Christ. Before the world began, He gave
Him His will to fulfill, and He fulfilled it. He created the
world in order to fulfill the will of God. He upholds the world
and brings about everything in the world in order to bring about
the will of God. Even His own life and death,
the Lord Jesus Christ orchestrated all of that. All things were
created by Him and for Him. And He is not only before all
things in terms of time, but He's before all things in terms
of preeminence. He has the superiority of all
things. So this is what's meant by He's the heir of all things.
He's first in God's esteem. He's given everything to His
Son and He's entrusted everything, even His own glory to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Not only his will to carry it
out, but his glory, he's invested in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
you see here, he's given him everything. And so in these first
few verses, what you see is that God is teaching us that Jesus
Christ is God himself. That's one of the main things
he teaches here. He says it by what he does. He created the
world, He upholds the world. He also says it by who He is.
He's the Son of God. And if He's the Son of God, He
must necessarily therefore have the nature of God. He has the
same intrinsic character as God. It says it here as the brightness
of God's glory. The brightness. The sun shines. How do you know it shines? You
see the rays of the sun. How do you know God? You see
Christ. How do you know what He's like? You see the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the effulgence, the outshining of God's glory. All that God is, Christ is. All that God makes known to us,
He makes known to us in Christ. That's what these first few verses
are saying. He is God Himself, but not just God. He's also man,
and that's where the heir of all things blends the two. He's
the son, but he's given the inheritance as our mediator. And so he establishes
the fact that he is God by what he does, by his essential character,
the brightness of God's glory, the express image of his person.
And then he says what he did as the God-man. And this is the
pinnacle, the pinnacle of God's work. The apex, the zenith of
what God has done, it's the highest thing, it's the stake in the
tent over which all of the purposes of God and the glory of God and
the providence of God and creation all hang on this, when He by
Himself purged our sins. So much of religion today is
caught up with experiences, with sensationalism, with emotionalism,
with rules, with comparing ourselves with one another, with esteem
amongst people. But God annihilates all that. He makes Christ the preeminent
one. Christ alone has done the work
of God, and Christ alone gets all the glory. There's no glory
outside of the glory given to the Lord Jesus Christ. And this
is what the writer to the Hebrews establishes these things right
at the outset. And then he starts in the next
few verses, in verse 4 in chapter 1, he starts by taking the highest
and most excellent of beings that were in creation, the angels. The angels excel in strength,
according to Psalm 104 or 103, I can't remember which it is,
but they excel in strength. God says there, He made them
spirits and a flame of fire. So they're spiritual, they don't
have a body, and they're flames of fire. It means they're very
swift. I don't know how spiritual beings
move about, but I know this. They have great strength and
they're very swift. Do the will of God. And God has
assigned to the angels a specific role in His creation. They're His servants. But God
doesn't need servants. So, they're His servants. It
shows the glory of the King by how great His servants are. The
angels are very great. Therefore, God is very great
that He has such powerful and wise creatures serving Him. But
it's even greater to know that He doesn't need them to serve
Him. Because if I had someone serving me, it would help me.
But God doesn't need help. He created them to serve Him,
to manifest forth His glory. And they do lots of things. They
carry the saints, when they die, to heaven, into the bosom of
Christ. They protect God's people. They
fight against the enemies of God's people. Angels also, it
says, they are constantly beholding the face of the Father for God's
people, for His little ones. Because they're looking at God,
seeing His will, seeing His face, and determining what to do next.
This is what the angels do. They're constantly at the bidding
of God's will on the behalf of God's people. And so it says
at the end of chapter 1, that they are ministering spirits
sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. The entire purpose for angels
is to worship God and to fulfill His will on behalf of God's people. And that's amazing to think about,
that they would be so strong and so capable of beings. But
the problem was that the Hebrews, Like even in the New Testament,
He said that some men, through their vainly puffed up minds,
are trying to intrude in things that they don't understand into
the worship of angels. But here, the writer to the Hebrews,
he sets the record straight. The Jews thought a lot about
angels, and rightly so, because the angels were used in such
a way. Do you know that it was through the angels that God gave
the law? At Sinai, when the people heard
the trumpet sounding loud, and the mountain shaking, and the
smoke, and the fire, and all those things, you know what they
were seeing? The work of the angels on behalf of what God
wanted to do. The very law itself was given,
it says in the book of Acts, through the disposition of angels.
In other words, the message came from God to the angels, Then
to Moses now that's important to know that look at Hebrews
2 chapter 2 verse 2 if the word spoken by Angels was steadfast
you see that God spoke the law Through the angels and we don't
understand it in great detail because the Old Testament is
pretty much silent about their role in You see them in the case
of Elisha and his servant when they're surrounded by the Syrians.
And Elisha asked the Lord to open the eyes of his servant
so that he can see the heavenly host surrounding them. And God
basically destroyed all their enemies. He didn't have to destroy
them, but he was guarding his people with these great angels
who were able to do that. But the Jews were prone to worship
the angels and give them honor. But they were never created to
worship. They themselves were creatures. And so in chapter
1 of Hebrews, God contrasts the angels to Christ in order to
show how Christ is so much superior to the angels. First thing He
does here, and He quotes three different ways. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the only one to whom God ever said in the Old Testament,
you are my son. This day have I begotten thee.
And that occurred when the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead.
That was one of the places. Another time, when the Lord was
born, came in human flesh in the incarnation. He said, and
let all the angels of God worship Him. So, He's the Son of God,
which means He's God Himself. And he's the one the angels were
commanded to worship. And he's the one that was prophesied
as David's son when God said, I will be to him a father and
he shall be to me a son. And all those things were to
teach us, number one, He's God. Number two, He's the offspring
of David, but He's still the Son of God. And number three,
He's the one who angels are commanded to worship. He is so much greater
than the angels, as the Creator is than the creature, as the
one worshipped is than the one who worships, as the master to
the servant. And so, as the Son is to the
created beings, He is so much greater than the angels. In fact,
He says this in verse 8, He says this, but to the Son, He said,
thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. The angels never reign. The angels don't reign. They
serve. Christ reigns. And so this is a theme He picks
up on. The fact that the Lord Jesus
Christ is the reigning Son of God, the conquering captain,
the champion of our salvation, the mediator between us and God,
the high priest who has completed the work, all these things, God
has exalted Him as man to His throne and given Him rule over
all things. All authority in heaven and earth,
according to our Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew 28, 18, is given to Him. All authority. All authority,
everything is given to His hand, just like He's the heir of all
things. And so, and then you see this other thing happening
in chapter 1. The Son, He said, He says to
the Son, God says to His Son, Thy throne, O God. And here's another testimony
to the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's undeniable in Hebrews. You have to be very crafty, like
the devil himself, to try to wrest from these scriptures the
clear statements that Jesus Christ is God. But not only God, but
he reigns in righteousness. He reigns in righteousness because
he himself is righteous. But he also reigns in righteousness
because he loves righteousness. He hates iniquity, and he hates
all workers of iniquity, but he loves righteousness. It's
part of his heart, his character. It's intrinsic to him. But the
amazing thing is that he who loves righteousness and hates
iniquity, loves his people who are iniquitous, sinful men. And that you see here, not so
clearly in chapter one, but later. He goes on with this ascription
to His deity and He says, but to the Son He said these things,
He also says, and thou, He also said this, thou Lord in the beginning
hast laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the
works of thy hands. Everything from the lowest creature
to the smallest thing on earth to the highest heaven was created
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything was created. But He
says this about His creation, He is going to fold it up. Everything He created, He's going
to fold it up like a garment, and He's going to put it away,
and He's going to recreate it anew, because He's not only the
Creator of the first creation, He's the Creator of the new creation. He's the Creator of all those
who are created in Him, in Christ Jesus. And so God says here,
the one who creates doesn't change, but the creation does change.
Later on in Hebrews, and you find this in the book of Hebrews
over and over again, He'll mention one thing in the beginning, and
you'll see Him develop it throughout the book. Remember what it says
in Hebrews 13? Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
today, and forever. And how do we know that? Well,
because He even said here that He... that He laid the foundation
of the earth, the heavens are the works of His hands, they
shall perish, but Thou remainest. You see the emphasis on His immutability,
His unchanging nature, and this immutability of our Lord Jesus
Christ, His being God, is supposed to give us the strongest comfort
and the greatest awe. And so He says here, In the end
of chapter one, but to which of the angels did he say at any
time, sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Because Christ has done the will
of God, God is going to bring all of his enemies to worship
him at his footstool in subjection, in subjugation. He's going to
put them under the feet of Christ. He's going to rule over them
as the king over all. But he never said this to the
angels because they never rule. So the Hebrews had this tendency
to think highly of the angels. But in chapter 1 of Hebrews,
God sets the record straight. The angels were created. They
were created to serve God's people. Some rebelled, some were elect,
some were preserved. But all those who were preserved,
they love to give glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they love
those whom He loves. Do you know that at the last
day, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to confess the names of
His people to His angels? He says that He's going to come
from heaven with His holy angels, and He's going to bring the harvest
of the earth, and He's going to confess His people to His
angels. Why does He do that? because
He's not ashamed to call them brethren. He loves His people. He died to save them. He glorified
them with Himself, gave them His own robe of righteousness,
and He's not ashamed to call them brethren. So, we see here
in chapter 2, the opening words. All that's said in chapter 1
in the book of Hebrews contains no commandment to you and to
me. Have you ever noticed that in Hebrews? Read through the
book. How many times do you find in the book of Hebrews that God
says, and this is what I want you to do. If you go through
the book and underline it, the first place you'll come to it
is verse 1 of chapter 2. And notice what He tells us to
do. And like I said, in Hebrews you'll
see something mentioned, and then it'll be developed, and
then it'll be really brought out in its fullness. And here
He says, therefore, because of everything that He said in chapter
1, which I've tried to summarize, Therefore, we ought to give the
more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at
any time we should let them slip." The word slip here is like, think
of a boat tied to the harbor and the stream is flowing by
and the boat is loosed from its moorings so that the boat begins
to drift downstream. God is saying here, We, you and
me, we who have heard what God has said in the gospel, which
was summarized in this first chapter, these Hebrews to whom
he was writing, we all need to give the more. earnest heed to
the things which we have heard, lest at any time, at any time,
not just one time, but at any time, we just let them slip away
like a boat adrift on the stream. It goes away and the rope is
gone and suddenly we've lost the gospel. If you've lost the
gospel, you've lost everything. Now, what kind of a command,
what kind of an exhortation is it? Because that is an exhortation.
It's an exhortation to each one of us. Don't let the gospel slip
away. How do you do that? Give heed
to what you've heard. Give heed. So, the first thing
God tells us to do is give heed. Not just heed, but give earnest
heed. Not just earnest heed, but give
the more earnest heed to the things which you've heard. That's
why we read. That's why we meditate. That's
why we pray the Word of God. That's why we listen to the preaching
of the Word of God. That's why we study it. We have
to give them more earnest heed. Remember the four soils? One
soil, the Word was dropped on, the birds of the air came and
gobbled it up and took it away. Satan comes. He takes the Word
before it has time to sprout and just robs you of it. The
other one, the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches
and the pleasures of other things just come in and they choke out
the Word. The Word of God is so precious.
It's a treasure in earthen vessels. It's not just something in earthen
vessels. It's a treasure. The thing to
be most highly prized is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What the Lord Jesus Christ has done. Who He is. Where He is
now. The world to come, everything about it. Don't let it slip. And then if you look at Hebrews,
you'll see these. Look at chapter three. Just for
example, the very next thing he says here is in chapter three,
verse one. He says, Wherefore, holy brethren,
partakers of the heavenly calling. And there's the verb. You see
the verb? Consider. Consider. Consider what? The
apostle and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus. You
see that? What is he saying here? Take
heed. Consider. And then later in chapter 3,
he says he exhorts them to faith. All through the book of Hebrews,
he's developing this. What you need to do is give earnest
heed, listen, consider, and believe the gospel. Chapter 11 is all
about faith and walking by faith. He says in the end of chapter
10, we're not of those who draw back unto perdition, but of those
that believe to the saving of the soul. It's all about believing
the Word of God, believing Christ, and putting all of our confidence
in what God thinks and accepts from the Lord Jesus Christ, our
High Priest. But chapter 2 opens that way,
we ought to give the more earnest heed, and then he uses He uses
what he had been doing in chapter one about angels, he uses that
to contrast now the Old and the New Covenant and to set angels
in their place in comparison to Christ here. Look at this,
verse two, chapter two. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, And every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompense of reward. OK, he's talking about the law
there. He's saying, look, if when the
angels gave the law, it was given through the disposition of of
angels. It was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. That
was Moses Galatians 319 and Acts seven around verse thirty eight
or so. These things teach us that the angels were used to
give the law, but the law brought a reward of recompense, a reward
of punishment on everyone who disobeyed it. And this was a
word spoken by angels. And he's using that to contrast
if the word spoken by angels was so so unmovable and inflexible
that any disobedience of that word spoken by angels It wasn't
unfair, it wasn't too harsh, it was exactly, precisely according
to justice, a just recompensive reward. How in the world do you
think you're going to escape or I'm going to escape if we
neglect so great salvation? That's what he's saying here.
Look, if the law was given by angels and everyone who heard
it and disobeyed it received a just recompense of reward,
how in the world are you going to escape if you let slip, if
you just neglect so great salvation? Which was not just spoken by
angels, he says, but was spoken by the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, the Sovereign, Absolute Monarch, who created the world
and upholds the world and sits on the throne of glory and has
all things in His hand, who is God Himself, who made everything
and will bring everything to a close, who supports everything
in its course and dissolves everything in its due time. How can we escape
if we neglect this great salvation? You see how important the Gospel
is? This is not something we just think about and talk about
as sort of an entertainment. This is real. Heavenly things
are a lot more real than earthly things. The invisible world is
real. What you see now is temporary.
It's passing away. It's going to be folded up. It's
going to be changed. Don't put your hope, don't put
your energy in trying to establish something and to receive something
in this life. You're not going to have anything
that you can hold on to. It's going to fade away, it's
going to go away and it's going to end. Life itself is so short. If you live 90 or 100 years,
what is that? It seems like a long time when
you're 10 or 15 or 25. But don't think you have 100
years. Don't think you have 90. Even
if you do live to be 80 or 90, you know what the end of your
life is like? Pain and suffering, a lack of mental capability.
It's not fun. It gets less and less fun as
the years go by after around 50 or so. But the point is, is that The
invisible things are the real things. What God has said is
true. Everything else, you don't know
what it is. It has no substance. It's like
a vapor. It's going to pass away. Jesus Himself said, your life
is like a vapor. It's like a wave on the sea.
You see it and then it's gone. That's what our life is. It's
so temporary. Not only is it temporary, but
what God has said is so true and so His glory hangs on. If you neglect my word, let's
say I speak to my dog. Dog sit. The dog sits. But if
he doesn't do it, what do I do? I get indignant. The dog isn't
minding me. I'm the master. He's the dog
and I make him sit. Now, think about it. Take it
up another level. Let's say you're talking to your
children. Your children show you disrespect.
They just neglect. I want you to do this. Humbug,
I don't need to do what you say. That's neglect. That's just a
disregard, a disrespect. But when you're talking, let's
say a man shows up in a long black limousine and he gets out
and there's a bulge in his pocket. He's sent by the president. Are
you going to hear Him? You probably are. Why? Because
of the dignity of the office who sent Him, even though you
may disagree with the politics. Here's someone here to enforce
something over a law that has jurisdiction over you, and you're
going to give Him some respect. But when God sends His Son, first
He sent the Word by angels in the media, but when God sends
His Son, we're talking about the very highest order of dignity. And you ignore and you neglect
what He says to your own peril. Not just an ordinary death, but
a kind of death that you can't imagine. This is a punishment. If the disobedience of the moral
law and the ceremonial law under Moses received... Remember Korah,
Dathan and Abiram? They disobeyed. They said, Moses
and Aaron, who are you to take such authority to yourself? And
Moses... He said, Lord, he tells these
people, he says, if you die a death, an ordinary death, then God hasn't
appointed me. But if something new happens,
if the earth opens up and swallows you whole, alive, then God has
sent me. And this was the law we're talking
about here. And God opened the earth and
swallowed these men and their families and all their belongings
and closed up. And they heard their screams.
And this was a disobedience of that law. What do you think? A disobedience, a neglect of
the salvation. And not just any salvation, the
great salvation, the so great salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why is this salvation so great? First of all, because we're great
sinners. Secondly, because the Lord Jesus
Christ is such a great Savior. Thirdly, because this salvation
doesn't just save a little bit, not just partially or conditionally
or temporarily. This is a full, a complete salvation,
an unconditional on us salvation. A salvation that saves eternally,
to the uttermost. And this salvation is something
that was accomplished by the Lord Himself through His own
death. It displays the love and the
mercy of God, the wisdom of God. God's glory is at stake in this
salvation. To neglect this salvation is
to treat God with disdain, to treat the Saviour with disgust,
to trample underfoot the Son of God, as it says later in Hebrews
chapter 10. That's what neglecting is salvation.
And how do we neglect it? We hear the gospel and we just
let it go. Ah, it's not that important.
But God, by His grace, through His Spirit, works in our heart
to teach us that we're sinners and that Christ has saved us
in spite of our wickedness. And He teaches that over and
over again as you go through the day and the weeks and the
months of your life and you feel the pain of your own cold heart
and hard-heartedness and disobedience, and you see that, and it resonates
with what God has said in His Word, that you're a sinner, and
your sin is against God. God teaches you, like David,
against thee, and thee only have I sinned and done that which
is evil in thy sight. And then he teaches you about
how the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, He who sits on the
throne of glory, assumed the nature of His people, came into
the earth, took on the likeness of sinful flesh, became a servant
in order to fulfill the will of God, and became obedient unto
death, even His own death on the death of the cross. That's
a great salvation. That's a salvation worthy of
the highest honor to be bestowed on the Lord Jesus Christ. That
makes it great. And we dare not neglect it. We need to give the more earnest
heed. But it goes on in verse 4. Not only was it spoken by the
Lord, but it was God Himself who bore witness to that word
with signs and wonders and diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy
Ghost. Signs and wonders and miracles,
what were they to point to? What did He just say? It was
the Lord who spoke and God bore witness to the fact that Jesus
Christ is the one to hear. Remember He said, this is my
beloved Son, hear Him, hear Him, hear Him. When they were saying
Elijah and Moses and so on, He said, no, hear Him. God said
He spoke from heaven and then He reinforced everything with
the sign. Remember every time in the book of Acts when they
would do a miracle, they said, in the name of Jesus Christ,
rise and walk. And He rose up. Why? Because
the miracle and the sign were there to substantiate by God's
witness to the truth and the testimony and all the work that
Christ did. to testify of Christ. That's
what the signs and miracles were for. They weren't there for sensationalism
or emotionalism or experiences. It was there to substantiate
what God spoke by the Lord Jesus Himself. And not only did God
do that with signs and wonders, but gifts of His own self, the
Holy Ghost. And He says, it was spoken by
the Lord. It was also confirmed to us by
them that heard Him. The apostles themselves gave
their lives and gave up everything in this world in order to bring
to us the testimony of what Christ said to them. It wasn't for some
kind of a personal gain. They gave it all for the glory
of Christ and for the salvation of His people and for their own
salvation. They gave it all gladly away.
And so in verse 5 he says, Now, back to the angels. For unto
the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come,
whereof we speak, but one in a certain place testified." And
we're going to read that in a second. So, look at verse 5. He says
this, God hasn't put the world to come in subjection to the
angels. He hasn't made the angels to
rule over the world to come. Isn't that interesting? Well,
we thought the angels were pretty great. Actually, they are great,
and we should have a high respect for the service of God, who are
swift to do His will, and God is endowed with great strength,
and they have nothing else that they would prefer to do than
to be constantly serving God and serving His people. We should
have respect in that sense, but not in the sense that He's showing
something here in chapter 2, and this is something that I
was thinking about this chapter on the way down and the way back
up from Los Angeles this last week. And I think I realized
something about this chapter that I hadn't realized before.
You read this chapter, and I don't know if you've read it. Maybe
we should just read it now to get it in our minds. But before
I read it, I want you to ask this question. Why did God Why
did he speak this thing? Unto the angels hath he not put
in subjection the world to come wherever we speak. And he goes
on and talks about all these things. And he ends this with
the Lord Jesus Christ as being the one who can run to the aid
of his people. And you look at this chapter,
there's something very deep. about the knowledge of what God
has done in Christ that's being revealed to us in this chapter
as a springboard to teach us everything else in the book of
Hebrews. Something very deep and something very comforting and very awe-inspiring. And something that absolutely
sets the angels back in their place and exalts Christ to His
rightful place. That's something that's talked
about here can be addressed by realizing, first of all, that
when the Hebrews looked at the angels, they saw these great
and shining beings. They didn't see them really,
but every once in a while, someone got a glimpse of one like Gideon
or Manoah, Samson's father, and other people in the Old Testament.
They saw these angels, Gabriel in the case of Daniel and so
on. And so they thought a lot of
these angels, they were very great. But when the Lord Jesus
Christ came and he said he's the son of God, and even though
he rose from the dead and God spoke through these signs and
wonders and by his apostles and prophets, something they saw
about the Lord Jesus Christ troubled them. The offense of the gospel
troubled them. And that was this, that he came
in weakness. He came in humility. He came
with reproach. He was despised and rejected
of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we
hid, as it were, our faces from Him. We saw Him in His weakness,
and that weakness, the shame of the cross, offends people. And so, when Paul is trying to
emphasize his heart's desire and life's purpose. He says,
I determine not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified is the very power of God. It's the very wisdom
of God. But we don't see that when we
look at Him in His flesh. If we were on the earth, think
about this, if you were on the earth when Jesus was on the earth,
what would you do? you might actually go up to Him
and talk to Him. Of all of the presumption to
be able to walk up to God Himself and just carry on a conversation,
you see how His flesh would have made us think less of Him than
He really was? And when you saw Him in weakness,
taken by soldiers and Herod and Pilate and the high priests and
the rulers and the scribes and treated as a common criminal,
what would you have done? Moses was a great man. The angels
were great and superior. What do you think of Christ?
He's weak. He seems like He even stoops
and washes His disciples' feet. He feeds His disciples. He's
always ministering to them and going about in His sandals and
getting dirty and all these things. And we think less of Him because
He was in the likeness of sinful flesh. He got hungry. He got
thirsty. He got tired. And he was amazed
when things happened. When he faced the cross, he was
distressed. All these things showed. And
he prayed earnestly, with tears. These things showed the humanity
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when the Hebrews saw the
humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ in comparison to the angels,
it troubled them. It troubled them. And so the
writer to the Hebrews is going to address that, and he addresses
it in the most wonderful way. Because He's going to teach us
that the Lord Jesus Christ, not only is He greater than the angels,
but God has put in subjection the world to come to this man. To this man. We know He's God,
but He's also man. And as man, God is going to exalt
Him to the highest place and put everything in subjection
to Him. And that's amazing. The One who
was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, as a servant, made under
the law, was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
He's the One exalted to the highest place of glory. Now, I want you
to get that. But secondly, and this I think
is going to be the springboard into the rest of the book of
Hebrews, He was not just made a man just for the sake of being
made a man. There was a reason He had to
be made a man. And why was that? to suffer death,
but to suffer it in union with His people in order to bring
many sons to glory." Now, this is huge. And it's not more huge
than Jesus Himself being raised to glory, but it's huge because
we don't realize it. The Hebrews exalted angels, and
in comparison to Christ, they struggled with that. He's completely
set that in chapter 1. He's put the angels in their
proper place and put Christ in their understanding on the throne
of glory. But now, even in His manhood,
He's going to show something that's amazing. He became man
in order to suffer death and bring many sons to glory because
He is the champion and the high priest of our salvation. And
so he's introducing these things in chapter 2 in order to show
his weakness, his humanity, his death, all those things that
trouble us because where is his strength, his wisdom and all
these things compared to angels? He did it in order to save us
from our sins, in order to bring us to God. He died the just for
the unjust to bring us to God. And then this also, that the
church, Those who were the seed of Abraham, the promised people
of God, those that God elected from eternity, that they would
be secured by Christ and actually brought with Him to the highest
place of honor and preeminence in the universe. God has chosen
to exalt His Son to His own throne. And guess what? He has put all
things in subjection to Him and with His people, so that His
people also are going to actually rule over all of creation. Remember what Jesus said to His
disciples? You're going to sit on the twelve thrones ruling
over the twelve tribes of Israel. And He said to those in Corinthians,
He says, don't you know that we're going to judge angels?
We're going to judge the angels. And if we judge the angels, what
does that mean? It means that God has put his people in Christ
to that place that he promised. Now, this promise was given in
Psalm 8. He says here, One in a certain place, verse 6, testified,
saying, What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son
of man that thou visitest him? We think about this and we immediately
say, yeah, what about man? We think a lot about people.
But when it comes to God, God is so infinitely superior. We
think, why does God even spend any time thinking about men?
They're insignificant. When you see these videos that
show Earth and the spaceship drawing away from Earth and Earth
shrinking in size in comparison. You see the Sun and all of our
solar system shrinking in size into a little tiny star amongst
the billions of stars in the universe and you see that That
string of stars is just our own galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy.
And that, as you draw back, is just a blur of a dot with all
the other blurs of dots in the sky, and you think, how insignificant
man is. This universe is so tremendously
huge, it's infathomably huge. Scientists can't even use measurements
that we can comprehend. Billions of light years, they
say, and they haven't even measured its extent. And man is so puny,
he's less than a worm of the dust. Why would God think of
him? But not just think of him to
take notice, but God in His eternal purpose and counsel, He determined
to bring many sons to glory. Why would God do that? And how
did He do it? Well, it's God's greatness. It
speaks of God's greatness. He who is high dwells with him
that is lowly. And Isaiah, we heard that sermon
at the conference by Lance Heller about that. He says that the
high and lofty one dwells with him that is lowly. And that's
the glory of God to do that. But anyway, getting back to the
prophecy in Psalm 8, he says, "...one in a certain place testified,
saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son
of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower..."
This is speaking about the creation now. "...you made him a little
lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and
honor." How so? Because he was made in the image
of God, and because he set him over the works of his hands,
and you put all things in subjection under his feet. And then he underlines
all, he says, and that he put all in subjection under him,
he left nothing that is not put under him. Now you think about
it. Do you see all things put under
him? Do you feel like when you're growing old that all things are
under you? Do you think your body is even under your control? You can't hardly get up out of
bed in the morning. Your muscles cramp up, your back is stiff.
You can't even hardly function. Your bowels don't work. I mean,
there's things that just aren't working right. Even when you're
young, you get sick. I remember down in Southern California,
my little grandchildren, you know, they hurt themselves, they're
getting sick. These things show us that, no, I mean, all things
are put under us, but there's a lot of things that don't seem
like they're put under us, right? So what does He mean? How could
God say this at creation? All things are put under Him.
Because it was just a shadow of what was to come. It was a
prophecy of something that would be fulfilled. And what God is
saying here in this prophecy is that everything would be put
under man only in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because when God created
the world, it seemed good to God, and it was good, that Christ
would have the preeminence in everything, not only as the Son,
but also as our mediator, also as the one who became one with
us in our nature. And so he determined that through
Christ, he would put all things in subjection under him and with
his people. He would make his people one
with them. So he says here, now we see not yet all things put
under him, but we see Jesus. who was made a little lower than
the angels, just like men, for the suffering of death. Why was
he made lower than the angels? For the suffering of death, to
die in order to redeem his people. And what was the consequence
of his being made lower than the angels suffering death? He
says, crowned with glory and honor. And why did He do this?
That He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every
man. Now it says every man here, but we're going to get to that.
I don't want to focus on that right now. The point is that Christ
had to die in order to redeem His people, in order to fulfill
the eternal will of God, to establish Christ with His people on the
throne of all creation. Everything would be ruled by
them. So, he says in Romans 8, for example, it doesn't yet appear
what we shall be, but we know that in 1 John 3, 2, we know
that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. We shall be
like Him. We'll see Him as He is. All these
things are amazing to think about. And I'm looking at my watch and
I'm thinking, we must have started late because it seems like it's
gone away. It's gotten late a lot faster than I expected. So I'm
going to have to bring it to a close here. But I want you
to see this. Chapter 2, what is he saying? He's saying, don't be concerned
about the humiliation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at why
he was humiliated. according to the will of God
to save his people. And he did that in the office
of our high priest and our mediator. Read through the second chapter
of Hebrews. See there that as our high priest,
as our high priest, he was the captain of our salvation and
he had to be made perfect through sufferings. And in his suffering,
he destroyed the works of the devil. He destroyed the devil
himself. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He didn't take
on angels, verse 16, but He did take on not Adam's seed, but
the promised seed, the seed of Abraham. And He did all this
in order that he might be a merciful and high priest, faithful in
all things. pertaining to God and to make
propitiation for the sins of His people. This glorifies God.
This saves His people. This is why Christ was exalted
in order to do all this. And this establishes Him in the
hearts of His people so infinitely higher than the angels. And we
talk about angels. We say, I haven't worshipped
an angel lately. I don't have problems with angels.
Angels don't bother me. But do you know what? We do have
problems with things like angels. You get some man talking about
some great things he's done, and especially if you see it,
or hear it, or smell it, or taste it, anything that comes through
our senses, our emotions, our experiences, our sensations,
we do think highly of those things. They do distract us. Go to a
church, what are they going to tell you to do? You need to be
about things that you can see, things that you can hear, the
music. We have a special speaker coming in. He's very dynamic
speaker. All the knowledge you can gain attending these classes
and things like this, it's going to make your marriage a lot better.
You'll have a better job, financial position, all these things. They
start talking about the things of this world. But the gospel
doesn't do that. The Gospel says, in this world,
you live by faith. In this world, expect trouble.
In this world, expect to die in your body in order that you
might live to God eternally. The world to come, God has put
in subjection to His Son and all those in Him. That's what
your eyes, that's what your heart should be focused on. The world
to come. And that's why in Hebrews 11.1
He says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not yet seen. Let's pray. Father, we pray that
we too, in our hearts and with everything that we have, would
exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. He would grow so infinitely precious
to us and high in our esteem, and that the world would appear
in its proper light as temporary at best, and evil in its true
light. because we know that all of the
philosophies and the religions of this world are opposed and
hostile to the throne of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our sin, and
the world, and the devil, and death, and even the testimony
of the commandments of God against us, and the accusations of the
devil, all these are our enemies, but we look to our Lord Jesus
Christ He was set up in order to save us, to deliver us, to
give us liberty, to establish us, to bring us to glory, and
to give us all that God eternally purposed in Him. We pray, Lord,
that this so great salvation would not slip from us. We would
be warned against letting it slip. And we would come to You
and ask, Lord, cause us to believe. Don't let the Word depart out
of our mouth utterly. but cause us to cry to You, come
to You for everything, even the faith and repentance and the
fruits of the Spirit that we need in order to live to You.
Lord, we pray, give us this understanding and this persuasion and cause
us to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ. and to confess Him in
our hearts and to men, as He is our Lord and He is your King,
your Savior for your people. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.