Exaltation Through Humiliation

Hebrews 2 and the Warning Against Drifting Away

And once again, it's Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2. We were in this text this morning. However, we did so by way of survey. In essence, looking at the subject of the warning passages, the exhortation passages in the book of Hebrews.

And now we will return in this evening attempt to look through the argument being presented in the first nine verses. And then we will, next time we are together, which is supposed to be at the end of June, but I'm gone the last two Sundays of June, so maybe the first week in July.

I don't know. However, that ends up working out. We will look at especially the argument in regards to verse 9 in relationship to the issue of the atonement following that argument through the rest of the chapter.

So, Hebrews chapter 2, beginning at verse 1. Therefore, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away, or as I mentioned this morning, pass by the place we want to be.

For if the message spoken through angels proved to be established so firm that every violation, every transgression or disobedience received its just and proper penalty or punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

It was first communicated through the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, while God confirmed their witness with signs, wonders, various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, which He gave or distributed according to His will.

For He did not put the world to come about which we are speaking under the control of angels, instead, someone testified somewhere, what is man that you take note of him, or think of him, or care for him?

Or the son of man that you care for him? You made him lower than the angels for a little while. You crowned him with glory and honor. You put all things under his control. For when he put all things under his control, he left nothing outside of his control.

At present, we do not yet see all things under his control or his dominion or subject to him. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by God's grace, he would experience death on behalf of every man.

The first nine verses of Hebrews chapter 2. So once again, just to reorient ourselves as to where we are, we have finished in the first chapter the presentation of the supremacy of Christ, the comparison of Christ to the angels, the fact that he is greater than the angels.

We saw that there at the end in verses 10 through 12, we had a citation, Psalm 102, applied to Jesus, identifying him as the unchanging Jehovah. And then we saw this morning that in light of this message, who has brought it to us, that we must pay close attention to what we have heard.

That we dare not close our ears to this. We dare not drift away from this truth. We dare not be moved away from this truth. Because if this is such a great salvation, how shall we escape if we neglect that great salvation?

I just wanted to mention briefly in verse 2, if you were thinking about that, for if the message spoken through angels proved to be so firm, the message spoken through angels, where does the Old Testament tell us that this law, this Old Testament message came through angels?

Well, you might think about the angel of the Lord, who sometimes was involved, but this says angels. And clearly at the time of the writing of the book of Hebrews, at the time of the writing of the New Testament, the Jews believed that there was a form of mediation involved in the giving of the Old Testament law.

That this mediation had involved angels. And we talked a little bit about this in chapter 1, but once again I just wanted to point out that even as we look at this particular text, when it talks about angels, it's possible that once again it is an issue of the text from which the writer is drawing his message.

What do I mean? Well, remember when we went back in chapter 1 and we saw that there was something very important at looking at the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, as the author was making his arguments, because there were certain phrases, certain things there in the text that were important to his argument that might be a little bit different or differed some from what is found in the Hebrew text.

Well, in Deuteronomy 32, when God brings the law, in the Hebrew text it talks about him coming with fire, probably in reference to the fire on the mount. But in the Greek Septuagint it says with angels.

Some scholars feel that this is what is being referred to by the author here. Again, he's writing to people who would be reading the Septuagint as their translation of the Old Testament. So maybe it's the two together, coming together is where he comes up with this idea of if the message spoken through angels proved to be so firm.

The idea is, of course, that the mechanism by which this new message has come is superior to that that had come before. And remember, what's the draw? Come back to the way of Jewishness, come back to the old ways.

Here's another way in which the new message is superior to the old in that it is delivered by the Son himself. In fact, it says, it was first communicated through the Lord, not angels, and was confirmed to us by those who heard him while God confirmed their witness with signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will.

Now, we could stop right here, honestly, for the rest of the evening. It wouldn't be difficult because if you're thinking with me, if you're still tracking with me, you said, all right, here we could talk about how God confirms Scripture.

We could talk about the actual function and purpose of signs, wonders, various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit which are here subsumed under the idea of confirming God's revelation not making us feel good about ourselves, not entertaining us, not the circus that we see on quote-unquote Christian television today.

And we would also have the opportunity to discuss how the Holy Spirit distributed these things, the gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will and how that ties in with 1 Corinthians 12 and how there the Apostle Paul tells us that it's the Holy Spirit who gives the gifts according to His purpose, His will.

Not only is that an evidence of the personality of the Holy Spirit there in 1 Corinthians 12 but also the fact that He has a will, He acts as a person and He gives the gifts as He wills, not as we will.

And so we could camp here for a long, long time. A little bit like the Puritans used to do. I would imagine Jonathan Edwards would have about 14 sub-points at this point and that would compromise about three books worth of text just in opening up verse 4.

But it is important to emphasize that at least in the argument here the author is saying look, angels brought this before but now the Lord has confirmed this message, He has communicated this message, those who heard Him have confirmed this to us and so it is interesting that the author here does not say I heard this.

The author does not say I was one of the eyewitnesses. That was one of the discussions in the early church about the authorship of the book of Hebrews and the relationship of the author to the apostles and things like that.

The author clearly says that it was communicated to the Lord, confirmed to us by those who heard Him and those who heard Him then would be the apostles those that were in the presence of Christ and so us, the author places himself in the congregation now that may be the only reason he does this is that he is placing himself in the congregation so these exhortations and all are from one that is amongst us.

That is a possibility as well but it is something to take note of and then this revelation then is confirmed their witness is confirmed with signs and wonders and so on and so forth the signs and wonders are not the substance of the revelation they are not the primary purpose of the spirit and whenever people get focused upon those kinds of things and I am afraid the vast majority of what our culture sees as Christianity is focused upon those things then they have missed the entire purpose that this text demonstrates for why those gifts were given in the first place and we certainly learned just as an example most of you know that some of you remember a couple of years ago on an Easter Sunday morning we had an unwelcome visitor outside remember?

Had a fellow outside with a sign that was yelling at people and talking about how yours truly is a false teacher and a false prophet and I am leading you astray and all these things. I might mention that that man was declared brain dead this week he came down with spinal meningitis and I tried to get some information this week while I was in Utah as to whether he had actually passed away finally or not but that single man, a pastor of a Baptist church in Utah is not going to be doing that anymore and he was one of the main people up in Salt Lake that had caused so many problems.

He had caused problems out in Mesa and it's a tragic thing to hear of anyone coming down with a disease like that. And yet the sad thing was he clearly detested me far more than he detested the Mormons and so it was a shocking thing because I believe I am older than he is.

I think he's just a little bit younger than I am actually so it is amazing how fast that can happen but I didn't bring that up for that, I brought that up to demonstrate the fact that we've stopped doing our outreach up in Salt Lake City because the Mormons would not differentiate between them and us no matter how different we were and we can't expect the world to differentiate between us and the people they see on that channel between 20 and 22 because well they're all talking about Jesus and they're all waving the Bible around and so we end up getting painted with that kind of understanding when the reality is we have a very different perspective and when we have opportunity to differentiate ourselves this might be a text you might want to remember that the reason for signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit was to confirm their witness.

And the essence of the message is that witness not the activities of miracles and signs and things like that extremely important thing to remember. And of course we just in passing the gifts of the Holy Spirit come according to God's will not according to our will not according to what we think we need.

God has a purpose in these things and those who attempt to make certain sign gifts necessary for salvation experience of which necessary for salvation clearly are not teaching in accordance with the entirety of the New Testament witness.

Psalm 8 and the Humiliation and Exaltation of Christ

So with that having been said then, that is the exhortation part, then we have this argument that in essence can be boiled down to this he talks about drawing from Psalm 8 in the Greek Septuagint the submission of the created order under man.

What is man that you think of him, son of man that you care for him made him lower than the angels for a little while, you crown him with glory and honor, you put all things under his control. Now some scholars believe that what the author is doing here is he is instead of seeing man as a whole he is identifying this man as Jesus, what is clear is that Jesus as the son of man in essence fulfills this.

I don't know that it's necessarily appropriate to read Jesus into each word of this particular citation from the 8th Psalm but the point is that we recognize that God has created man and he has differentiated man from angels.

There is a hierarchy in this case said that man is lower than the angels in a certain sense, we know that the angels are not the objects of God's redemptive purposes and things like that. So we could differentiate along those lines as well.

But he quotes from Psalm 8 and he focuses on that last phrase. For when he submits all things to him where he puts all things under his control he left nothing outside of his control, at present we do not yet see that this situation has yet been fulfilled.

We do not see the earthly order yet fully under the control of man primarily because of man's sin. But we see Jesus who was made lower than the angels for a little while now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by God's grace he would experience death on behalf of every person or on behalf of all.

And of course that is where we will be focusing our attention next week. And so we have a citation from Psalm 8 and basically the assertion you see this was pointing forward to something there is a crowning and an honoring and all things put under his control.

Well we haven't seen that happen yet. But we do see Jesus who for a while also enters into this human state. He is made a little lower than the angels. But why? What does he do when he is made a little lower than the angels?

Now we see him crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death. So the author is basically saying where is this crowning with glory and honor spoken of in the Psalter. It is found only in Jesus who is made for a little while lower than the angels.

This is the same Jesus that we have seen in the previous chapter who has created all things, sustains all things the image of God described as Yahweh etc etc. But now for a little while he is actually and here we have sort of a reference to the Carmen Christi of Philippians chapter 2 that voluntary humiliation.

He is made a little lower than the angels for a little while now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death. Now I know that everyone here knows this but it is important to repeat basic themes that are repeated in scripture because I figure if the Holy Spirit repeats it he probably knows we need to remember it as well.

And that is the path to exaltation lies along the road of humiliation for Jesus. And the same thing is true for us that is you have here in just one sentence an encapsulation of what you have in all of that beautiful text in Philippians chapter 2 where Jesus humbles himself he is made in the form of a servant.

That is one of the reasons why if Paul didn't write this I am convinced that it was one of his close companions. Because it is very clear to me that whoever writes these words has those same words in the back of his mind.

He is describing the very same process the very same truths that were exemplified in those words in Philippians chapter 2 where he made himself of no reputation he became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him because of the suffering Messiah that is the road to exaltation. The person who seeks exaltation will be humbled. The person who is humbled will be exalted by God.

This is a basic fundamental thing that mankind refuses to get. Mankind refuses to accept. It is that time in the sporting world right now where there are finals going on. And what do you see. You see men who are tremendously talented men who have great physical capacity at least as long as they don't jump in the air land on somebody else's ankle blow their ACL up.

And that's the end of their career. You see men who have these abilities to change directions they change directions so fast while they are moving that the rest of us did that our bones would come out of joints.

I mean it is just amazing the capacities they have. But they if they do not truly recognize from whence those capacities come their results. And insufferable arrogance and arrogance that is just absolutely mind numbing to observe.

And we see this over and over again right now. The only true path to true exaltation to truly being commended by God is that of humiliation. And indeed it would have struck the original readers of this text with far more irony than it does us to read those words now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death we have to remind ourselves because we have especially if you have been raised in the Christian faith when you hear the death of Christ you think of the cross of Christ.

You think of something that is glorious and something that is wonderful. But you must realize that when that message was first proclaimed it was proclaimed within a culture and a context where that kind of death was absolutely humiliating from the Roman perspective to die upon that cross oh my only the worst died that death.

We must keep that in mind. And I keep reminding myself of that because in witnessing to Muslims that remains this day one of their greatest stumbling blocks how could a prophet of God be so humiliated.

Allah would never allow that to happen. And that's why you have to emphasize the fact that he did so purposefully it was his intention to give his life. That is something that Lord willing in less than a month actually right at three weeks now I will have the opportunity hopefully of emphasizing in the dialogue on Long Island with Imam Shams Ali.

So we have the argument in essence then being that the fulfillment of the psalm in psalm 8 is found in Jesus in his being crowned with glory and honor but because of his sacrificial death which then brings us into verse 8.

The Meaning of “By the Grace of God” and the Textual Variant in Hebrews 2:9

Now as I said next time that we address this text I want to address its common use as an argument against particular redemption. It is read in isolation. The rest of chapter 2 which I believe very clearly provides to us the context takes us back into the Old Testament gives us the context of understanding what is being said here what it means when it says in behalf of all by the grace of God in behalf of what does that mean to taste death.

That this is in no way shape or form a foundation for a universal or nonspecific atonement. We will look at that next time we will look at it in context and address that issue. But for this evening given the amount of time we have I wanted to address something else and that is I want to address the fact that you might in a modern translation have a note next to the statement by God's grace.

By God's grace. If you have maybe a New King James I doubt I don't think there is one there. I didn't check that. But you might have a note that there are just a few manuscripts very small. In fact the earliest one that I am aware of is from the 10th century.

You say well why are you bringing it up then. Well let me explain it. In the 10th century we have a manuscript that reads so that apart from God he might taste death in behalf of everyone. Now there is a couple of ways of construing that and understanding that most people would read it apart from God that is in separation from God maybe as a part of the expression of God's wrath.

Some actually construe it in such a way that it is differentiated between God and the creation. But there is a slight difference in the Greek text. Now to us it sounds like a big difference when you see it in the Greek text.

It is not that big of a difference at all. But why do I raise this issue. Well many of the early church fathers also recognized this variant. They discussed it so Origen and others also recognized it so yet the vast majority of manuscripts say by the grace of God.

The reason I raise this is because of the fact that some of you are going to be heading off to university in the fall and if you are going to ASU or Glendale community or leaving the state it doesn't matter where you are going.

In many of the religion classes you will encounter books by a gentleman that you have learned of from me probably by the name of Bart Ehrman and unfortunately his books are used as text books all over the place.

And one of just two or three texts that this gentleman cites he is a graduate of Moody and Wheaton in Princeton. So he is an apostate Christian and is very popular with the culture out there. This is one of just two or three texts that he cites where he says a textual variant changes the entire meaning of a book.

He argues that the original reading is apart from God rather than by the grace of God. And he says see here you have a situation where what a book means depends on which manuscript you read. And that is one of the arguments he uses to destroy faith and confidence in the text of the New Testament.

The irony is that to get to that point to get to the point of saying this is the original text. One of his primary arguments is this you see all through Hebrews you have this theme of the sacrifice and you have this theme of Jesus in distinction from the father and he gives himself and he is the high priest and things like this.

And he actually argues that one of the main reasons why we should believe that apart from God is the original reading is because it is consistent with the book of Hebrews the theology of the book of Hebrews.

Well there have been some decent scholars that have agreed with that but they weren't apostates and they weren't coming to the conclusion that you can change the entire theology of the book of Hebrews by how you read it.

Did you notice the circularity of that argument? He says well it should be apart from God because the theology of the book of Hebrews would be consistent with that. And then he says how you read it would change the entire theology of the book of Hebrews.

How do you use the theology of the book of Hebrews to determine the reading of this text. If the reading of this text determines what the theology of the book of Hebrews is it's sort of like one of those things where you put the little p under the shells and move it around.

And as long as a scholar does it with a lot of letters at the end of his name you go oh that's good you know but most people realize it's a shell game he has no way of doing that. In fact if it is apart from God that's not in any way shape or form saying apart from God's purpose or apart from God's will or anything like that it was simply referring to the fact that Jesus died as the sacrifice for sins.

And if it says by the grace of God it just means that it was God's grace to provide this sacrifice. Either reading does not change the theology of the book of Hebrews. Besides that did you notice this is sort of a sub-clause.

It's not even the main point of the argument. And so I mention this to you for two reasons. First of all like I said if you end up as a student out there you cannot believe how many secular institutions use this man's books as text and sadly 99 .999 of the evangelical students going into their schools have never heard a discussion of this at all.

And secondly I have often said that when I attempt to preach through the word of God I attempt to raise these issues when they are relevant and explain them to the people of God. There are people who say you shouldn't do that shouldn't do that no no shouldn't no should not do that.

Well there might have been a day when we could ignore these things maybe 60, 70, 80 years ago. But the fact of the matter is we live in a day where almost every one of us, not all of us there are still a few holdouts but almost every one of us has a device attached to our belt or in our purse or in our car that not only attaches us to other people anymore they attach us to everybody.

It's called the internet it's all around us. And this kind of information can be distributed at incredible speed so that these kinds of arguments these kinds of assertions are repeated by unthinking individuals those individuals who don't know the background but they're repeated confidently over and over and over again.

And one of the reasons they're repeated confidently is they are so very rarely corrected. Now don't get me wrong you can correct people and they'll still repeat the same errors over and over again. But most of the time these kinds of assertions go uncorrected and sadly it's the Christian scene they're going.

I've never heard of anything like that don't know what you're talking about and that just simply should not be the case. We can dig deeply into the text. We can go just as deeply and deeper than the critics do and answer their questions and deal with their facts.

But we need to be aware of these things. And so almost all I can make a very strong case. I have a presentation I can give on this I gave it at a conference back in January in Florida specifically on this text laying all the reasons out why it is best to see it as by the grace of God.

I think there's strong strong reason for all of that. But be that as it may the reality remains that this particular text is important because it does introduce at least the beginning of this discussion of the purpose of Jesus' death.

It doesn't finish the discussion. It's sort of like the introductory phrase and it's not like there's not so much more coming in the following pages that will explain everything that's said in this one sentence.

But unfortunately many people when they read the Bible they do not see how it's connected together. It may be partly due to the fact that there was a little bit I think of a of a breakdown helped us a lot.

I'm not saying it was bad but when we put these chapters and verses in did you notice for example the introduction. Look at verse 6 of chapter 2 instead someone testified somewhere. Did that ever surprise you?

You ought to look at all the ways the Old Testament is cited by the writer of Hebrews. Sometimes he'll be very specific it's written in the prophets. But sometimes it's but we know that it says somewhere now is that just laziness on his part?

No it's reflective of the fact that from his perspective the entirety of that word is the oracle of God. And they didn't have chapter and verse divisions like we do. And I really think maybe that one of the reasons that we know fellow Christians who will grab this verse and they'll grab this verse and they'll grab this one over here and they'll make them the all important text.

And when you start probing a little bit they don't know anything about the context of any one of them. They don't know anything about how these verses relate to the rest of the text. They can't look at the book of Hebrews and go well here's where the argument flows like this.

And this is related to that. No, they just see little segments. And I think that's related to somehow how we think even how we study how we memorize things. We rarely see the flow of thought. We rarely see how one thing is related to another.

And especially as we look at verse 9 and this concept of tasting death in behalf of everyone we will see that verses the rest of the chapter will provide a commentary on what that means. And the entire rest of the chapter will very clearly indicate that he tastes death only for specific people.

But why won't people see that. It's not just refusal to read in context. It's refusal to see an argument as it is developed over an entire expansive text. It's almost like refusing to listen to someone for more than just a few sentences.

You know a few people like that at work you start trying to explain something to them. You get about two sentences in and they think they've come to a conclusion already and they can cut you off. And it's extremely frustrating because they're not getting the whole thing.

That's how a lot of people I think treat the text of the bible as well. They don't allow the rest of the context to define things. And so in closing Jesus then becomes the fulfillment of the psalm prophecy in psalm 8 though he is made lower than the angels for a little while now he's been crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.

So by God's grace he would experience death or taste death on behalf of everyone. What's going to follow from this will be a discussion of those for whom he tastes death and the necessity that Jesus truly be human truly be human.

And we will have to expand out upon that because one of the greatest controversies in the first three centuries in the early church were those people who tried to make Jesus a super human cosmic being who did not truly become flesh.

And by changing the biblical teaching they undercut the very incarnation and hence the atonement itself. And that was one of the greatest battles that the early Christians fought. Those very same early heretics have now become extremely popular in modern academia and even on the big screen those were revived once again by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code.

And so we will likewise look very closely at that assertion as well. But for now we have the assertion this Jesus who in the preceding verses is Jehovah coming to flesh was made lower than the angels for a little while now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.

The path to exaltation the path to receiving God's approbation was one that walked through that dark valley of death. Jesus is our guide, he's our example how far it should be from our thinking that we should ever seek to avoid the sufferings that he would bring into our lives recognizing that we follow in his footsteps.

We are following indeed in God's will. Let's pray together our heavenly father. We thank you for your word we thank you for its message, we thank you for the fact that so long ago in your will there were those congregations that needed exhortation.

You could have protected your people of old from all types of temptations or trials or difficulties but you did not and in fact their difficulties, their trials and this exhortation written to them then becomes an encouragement to us.

We thank you for the process through which your word came to us and all the things that we can learn from it, we thank you that we possess it, we possess it in fullness to this day, we can study it, we can love it, we can honor it, we can memorize it, we can proclaim it to others as we go forth from this place for service for another week we ask for your strength we ask for your protection.

We ask for opportunity that we might give forth a testimony that Jesus Christ indeed is lord it is in his name that we pray, amen.