The Family of God (Hebrews 2:11-13)

Kootenai Church

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Turn your Bibles now to the book of Hebrews chapter 2. We're going to read together starting at verse 9 and we'll read through the end of verse 18 of Hebrews 2.

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But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely 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.

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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.

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For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying,

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I will proclaim your name to my brethren. In the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise. And again,

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I will put my trust in him. And again, behold I and the children whom God has given me.

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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.

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For assuredly he does not give help to angels, but he gives help to the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brethren 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.

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For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.

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Let's pray together before we begin. Father, we ask your assistance and your help in understanding your word and in thinking appropriately about your word.

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It is for us the highest authority and it is for us a guide and the thing which must govern our lives.

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We pray that we would be a people of this book and that today your spirit would teach us and guide us in our understanding of this text so that we may be children who hear your word in the pages of scripture and are conformed into the image of Christ by your word and by the working of your

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Holy Spirit. We pray that you would make us holy today by your grace and for your glory and the glory of your great name we ask this in Christ's name.

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Amen. The Bible contains a number of different metaphors for the people of God. If you look through the

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Old Testament, you'll see a number of them and then you click to the New Testament and you see the church referred to in a number of different ways.

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For instance, in 1 Peter chapter 2, we are called a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a spiritual house.

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That's all within just a couple verses of each other. We're also called living stones. We're called the temple of God, the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, the church, which is a reference to the called out ones.

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That's what the word church means, the ekklesia, those who are called out of the world and set apart and distinguished for God's use and for God's purposes.

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We're also called the sheep of the shepherd. But one analogy or metaphor that stands out probably most prominently in all of Scripture, and I don't know if it is the most prominent analogy, but we can certainly say it is one of the top two or three, and that is the metaphor or the analogy of being part of the family of God.

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That analogy of being a family and belonging to God as those amongst His family is probably the most referenced analogy for the people of God in all of Scripture.

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And it's one of the most natural metaphors that the authors could use. Salvation results in us being brought into the family of God, and salvation results in us even thinking about ourselves in terms of being a son.

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It's not one of the very first things that you think about after you got saved was a different relationship to God in heaven that is now characterized as being

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His son. He is your father, and you are His child or His son.

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That is the most instinctive way that we begin to view ourselves immediately after our salvation.

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God is our father, and we begin to relate to Him in those terms, and we pray to Him as our father. We think of Him as being our father, one who protects us and provides for us and guides us and watches over us and cares for us.

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And we think of ourselves as being His children in terms of being related to Him as children. Not as the son, the divine son, but as adopted sons and adopted daughters.

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It is probably the most natural metaphor for being of God's people, and that's how we begin to think of ourselves instantly after we are saved.

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And it is also probably one of the most intimate of all metaphors used in Scripture. There is an intimacy that exists between the shepherd and the sheep.

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The sheep know His voice, and the shepherd knows his own. There is an intimacy that is pictured in the analogy of the bride of Christ, and Christ being our bridegroom and us waiting for Him.

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There is a certain intimacy there. There is an intimacy in being indwelt by the Holy Spirit as being a temple, a living temple, carved out and made and built as a habitation for the

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Spirit of God. But there is a familiarity and an intimacy in just the metaphor of being part of a family.

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You are intimate with your family members in a way that you are not intimate with everybody else because you know each other and you are comfortable with each other.

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In fact, we use this terminology when we are talking about people that are not even related to us, but we feel comfortable with them and familiar with them.

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We say, we are just family. We are all family here. You might not even be related at all. You might not even wish they were part of your family, but if they are familiar enough with you and you are comfortable with them, you could use that analogy, we are all just family here.

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So there is a familiarity, and I did not look up the etymology of this word, but it has got to be connected to family, right?

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Familiarity, family. You see the connection there? There is a familiarity and intimacy to being part of that family of God.

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And it is an appropriate metaphor given the nature of our salvation. It requires a new birth. We are born into the family of God.

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So our new spiritual birth is analogous to a physical birth in that we are born into the family of God, but it is a spiritual lineage that we have.

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It is a spiritual kinship that we have to the people of God and to God as our Father as we are birthed by the

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Spirit of God, regenerated and given new life in God's family. And so this is the metaphor that colors the language here in Hebrews chapter 2.

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And if you remember last week, we looked at verse 10. We are looking today at verses 11 through 13, and we are examining the purposes and the results of the suffering of Jesus.

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And we saw that one of the first things, verses 10 through 13, is that Jesus is identified with His people in His sufferings.

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So He suffers as the Divine Son, and He suffers in our stead. And one of the reasons that He took flesh and came in here and dwelt among us, lived among us, and suffered that death on the cross is that He might be identified with us and do it in our stead as a substitute, standing in our place and bearing the wrath that you and I deserve, but we could never bear, even for all of eternity, we could never pay for that wrath, our sin, debt against God.

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But Christ does that as our elder brother, as it were. And then all of the nature of that relationship being heirs in the family of God, being co -heirs with Christ, being heirs of the kingdom, and having the kingdom given to us, that's all the language that we're looking at here in Hebrews chapter 2.

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And then we get into verses 11 and 12, and the language of brothers and brethren and father are predominant through the passage.

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So Christ is incarnated, and He suffers on a cross to be identified with us,

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His people. And He bears the suffering for us, and He does something for us that we could never do. So I want you to look again at verses 11, 12, and 13, and we're going to notice in this familial language, the language of family, that is, not familier, but familial language, the language of family in verses 11 through 13.

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We're going to notice that the family of God bears three things. Number one, we notice the character of the family of God in verse 11.

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We are holy. We notice the confession of God's family that Christ says of us, that we belong to Him, and He is not ashamed to say that.

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And then we notice the confidence of God's family in verse 13, that our mutual trust in Him. So the character of God's family, the confession of God's family, and then the confidence of God's family.

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So we'll look first of all at the character of God's family, and that is holiness. If there is one word that you could use accurately to describe the family of God, and what characterizes those who belong to the family of God, it is this word, holiness.

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You'll notice it mentioned twice in verse 11. For both he who sanctifies, that's the word we're looking at, he who sanctifies, and those who are sanctified, that's the word for holy, are all from one

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Father. He who sanctifies, there's one who sanctifies, he does the activity of sanctifying or making holy, and there are those who are sanctified by him.

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And that word sanctify comes from a family of words. Hagios is the word for holy. Hagiazo is the word for to make something holy.

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And there's sort of a family of words there that we translate as sanctified, sanctifying, sanctified, to set something apart, to make something holy, or that which is holy.

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And so that family of words has to do with something being set apart from that which is common. So if you have a bunch of common vessels or common tools or common implements or instruments, and you select or choose one out of that group of common things to use for a special purpose, you would, in that sense, be sanctifying or setting something apart and making it special.

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And that's what the word holy means. It means set apart or sanctify, chosen out of and put apart from the rest for the purpose of doing something unique and special with it.

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So the Old Testament vessels for the sanctuary and the temple and the tabernacle, those bowls and snuffers and cups and all of the things that went with that, the thing that made them special was the fact that those were chosen and reserved for one special function, that is worship.

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What made ground special and holy and set apart, when Moses stood on holy ground, what made it holy was the fact that it was unique from everything else.

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That was the place where Moses met with God. So it has the idea of setting something apart for a special use.

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It also has moral, ethical, pious, and religious connotations in the sense of making something morally holy.

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So when we say that something is unholy, we don't just mean that it belongs to all the other things. When we call something unholy, what are we saying?

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That it is, in some sense, profane, immoral, unholy, unrighteous, or iniquitous in some way.

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It might be unholy in that sense. So the idea of making something holy is not just setting it apart, it has to do with that, but it also has the idea of setting apart something and then sanctifying it, making it something unique and special.

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And in the case of the people of God, the family of God, that which is done to us is we are made holy in a moral and ethical sense.

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We as the family of God should be unlike everyone else. And we ought to be marked by one thing, not just that we're weird, peculiar, and different from the world, but that we live in a fashion that is weird, peculiar, and different from the world.

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We're holy in that sense. Now holiness, or sanctifiedness, has three tenses.

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There's a past tense, present tense, and a future tense. In case you're unfamiliar with this, let me go through those three tenses real quick.

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We are sanctified in the past tense in this way, that God from eternity past chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be what

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Ephesians 1 says, holy and blameless before him in love. The object, the purpose, and the goal of God choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world was that he would set us apart and make us holy.

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And so those who have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, we are predestined to adoption of sons,

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Ephesians 1 says, and we are predestined to the glory that comes in being conformed to the image of Christ.

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So God in eternity past set us apart. For some inexplicable reason, he said, of Jim Osman, Jim Osman.

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He didn't say Adolf Hitler or Osama Bin Laden or any of the other people that I'm morally equivalent to.

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Instead he said, Jim Osman. And he set Jim Osman apart in eternity past. Now there's a future tense to sanctification.

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In the future, eventually, we will be set apart and placed entirely apart from sin and iniquity, and we will be made perfectly like the

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Lord Jesus Christ, fully sanctified, fully blameless, and fully holy in every way.

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And there will not even at that time be any inclination to sin or desire to sin at all.

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We'll be set apart and made holy without sin entirely. Now in eternity past, before I was born,

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God set me apart. And sometime in the future, he's going to make me fully holy, but then there is this time period in the middle, and in this time period in the middle,

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God is involved in and working on my progressive sanctification. That is, what he has in view for the future, he is slowly growing, and all too slowly sometimes, he is slowly growing me toward that goal.

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So that he is in the process of making me more and more holy, and he does this work, it is his work, and he does it for his own sake, so that, scripture says, he might present to himself, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, a bride spotless and glorious and pure for his own glory.

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And those are the three tenses of sanctification. And who is the one who is doing the sanctifying? It's Christ. And whom does he sanctify?

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He sanctifies his bride, the church. Christ is not sanctifying all the pagans in the world.

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He is not making the world better. He is not making culture better. He is not making Washington, D .C.

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better. He is not making the political establishment better. He is not making television programming better. He is not making anything better.

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You know what he is intending to make better? Us. Those whom he chose in Christ before the foundation of the world, he has predestined and purposed their eternal glorification, separate entirely from sin, and perfect Christ -likeness.

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That's what we are destined for. And in this process, he is slowly conforming us to the image of his

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Son, so that we are becoming like what it is that we will eventually achieve. We will never in this life achieve that fully.

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At some point, before that process is complete, we will die, because in these bodies of flesh, even if we could live a thousand years, we would never be able to be conformed to that image.

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So, we must shed this body of death, then we will die, and then we will be made perfectly holy, just as Christ is.

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He is the one who is doing this work. He is the one who sanctifies us. From Ephesians chapter 5, and this is a passage

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I read yesterday at the wedding ceremony, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she would be holy and blameless.

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That's the goal. What is Christ doing now? Sanctifying us through the washing of the word, slowly conforming us to his own image, the goal being that on that last day, he may gather together all of his people, all of his sheep, all of those for whom

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Christ has died, he might gather them together and present to himself a pure and holy and spotless bride.

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Christ is the one who does this work. The Holy Spirit is involved in this. He does it through his word. He disciplines us, and he does it through our efforts of applying grace and mortifying sin and putting it to death and pursuing holiness.

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We are commanded in Scripture to pursue holiness because without it, we cannot see God. So we are to pursue it, but we know that Christ himself is doing this work in us.

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And what's interesting is that the sanctification of God's people is here attributed to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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That's what it says in verse 11. For both he who sanctifies, that is Jesus, and those who are sanctified are all from one father.

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There's one doing the sanctifying, that's the Lord Jesus. There are those who are the sanctified, that is us. And the

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Lord Jesus is the one who does this work of making us pure and spotless. What's interesting, do you remember back at the beginning of the book of Hebrews I said to you that the background for the book of Hebrews is the book of Leviticus?

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Remember that? There's so much in the book of Hebrews that comes out of the book of Leviticus. The priesthood, the Aaronic priesthood, the references to the temple and the sanctuary and all the furniture in that, that is woven all the way through the book of Hebrews.

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It's almost like you're expected to have a good solid working knowledge of the book of Leviticus before you can begin the book of Hebrews.

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What's interesting is that in the book of Leviticus it is said over and over again as a common refrain that Yahweh is the one who sanctifies his people.

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Let me give you some examples of it. From Leviticus 20 verse 8, You shall keep my statutes and practice them.

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I am the Lord who sanctifies you. I am Yahweh who sanctifies you. Leviticus 21 verse 8,

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You shall consecrate him therefore for he offers the food of your God and he shall be holy to you. For I Yahweh am the one who sanctifies you.

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I am holy. Leviticus 21 verse 15, I am the Lord who sanctifies him.

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Leviticus 21 verse 23, For I am the Lord who sanctifies them. Leviticus 22 verse 9, I am the

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Lord who sanctifies them. Leviticus 22 verse 16, I am the Lord who sanctifies them. Leviticus 22 verse 32, last one

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I promise, I am the Lord who sanctifies you. Do you hear that common refrain over and over again? What is the point of the book of Leviticus?

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In the context of the worship of the people of God and then presenting an offering of sacrifice and praise to God Who is the one who works through that to make his people holy?

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It's Yahweh. It's the king of heaven The only true God it's Yahweh himself The book of Hebrews who is it that sanctifies his people the people of his covenant is

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Jesus What does that tell you about? Jesus if it is Yahweh who sanctifies his people it is

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Jesus who sanctifies his people and who is Jesus Is Yahweh is the one true God and that is what all chapter one was about Remember that is the radiance of God's glory the exact representation of his nature

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He is the Yahweh of the Old Testament. He is the second person of the of the of the

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Trinity He's the Divine Son Fully equal with the father and he is the one who sanctifies his people his people who are his by covenant

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I want to make a distinction between positional sanctification and practical sanctification Here's the here's the difference.

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It's very similar to justification and righteousness If you're in Jesus Christ, you have trusted him as your

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Savior. So you are born again You are right now regardless of your practice. You are right now perfectly righteous in the sight of God Perfectly righteous not because you yourself practice righteous perfectly not because you yourself have done anything to be righteous

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You are completely righteous because of what Christ has done So the righteousness that you have in God's courtroom is the righteousness that belongs to another you can't do anything to mar it

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You can't do anything to approve it. You can't do anything to lose it because it's not your righteousness It's credited to your account in a transaction that you had nothing to do with whatsoever

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That it is yours. So right now in the presence of God you are positionally perfectly righteous, but in practice, what are you perfectly righteous?

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No, no, just getting ready for church this morning with your spouse and your kids

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You should be enough to demonstrate to you each and every day that you are not perfectly righteous In all your thoughts and deeds and all your activities

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You are not perfectly righteous and we will never be perfectly righteous in terms of our practice in this life in the sight of God Judicially speaking in his courtroom.

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There is no charge against me. No No charge can be brought against me. Who is the one who justifies

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Christ Jesus? He is the one who pleads my case. He is my advocate and the father is inclined to my forgiveness and my redemption and Christ the

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Son pleads my case for me. It's his righteousness that I stand in so no charge can be brought against me

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I am in the in the presence of God positionally speaking Perfectly righteous, but I don't practice perfect righteousness

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In this it is the same way with sanctification in the presence of God even right now Positionally in terms of how

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God views me. He sees me as perfectly holy Not because I am perfectly holy

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But because he sees me in his son and his son is perfectly holy and God looks forward and he sees what

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I eventually will be Perfectly glorified and perfectly holy so positionally. I am you are if you're in Christ perfectly holy

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But you are not practically holy There is this This dichotomy this break this difference between what we are in our position and what we are in our practice

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So we say that we are sanctifying It's be careful what we mean by that in the presence of God.

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I'm perfectly holy in the present right now I'm being made more holy by the grace of God by his work

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Eventually God sees me as being perfectly holy in the future. That's what sanctification is So God sees this as righteous and God sees this as holy not because of anything we have done but because of what somebody else has done who was perfectly righteous and perfectly holy and now because of that this is a perfect Because of my ultimate righteousness and sanctification it is a perfect and wonderful motive for me to pursue holiness and Let me give you two examples of how even in the book of Hebrews our

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Sanctification is described in terms of what God did that we had nothing to do with it Something that God did and he did it a long time ago by the death of Christ Listen to Hebrews chapter 10 verse 10 by this will we have been sanctified past tense

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Have I been made perfectly holy? No, but I have been sanctified Completely set apart and made holy in that position sense

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Hebrews 1010 by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the blood Of Jesus Christ once for all one sacrifice has perfectly made me perfectly holy in the sight of God That's magnificent Hebrews chapter 10 verse 12

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But he having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time sat down at the right hand of God waiting for that time onward until his

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Enemies be made a footstool for his feet or by one Offering that is the death of Christ by one authoring offering

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He Christ has perfected for all time those who are sanctified in that one offering

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Jesus Christ made perfect all those whom God has chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world

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He has perfected for all time Those were sanctified those whom God set apart Christ came and offered a sacrifice on their behalf and he has perfected them forever

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By one offering it's a perfect sacrifice Beauty of that doctrine cannot be overstated

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Gloriously true because of what he has done. That is my standing now. Can you and I ever lose that standing?

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What did you do to gain it? Nothing You did nothing you can never lose that The righteousness is his the holiness is his it is credited to our account through faith.

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That's how we have it And so we shall ever have it Because in the end God knows exactly who it is that he is sanctified in the past and he knows exactly where every last one of those are going to end up so in the process there is nothing that can derail that or Detract from that or to order or to set it off its course so that it might not happen for you or for me if you're in Jesus Christ So we are to pursue holiness

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Hebrews 12 verse 14 says pursue peace with all men and we are to pursue the sanctification

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Without which no one will see God All right, so because I've been set apart I am to pursue my goal

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Which is ultimate sanctification glorification and if you do not have that then you will not see God if you are not sanctified

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Here's the bottom line. You do not belong to Christ. This is the one thing that marks the family of God. We're holy And if you're not holy if you're not set apart in any of these senses

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Then you do not belong to him. That's the bottom line. So are all of us in the family of God Every single individual in the face of the planet.

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Are we all in the family of God? So clearly that cannot be the case Because there are some in the text whom

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Christ calls brethren There are some who belong to this one father along with Christ. There are some for whom we look to We look to Christ as our brother and to God as our father and there are some who are being sanctified and made holy

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But certainly not everyone was set apart Not everyone is considered Positionally perfectly holy and righteous and not everyone is going toward that goal scripture reveals that there are some who will suffer damnation and Judgment as a result of their impenitence and their rebellion so even though God is our everybody's father in the sense that He is everybody's creator.

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He is not everybody's father in the sense that he is everybody's Redeemer So we all belong to him all of humanity in the sense that we are his offspring.

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He's our creator, but there are only some And Jesus said it's a very narrow number of people because it's a very narrow path that has entered on to there are only some

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Who belong to Jesus Christ in that saving sentence? The family of God is holy and so he says in verse 11 that we all share one father for both of you

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Sanctifies those sanctified are all from one father Now if you have a different translation at that point You'll notice that there's a little bit of a different wording there the

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ESV translate that this way we all have one source The NIV renders it are of the same family the

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NASB as I just read to you all from one father and the King James New King James says we are all of one

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That's probably the most literal translation of the phrase. We are all of one and so the question is we're all of one what and that's where all the other modern translations step in and try to provide some sort

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Of a reference there that would explain the context or at least make it flow And so the NASB says we are all of one father and with the familiar language of the passage

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It seems to be probably one of the best ways of rendering it either We are all of one family where we're all of one father

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You could say we are all of one source in the sense that verse 10 describes God as being the one who is from whom are all things and through whom are all things

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But the general idea here is that both he who sanctifies Christ and all those whom he is sanctifying

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We all share the same father now Christ is our brother in this sense that we both have to share the same father

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The relationship the Lord Jesus Christ has with the father is different than our relationship with the father He has a relationship with the father and calls him father because he is divine by nature

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So God is his father and he is the divine son. So his really he is a son by nature. We are sons by adoption

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We're gathered into that family And so we can look to Christ as our elder brother as it were who's going to inherit the entire estate

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And he's going to turn around share it with all of the adopted children We get the adoption of sons

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So he inherits everything And he turns to those who are his The the children as verse 13 says that God whom

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God has given to him and he shares the entire inheritance With all the sons of glory whom he has brought through to glory because he is the sanctified sanctifying one

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And we are the sanctified ones So we are a holy family and this is the motive of our holiness first Peter 1 verse 15 and 16

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Says but like the Holy One who called you be holy yourselves in all your behavior. You should be holy for I am holy

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We look to God's holiness his moral purity and perfection That is what gives us the drive the ambition the ability to pursue that holiness and sanctification without which we cannot see

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God First Peter 2 5 refers to us as a holy priesthood and first Peter 2 9 refers to us as a holy nation

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This is the thing that marks the family of God. We are a holy people We're holy because we're set apart

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But we ought to also be holy in our conduct and in what we are pursuing so that we are so different from the world

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This is the character of the family of God We are a holy people, even if you look just down to chapter 3 verse 1 where the author here calls us holy brethren

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Get sense. He's trying to emphasize something. We're the sanctified ones and referred to as holy brethren So that's the character of the family of God Nelson first second of all in verses 11

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And 12 11 be in 12 at the confession of God's family. This describes the confession that Christ gives concerning us

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Verse 11 for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren So who's the them? It's the those who are sanctified

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Christ is the he the one who sanctifies for this reason because we share us the same father Christ is not ashamed to call us

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Brethren since we are the children of God and God is our father He's our protector our life comes from him or the origin of our spiritual life comes from him

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And because he is because Christ is related to him as the son and because we have been adopted into that family

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Christ gladly says these are my brethren referring to us. He's not ashamed to call you and I brothers

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That's an incredible thought to me You ever have a family member that you're ashamed of don't point to anybody if you're sitting next to them just And if you don't

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I'll make it a little bit easier How about your in -laws because for me that's where I start to say, okay. Well, I can name a few there my in -laws

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Still A couple more You ever had that cousin or crazy uncle that you just say to yourself who

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Yeah, we are related. I was hoping you wouldn't bring him up We see him once or twice and you're a little ashamed of him because he's crazy or because he's a

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Felon or for some other reason like that. You're a little ashamed of them. I don't like to acknowledge your relationship with him Christ has every reason to be ashamed of us if there was ever a felon

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There was ever a group of felons on the face of the planet. Is this not it? Have we not violated

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God's law in so many ways deserve his wrath What have we dirt done to deserve the status of sons?

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Have we done anything to deserve the status of sons? Our iniquities are over our heads

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The wrath of God should be satisfied and poured out upon us He ought to be ashamed of us

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But the text says that he is not a called shame to call us sons In the ancient cultures shame was a powerful thing

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Because if you did something to shame your family, you would be forever shame you would be kicked out and it served in ancient cultures that served as sort of a

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What would you call like a fencing mechanism that you were kept within certain boundaries of behavior?

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Certain boundaries of the quorum because you didn't want to do anything to shame the family We see that even today in in a lot of Eastern cultures that idea of shame if you do something that is shameful

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And you are shamed because of it and and the family looks down upon you It's a powerful motivating force now in our culture

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We don't have any shame do we now we put it on that We put it on TV screens and billboards and we have it on our phones

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We don't mind what it is We almost the only thing that is shameful in our culture is having a righteous standard of moral conduct

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That's shameful in our culture We keep shame on all the wrong things and all the things that are deserving of shame

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We have no shame in those areas. It is completely upside down and backwards as to what it should be But in ancient cultures and in this culture the idea of being ashamed of somebody

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The author is saying Christ has done nothing as your brother for which you ought to be ashamed of him

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We have done everything for which he ought to be ashamed of us And yet he is not ashamed to call us brethren and then he quotes here from Psalm 22

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And this is the quotation in verse 12. I will proclaim your name to my brethren in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise

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The author here is quoting from Psalm 22 verse 22 and as would be our normal course of events

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We would go back to Psalm 22 and we go through the entire song to see what the context of it is And I would bore you with that entire process

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But we have a whole nother quotation that we have to take on in verse 13 Which so I'll just give you the context of Psalm 22 and it wasn't too long ago back when we were in John And I mean, but I'm not too long ago

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I mean if you just sort of forget Ecclesiastes then it wasn't too long ago that we were back in the book of John and we went through Psalm 22

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Because Psalm 22 is referenced by Jesus at the cross when they gambled for his garments That was a fulfillment of Psalm 22.

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So you remember Psalm 22 is a messianic psalm It's the one where David begins by saying my God my God Why have you forsaken me?

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and then he begins to lament all of his physical suffering and he describes his bones being out of joint and the thirst that he

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Endured and people walking by and wagging their head and saying he trusted in God. Let God deliver him This was people saying this to David in David's day he described being laid in the dust of death and counting all of his bones and his hands been feet being pierced and people casting lots for his clothing that Psalm 22 is a is a

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Magnificent and graphic description of crucifixion a thousand years before crucifixion was ever invented

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It describes that death by crucifixion and it is obviously a messianic psalm and the author of Hebrews Says it's a messianic psalm and he indicates that because he takes the words of verse 22 in Psalm 22

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I will tell of your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly I will praise you and he puts those words in the mouth of the

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Lord Jesus So look in verse 11 He says for which reason he that is Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren

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Saying quote as if Jesus himself said this I will proclaim your name to my brethren in the midst of the congregation

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I will sing your praise Now in Psalm 22 around verse 22 there is a change So the first half of the psalm begins with starts off with my

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God my God. Why have you forsaken? Right far from my groaning is my deliverance and describes all that physical anguish that he was going through and from our perspective

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We look back on that and we say wow sure sounds like Jesus were describing his own crucifixion there in Psalm 22

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But it was David and then partway through the psalm. We read this prayer in verse 19 But you

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O Lord be not far off. Oh you my help hasten to my assistance Deliver my soul from the sword my only life from the power of the dog

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Save me from the lion's mouth from the horns of the wild oxen. You answer me That is his prayer.

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So God do not be far from me in my anguish and my suffering instead save me That is his prayer verse 22.

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I will tell of your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly I will praise you then in verse 24 for he has not despised

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Nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted nor has he hidden his face from him But when he cried to him for help

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God heard him So there's this transition from the suffering the anguish feeling abandoned to David realizing that it's not abandoned

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He's not abhorred me. He is right here with me in the midst of this affliction. He has not turned his head from me

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He has not left me alone He will deliver me and is right at that turning point that the psalmist

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David says I will proclaim Your name to my brethren that David was thinking in terms of the nation of Israel Standing with them in the assembly of God and praising

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God Before them with all of those who were his brothers and sisters The author of Hebrews puts this in the lips of Jesus because here's the here's the story arc of Psalm 22

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There is one in Psalm 22 and I want you to see how this is fulfilled in Jesus There's one in Psalm 22 who suffers anguish he suffers the torment and he goes through all of this realizing that God will deliver him and then he stands with His people who have been delivered with him and he praises

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God in the assembly of those who have been delivered Now that is the same story arc that is followed in the life and ministry of the

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Lord Jesus the Lord Jesus suffered that anguish He goes through death through resurrection so that he may stand with all of those whom he has brought through all of that and stand and praise the

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Father with us in The assembly of the brethren and so all of those whom Christ has brought through affliction and suffering

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Through death through resurrection as God is bringing many sons to glory Christ stands with them in the end and praises the

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Father We will stand with the Lord Jesus Christ and give glory to God because like the

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Lord Jesus Christ God is our Father and though Christ is the Divine Son He as the man

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Christ Jesus is still related to the Father as his God and Father And so he will stand with those whom he has delivered through death and resurrection

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And he will praise the Father That is the confidence that we had and for this reason he is not ashamed to be called our to call us brother

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Also at Hebrews chapter 11 It says that God is not ashamed to call us for us to be called for him to be called our

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God Hebrews 11 16 But as it is they desire a better country and this is in the chapter of the heroes of faith

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They that is all the Old Testament Saints desired a better country. That is a heavenly one Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their

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God for he has prepared a city for them That Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren and God is not ashamed to be called our

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God That boggles my mind If there is anybody who should be ashamed

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There's Jesus Christ and yet he is not and if there's anybody that God should be ashamed of it is us

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Yet he is not and I think that the hint as to why In Hebrews chapter 11 where says

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God is not ashamed to be called our God I think the hint of that is in the words as it is They desire a better country a heavenly one

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Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared a city for them What when

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God is not ashamed to be called our God, what does he have in view? The heavenly city the place that he has prepared for us.

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God has the end in view So he's not looking at us right now and saying yeah boy, they are spanky.

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I'm so glad they're on my team Those are great people right there the ones gathered at Kootenai Community Church on this

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Sunday morning Those are that's a great group of people to call my own That's not how God views it God looks to the heavenly

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Jerusalem to the new city to our ultimate goal Does that's what I'm making and that I am not ashamed to be called their

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God I'm not ashamed to have those as my people. I think that is what Christ has in view as well He is sanctifying us knowing that he is going to present us as his bride

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Holy spotless and blameless and he will not be ashamed of that. He is not ashamed to call us brethren.

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I First century Christians Remember we find out in chapter 10. They had suffered the loss of their property.

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They were enduring soft persecution They were being alienated from the family and their friends because of their profession in Christ They've done that and so some of these first century

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Christians were suffering shame in the sense that in the sense that their family members who are still

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Jews and in that Old Testament system would look at them and say you have Abandoned the faith of our fathers and now you're chasing off this man who calls himself the

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Messiah and now you're a Christian and you've walked away from the temple and the sacrifice and the feast the festival and all of that well if you're gonna do that you have nothing to do with our family and So they would have been shamed in their own culture and here the author turns that around and says

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Christ is not ashamed of you And so what is the implication therefore do not be ashamed of him? And I think that would have been an encouragement to these

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Christians suffering persecution That they should not be ashamed of Jesus Christ Because the temptation for them would be to stay quiet and to be quiet and to not speak up when they should have spoken

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And listen friends you and I are faced and are going to be faced with this same issue We are living in a culture that does not heap shame where it belongs

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Heaps shame in all the wrong places The notion of absolute truth is completely mocked

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The idea that there is one way of salvation is completely jeered in our culture and even in religious environments the claims of an exclusive salvation are hated sexual ethics and Morality in our own nation is is almost scandalous

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It is derided and the people who are shamed by our culture are the people who are righteous and moral and holy

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And if things don't change in our own country There's going to come a time where if you have a biblical view of marriage and human sexuality and gender

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You know the view that has been held by humanity for roughly four thousand years And it's only recently changed in the last ten if you hold to that view you might as well look at jail time or prison time

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If something doesn't change, that's where we're headed. Are we going to be ashamed of him and Yet the spirit of our age and the spirit of this day is

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Compromised and being quiet being silent doing nothing and going along This is a clarion call to us if he is not ashamed of us

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We certainly have no reason to be ashamed of him Look lastly at the at the confidence of the family of God in verse 13

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The confidence of the family of God I will put my trust in him and again be hot behold I and the children

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God has given me. This is a quotation from Isaiah chapter 8 Again, the words here from Isaiah chapter 8 were attributed to Jesus even though The author of Hebrews knows that Isaiah was the one who wrote

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Isaiah 8 He takes those phrases and he applies them to the Lord Jesus Christ I think because in the mind of the the author of Hebrews he sees in Isaiah something that is fulfilled in Jesus So even though Isaiah is saying this back in his time he is looking forward

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He is describing something that was true of the Lord Jesus Christ And so the author the author basically is doing something that we should get used to doing

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He is reading the Old Testament through the lens of Christ seeing him as the fulfillment of everything So as you he reads the

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Old Testament not trying to read into it, but as he reads the Old Testament He sees Jesus coming up all over the place And so he sees in Isaiah chapter 8 this reference and he sees this as referring to the

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Messiah Let me give you the context of Isaiah chapter 8 Versus chapter 7 through 12 of the book of Isaiah and commented at a particular time in the nation of Judah's history when they were in in danger of being evaded by the

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Assyrians and some other outside forces and of course the threat and the Danger of the concern was that if these forces came in and took over the southern kingdom

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They would uproot the line of David They would destroy David's kingdom and David's throne and set somebody else on there And of course then the promises to David God making a promise to David that he would seat somebody on his throne that David would

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That promise would end up not being fulfilled and so Isaiah is writing to an unfaithful people who are under the judgment of God and the only reason that they were threatened by that invasion is because they had been

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Sinful and unfaithful and so Isaiah as a prophet of God was trusting in God, which was not in vogue

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He was standing up for God is speaking God's Word and that was not fashionable at the time And so Isaiah was scorned by his own people and rejected by his own people and God promised him that it would be such

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God promised him you go to these people. They will not hear you. He will speak but they will not listen You're gonna show them things.

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They're not gonna see it. They're not gonna turn I'm doing this to harden their hearts. I Was not exactly a promise of a successful ministry, but it was a it was a command of faithful ministry

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And so I did it Isaiah did that very thing in his own day writing to the people and he encouraged them

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Do not be concerned about the threats outside God has promised something to David that must come to pass and it cannot fail

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And so in chapter 7 we read that familiar prophecy Unto us a chip.

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No, that's a chapter 9 a virgin will conceive and bear a son. She'll call his name Emmanuel and God with us.

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All right So what was Isaiah's promise to the nation in the context of the throne of David? Crumbling and falling into disrepair.

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What was Isaiah's promise? God promised something to David remember what it was a virgin is going to conceive

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She'll be our son now in Isaiah's day that young maiden bore a son was

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Isaiah's child That was the sign of a promise being fulfilled in Isaiah's day The kingdom was not overthrown because Isaiah's son was born at that time but the ultimate fulfillment of that was later on we find out in Matthew 1 and 2 that was the birth of Lord Jesus Christ to the

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Virgin Mary So that's the promise in chapter 7 then we have in chapter 9 that promise unto us a child son is given unto us a child

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Is born and he should be called wonderful counselor mighty God eternal father prince of peace, etc And and and he will sit upon the throne of his father

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David and he will rule and reign forever That was the promise of chapter 9 Well between the promise of that Child being given and the promise of Isaiah's child being given right there in the middle in chapter 8 is this reference of Isaiah to?

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His own children his own believing children and he says in chapter 8 I will put my trust in him And this is what

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Isaiah was encouraging God to do We're sorry encouraging people to do in terms of God to put their trust in God You're threatened by outside forces your people are coming in but Isaiah says

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I will put my trust in God And he says not just me but the children whom thou the

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Lord has given to me And so Isaiah's believing children became a sign of God's fulfillment and God's promise even in Isaiah's own day

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So that's the passage that is quoted here in the book of Hebrews So what is the author of Hebrews trying to say here in quoting these two passages?

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He's simply referring to the the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ as the God man So he's got in human flesh as the

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God man He himself believed entrusted and had faith in the father Believing that in the midst of that persecution that the son endured him suffering and being perfected through that suffering in the midst of that affliction and suffering that he would be delivered through and out of that turmoil just as in Psalm 22 and Just as the author of Hebrews indicates that he was perfected through suffering and of course

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Christ went through that suffering and he rose again And he has been given by the father a group of people whom the son here calls in this passage his own children

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So what is God doing? It's going to deliver us through suffering through affliction into eternal glory.

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That's the promise of verse 10 God is bringing many sons to glory Christ is doing this so on the other side of it

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He may gather together those who are his with his brethren and say these are mine. I'm not ashamed of them

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They are my brothers and we praise together the father in eternal glory That is a glorious picture and that's the context of Isaiah chapter 8

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Death has frustrated us from ruling over the world and exercising dominion as we were promised and purpose to do

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But death does not have the final say the father gives his offspring to Jesus. We are his people his children

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That's just another analogy of our relationship to him And so Christ establishes for us his rule and his victory by bringing us through that suffering and through that affliction

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And for that reason he's not ashamed to call us his brother God has something in view

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If you thought that the sufferings of Christ were just intended to be a demonstration of God's love Or just sort of his way of showing you how he could suffer great things

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Or just something to sort of open the doors to paradise so that you can walk through by your own free will if you choose To do so it's not what the sufferings of Christ are all about in the suffering of Christ He bore perfectly the wrath for his people

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So that he might take those for whom he suffered his bride Purify and sanctify and eventually glorify her and present us to himself before the father father

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This is the bride you gave to me. This is the bride. He chose for me. This is the bride

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I died for this is the bride. I have sanctified and glorified Then we get to praise the Lord together

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You're sitting here this morning and you are not a believer in Jesus Christ. You don't have any of this

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He's not your brother. He's your judge It's the relationship you have with him You're under the wrath of God because of your sin

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You can have eternal life and you can have forgiveness if you will repent of your sin Acknowledge that you have violated his law

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You've stolen you've lied that you deserve God's wrath and God's justice that for by every right and by every measure

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He should be ashamed of you, but he's not If you believe that he died for you and that he rose again on your behalf and you turn from that sin

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And you believe upon him and you ask him to break your heart to grant you repentance to grant you to get the faith

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Take you to heaven to be with him and forgive you for your sins He will do that the promise of Christ is he will not turn away any of those who come to him

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I would beg you this day to come to Christ if you never have be part of the family of God It is a holy family that belongs to Christ that is destined for glory and you ought to be

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Thankful that God has done this on behalf of any and all who will trust in him to come to the Savior today

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Father do a work in our hearts that we would be encouraged To not be ashamed of Christ to never be ashamed of Christ and to love him with hearts full of affection devotion and faithfulness

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Be glorified in and through your church Be honored and glorified by bringing many to faith in Jesus Christ that they may be

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Called sons of glory and brought to the glory that you have destined them for Draw them to you that Christ may be honored and glorified we pray

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We thank you for your loving -kindness to us and to your to your church the bride of Christ We are included in that we thank you for that.

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We are destined for glory. We rejoice in that as well May your name be praised amongst your people both now and forever.