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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/phil-coulson/hebrews-2-14-16-humanity-required-to-defeat-the-devil/
Now, we'll turn another time, please, to the second chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. Now, we'll remind ourselves of where we are in the chapter before we read together the next section, which will be verses 14 to 16.
We have thought in the section verses 5 to 9 that the real, totally real humanity of the Lord Jesus, what we would call His essential humanity, what He is in essence, it was vital that He should be truly human in order that the dominion that God had ever intended should be in the hand of a man could be restored.
God's plan is never ever thwarted. His first ideas, well, not first ideas, His first thoughts are always His last as well. So, in order that there should be a man into whose hands universal dominion could be restored, it was essential that the Lord Jesus be a real man.
But then, as we saw from Genesis 1, God didn't intend for the first Adam to bear dominion solo. He gave him a consort, He gave him a help, meat for him, and in doing so, He gave us lovely lessons concerning the role of Christ and the church.
So we find here in Hebrews chapter 2 that the one who is going to bear universal dominion and who has become truly man to do so is also going to be the pioneer who's going to lead many sons to glory. He's not going to be alone in the exercise of dominion.
And so, we saw that particular truth in verses 10 to 13, the captain of our salvation, he's going to be the pioneer leading many sons to glory. If you boys at the back there stop speaking, please, while I am, boys, there's one still ignoring me yet, but he won't continue to do so.
Young men, tell that lad there in the gray to be quiet. Thank you. I apologize to the others, I don't like this sort of thing, but it's not only distracting, it's very dishonoring. Sit still. So verses 10 to 13, the essential humanity of the Lord Jesus, vital so that many sons could be brought to glory.
But then there's a problem, that those whom He's going to bring to glory are associated with Adam and his race. And because they're associated with Adam and his race, they are already under dominion. So, how can they exercise dominion when they are under dominion themselves?
And the dominion they are under is the dominion of death. And so, the next verses, 14 to 16, are going to show how that the humanity of the Lord Jesus was essential so that those who were already under the dominion of sin and death could be delivered from that, and thereby be left free to then exercise dominion alongside the Lord Jesus.
So verse 14 tells us, for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. And those are the verses that we'll look at, especially over the next few minutes this morning. So, the genuine humanity of the Lord Jesus has already been established in that if he were not truly human, if he was only like a man, then it would be disingenuous, it would be dishonest for him to speak of his brethren.
It would be dishonest for him to speak of those who were his children. The reference is to Isaiah chapter 8 and the children of Isaiah himself, but the idea is that whether it is to do with bringing those sons to glory, whether it's the Lord leading the praise of his people in the congregation, whether it's those who he calls his children, none of those things could be honestly said if he were not truly human.
So relationship having been established, we then find how it is that the sons of glory might be delivered from the dominion under which they already were. And we have this lovely statement in verse 14 of Hebrews 2 that as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.
Once again, we delight in the accuracy, the pinpoint accuracy of the language of the Spirit of God. The children. Now, it's not he hasn't got anyone particularly in view, although, of course, the reference back to the children of verse 13 would make sense.
But in other words, just as we who are amongst those sons of glory, just as we are partakers of flesh and blood. Now, the thought is that when you and I were conceived, we, of course, had no part to play in it.
It was something in which we were completely passive. Conception took place, growth in the womb took place. We were unconscious of it all. It was completely passive on our part. And I suppose it makes for quite amusing conversation sometimes as when we try to go back in our minds and say, well, what actually are our earliest memories?
And most of us, you know, we probably would agree that sometimes we're not quite sure if it's a genuine memory or if we're just remembering something that somebody's told us about our early years and so on.
So, in the very early parts of our lives, and certainly from conception to birth, we are totally unconscious of the whole process, completely passive in the whole thing. But just as we were partakers of flesh and blood in a passive way, He, the Lord Jesus, also Himself, likewise lovely, every word's precious He also Himself, likewise took part of the same.
So that process of gestation, that process that brought us to birth, in which we were totally oblivious and passive, is something in which He deliberately, actively took a role. He chose to become so.
And so just as we are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself, that is, of His own revolution, in the same way, by the same process, took part of the same. You see how it's being emphasized all the time, the same, the same, that whether it was the process by which He came into the world, the process in the womb, or whether it was the product of the womb, the Lord Jesus is a genuine and a real man.
We would repeat what we said yesterday, that although His conception was completely supernatural and divine, the moment that Mary conceived in her womb, the rest of the gestation period and process was as natural as yours and mine.
And eventually she brought forth her firstborn son, umbilically connected to his mother. Her blood was His. He was truly the seed of the woman. And we have stressed this point again and again because it is so absolutely fundamental to the truth of our salvation.
You will recall that lovely, delightful little book of Ruth in the Old Testament, and the way in which, in the book of Ruth, we see a Gentile woman who's eventually brought into the kingly line, she's brought into the royal family, and that's through her relationship with Boaz.
And Boaz was a true kinsman redeemer. If the Lord Jesus were not truly a man, He couldn't be a kinsman redeemer. And so these things have been established, and we are told now of the process by which He came into the world.
He came in having partaken voluntarily and deliberately of exactly the same process and product as ourselves. And it was for this purpose, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil.
When we think of the power of death and its relationship to the devil, I want to be very clear at the outset that nowhere in Scripture would we find the idea that Satan can exercise death over whomsoever he will.
He does not have that authority. He does not have that power. There are various words that are translated in our English Bibles, power. The one you're most familiar with probably is that dunamis word, the thought of power and might from which we get our English word dynamite.
We have another word in the Greek language which is exousia, it's authority. To them who believed, He gave authority, power, to become the sons of God. So it's possible to have power and no authority to exercise it, and it's possible to have authority but no power with which to exercise it.
So those are the two most common words perhaps, but the word used here is a completely different word, and it's a word meaning dominion, and it's that realm of authority, that the devil has that realm of authority which is death.
By one man, sin came into the world, and death as a consequence of sin. And it's your relationship with Adam, naturally speaking, that makes you liable to death, the same for myself and for all of us here.
But then the writer says that the Lord came so that through death, He might destroy him, that is nullify the power, nullify the effect, take away the control of the one who has this dominion of death in which by nature we are.
Our brother Larry has quoted in Thanksgiving this morning from Colossians 1 and 16 of how we have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Now that translation from darkness to light, from death to life, from bondage to freedom, that is not something that God has done simply by superior power.
It's not as though He reached into that kingdom of darkness and brought you out of it into the kingdom of light. That's called kidnapping. The only way in which you can be legally delivered from one dominion and brought into another is if you die, as far as these Scriptures are concerned.
It's death, ironically, that gives deliverance from it. So let's just think about that. Look again, please, at verse number 14. The Lord Jesus, through death, would render powerless the one who has the dominion, the sphere of authority, the one who controls the realm of death, that is the devil.
Now, that's easy enough, I think, for us to understand. We know, it's been mentioned this morning in Thanksgiving, that the Lord Jesus went into death, though a real man, because He's not connected to Adam, He's not subject to death.
He wasn't mortal in that true sense of the word. Death couldn't claim Him. But the Lord Jesus, you remember when He stood before Pilate, and Pilate puffed out his little chest and He said, you not know, I've got power to crucify you and power to release you?
The Lord said, you'd have no power at all, except it was given you from above. I have authority to lay down my life. I have authority to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. And so He was the only man ever that death couldn't claim, but He voluntarily went into death.
And because death couldn't claim Him, neither could it hold Him, because death can only lay claim to those who are related to Adam and who are therefore sinners by nature. So death couldn't claim Him, and death couldn't hold on to Him.
You have the graphic picture in the experience of Jonah, who as he was drawn down into those cold and dark depths and into that alien environment, desolate and abandoned, that's the picture of the sufferings of Christ for our sins.
But then he was swallowed up of the great fish. That's a picture of Christ going into death. And then, of course, the great fish. If Jonah felt bad, the fish felt pretty queasy itself. And after three days and three nights, graphically the Bible says it vomited him out onto dry land.
So not only did the Lord Jesus have the authority to come up out of death, but death simply couldn't hold on to him. It had to eject him. And the moment it did so, the power of death over man was broken.
It was broken by a man going into death and coming up again out of death. So, in doing so, it meant that he could now deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Remember, he's writing to Hebrews. So they would understand from this that those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Now it's not the thought that they were so much afraid of dying.
Their fear of death was, well, it's brought out in chapter 9. As it is appointed unto man, once to die and after this, judgment. And so, death was the portal. Death was the gateway to judgment. And because of fear of that, they're all their lifetime subject to bondage because they're living, as Hebrews, under a law that they cannot keep and that can only condemn.
When God instituted that law, the Sinaitic law in Exodus 19, when God instituted that, the law was absolutely impassive, absolutely cold. The law had two simple requirements. Obey completely or die. There was no in-between.
There was no second go at it. One strike and you're out. So the law said, obey. And if you fail to obey, death. So as a consequence, there's a people here and they're under law. It's a law that they can't keep because of the frailty of the flesh, Romans chapter 8.
And so they're looking forward only to inevitable death and inevitable judgment. All their lifetime subject to bondage, to a law that can only condemn and no matter how hard they try, they cannot keep.
And so for these readers, and for us as well, of course, the point now comes that the Lord Jesus, if He is to one day exercise universal dominion as God's man, and if it is to be that He will have a consort with Him, those sons He's led to glory, then it follows that there must be a means by which they can be delivered from under the dominion of law and death.
Now one thing we need to understand about this, it might possibly be in this audience that there's somebody here from a Jewish background. There might be somebody here who is a Jew by birth and nature.
I judge that the majority of us are sinners of the Gentiles, of whom Paul wrote to the Ephesians saying that we are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, without God, without hope in the world.
All that we have we owe to God's grace. We had no claim upon Him. So now we need to understand, and once again with respect, I say this a little bit as we say tongue-in-cheek, but we must be careful not to take our doctrine from our hymn books.
We must take it from our Bibles. So I'll sing along with the rest of you, free from the law of happy condition, but you and I were never under that law. As Gentiles we were never under it, and we therefore didn't need to be redeemed from under it either.
We were never under the curse of the law. That was specifically for Israel. That's who the law involved. That's who the covenant was with. And if you, one or two of you are looking a bit dubious, all I would suggest politely is that you go away and read the Galatian Epistle again and pay particular attention to the pronouns, by which I mean we, us, you, me, I, those are pronouns.
And in chapter 3 of Galatians, Paul is answering the question that he assumes the Jew will pose to say, well, how is it we've been delivered from the law and its curse? And so he tells him, he says, Christ was made a curse for us, us.
He's talking to the Jewish element of the Galatians to whom he's writing. Later on in the same chapter, he's going to talk to you, and he's going to speak about we and so on. So when you look and sort out the pronouns, you will realize that when Paul is speaking about the law and its curse and things like that, he's writing about the Jewish element.
You and I were never under the law and its curse. We had nothing to do with it. So, this has to be taken in its context here, that those who were delivered, those who were set free, liberated, were those who through fear of death and its consequences, not the act of death, but the inevitable judgment that would come upon them as a consequence of a broken law.
It's as well, perhaps at this point, just to remember, too, that when we're dealing with these matters of the work of Christ, we should remember that not everything at Calvary was about us. The work of Calvary was first and foremost for God.
But then, in doing that great work for God, when I say it was for God, really what the Lord Jesus did at Calvary, as far as God was concerned, was that he, through the sacrifice of himself, laid a foundation whereby a righteous God could move out at no expense to his righteousness, to needy sinners like you and me.
It also meant that, eventually, creation could be delivered from under the curse under which it had been placed. But as far as the nation was concerned, it also meant that Israel could be delivered finally from the curse of the law.
The law was there, immovable, they'd broken it, it demanded death. And so, the Lord Jesus at Calvary took upon himself, on behalf of the nation, the curse and all its consequences. And having been made a curse for the Jew, having borne all its consequences, then the law could righteously retire.
The law says, I've got no further claim. Case dismissed. The law was satisfied. And thus, legally and righteously, the law could be taken out of the way as an obstacle. Now, when the law was given, God in mercy, knowing that the people wouldn't be able to keep the law because of the weakness of the flesh, he instituted a system of sacrifice so that when they did break the law, he wouldn't have to visit them with immediate summary judgment.
He provided a system, the system of atonement, whereby blood that was insufficient, incapable of taking away those sins, could nevertheless cover them. And in covering the guilt of those sins, it averted divine gaze.
It meant that God could righteously put judgment on hold, and he could do that against the day that the Lord Jesus Christ would offer himself a sacrifice, and as Romans 3 teaches us, that sacrifice was for the remission of sins that were passed.
That great mountain of sins that were covered, covered, covered, covered, all the way through the Old Testament period. Every one of those sins atoned for, covered up, never got rid of. That mountain of sins grew and grew until Christ, the perfect sacrifice, offered himself, and through the efficacy of his blood, full remission of those sins of the past took place.
Importantly for the Hebrew readers, especially if they were mostly priests, at the same time as God instituted the law at Sinai and instituted the system of sacrifice so that there was blood to provide atonement, those sacrifices required a priest to administer them.
So a temporary priesthood was set up under the headship of Aaron, and that ran its course, but it follows, and this is really the argument of the writers initially as he's writing to the Hebrews. Now, he says, if it is the case that in his sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ has dealt not only with the sins of the people bringing full remission, but also he's borne the curse and delivered them from that bondage they were under, if the law has retired, then there's no further need for the sacrificial system.
It was only there because of a broken law. And if there's no need of the sacrificial system, well, it follows there's no need of the priestly order that looked after it either. So at Calvary, God terminated the age of law.
He terminated the Sinaitic covenant. The blood that brought an end to that Sinaitic covenant was the blood that also laid the basis for the new covenant that is with Judah and Israel. It saw an end to the sacrificial system, and it saw an end to the priesthood.
If you don't understand those things, you'll have trouble with the letter to the Hebrews. So what a great work was done by Christ at Calvary on behalf of the nation. So you see, brethren, and may I say respectfully, I hope helpfully, to those of you who preach the gospel, be careful of the language you use.
Be careful that it's the language of the Bible and not of your hymn book just, because you see, your sins haven't been atoned for. You say, hang on a minute, we've been saying, Christ hath full sins atoned.
I said, don't take your doctrine from your hymn book. You don't find the word atonement in the New Testament. It's not there because it's finished. Atonement was for the age that is past. It's true in the King James, in Romans 5 .11, you'll read the word, but the margin corrects it to reconciliation.
So atonement doesn't appear in your New Testament. And you might be surprised to find, while we're at it, that the word pardon doesn't appear in the New Testament either. So where you sit today by the grace of God, your sins haven't been atoned for.
The moment you put your faith savingly in Christ, they were put away forever, dealt with fully, totally. Every one of your sins as a believer has met its full punishment in the substitutionary death of Christ.
Do you believe that? It means your sins will never ever arise before God again. They've been dealt with. They haven't been covered up against a future day. They've been dealt with the very moment you put your faith in Christ.
No atonement today. And pardon, well, you know yourself the way we use the word. If a man receives a pardon, what he does, he escapes the penalty of a crime he's committed. So he's done something really bad, and he's due, I don't know, to get shot or something like this.
And the guard comes in, he says, you're a very fortunate man, it's the king's birthday, and he's decided to grant you a pardon. So it means the man escapes the penalty, but he still did it. The guilt remains.
So we're not pardoned sinners. I know the hymn book tells us that, but we are not pardoned sinners. So carry on singing the hymns. I'll sing them with you, but sing with the understanding also. And brethren, when you preach the gospel, see that you're using the language of the New Testament gospel, because atonement and pardon were things of the past.
They belong to a nation that's gone. So did the curse. So did the law. And the wonderful thing is now that we who are saved by the grace of God stand before God justified. That's the thing. We're not pardoned, we're justified.
That is, God sees us in Christ, he has himself declared us righteous. There is absolutely nothing more to answer for. What a full and free salvation for which we bless God today. So verse 15's about the deliverance of the nation, the Jewish people, from the law and its consequences, death and its consequences.
We need not now fear death, again, not the act. None of us looks forward to that process, we've heard that already this weekend. And the act of death, the actual final moment when we breathe our last, it's not so much speaking about that.
The wonderful thing is, my dear brother, my dear sister, we do not need to fear death as a portal. For these readers, prior to the death of Christ, death only led to judgment. For us, it leads to heaven and home.
What a difference. So he delivered through his humanity and through the offering of himself, he delivered them who through fear of death, all their lifetime, subject to bondage. And so he concludes with these words, this section, in verse 16.
He said, now, effectively, I'm going to paraphrase, now, seeing it is clearly the case that God didn't take on him the cause of angels. That's taking us back to verse 5. Because the age to come is not going to be subject to angels, Christ didn't come to take on their cause, he came to take on the cause of the spiritual seed of Abraham.
Those who, as we would read in Romans chapter 4, have a faith that is like that of Abraham himself, taking God at his word, and he came to take on him the cause of the seed of Abraham. So where we're at, at the end of verse 16, is that the essential humanity of the Lord Jesus has laid the ground for the restoration of dominion out of the hands of angels, back into the hands of a man.
It's also been the means by which, through his suffering of death, he can now bring many sons to glory, so he has, through his own sacrifice, obtained the consort, the companion, who will reign with him and exercise that dominion.
He's brought them into glorious liberty to do that by delivering them from the consequences and the power of the dominion of death. There's one more thing that that humanity is going to ensure for them, and that, God willing, we might look at this afternoon, verses 17 and 18.
And that is that as a glorified man, he lives to keep them. Those whom he has brought out of death and darkness, those whom he has delivered, he also lives to keep them, and to be one who can bear with them in all their weakness, all the time we're down here.
He knows that we who are destined for glory, we who are destined to be with him and to reign with him and to be like him, in the meantime, we're still here in these bodies of flesh, we're still here with an Adamic nature, and we need every support that we can get from that glorious man who is now seated at the right hand of God on high.
But those last two verses in the will of God, we'll wait for a little later. It's a couple of minutes to 12, and I think a meal break beckons, so will I just close in prayer and give thanks? Okay, brother.
We trust the Lord will bless his word to us today.