“A Word We Must Hear”
Hebrews 2
SICC
6/16/02 (Morning)
Some messages we intuitively know we don’t have to listen to. “No Standing” signs for instance. Is there anyone here who has not left his car at in a no standing zone – just for a minute? There are definitely some places where you know if you leave your car you will get a ticket, but there are others where you know you won’t.
How about the warnings on a bottle of Tylenol. “Take only as directed.” I had a buddy in college. “You got any Tylenol?” “Yeah, how many do you need?” “Six” “Six, what do you have somebody in your pocket.” Some messages we always obey. “Lather, rinse, repeat.” I always repeat. Always. It’s my hair. Some messages we have found out we better listen to. Baking instructions. “It only calls for a little bit of baking powder, I can leave it out.” No, you can’t.
Some messages we listen to more carefully than others. Why is that? It may be because of the consequences. Sometimes we know the consequences are sure. Other times we may think we can get by without paying the consequences.
Who the messenger is also makes a difference. If the messenger is someone I respect, I am not likely to disobey the message simply because I respect the messenger. The consequences in that case are secondary. I may not even be concerned about the consequences. Chapter 2 of Hebrews begins with these words, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard. . .” We find out in that chapter that we must listen to the message for two reasons. First the consequences of disobeying the message are sure. Second, the messenger is worthy of our respect. His argument is brilliant, and to understand it we will need to review what we learned in chapter one.
In chapter one our author says Jesus is God’s final answer. There is no more to be said after Jesus. In verses 2-4 he gave 7 qualifications Jesus has to be God’s final answer: 1. He is the heir of all things. 2. Jesus is the agent of creation. 3. The son is the radiance of God’s glory. 4. He’s the exact representation of God’s being. 5. He is the sustainor of the universe. 6. He provided purification for our sins. 7. He is in the seat of authority in heaven. All seven of those qualifications can be distilled to two seemingly contradictory principles. Jesus is completely of heaven. Jesus is completely of earth, or as the early church leaders put it, Jesus is completely God and completely man.
Chapter two begins with that “therefore” statement I just mentioned. We could restate that statement like this: “Because Jesus is God’s final answer, we must listen carefully to His message.” The rest of chapter two is a warning not to disobey this final word. It speaks to the credibility of the message and the credibility of the messenger. Not credibility based on characteristics like in chapter one, but credibility based on action. Let’s look at this.
To establish credibility of the message, our author appeals to historical precedence. We can assume that previous action/reaction to situations will clue us into future action/reaction. Since Jesus is a word from God, first we need to see if God has a history of being serious about what he commands of his people. To know if Jesus’s message is a messenge we need to listen to, we are going to look back at some of the messages God has given in the past. Some of them were disobeyed. What was the result? Let’s go to the beginning. The first time God was disobeyed was when Adam & Eve ate the forbidden fruit. What happened? Their Garden of Eden was over. They were kicked out. They had to work for a living. They experienced pain and sickness. They grew old and died. They were cut off from that intimate fellowship with God. Theses things were punishment for disobeying God.
Skip ahead. The Israelites had just escaped Egypt. They were standing on the brink of the Promised Land. Moses sent in spies to see how they would capture the Promised Land. Ten of the 12 spies said they were not strong enough to defeat the people there. The other two said the land was beautiful and fertile, God had given it to them, they should go and take what belongs to them. The Israelites listened to the ten instead of to the two. God punished them for not believing what he promised them. They spent another 40 years wandering in the desert. None of Moses’ generation made it into the promised land. None but Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who trusted God. The people disobeyed. God punished them.
One other example. The first city the Israelites conquered was Jericho. It and everything in it was to be dedicated to God. The Israelites weren’t to keep any plunder from Jericho. One man, named Achan did though. No one knew it, but Achan kept a beautiful robe, some money, and some gold from the city dedicated to God. Before the sin was evident, Joshua planned an attack on the next city, Ai. Ai was a smaller, weaker city than was Jericho, but they routed the Israelites. God was punishing them for Achan’s sin. When Achan was found out, and punished individually, the Israelites were able to defeat Ai.
What do we learn from this short history lesson? God punishes sin. Numbers 15:30 “But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the LORD, and that person must be cut off from his people. Because he has despised the LORD’s word and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.” God punishes sin.
That is one piece of the puzzle. Keep that nearby because we will need it later. It is important, because it tells us that if God says something deserves punishment, He will punish us for doing it. We had better listen to God’s message through Jesus, because if we don’t, historical precedence tells us, we surely will be punished. Remember that. There is something that we need to revisit from last week before we go on though. One of the seven qualifications for Jesus being God’s messenger is that everything is subject to him. It is obvious to us that this is not completely true today. Even our author can tell that. “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.” (2:9) Our author didn’t deal with that objection in chapter one because in answering it, he will also be building the credibility of Jesus, God’s final answer. In this chapter he deals with the credibility of Jesus based on Jesus’s action. In chapter one our author does deal with Jesus’s credibility, but it is based on his character. Now let’s talk about his credibility based on his action.
What was it that Jesus did that sealed the deal on his credibility? He died. He died for a purpose. His death proves to us and to all history that Jesus’s message is reliable. If we can, let’s separate Jesus’s death from the atonement. There was more to Jesus’s death than the need to pay the price for our sin. Jesus’s humanity is supremely attested to by the fact that he died. The NIV translation says that he would “taste death for everyone.” The last two words are vague. They could mean a variety of things. The option that I think best fits is that Jesus tasted death for our benefit. It is to our benefit that Jesus died because (in this context) it proved Jesus was like us. He completely entered our world when he died. His humanity could not be denied, since he died.
I want you to notice one verse. In verse ten our author says, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” “It was fitting for God . . .” Some translations will read, “It became God . . .” The point is that the right thing for God to do was to have Jesus suffer death. It was fitting because he came to bring a message to people who, without exception, die. If Jesus hadn’t died, then there would be no possible response to the question of evil. “If God is good, and God is all powerful, then why does he allow so much evil?” We would have no basis to respond to that question, because God would have skirted that issue in his atonement process. Sin is the problem that Jesus came to solve. The biggest symptom of that problem suffering – both the suffering inflicted by man on another man and the suffering that results naturally. Jesus could not speak authoritatively to the problem without addressing the main symptom of the problem. He could not stop suffering and death, because God was aware that we would still be sinful people. Suffering and death would inevitably result from our sin. He could forgive the sin, and pay the price for the sin – a price we can not pay ourselves. He could not stop the suffering, not in a world where there is free choice. He could participate in the suffering and death, however. That is what he chose to do.
What does that mean for us? If means that his message has credibility. Jesus did not take the easy way out. He came here to pay the price. In dying he made his message unavoidable. Had he not died we could chalk his talk up to idealism. It is easy to tell me to turn the other cheek if you have never been hit. It is easy to call me a murderer if I simply have thoughts of hatred toward someone when you aren’t tempted to hate because you have never been hated. Anyone can avoid hatred if they have never been hated. If Jesus had not carried his own cross, why would we listen to him when he tells us to carry our own cross. What credibility would Jesus have when he told his disciples to hold up under persecution, if he had never suffered persecution? Jesus’s suffering makes Jesus’s message unavoidable.
What will you do with the message God sent to you through Jesus? The message is this, “I love you enough to experience your life to the fullest. I love you enough to die for you.” He did you know. He died for you. He didn’t decide die for the millions. He made the decision millions of times to die. He decided to die for me. He decided to die for you. He knew what you would suffer. He knew what your questions and doubts would be, so he didn’t want to leave any loose ends. It was fitting for God to prove his love for you by suffering and dying for you. It is fitting for you to pledge your love to God by living your life for him.
