Bulletins - Keystone Presbyterian Church

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Gloria Patri
Doxology
The preachers asks an important question that each of us must answer. That answer will show us where our eternal destination is.
Hebrews has shown us an exalted Son of God. We have read how the Son’s rightful place is with God above all of creation. We read that the message from the Christ is superior to the message from the angels because Christ, the messenger, is superior.
The preacher now moves us from the exalted Son to the incarnation where the Son humbly took on humanity in order that we can be raised up with HIm.
Follow along as I read our passage:
Hebrews 2:5–9 CSB
5 For he has not subjected to angels the world to come that we are talking about. 6 But someone somewhere has testified: What is man that you remember him, or the son of man that you care for him? 7 You made him lower than the angels for a short time; you crowned him with glory and honor 8 and subjected everything under his feet. For in subjecting everything to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him. 9 But we do see Jesus—made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone—crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.
Paul teaches us that when we are weak, God’s strength can shine through. His strength and power can be seen in our weakness.
1. God's Design for Humanity
In order to grasp this, we have to look at God’s design for humanity.
Nothing in this world just simply developed out of happenstance. Everything was by design.
There were not two little atoms or anything else that collided at just the right time, in the right space, at the correct speed, which caused creation. God designed creation and He spoke it into life by His word.
Knowing that also tells us that within humanity, there was order. We tend to argue that we have creation because we have a creator. With creation we have order, we have laws. Creation is maintained by laws, rules and order. When one of these gets out of whack, when one of these does not operate correctly, we have disaster.
Yet, when we talk about humanity, we want to say that we create the laws by which we live. We determine the order of things. But the truth is there is order within humanity and when we get out of order, we have disaster.
Realizing there is a created order that God intends for everything to follow is importnat. The order of creation is stated very clearly in Genesis, reaffirmed by God the Son and taught again by Paul. We can get into a deep discussion with this and we can get into many arguments about it but this is not why I am bringing this up.
We have an order for humanity, roles and positions. The reason we have this in humanity is so we can see how it works. It is important for us to see how God’s designed order for humanity works so we can better understand how the church works, how marriages work, how relationships are supposed to work. When we see these, we can start to understand how our relationship as individuals, as a church family are supposed to work with God, who we cannot see.
We know about gravity because we can see the works of gravity. If you are holding a ball and let go of that ball, it falls to the ground. Why? Because of gravity. Because we can hold a ball and then let it go to see gravity work, we can better understand how gravity effects the planets. We may not be able to completely grasp the full effect but we can at least see there is a relationship.
Because we can witness the correct relationships in humanity, we can better understand our relationship with God.
That relationship is one of submission based off of love. We see submission at work in right relationships between husband and wife; one Christian to another; within the church family and on and on we can go. But those only work if the relationship is correct.
When we see these relationships working, we can better see how we should be in submission to God.
Every world religion is built off an believe that humanity either can or must work its way to heaven. Every religion that is except biblical Christianity. Christianity is radically different.
We recognize that correct relationships are important and that submission is important. But we also recognize because of sin, the relationship between us and God was thrown out of whack. We also see and know, whether we admit it or not, we cannot enter into a relationship with a just God simply because we want to. Because God is a just God, there is a just price that has to be paid for our sin. And that just price is the death of the one who sins, us.
2. Jesus' Humility and Power
In order for that price to be paid in full and for us to have a relationship with God; God determined to pay the price Himself.
We can better understand what happened when we start to grasp how it happened. We go back to Genesis after the first sin and we read about the curse.
Man will have to work for the rest of his life for food. Women will have increased pain during birth and will try to usurp man’s place in creation, the serpent will crawl on its belly and the serpent and the seed of woman will be in constant hostility. The serpent will strike the heel of the seed and the seed will crush the head of the serpent.
This is often called an early or first presentation of the gospel but if we leave it at just that, we miss much of the OT and how things happened.
As we looked at earlier, there is an order to creation. God, man then angels. Man was created to be in relationship with God in such a sway that God and man would spend their time together. That was the design. Angels were created to be the servants of God but lower than humanity.
When man sinned, humanity fell. The new order, because of sin, became God, angels, then humanity. It changed the order for a time but with the promise that God will set the order correctly.
They way God chose to correct the order was for humanity to pay for their sin. In other words, humanity, because of our sin, have to pay the price of sin which is death. But then God said He would pay that price for us.
It is they how that is important and what the preacher is pointing out to us. God the Son left His throne in order that He could pay our price.
In order to do this, God had to become one of us. And thus, we have the incarnation, in which God became human to pay the price of sin for us.
And so, God the Son left His rightful place. He humbly became a human, lower than God, lower than the angels until He was crucified as a man in place of humanity.
This next part tends to trip us up. Jesus showed God’s power through weakness. God’s humilty allowed Him to become human, live a life of righteous faith and through the weakness of being human, show us God’s glory and power.
3. Glory Through Suffering
We might ask just how can we see God’s glory through suffering.
Thus far, the preacher of Hebrews has shown us the exalted Christ. We have seen how God the Son is exalted above all of creation. The Son is superior to all of creation because it is through Him that creation happened. It is through Him that all of creation is held together. Without the Son, there is no creation and without the Son working even today, there is no chance that creation could still exist.
Beginning in this chapter, we start to see how the exalted Son, who is above all creation was made lower than the angels and why He was made lower. We see how we moved from an exalted Son to the incarnation in order that the exalted Son can pay the price for our sin so that we can be raised with the Son back to how God created us to live.
It is difficult for us to grasp during this part of life. We cannot see everything being subjected to Him. As of now, it can seem as if nothing is subjected to Him.
The truth is, the reality is, everything is subjected to Him even though we cannot see that yet.
What we can see is Jesus. By reading the Bible, the Word of God, we can witness God’s Word being made human, living a life of suffering just as we do but then we also see in God’s word just how Jesus was raised back up to His rightful place and how, as Jesus the Son, is once again crowned with glory and honor.
It was through His suffering that God brought us salvation. It was through His suffering and His resurrection that God gives us the promise of having a lasting and living relationship with God once again.
As we see the exalted Christ humbly become human, die in our place so that He is once again exalted, we witness what God desires for us.
Created to be in a relationship with God, we have been made lower than the angels because of our sin but we can be raised once again with the exalted Christ into a rightful, eternal relationship with God.
What about you? What is your relationship with God?
Is your relationship strong enough that God’s glory can shine through your weakness?
Let’s pray.
- - Hebrews 2:5–9CSB

1. God's Design for Humanity

2. Jesus' Humility and Power

3. Glory Through Suffering

Hebrews 2:5–9CSB