Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Text:

Jesus is many things to us. He’s our Savior. He’s our Lord. He’s the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Our passage this morning highlights four things that Jesus is to us.

Read Hebrews 2:10-18

There’s a lot in verse 10, so I want to spend some time unpacking it because it’s the backdrop of the four things Jesus is shown to be to us in this passage (v. 10), God created everything, and created everything for Himself. We exist to glorify God. That’s our purpose. In fact, that’s the purpose of the whole universe. This ought to bring clarity to our lives.

We’re prone to lose our way or get distracted by life’s concerns. It’s easy to get pulled in so many different directions. Anything which does not help you to glorify God does not belong in your life. Sometimes this means that we need to adjust our attitude. If you blame your job for distracting you from your purpose, the problem is rarely your job. Doing all to the glory of God often means working in your current job as if serving the Lord, not mere men.

This God who created everything, and created it all for Himself, is bringing many people to Himself. It calls us “sons.” We become God’s children. All people are God’s children in one sense. But those who know Christ as Savior are God’s children in a very special sense. God is our Father. We have a personal relationship with Him. We enjoy all the benefits of having God as our Father.

We are sons brought “to glory.” We have a glorious inheritance in Christ. We have a present glory and a future one. In the present, we have the Holy Spirit inside us. In the future, we will be with God forever. But it’s not just talking about inheritance. We are being changed into something glorious. We are becoming more holy, more pleasing to God.

The text says that God brings us to Himself. This is an unfathomable truth. God requires us to repent and believe in Christ, yet God is the one who draws us to Himself. The gospel is truly available to all people, and all people are called to embrace Christ, yet God is the one who sovereignly calls people out of darkness.

With this in mind, that everything was created by God and for God, and that God is bringing many people to Himself, it was fitting that Christ suffered. Why? Why must Christ suffer? Why is that fitting? The writer of Hebrews has already established that Christ is God. That Christ created everything by the Word of His power. That everything exists to glorify Him. So why should the Creator suffer?

The humbling reality is that unless Christ suffered, we would have no hope. We are all sinners. We can’t save ourselves. We can’t live up to the purpose for which God created us. But since Christ suffered for us, we do have hope. We have hope in the future as well as the present. We have hope in a future resurrection. We have hope even when life’s burdens seem so overwhelming, because Christ is with us. Christ is called the founder of our salvation. We’ve done nothing can do nothing to save ourselves. Because Christ suffered for us, we simply need to call on Christ for salvation.

With that as our backdrop, Christ is shown to be four things to us in this text.

1) He is our brother.
2) He is our priest.
3) He is our sacrifice.
4) And He is our help.

First, Christ is our brother (v. 11). Jesus is the Son of God. God also calls us His sons. Even though Christ is far greater than us, and far greater than everything, He calls us brothers. Christ didn’t come to earth with a massive ego, commanding everyone to bow before Him. He came humble. He came loving us. He came demonstrating how a person ought to live. As our brother, Christ demonstrated singing praise to God (v. 12). As our brother, Christ demonstrated trusting in God (v. 13). As our brother, Christ demonstrated a faithfulness to God, even when suffering (v. 18).

Christ is also our priest (v. 17a). The link between Christ being our brother and priest is that Christ could not be our priest unless He was first and truly our brother. A priest is a mediator between God and man. He is the founder of our salvation (v. 10). If Christ were not our brother first, then He would only be God, and there couldn’t be any mediation. But Christ came down as a man in order to be our final and highest priest in order to offer a final sacrifice for sin.

Jesus Himself is that sacrifice which He offered (v. 17b). As the merciful and faithful High Priest, Christ came to offer a perfect sacrifice. But He couldn’t just offer another bull or goat. This wouldn’t have been any different from the thousands of sacrifices in the Old Testament. He had to offer Himself.

His sacrifice was different (v. 14). His sacrifice bridged the gap between God and man. Jesus became flesh and blood just like us so that His perfect sacrifice would substitute for our death. Satan is said to be the one who has the power of death because as long as Satan still exists in the world, there will always be death in the world. Satan tempted man to sin, and when he sinned, he brought death into the world. But because Christ died for sin, Satan’s demise is inevitable, and all who trust in Christ will have eternal life!

But Christ’s sacrifice isn’t just about our future, it’s about our present (v. 15). Christ’s sacrifice sets us free! Without Christ, we are all enslaved to sin. Without Christ, we are all enslaved to the fear of death. But with Christ, we ought not have any fear because perfect love casts out all fear. And we certainly don’t fear death because we know that death is merely the beginning of new life. And our new life is going to be so much better for us than this one! We don’t fear death as believers, we look forward to it! To live is Christ, and to die is gain! (Philippians 1:21) And with Christ, we are not enslaved to sin, but we become slaves to righteousness. We should see God as our master, and seek to obey Him. Not out of fear, though, but out of joy! But even though sin is not longer our master, we still sin. We need help in overcoming the temptations which bombard us every day.

Christ is our help (v. 16, 18). Christ, in the form of the Holy Spirit, helps believers experiencing temptation. We need to remember Christ in the midst of our temptations. Christ experienced temptation. He knows what it’s like. The text says He “suffered when tempted.” Yet He remained faithful. He was made perfect through suffering. We can’t just say, “Well, of course He remained faithful. He was God.” While that’s true, that’s missing the point of this text. Christ became like us to sympathize with us, to set an example for us, to show us that faithfulness is possible if we would only trust in God, and ultimately to be that final sacrifice for us so that we might be forgiven and cleansed of all sin.

So I’d like to end this morning with the reminder that if you know Christ as Savior this morning, the Holy Spirit is in you to help you through temptation, and you can overcome temptation because you are no longer slaves of sin, but slaves of righteousness.