You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. Have you ever been driving along at 80 miles an hour and you took your eye off the road? What happened? Well, you drift. You drift. And if you drift too far, what happens? You die. Serious consequences when you're going that fast. Well, today there are serious consequences, too, if you drift.
Drifting from the Gospel. Yeah, so today in Hebrews 2 on More Than Ink. Well, good morning to you today. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we are excited. We are adventuring our way into Hebrews, a book that both of us admit we are not experts on.
Totally not adequate. And I would dare say that anyone who claims to be an expert on the book of Hebrews is kind of speaking above their pay grade. Well, I don't know. It's an astonishing book, and it's deep in so many ways. But we're hoping as a result of our conversation we have here today and as we on go, that it will intrigue you enough to want you to come back again on your own over and over and over, because that's what it's done with me.
The first time I heard it, I said, I've got to read that again. That's what we do. And I would just encourage you, too, that we, even after all of our years of Bible study, we approach everything that we study, but particularly something like this book of Hebrews with great humility, with a real understanding that we are never going to plumb the depths completely of what is here, but that the Spirit is our teacher, and as He makes things, causes things to leap off the page, we will gain a fresh understanding every time we come to it. Absolutely.
That's what makes this kind of adventuring just exciting. I mean, I just love coming back and going into this stuff. So can I open with a story about this, because we're in Hebrews 2 today.
Sure. And I'm kind of fond of this particular section, because there was a time years ago, maybe like 20 years ago, I was having regular breakfast with a fella at a Denny's restaurant, having our Grand Slam breakfast and stuff like that, and I had just read this section we're looking at today, and I got so excited by what it said in Chapter 2, that I came to him, and as we were getting our eggs, I said, I read the most incredible thing in Hebrews 2 today, and he says, well, what's that? What are you so excited about? I was really pretty worked up about it. And I said, well, I read this verse that said, and it says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? And I said that, and as I said that line, I mean, I literally, as I said that line, a white station wagon passed down the street in front of Denny's, and then hand painted on the side of this white station wagon was, how shall we escape, the whole length of the car, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? And my friend, I quoted to him, I said, well, like that, and I pointed at the car, and he looked out the car, and then we looked back at each other, and our eyebrows went up, and we said, hmm, how about that? That's a pretty interesting example of Scripture leaping off the page, right?
Leaping off the page. Well, that's what we're going to look at today. Why is it that he has such a, it's a very stark message, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? And last week, we came into this section in Hebrews talking about the fact that Hebrews is all about who Jesus is, and especially from a Jewish, from a Hebrew perspective, which is where it gets its name from. So we're into chapter two now, after we've gone past the supremacy of Christ over angels, but it implies more than just who he is, it talks so much more about his role in all of creation. Well, and we haven't actually gone past the comparison with angels, because angels are going to show up a handful of times in this chapter, too. So the writer is still discussing the supremacy of this firstborn son over angels.
And before he continues that argument, he takes a little parenthetical thought here and says, and this is a big deal, and this is why. So you want to start into verse one in chapter two? And well, and it's interesting, because chapter two starts with a therefore, right? And so for you beginning Bible students, every time you see that word, therefore, you look back and find out what it's there for, right? Okay, so that's a stupid pun, but it helps us remember that we need to take in mind everything that was said in chapter one.
Who is this one, and what has been said so far about his relationship to the angels, and why is he so much more, so much better, so much other than they? So that the writer has laid down that argument in chapter one, and then he begins chapter two. Well, he didn't begin chapter two. We begin chapter two.
The two was added later. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received with just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?
It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. Let's stop there. So Jesus is much bigger than angels. That's what we talked about last time. Therefore, we better pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. Okay, so the question that arises in my mind at that point is, what have we heard?
What have we heard? What were we told in chapter one? The author says, God has spoken in His Son. So what we've heard is the Son Himself, the Word become flesh. And He tells us much about salvation and the need for repentance, that whole package about what the gospel is. But then He says, too, that God Himself spoke to us, God bore witness, Jesus Himself bore witness, and then those He spoke to bore witness. And we have all of that witness that we have heard, so we better pay attention. We better pay attention.
I like the way he says it in verse one. It's not that we'll repudiate what we know about the gospel. It's the fact that if we stop paying attention to it, we just drift away from it. We drift. And it's interesting, you can talk a lot about what that drift manifests as, what happens in our lives when we don't remember what Christ has done on our behalf for us because of our inability to pay for our own sins. Many times what we drift into is trying to go back and being good enough to pay God for our salvation. That's one of the things that we drift into and away from, Christ has done on our behalf. There's lots of ways in which we drift away. So there's something about the gospel and who Christ is and His supremacy that if we take it off the front burner of our thinking, we tend to drift into backwater places that you really shouldn't go to.
You need to keep that supremacy there. Yeah, and I was really attracted to this word drift as I was reading this, just preparing for today, because I got to thinking about when do you drift? Well, if you're in a boat, you drift when you cut the engine and you just let the boat float along with wherever the current is going. If you're driving and you drift into another lane, it's because you've either gotten sleepy or you've taken your eyes off the road or perhaps your hands off the wheel. So those things, drifting in a boat can be a fairly gentle process, but drifting when you're driving on the freeway can be deadly. So a drift is not necessarily a harmless process.
It can lead you to death. And He's saying this is the deal. Christ is so much more supreme than the angels and everything in all creation. Remember, He created everything and everything is going back to Him. Then we better sort of listen up. Don't take your eye off Him. And don't let your focus drift to the angels.
Or to anything else that's sparkly and gets your attention. In verse 2, He's kind of opening up the Old Testament a little bit here, which He's going to do a ton as the chapters go on, about the fact that the message that came through angels in the Old Testament, about the Mosaic law particularly, if that proved reliable, if there was a consequence for disobeying those, then hey, when we get a message from the Son, we better kind of take a really close note of what He's being said. And so if we neglect it, not actually just go against it, but just neglect it, then how are we going to escape? And what is it we're escaping from?
That's a good question. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? Well, we find out later on in the chapter that what we're escaping from is death. Yep, yep. But I was kind of intrigued by how great is this salvation?
I mean, that question, I rolled around in my mind for a little while. Well, this is a salvation that God's own Son was given to procure for us. He has already told us in chapter 1 that He, the Creator and heir of all things, Himself purified us from our sins.
That's right. How great a salvation is that? God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Because I think sometimes we minimize the cost of our salvation. We live in an age when Christianity is kind of minimized in general.
And sure, we live in this country, of course we're Christians, right? Or there's a great deal of confusion about what salvation really is. Salvation seems kind of automatic and just coming to us. And if you neglect the reality of the greatness of our salvation, you are in danger of drifting into something deadly. Yeah, and that's a constant danger. We drift if we don't keep our minds state. Because we don't pay attention. Yeah, just like that driving the car down the freeway. If you don't keep attention to what's in front of you, you will drift.
Right. And it's like an extreme danger to us. So He also brings up the fact that not only did the Lord tell us about this, but I like in verse 4, He says, While God bore witness by signs and wonders of various miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. So very much so, God seems like has gone to a lot of work to let us know how we can escape what this great salvation is, not only through what Jesus has said, but the eyewitnesses who heard, and then all these miracles that attest that He is the person He says. God's gone to a lot of effort to say, Listen, and I have validated for you what this message is all about.
So on the basis of even all that heaped up evidence, we need to kind of straighten up and aim in that direction and make sure that we don't drift away from it. And the ultimate validation, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus. Exactly. And Paul used that many times in his discussions, too. He says, you know, and it all comes back to, well, He raised from the dead. He came back from the dead. Right. That was his last comment when he talked in Athens in Acts 17.
And, you know, he goes through the entire thing and he says, And, you know, it's all proven because He came back from the dead. Right. There you go.
A real being, a real person. Exactly, exactly. So this is almost a little parenthetical thing in his old discourse on who Jesus is, but it's like, come on, this is really important.
It has gigantic repercussions. Well, let's move on. Let's go on to verse five. What do you say? Well, we're still talking about angels.
Right? He's still making the case. We're continuing the chapter one discussion. Right. We're continuing the case that this one is greater than the angels. Shall I read?
Sure, yeah. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we're speaking. It has been testified somewhere. What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little while lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Okay, so he's quoting Psalm 8. Psalm 8. We'll talk about that more in a minute.
Almost verbatim. Let me read to the end of the passage. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him, but we see him, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.
Wow, there's a lot of stuff here. Oh, you know, that taste death for everyone has just stuck in my soul like a burr today for a couple of reasons. That's an astonishing phrase. It is, and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, but that's kind of the thrust of this whole passage, that he has become lower than the angels for a purpose, and that is to taste death, to fully experience death for us.
And it kind of underscores what he just says. If indeed Christ came and his purpose was to taste death on our behalf for us, then how are we going to escape that if we neglect that solution? Right. There is no remedy for death if we neglect the one remedy that God has provided, which is the resurrection of his son. It's a huge solution. It is. And if you neglect that- It's the only solution.
You're in big danger if you wander away from that. So, yeah, so he comes into five talking about the supremacy of Jesus over angels again, but he asks a really concrete question. Has God made the offer to angels to subject everything, the world to come? Yeah, never.
The world to come, which is like all of God's promises fulfilled finally. Has he ever subjected the world to angels? No.
I mean rhetorically speaking, no. Actually, I can't, no, I didn't really track this down, but I can't think of anywhere in scripture where God subjected anything to angels. I don't think so either.
I don't think so either. Now, angels are his messengers, and they deliver his message, and people respond with great fear and reverence, but the angels don't rule over anything. Right, right. Yeah, so clearly we're talking about Jesus. I want to quote Psalm 8. He's talking about Jesus right here, and the importance of Jesus actually being a man.
This is the interesting thing. We'll talk about this so much during the entire book is that Jesus is equally God and man, God and man at the same time, which sounds like it shouldn't be possible, but it is possible. But it is possible, and he says so by quoting Psalm 8 right there. You made him a little while lower than angels, but you've crowned him with glory and honor and put everything in subjection under his feet. So it's an astonishing thing that here God has his son, makes him lower than angels, that is, as a man, and then being in that condition, being in a man, still everything is subjected to him.
Everything is under his feet, everything. Now, it's interesting to me, because this raises a study technique question, because the way this writer uses this Psalm is a little bit of a head scratcher. And the ones we're going to talk about next week is even more so, because Psalm 8 was written by David. And if you go back and read Psalm 8, the writer of Hebrews has taken out kind of the middle section and applied it to Jesus. But if you read Psalm 8, it doesn't sound like David is talking about Messiah. He's ruminating on himself as king, and what has God done in subjecting, in giving man kind, rule over creation, in a sense, like he did in the garden.
He said, now take care of it and have dominion over my creation. So that opens this question about how do we handle these kind of Psalm quotations that don't immediately look like they apply? Well, it's a good study principle to remember that we let the Scripture interpret the Scripture. So, if the writer of Hebrews has utilized Psalm 8 to explain his point, then we've got to say, then that's in Psalm 8. And I perhaps have not properly understood Psalm 8 until I see it in this light as it applies to the Son of God. Yeah, well said. Because there are a whole lot of Scriptures that are used this way in the book of Hebrews, and we go, wait, what?
How does that approve his point? And since he's writing to a Hebrew audience, he knows he can drop these verses that they're familiar with and go, you're right. But for us, we're not quite in that same experiencing place.
And so we go, what? Because, yeah, you read Psalm 8, and it talks in general about the role of man in God's creation. But it also talks about how astonishing it is that you have God's creation, which is huge and big and reflects the bigness of who God is.
And then there's man in the middle of it. And yet, even from the Garden of Eden perspective, God says to Adam and Eve, you're going to be in charge of everything. Right, right.
Well, that's just crazy. I mean, we're talking about God's creation and all that stuff. But he has extended it to the Messiah himself. And maybe he's jumping off of that phrase he has in verse 6 there, or the Son of Man that you care for him. That Son of Man is a peculiar phrase in the Old Testament that usually hints at the Messiah, Jesus. So he could be that. He could be that.
I don't know. I don't know what the interpretation was. Well, and we know that Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man, emphasizing his humanity. Emphasizing his humanity.
Fully identifying with us. Yeah. So here we have him bringing out this Psalm 8 justification for why he puts Jesus on such a high pedestal. As an illustration, right, saying it's like this.
He was made lower than the angels for a little while. Yeah, so if he's putting everything in subjection to him, he hasn't left anything outside his control. So that's what he says. He's interpreting for us. That means Jesus is in control of everything. Well, he'd already said that in chapter 1 when he says in verse 13, you know, sit at my right hand until I make everything subject to you. And it already was subject to him because he created it.
And it's going back to him. He is the author of it all. So he's trying to emphasize 100 times here the fact that Jesus is preeminent over all creation.
And so this, how great is this salvation that this one came. But I love how he says now, you know, you've got this question in your mind. We don't see everything at present as subject to him.
That's right. So when are we going to see it? All we can look at right now is Jesus.
Right, right. And we can see him for a little while. We see him a little while meaning, you know, three years basically. What a brief ministry to have such an astonishing effect on the course of mankind. We see him for a little while who is made lower than angels, namely Jesus. But still, even though as a man, a lowly man crowned with glory and honor.
Why? Why is he crowned with glory and honor? This is what's interesting. Because of the suffering of death. So he's crowned with glory and honor because of the death that he's going to undergo.
That's an amazing thing. That's utterly astonishing that the source of life himself would become subject to death. Right. And the suffering entailed with death. That just stops me in my tracks. And that's the point of honor.
That's the honor here. So Jesus, he hasn't even gotten half way through chapter 2 and he's already told us so clearly that the purpose, the telos they say in Greek, the purpose of Jesus' life was to die. And what's the purpose of that death? And he says at the end of that sentence, so that he might taste death for everyone. So there is a destiny we have because of our sin which is death and spiritual death and separation from God, separation from the source of all life.
That's the wrath of God coming down on it. That's what we need to escape if we want to continue to experience life. And it turns out that he himself has tasted death in our place for everyone.
And not just for some, but for everyone. So you know when we use the word taste, we think hmm, let's get a little sample of that on my tongue and see if I like it or not. But this idea of tasting is not just to perceive the flavor of something, but to partake in it, to experience it.
Not just to know about it, but to be in the know about it. Like a wine taster slurps that wine in their mouth and sloshes it all around and just holds on to it until all of the flavors become apparent. It's that kind of idea, it is a complete savoring of death.
And just a little, oh I'm going to dip my toe in. No he became sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him. But what a great word too, because when we taste things we don't fully ingest them. So there's kind of a, and I'm not saying he just didn't really die, but what I'm saying is that there's something about the death that he experienced that wasn't total. What? Which means that there was a resurrection. No he really died. He really died. I'm just saying.
See don't raise a question in people's minds about that. I mean he'll explain this later, but he's used a really interesting word of intrigue right here. What do you mean taste death? I mean didn't he swallow the whole thing? Well there's something in which he fully participated in it by tasting it instead of just smelling it, but there's something not quite total about it. And that not quite total is the fact that he actually conquered death. So he's going to have to unwind that as we go on here and he'll unwind that. But another way to put it is did death actually conquer him?
No. But it does us. So in a certain sense he tastes death, he tastes it just like we taste it, but the process wasn't as full as it would be for us. Well okay but see the scripture says even in 2 Corinthians 5 that death is swallowed up by life. So okay I see where you're going here. He's using a halfway word to intrigue us. That he subjected himself to death, but it did not permanently swallow him up.
Exactly. He overcame it. So this kind of sets me thinking about the conversation Jesus had with the Pharisees in John 8 and I would encourage you to go back and read it from verses 51 to the end of the chapter where he says, truly I say to you anyone who keeps my word he shall never see death. And the Jews immediately said well you must have a demon.
Abraham died and the prophets also. How can you say if anyone keeps my word he shall never taste death? So they understood him.
They understood him. And that conversation actually culminates in him saying before Abraham was I am. He makes this claim to being God the source of life. So that's an interesting connection here I think if we're looking at that phrase taste death and so that's John 8.
You all might go and look at that. It's worth reading John 8 many times. It is. It's a great discussion. But here we've gotten, wow we're out of time again, but here we've gotten halfway through Hebrews 2 and we've come to the point that we understand that this one who created everything who holds everything together and to whom everything is going needed to, needed to come and die and taste death on our behalf for everyone.
Boy there's the gospel even in the first couple breaths. And he didn't need to do it for himself. Nope.
Nope. But we needed him to do it for us. Right. And not because we earned it in any way but by the grace of God. By the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. We didn't warrant it.
We didn't deserve it. But by the grace of God he will indeed die for us. And there it is. There it is.
In the opening verses of Hebrews. Well we need to close down for today but did you track that well enough? Did you see where he's going with this, the supremacy of who Christ is? I hope we have just inflamed your appetite to follow through with this Hebrews study. Yeah.
Yeah. So we will come back next week. We're going to be in the second half of Hebrews 2. And you mentioned Abraham. Abraham is going to come to the floor next time. Abraham is going to show up.
What? So we're going to do more appealing to the Jewish Hebrew mind to a lot of people here and who was Abraham and why is that figuring. But we know at this point right now that Jesus came, the creator came to die on our behalf so that he might taste death for everyone.
That's great good news but how in the world does that actually work? But how great a salvation is that? Yeah and if you neglect that salvation. There's no hope. You're going to drift away into a meaningless direction. There's no other way to be saved. It's just way too big. And it turns out this death will be looked at even much more closely as Hebrews goes on and we talk about the death of the animals and the temple sacrifice and so much more.
So this just tickles the beginning of the whole thing is why would, why would the Messiah have to come and die? So anyway we're glad you're with us. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we'll see you next week. Read ahead because it will take you a while to digest this. We'll see you next time on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments just go to our website morethanink.org. Oh that's, I don't know what to say about that.
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