For Abel, would you please remain standing for the reading
of God's Word? This morning I'll be reading the
letter to the Hebrews. First we'll be reading from
chapter 1 and then from chapter 2.
Hebrews chapter one, verse 1. Long ago, at many times and in
many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in
these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed
the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.
He is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of
His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His
power. After making purification for
sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high,
having become as much superior to angels as the name he has
inherited is more excellent than theirs.
A chapter 2, verse 9. 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 by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things
exist, and bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder
of their salvation perfect through suffering.
For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one
source. That is why he is not ashamed to
call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my
brothers in the midst of the congregation.
I will sing your praise, and again I will put my trust in
him. And again, behold, I and the
children God has given me. Since therefore the children
share in flesh and blood, He himself likewise partook of the
same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has
the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who
through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the
offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like
his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a
merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to
make propitiation for the sins of the people.
For because he himself has suffered when tempted, is able
to help those who are being tempted.
This is the word of Lord. You may be seated well.
During the season of Advent. We focused on the doctrine of
the Incarnation and more importantly, why it matters for
us as Christians. In these past several weeks,
we've seen how the Incarnation helps us understand who Jesus is
as the Son of God. In his Gospel, Apostle John
tells us that in John One that Jesus is the Word, that the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. These last two weeks we've
turned our attention to the book of Colossians.
Colossians 1, the apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is the image
of the invisible God, the first born of creation, that in
everything he might be preeminent.
And in Colossians 2, Paul tells us that in Jesus the whole
fullness of deity dwells bodily. We've also looked at the Nicene
Creed, the words that the Church of Jesus Christ has used to
profess what it is that we believe about Jesus in his
incarnation for centuries. We profess that we believe in
one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of
his Father before our world's God of God, light of light, very
God, a very God, begotten, not made the nice.
And creed teaches us that Jesus it's fully God and fully man,
that he is 2 natures, the divine nature and human nature united
and one person, and that 2000 years ago he was Incarnate by
the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin named Mary, and was made
man. This is why we celebrate
Christmas. But why?
Why the incarnation? Why did Jesus take on flesh?
Why did God become man? You see, because the doctrine of
the Incarnation not only helps us to understand who Jesus is,
but the doctrine of the Incarnation explains what Jesus
came to do. Without the Incarnation there
can be no cross. Without the incarnation there
can be no atonement for sin. Without the Incarnation, there
can be no gospel. And so on this 4th Sunday of
Advent, we're now turning to the letter to the Hebrews and what
we find. The union of God and Man United
together in the incarnation of Jesus is the very source of our
salvation and it's the foundation of our union with
him. First thing that Hebrews teaches
us is this, that Jesus is both God and Man United in one
person. I want you to look with me at
Hebrews one verse one. I wish we had time to get into
every part the passage that I read for you this morning, but I
want to just pick out a few verses for us as we begin to set
our sight on the Manger and Christmas Eve later this week.
The preacher of Hebrews says that long ago, at many times and
in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in
these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.
Now, though this passage is not always associated with
Christmas, it's one of the great and I would argue, key texts for
the doctrine of the incarnation. You can almost hear the apostle
John first words of his gospel in the background.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
The Word was God, and here the preacher of Hebrews says that
long ago and many times, many ways, God spoke to our fathers
by the prophets, but in these last days he's spoken to us by
his Son. God speaks to us by His Word,
but also through His Word, Jesus Christ.
What Hebrews is telling us is that the Bible is not simply the
revelation of God about Jesus, but that Christ himself is in
his person, in his flesh, the very revelation of God.
He is embodied, God revealed to us, and out of his grace and
mercy God has always revealed himself to us.
And that is gracious because in our sin we are so far from Him.
But God has always cut through all of that to show us who He
is. In the beginning, He did this by
the work of His creation. Psalm 19 tells us the heavens
declare the glory of God. The sky above proclaims His
handiwork. And then as we move into the
Pentateuch and read the story the Giving of Law in the book of
Exodus, we see that God revealed Himself to us through His law.
And then as we turn the pages of Scripture to the prophets, we
see that God revealed himself to us through the prophets.
And now the author of Hebrews is declaring that now, after all of
this waiting and all of this revelation, God has now finally
revealed himself through his Son.
Jesus is the fullness of God's revelation.
What does that mean? Well, it means that Jesus is the
center of the story. He is the hinge of all of human
history. He's the fulfillment of every
promise and every prophecy. And the author of Hebrews wants
us to know where we are in that story.
He says verse 2, in these last days.
He's spoken to us by his Son in these last days.
What does that mean? What does it mean that we are
living in the last days now? We often say that now, hoping
that Christ will come back, but here is the author of Hebrews
saying this some 2000 years ago. What does it mean to be living
in the last days? I've always loved a CS Lewis
ended the Chronicles of Narnia. The very final paragraph, the
last words of the last battle, goes like this for us.
This is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly
say that they all lived happily ever after.
But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia
had only been the cover and the title page.
Now, at last, they're beginning chapter one of the great story
which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, and which
every chapter is better than the one before.
The incarnation of Jesus is the turning page of history.
The first advent of Christ's birth marks the end of 1's, but
it's just the beginning of another as we wait for the
second Advent, when Christ comes again to fulfill every promise
and make all things new. Until then, we are left waiting
and wondering, how can the promises of God be true when the
waiting seems and feels so long? As we struggle and sin and
temptation, as we grieve and suffer and experience loss and
disappointment, when the waiting seems long, how can God be
trusted? The author of Hebrews reminds us
God has spoken to us by his Son through Jesus.
God is saying you can trust me. He goes on in verse 3 describing
Jesus with three words. First, he says he is the
radiance of the glory of God. The word radiance is used
nowhere else in the Bible. It means shining or brightness.
It's the way that the light might radiate from the sun.
It's where we get the words of silent night.
We'll sing this Christmas Eve. Silent Night, Holy night, Son of
God loves pure light. Radiant beams from thy holy face
with a dawn of redeeming grace. It's one of the reasons why we
put lights up throughout Christmas.
The picture of light shining in the darkness.
And if your family's like mine, one of the great Christmas
traditions that we have is to go around and look at all the
lights throughout our city. And by now we've been doing it
so many years that we have our route.
You probably have your own. You got to go down Beverly Drive
and go slowly behind all the carriages.
You got to make your way over to the Santa House.
But last year we added a new house, maybe you know the one.
My kids call it the Unicorn House because that was the
theme. This year, the theme is How the
Grinch Stole Christmas. Some of you know what I'm
talking about. We went.
It was such a sideshow that the police were there.
They had shut down the street. Once you want to be their
neighbor, you had to walk in order to make your way to see
the most unbelievable display of lights.
I promise you can see it from space.
The author of Hebrews is saying here is that the radiance of
Jesus is no decoration. It's not a sideshow.
That's not a gimmick. That in the brightness of
Christ, who is the light of the world, we see the very glory of
God. And he doesn't stop there.
Later in verse three, he says that Jesus is the exact imprint
of his nature, just like radiance.
The word imprint is used nowhere else in Scripture.
It's like a stamp or a seal, like an image on a coin.
In other words, the author of Hebrews is using two different
words to show us the paradox of the incarnation, that Jesus is
the brightness of divinity, the glory of God, but in his
physical form he's also the imprint of the very nature of
God. It's the question that remains
for us, the question we've been asking in this season of Advent
is this. Well then, how can that be?
How can Jesus be both fully God and fully man?
He uses a third word. It's the word nature.
Now stay with me here. This is important.
The Greek word for the word nature is the word hypostasis.
It's where we get a theological term that's called the
hypostatic union. I told you stay with me because
this is split entire churches. What the hypostatic union
teaches is that there are two natures, 2 distinct natures in
one person, Jesus Christ. Those two natures are God and
man, divinity and humanity, and what's important for all of us
to understand is that these two natures are full.
In other words, Jesus is not part God and part man like
Hercules or something. He's not 5050 somehow split.
No, He's 100% God and 100% man, and these two natures are united
together in one person, and this union is the foundation of our
salvation. It's the second thing that
Hebrews teaches us, that Jesus went before us as our Savior.
I want you to turn to chapter 2. Find it there in your bulletin,
or again you can turn there in your Bible.
Hebrews chapter 2. The author of Hebrews goes on to
describe the divinity of Jesus by making reference to Psalm 8.
Psalm 8 tells us it's a messianic Psalm, that yet you've
been made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and
crowned him with glory and honor.
Yet you've given him dominion over the works of your hands and
put all things under his feet. By pointing back to Psalm 8, the
author of Hebrews is saying Jesus is the promised Messiah.
He is the King of kings and Lord of Lords.
Everything has been subject to him puts under his feet.
And yet in Hebrews 2 verse 8, the preacher acknowledges that
the world that we live in does not reflect that reality.
This is at present. We don't see yet everything in
subjection to Him. We feel this, don't we, that we
hear that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of Lords.
We hear that He is reigning and ruling over all things.
We look around our world and we say, but it doesn't feel like it
doesn't look like it. Parts of our world have
completely rebelled against Him. Parts of our own hearts have
completely rebelled against Him. And So what do we do?
What do we do with this dissonance between the
proclamation that Christ is king and a world that has turned its
back on him? Where do we turn our gaze?
Verse 9, the author's Heber says, see Jesus in the midst of
a world that is being unravelled by sin.
Look at Jesus verse 9. But we see him for who 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.
This is why the incarnation is such good news, because Jesus
Christ and His divinity did not stay that he came down, and
though he is King of kings and Lord of Lords, and everything
has been placed under his feet, for a little while he was made
lower than the angels. And then notice what the
preacher says. He's crowned with glory and
honor, not in spite of his suffering of death, but because
of it. This is why Jesus took on flesh.
Why did God become man? Jesus was born in a Manger that
he could die on a cross, and that is why He is worthy of all
glory and honor and worship. This Christmas season.
The author goes on verse 10. For it is fitting that he for
whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to
glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect
through suffering, calls Him the founder of our salvation.
That word founder he will use again in Hebrews 12 verse 2
recalls us to look to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our
faith, who for the joy was set before him endure the cross,
despising the shame, and his seat at the right hand of the
throne of God. That word founder, it's an
amazing word. It was used in Greek mythology
to describe a champion, somebody who would go into battle before
the people and fight on their behalf.
That is who Jesus is for us, and that is what he has done for us
in his incarnation. He stepped down into the misery
of our sin and into our grief and our suffering so that he
could go before us, so that he could be our champion, so that
he could fight our every battle and he could defeat sin and
death once and for all. But it also means pioneer.
It means forerunner, my personal favorite.
It means trailblazer. Jesus has gone before us to
death on a cross, but now he goes before us.
He is blazing the trail, making a way of salvation for us.
The Dutch theologian Herman Bobbing points out that every
worldview, every philosophy, every world religion is a self
salvation project, a way at trying to save ourselves and get
to God. The gospel is the only story,
the true story, but God came down to us.
Jesus in His incarnation made His way down to us and order
that we could make our way to Him.
This brings us to the third thing that Hebrews teaches us,
that Jesus is with us as our brother.
I want you to look with me. Hebrews 2 verse 11.
The author goes on, and he says that he who sanctifies and those
who are sanctified all have one source.
He's continuing to help us to understand why the incarnation
matters. And earlier in chapter 1, we see
how Jesus, the radiance of the glory of God, is one with God.
But now we see that in his deity and his humanity, Jesus is one
with us. Notice what it says.
For he who sanctifies, who is that?
Well, that's Jesus, the one who sanctifies.
And then he talks about those who are being sanctified.
Well, who are they? Or those are all who trust in
Jesus Christ for their salvation.
Followers of Jesus, those who've trusted in his death and
resurrection. And notice what he says.
He says they all have one source.
Literally, it says that they are one, that Jesus in his
incarnation has become one with those whom he saves.
This is what we call union with Christ.
You see, in the union of the incarnation, fully God, fully
Man United in one person, we have the source of our union
with Jesus. If there was no incarnation, if
Christ did not take on human flesh, there's no way that we as
humans could make our way to him.
Throughout the Bible we see the story of God coming to us again
and again and again, and then suddenly in the Gospel of John,
we're told that now God dwells with us.
And then throughout the writings, the apostle Paul,
we're given this amazing reality of the gospel that because
Christ dwells with us, we are one with him.
We've been united to him. He uses the phrase in Christ
more than 160 times. Just going to give you a few
examples. Ephesians 2 verse 10 Paul says
we are created in Christ. Galatians 2 verse 20 we are
crucified with Christ. Colossians 2 verse 12 we are
buried with Christ. Romans 6 verse 3 we've been
baptized into Christ. Romans 6 verse 5 we've been
united with Christ in His death and His resurrection.
Ephesians 2 verse 6 We've now been seated with Christ in the
heavenly places in Ephesians 3 verse 17 and now Christ dwells
in our hearts. What does that mean?
Means because of the Incarnation.
When Christ died on the cross, we died, and our sin died with
them. When Christ came out of the tomb
on the third day and rose in his body from the grave, we rose
with him. And now Christ, seated at the
right hand of God to the power of the indwelling of Holy
Spirit, now dwells not just with us, but in US.
And if this seems so high and lofty and too hard to wrap your
mind around, it's because it's getting at the union of the
incarnation. How is it that humanity can be
indwelt by the divine? So Paul, I'm talking about union
with Christ again and again and again shows us that it's the
heart of the gospel. And here the author of Hebrews
shows us that the way that this lives out in our daily lives is
something that we if this seems high and lofty experience every
single day. Look at the end of verse 11.
He says that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.
See, to be one with Jesus is to be included in his family in the
same way that each of you and your own families are one with
your family. We call it flesh and blood.
And what's unbelievable about the incarnation is that we who
once orphaned by sin, have now been adopted into the family of
God because Christ came down to us, The Son of God came down to
be one of us. We are God's children because
God is our Father. And what that means?
Get this. Jesus Christ, that same King of
kings, that same Lord of Lords, that same radiance of the very
glory of God, is our brother. He's not just our Savior, He's
our brother. He's one of us.
And not only that, He is not ashamed to call us his brothers
and sisters. I don't know if you've ever been
ashamed of any of your family members because that might be
too painful of an illustration. Let me give you a different one.
Yesterday I went with a different kind of family and I
went to the Texas A&M playoff game and we stopped at you
Woody's gas station on the way down.
And of course, we're all decked out in our Aggie gear.
And let me tell you, it felt pretty good to walk around
decked out and Aggie maroon and white and see everybody else.
And they're like, yeah, we're all going, we're doing it.
We're going to the game. And after the game, we stopped
at Woody's on the way back, and I'm supposed to never be ashamed
to be an Aggie. But I'll tell you, it felt a
little different to where Aggie maroon Woody's gas station after
the game. Jesus is not ashamed of you.
And if you this morning are so overwhelmed by the shame of your
sin and can't believe that Jesus is not ashamed of you, look no
further than the incarnation, because he was not ashamed to
put on human flesh. He wasn't ashamed.
He's not ashamed to call you brother or sister.
And now He is with us in every respect, verse 17 and every
respect made like his brothers in every way, bearing our
griefs, carrying our sorrows when he suffered and he was
tempted. He is able to help us when we
suffer and we tempted. Whatever you face, whatever you
experience, Jesus knows. Not only does He know, but in
His incarnation He laid His life down for it.
He was born in a Manger. To die in your place on the
cross. He rose from the grave as our
trailblazer to make a way for us in our resurrection.
And now in him, the fullness of his incarnation, He dwells with
us, not ashamed to be with us as our older brother.
Let's pray. Father in Heaven, I pray that as
we now turn the page to Christmas Eve, that you would
fix our eyes on Jesus. As we look around this world and
even look at our own families and our own hearts, we are
overwhelmed with temptation and sin and grief and sorrow.
Help us to see Jesus. Help us to gaze at the Manger
and see the One who came down to dwell with us so he could die
for us, so he could rise on our behalf, so now he might be with
us and walk with us as our older brother.
May we follow him into this Christmas Eve.
We pray in Jesus name, Amen. Let's stay on the scene.