This evening we are in Hebrews chapter 2 verses 14 through 18. So we've come to the last section of the chapter in which as we have seen Really the chapter is dealing with a question. Why did the eternal son of God the Creator is the end of the universe take on human flesh and blood body and soul and suffer and die and Part of the answer to that we saw in verses 5 through 9 He did it to restore our humanity It was by a man that our our dignity was was twisted and our dominion over everything and suffered And so it is by a man and it is fitting the author author has said it's by a man that these things are restored in verses 10 to 13 We saw that he also came to reconcile God's family He became for us our older brother He and he's not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters and and he restores us as the children of God to the family of God And now this evening in verses 14 18 the writer continues Why did Jesus become man to to vanquish our enemies or everything that stays against us? He came to face all of it and to defeat or divert Which is opposed to us and he stands in victory and his victory is for us So what foes did he face what victory did he win?
Let me invite you to consider that from Hebrew chapter 2 beginning here at verse 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood he himself likewise per took 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 He is able to help those who are being Tempted amen. This is God's word. Let's pray father in heaven Give us eyes to see Jesus by the work of the spirit through your word and so encourage our hearts Help us to know what we have in him in Jesus name. We pray Amen Amen well others have noted sons to the ancient Chinese military general and leader He wrote a book called the art of war in the fifth century and he says if you know the enemy and you know yourself You need not fear the result of a hundred battles if you know yourself But not the enemy for every victory game You will also suffer a defeat and if you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle And his thought on war is considered so wise I'm told that it's part of the US Marine Corps professional reading program It's a recommended reading for all United States military intelligence Personnel and well if with the PDAs to be believed it's required reading for everyone in the CIA But we don't know much about that when you have enemies though You need why would it be recommended when you have enemies you need to know what sort of enemies you have what sort of weapons They use and then how to oppose them and to be ignorant is to be defeceless and too often we Christians Don't realize that we have real enemies nor necessarily what Jesus has done to face them and to free us And the writer here points us to four and let me point you to them in verse 14 Jesus disarms the devil in verse 15 He delivers us from death even the fear of death in verses 16 and 17.
He diverts the wrath of God from us So you can have an enemy and it's not the enemy that's wrong. It's your wrong But the wrath of God stands opposed to us and he diverts that from us and then in verse 18 He dispenses help in our temptations. So let's look at those four things in the first place verse 14 Jesus disarms the devil sets 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 So let's start with the devil here There is a devil and he hates you and he hates you and he hates me and he hates God And he hates us because we're God's creation because we're made in God's image Made to represent God on the earth and if we're a Christian He hates us all the more because we believe in Jesus and in Johnny Jesus tells us about the devil He says the devil was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him When he lies he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies Now if you don't already believe he exists then I would say he's already successfully deceived you But don't mistake what he's like in in letter seven of CS Lewis's crew take letters It's that book of letters from in its imaginative from a greater or more powerful or senior demon to a junior demon on how to destroy people Basically the senior demons demon says to the junior demon if any faith suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind Suggested him the picture of something in red tights and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that he therefore cannot believe in you So if you think of the devil wearing long red underwear and a forked tail and horns and a pitchfork Some people who said that such a ridiculous picture or conception of Satan That the being himself is denied But of course he lies even about himself to keep people deceived and he lies to Christians about their relationship with God And Satan will tell you Christians. You're absolutely hopeless.
You're unloved that God's had enough of you and And so he's gonna kick you out of his family if he hasn't already done it So why don't you just give up following Jesus? It's not worth it. That's the lie of the devil. You aren't hopeless You are deeply loved and deeply valued by God God himself died for you How could we say otherwise?
Well, so then in one sense if there's this devil is he destroyed as the text says or defeated if as the Apostle Peter says In his letter the devil is prowling around seeking someone to devour Then what can we say about these things? Well, we can certainly say Jesus bound him He's let's say on a leash and he's doing his sure his end as we know in Revelation is the lake of fire that certain But especially here in Hebrews he is disarmed the weapon he had against us Jesus took away That's the idea here in the way. That's most important Jesus made him impotent against us He has the power of death that says obviously again not absolute power not sovereign authority God has that God has control of death Death is the sentence God pronounced on guilty man in the day you disobey you will surely die But in a sense the devil has the power of death because he entices people to sin and The wages of sin is death and then having enticed you to sin he accuses you of it and he calls for God to judge you for it Though the devil is not infallible often enough. He has a point, right?
He knows when we disobey God he knows we deserve physical spiritual and everlasting death for our disobedience to God And so he points it out and he accuses it and he calls for judgment But the glory of the gospel is Jesus has disarmed the devil Colossians 2 verses 13 to 15 helps explain this You may want to turn there or listen in but Paul and Colossians 2 notes that Jesus died God raised him from the dead And what did he do for believers in verse 13? It says God made us alive together with him with Jesus having forgiven us all our trespasses Now how did he forgive us verse 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands Well, how do you cancel that record of debt? It says this he set aside nailing it to the cross so our debt was laid the Christ's account And he paid our debt and what's the effect of that in Colossians 2 verse 15? He disarmed the rulers of authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him and rulers of authorities there Our technical terms used for the fallen angels like the devil Jesus took away their weapon When they accuse us to God Jesus says I died their death So we can sing as we so often do with joyful exuberance when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within Upward I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin because the sinless Savior died My sinful soul is counted for you for God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me It was glory in the gospel.
He's disarmed the devil. I love this illustration This is a man in Carl Armanding arm-erding he was watching a wild cat gonna zoom and he says I stood there and attendant entered the cage through a door on The opposite side he had nothing in his hands but a broom and carefully closing the door He proceeded to sweep the floor of the cage and we observed that the worker had no weapon to ward off and attack by the beast In fact when he got to the corner of the cage where the wild cat was lying He poked the animal with the broom and the wild cat hissed at him and then lay down in another corner the enclosure Armanding remarked to the attendant. He certainly are a brave man. No, I ain't brave.
He replied as he did the sweet Well, then that cat must be tame No, he ain't tame Well, if you aren't brave and the wild cat isn't tame then I can't understand why he doesn't attack you Armanding said the man chuckled and then replied with an air of confidence. Mr He's old and he ain't got no teeth The devil's threats have no teeth against you. They were pulled out by Jesus upon the cross That is it to say that the devil can't hurt us. He lies to us He entices us to sin.
They'll try to discourage you and make you fearful He may cause you like Job great suffering But what we are saying is a believer in Jesus is safe from eternal spiritual harm Because we've been rescued by Jesus and the devil cannot bring us eternal spiritual harm Maybe this explains then why the Bible says to us resist the devil. It doesn't say flee him We are to flee temptation Paul will say but James chapter four verse seven says resist the devil and he will flee from you Opposes accusations not by arguing your innocence, but by trusting in Christ death for you So stay strong in the grace of the Lord Paul will say put on the full armor of God where the belt of truth around your ways Don't listen to his lies take up the shield of faith with what you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one So Luther will say the Prince of darkness grim we tremble not for him his rage We can't endure for lo his doom is sure one little word shall fell him that word above all earthly powers No, thanks to them abideth that word that word is the word made flesh who took on flesh and blood to disarm the devil That's the first thing I want you to see now the second I want you to see is this verse 15 Jesus delivers us from the fear of death notice that language and And well, let me pick it back up at verse 14 says therefore the children sharing 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 the fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery It's interesting to compare the way people have have written about or spoken about death Neil Simon wrote the eye couple Barefoot the park and such I mean was asked to talk on a show whether making a lot of money concerned him and the studio went Dead silent when Simon answered no what does concern me is the fear of dying But but Christians are freed we need to know that we are are freed from this fear And so a few days before his death the Baptist pastor F B Maya read a very dear friend these words I've just heard to my great surprise that I have but a few days to live It may be that before this reaches you I shall have entered the palace don't trouble the right we shall meet in the morning When John Owen the great Puritan lay on his deathbed his secretary wrote in his name to a friend I am still in the land of the living Stop so don't change that and say I am yet in the land of the dying But I hope soon to be in the land of the living why such confidence? Well the worst fear about death is not the act of dying or the manner of dying nor even physical death The worst fear about death is second death what the Bible calls second death or judgment and Christ took away What is most awful about death and what is most fearful in death the devil can't use our sins to destroy us He could mock us sure he could taunt us. Yes, but can he damn us no Christ bore the curse on our behalf Now we should say a few words here about the fear of death leading the lifelong Slavery and think about what that might mean apart from Christ You know apart from the forgiveness of sins the hope of the resurrection the reality of eternal life and the assurance we can have of these things apart from Those things death is certainly a thing to be feared because if all that is in front of you is either Nothingness or a very unpleasant reality and eternity.
I mean what's what's the abiding option there? And if that's how you think of things well the now becomes all important you have to make the most of this time You have to try and extend this time as long as possible you have to milk it for every personal advantage and every possible pleasure So the fear of death for those who are apart from Christ sets you up for becoming enslaved to all sorts of idolatries and Indulgences eat drink and be married for tomorrow we die and after that either nothing this some people think or or a terrible spiritual eternal reality So some then try to get everything they can get here and now so to speak and become in bondage to the clock Become enslaved to their own desires and they're held captive by things that were once freedoms Some chase after the myth of eternal youth will sacrifice almost anything to satisfy that idol Some become entangled in their own possessions and become owned by the very things they imagine themselves to own And so the bondage that comes the slavery that comes through the fear of death is a very real bondage But Christ victory the author says delivers us from this sort of slavery But what we do not have to be held hostage by the clock or by youth or by success or by power or by status or by pleasure or by things Calvin put it this way although we must still meet death Let us nevertheless be calm and serene in living and dying when we have Christ before us If anyone cannot set his mind at rest by disregarding death that mention know that he has not yet gone far enough in the faith of Christ There are degrees of faith as we see in Matthew there are there are people of great faith and trust and tremendous confidence in Jesus And then Jesus will turn to his own disciples his apostles and say oh you men of little faith And what we want to do is see our faith so built up that our confidence is such in Christ that we're liberating From this fear The key is to see that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us to be convinced as the apostle Paul Says in Romans 8 that neither death nor life nor angels nor demons nor things present nor things future nor any powers Or anything else in all creation nor hyphen or death will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord nothing can separate a believer from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord And so Jesus came to deliver us from death and the fear of death And then thirdly in verses 16 and 17 Notice Jesus diverts the wrath of God from us for surely it's not angels that he helps 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 his people He's the high priest who makes propitiation for the sins of his people and it's not angels he rescues So it's not the nature of angels that he took to himself But it is the children of God he rescues those who trusted them as I promised to Abraham And so it is the nature of those brothers and sisters which he took to himself He was made to like us in every respect Without sin So that he could be a merciful and faithful high priest What does a priest do a priest represents the people to God a priest offer sack offer sacrifices of a Atonement for the sins of people a priest then assures the people when their sacrifices are acceptable and their sins are forgiven And Jesus does that priestly work He is himself that sacrificial lamb in the language of the passage he made propitiation That is he turned away the wrath of God from us By absorbing in himself the wrath of God due to us for our sins I was in seminary a long time ago now. We took teenagers up to a back to church north of town to help them with their vacation Bible school It was a little little Baptist Church and we invited my friend Keith a fellow student to give the daily five-minute Messages and Keith asked for a volunteer to throw a ball as hard as he could So some big strong kid stood up and threw it really hard no problem Keith invited him forward and then Keith asked for another volunteer and One little kid stood up and Keith moved him a couple of yards away Had him turn his back on the big kid and then said when I tell you Throw the wall as hard as you can at the little kid And all of the rest of us leaders were the key you can't do that don't do that though We were alarmed but but Keith did but before he did he stood in front of the little kid between The two boys with his own back exposed and then he said throw it and the big kid did and nailed it and Keith turned around and said that's the gospel God commanded our judgment and God wrapped himself up in humanity to suffer his own wrath and judgment for us And so the gospel is a glorious thing that Jesus Diversed then from us that which is opposed to us and he had to be made like us in flesh and blood in order to function as a priest Before God so that he could truly represent us and truly stand in for us in death He had to take on our humanity to turn away and satisfy The just judgment of God as others have put it the love of God sent the Son of God to bear the wrath of God for the people of God Where's Philip Hughes put it our hell? He made his that his heaven might be ours And there's one last thing here in verse 18 then Jesus dispenses help to us in our temptations I mean even though the fear of death is taken away and we are free what about the pain and losses that lead up Maybe it's not death itself that we're afraid of but it's dying What about all the trials and temptations of life that that go along with living as frail children of Dawson feeble as frail Notice how this passage encourages us verse 18 for because he himself has suffered when tempted He is able to help those who are being tempted So that he took on our nature not only to die but to experience dying And all the sufferings and temptations of both life and death Jesus knows it all he knows how hard it is to say no to temptation He knows how powerful temptation is he knows that exactly what we need because he faced those same temptations Philip's PC minister now says when I was on the faculty of the United States military Academy I spent one summer with the counseling center training of new during the training of new cadets It was affectionately known as beast barracks.
It's a grueling time of physical and psychological challenges under which not a few young men and women begin to crack Which is why the academy provides counselors I was one of several officers who oversaw the center, but the counseling was done mainly by older cadets Who had been through the brutal weeks of that first summer at West Point? The cadets had recently been through themselves and therefore were best equipped to help new cadets who were tempted to quit or to go home Or otherwise fall into despair Well, Jesus understands what you're going through not from afar But we might say from the inside out and he is a sympathetic and merciful Priest when you cry out to him As and he is able to help there is no situation in which he is unable to help As one friend to another. She says no man knows how bad he is So he has tried very hard to be good a silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means This is an obvious lie only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it not by lying down a man who gives in to temptation after five minutes Simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later That is why it says Lewis bad people in one sense know very little about madness They've lived a shelter life by always giving it we never find out the strength of evil until we try to fight it and Christ Because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation is also the only man who knows to the full What temptation means? And so we invite you to celebrate Rejoice the worship God in human flesh Disarming the devil delivering us from death diverting from us the wrath of God and dispensing help to us in our temptations Let's pray on Lord Jesus.
Thank you That in love you came and you loved your enemies and then made us friends. We thank you that you traveled The road we travel in flesh and blood and all its pains and sorrows and miseries We thank you that you freed us and rescued us from that which we deserve we thank you that you you know all our needs You deliver us from the enemy and from death and that you can help and we ask for that help tonight We pray that you teach our hearts to be quick to cry out for mercy and help in our time of need and that we would turn to you And so find you to be the help of your people in Jesus name. We pray amen amen. Let's stand and sing