This evening we're in Hebrews 2 verses 5-9. Last week in the letter we looked at verses 1-4 of chapter 2 and in there the author gave his first warning in the book and that was not to drift away from Jesus, like a boat taken by wind and waves and currents and but slowly and subtly drifting from Jesus. And so missing out on such a great salvation. No, he says I want you to pay closer attention, pay closer attention, claim to Jesus, more yourself to Jesus.
So in chapter 1, to encourage us to more ourselves to Jesus, he shows us the beauty of Jesus in his divinity. Right? He's the Son of God, he's God of God, he's God himself, the Creator and the Sustainer of all things and the angels worship him and serve him. We saw these things in chapter 1, but having spoken so highly then of his greatness in accordance with his divinity, he has to answer the question that what is the Son of God doing in so humble a state as taking on human nature and walking this earth?
What's he doing being born in a manger born in a poverty, weak as a baby wearing diapers that have to be changed by others, nursing and a mother's breast growing up only to suffer the miseries of this life and death upon a cross. And so here in chapter 2, he explains the greatness of Jesus in accordance with his humanity. And so tonight we come to the question why did God become man? Let me invite you to consider that from Hebrews chapter 2 verses 5, 3, 9.
Here the word of God, for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, but what is man that you are mindful of him or the Son of man that you care for him? You have been a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet 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. Amen.
This is God's word. Let's pray together. Father, in heaven, open our eyes to see wonderful things in your word. Show us Jesus.
In his glory, in his goodness, in his grace, and so help our hearts cling to him. In Jesus name, amen. Why did God become man? That's the question tonight.
Let's start with the story. True. In the jungle episode of the TV series Planet Earth, there's this fungus that destroys everything it comes in contact with. It will land on an ant, and the fungus will board its way into the body of the ant and make its way to the brain where it gets there.
Somehow it releases a message to the ant to climb a tree, and when the ant gets to the top, it attaches itself there, and the fungus begins to digest the ant from the inside out. And eventually, a mushroom-like thing will pop out of the head of the ant, and when the wind blows on the mushroom, the ant has a lot of fungal spores released in the air, and they land on all the ants below, and they destroy the entire community. Happy Halloween. That's planet Earth, and this is how ever it happens.
That's what happens. But that is also, in a way, what's happened in this world with the first man sin, Adam. Like a spore set free, by the way, that infects all, destroys all, brings death to all. But what is even more incredible in the community of ants is that when one of them realizes that one of the ants has been infected, they will send an uninfected ant to remove the infected ant from the community so that the community will not be destroyed.
But in doing so, that uninfected ant will become infected, and that is, in a matter of speaking, a picture of the gospel, the only uninfected one gives himself for the infected that we might live. In the language of our passage, Jesus tastes death that we might have life. It's incredible. The son of God adding to himself true humanity without ceasing his divinity, God becoming man to bring mankind back to God by tasting death for us.
In fact, it's so fantastical a claim. It's a real stumbling block to some people. They find it too outrageous to believe. They'll say things like this.
Well, if there is a God, well, then if there really is one, then he is awesome. He's transcendent. He's majestic. He's all-powerful.
In which case, how could he become so small, so weak, so unimpressive, as to become human? Now, that's not a new objection to Christianity. In the early church, there was a group of people called the dosages from the Greek word meaning to seem or to appear to be. And they said Jesus only appeared to be human, but he really wasn't human.
And part of the reason they believed that was they had a hard time believing in the infinite eternal God of the universe experiencing the humiliations of human weakness, suffering, and death. It's such an extraordinary claim. They would agree with C.S. Lewis, but not believe in Jesus like he did.
Would Lewis suggest that believing in the inflesement and crucifixion of God is like believing in one of us becoming an ant and letting all the other ants kill us? So they said Jesus was God, but he only seemed to be human. He wasn't really human. They also had difficulty believing in the true humanity of Jesus because in the first and second centuries, a lot of people thought that matter, the stuff of the universe, is evil.
But that the spiritual things are good. And so the soul is good, but the body being matter is evil. And so their view of redemption was we got to get out of the body. Freedom, redemption, life is found in becoming a pure spirit and getting out of the body, leaving the material aspect of reality behind.
And so then they, drawing a conclusion from that, said, well, how could a good God, a perfect spirit, possibly take upon himself, true, genuine, humanity, a body, and a soul? And so some raised these kinds of objections, some in our own generation do, at least I know that up until about, well, I don't know, a few months before my dad died, his biggest objection to Christianity was if there is a God, then there's no way he became enfleshed. But the Lord persuaded him otherwise by the end. And so against this view, the author of Hebrews insists God became man.
Why? And so now we get to our text. Why? And to answer that question, notice how he answers these questions.
What does it mean to be human? What's wrong with humanity? And so then what did Jesus do? In verses five to eight, what does it mean to be human?
It means dignity and dominion. What's wrong with humanity? Our rebellion brought disorder and death. And in verse nine, so what did Jesus do?
Jesus is the death eater who destroys death and disorder and restores our dignity and dominion. So let's think this through in three parts. First, in verses five to eight, what does it mean to be human? Well, God made mankind with dignity and dominion so that by a man our dignity and dominion must be restored.
Notice verse five, it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking. Remember that angels are not given dominion over the world. Mankind was given that. And that's true of creation and true for the world to come to new creation.
And he illustrates this from a song where he says it has been testified somewhere. And he's referring to Psalm eight. He quotes a portion of it, but let me remind you of the whole of psalm eight. It's not very long.
Maybe you want to turn there. Maybe you just want to listen in. The psalm reads this way. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
He'll begin there with a note of praise and he'll end there with that same note of praise. And it goes on, you have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes to steal the enemy of the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea. Whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. And so here in Psalm eight you have the dignity and the dominion according to the original creation in the Garden of Eden. In verses three and four of that Psalm, the Psalmist looks to the heavens and awes, the son of the moon and the stars. And he's humbled.
He's humbled. And then he realized that he's amazed that the God who can do all of that cares about tiny little people. And aren't we in a way of speaking insignificant by comparison to Jupiter and the Big Dipper and Black Holes? How many thousands of years or whatever have they been and you and I are but less than 80 in this room?
And they'll be there when we're gone. I mean, but think of it. Think of it. He says, God's saying to us, I've made these massive things, but you are the crowd of my creation.
You are the ones I love most of all. Right? What is man? That you are mindful of him and yet you are.
He just can't really take that in. And so he gives us dignity as the crowd of his creation. And he gave us dominion. And you remember, you know, verses four to six reflect on Genesis chapter one.
And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image in the image of God created in male and female. He created in male and female full of dignity and given dominion over the earth. And so part of God's plan for the very start was that men and women would serve under his authority as his vice regents exercising dominion over everything else and managing it on his behalf and for his glory.
God didn't put that kind of authority into the hand of the angels. However, it's altered, they may be. Now actually he put that kind of authority into the hands of people, made in his image. And it was that way at the beginning and it will be that way in the consummation.
But in the meantime, we don't see that so clearly doing. Right? And we'll come back to that. Being given dominion means life is a responsible reflect.
Being given dominion means life is full of meaning. Right? Everything we do is full of significance. Even if you have a professor or a book to study that makes it seem dollar irrelevant, every subject is of interest.
We were designed to understand the world, to care for it, to shepherd it, to master it. And originally without frustration, without lapses in memory, right? Without any thorns and thistles and obstacles to doing so. And that dominion was wrecked by the fall.
But we catch glimpses of it and we need to be reminded of it, even in unexpected ways. Last decade, and now this has become all the rage and fashion, but this was the front edge of it. The University of Michigan and Ann Arbor announced a campus-wide policy that allowed students to select their own designated personal pronoun. Administrators informed the campus community that they were expected to hear to those preferences.
And the university defined designated personal pronoun as both a pronoun and individual chooses to identify with and expect others to use when referencing them. And they give examples. Of course you can use he or she, him or her, but you can use he and sir. Well, we've heard the variety of things.
And as a result, professors were now expected to call students by the personally designated pronoun, even if it had no basis in their biological sex. And so in light of that, Grant Strobel, a student at the University of Michigan and chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom Board of Governors, changed his preferred pronoun to get this, his Majesty. And so it was required that he should be addressed as his Majesty, Grant Strobel. And of course he was trying to poke fun at what he saw as the absurdity of the policy, but ironically, if you'll follow where I'm going with this, it actually captures for us what you and I were created to be.
Right in the language of C.S. Lewis, the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve are destined to be the kings and queens of Narnia, made to be lords of the creation, not to exploit it, of course, but to steward it, not to destroy it, but to harness its potential, not to be enslaved by it, but to enjoy it. That's what we're made for. Do you remember the story of Eric Little, my famous, of course, by the movie Chariots of Fire.
Little was a godly and young man. He eventually became a missionary from Scotland to China and prepared for that during his university days. But first, while he was a student, he also excelled at running. And his sister wanted him to get on with it and go to the mission field.
But first he wanted to train and run in the Olympics. And he said to her, God made me for China, he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure. You see what he's saying.
It's what I'm built for. So I'll pursue that. That's dominion on the track and with the body. And so he was reminds us here of what it means to be human because, well, it is by a human, our dignity and dominion must be restored because it's a mess.
Now we don't easily see dignity and dominion. What do we see? Verse eight, the writer says, at present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. So this is the second reason God became man.
Not only because by man, dignity and dominion must be restored because it was by man, dignity and dominion was destroyed. Here, secondly, because God became man because of the disorder and death that mankind suffers. What do we see? We see disorder and death.
Not everything is in subjection. Notice that language. Now I'm putting everything in subjection to him. He left nothing outside his control.
At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. Now there's an understatement if there ever was one. And by the way, as you're looking at that passage, the him here can refer to Christ, or it may refer to a man. And it is a bit of a toss up deciding which and among the commentators, there's disagreement.
I take it that he's still speaking of man here until verse nine. But some see it as referring to Christ in the time before the consummation, the point being he is ruling from heaven over a world still in rebellion. So we don't yet see all things in subjection to Christ. Others see it as referring to man continuing the thought of Psalm eight in light of our rebellion.
We're made for dominion and that dominion is frustrated. We don't see all things in submission to us. And we were made for that dominion, but that dominion is frustrated. Thorns and thistles and obstacles and troubles abound.
And we all have our illustrations. But I just left thinking about these days, seven years ago, the passenger side door of suburban, the inside handle broke and wouldn't work. But I had a simple and free solution. Just roll the window down, reach out, open the door from the outside, get out, roll the window out and get shut the door.
And so I hadn't gotten it fixed. I told my passengers, hey, it's old, it's a ninety-nine, it's got two hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. Now we're at 330, I think. It's really worth the cost to fix the inside door handle, I don't know.
But then what happened is that the driver's side indoor handle broke as well. And the window wouldn't roll down. And for a bit that I was literally crawling across to the back seat to get out of the suburban. And until the moment of genius, I realized I could recline my seat all the way back, roll the window down, reach around three, open the door, and shirt took a couple of minutes.
But again, it was free on a really, really old car. Well, you have similar stories, problems with much greater consequence, I realize, but not always a solution, do we? I mean, why does everything wear out? Everything break.
Why does it not do what we want it to do? Because of the fall? Because of our rebellion, the whole creation was subject to frustration, plunged into disorder and decay, leading to death. As As One says in the fourth book of the Chronicles of Narnia to Prince Caspian, you come from Lord Adam and Lady Eve.
And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the porous beggar and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Mathematician and theologian place Pascal said it this way, what sort of freak is man? Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe. Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach both.
And of course, the consequences of our rebellion are far worse than broken handles. Forspirations that work, mold and mildew, eating away our homes, my sneaking around our kitchen at night, customers I rate, bosses unhappy, books incomprehensible to your brain, employees stealing your products, family members, estranged in bitterness of heart, dementia, and heart disease, terrors, planting bombs to hurt strangers. We can manage true some aspects of some of these things some of the time, but we are as often mastered as we are the masters. As One said, the greatest single testimony to our inability to manage the world are the countless graveyards and cemeteries that can be found everywhere.
We feel the mercy of time and the ravages of disease and biological decay. Why did God became man? Because we have so ruined everything and he has come to restore it. So this is why Jesus came for restoration through Jesus, the death eater, dignity and dominion are perfectly restored.
Now the writer says we don't see man in control, but what do we see? Notice what we do see verse nine, 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 in the incarnation he was made lower, he suffered death. And in the resurrection he returned and that was the God man to a place higher than the angels.
As the Apostle Peter puts it in verse 3, 22, Jesus has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. He has already exalted, crowned with glory and honor as the head of the New Age, the age that has begun with the coming of Christ, but that age has not yet been consummated in its fullness. We live in the already in the not yet. Already he has exalted, not yet as he made all things new.
The New Age is inaugurated, but not yet consummated. And in him with eyes of faith we do see the dignity and dominion of man fulfilled and restored. Because in him the dust of the earth, as others have said, sits on the throne of the universe, that which was lost in Adam is reversed in Christ. When Adam squandered, Christ recovered, and Adam all died.
Only in Christ are we made alive. That he had to die for us was because death is the punishment for sin. And that he did die for us is due to God's free gift, free gift of grace to us. And so the Bible would not have us to be content with the way things are in this world.
So now he says we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70, or even by reason of a strength, 80, yet their span is what toil and trouble. They are soon gone, and we fly away. We are a vapor.
We are a mist. We were made for a world where strength lasts. And the gospel is the good news that our God has shared our experience. And Jesus has, as it were, eaten death.
Drunk, it's poisoned, swallowed its bitterness, sucked the death out of death. But he might breathe upon us, life, from his life, so that in him, a dimension in heart disease, cancer, car accidents, casualties in the war might never have the last word about us. This is the world we long for. That world where all pain and sorrow are gone forever.
And that is the world God made us for, and that is the world man lost, but that is the world that God man, Jesus restores, and all who trusted him will enjoy it forever. Trust in him. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gift of your son.
Thank you, Jesus, that you loved us and gave yourself for us, becoming obedient, even to the point of death, death upon a cross. And therefore God exalted you to the highest place and gave you the name that is about every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We confess tonight. We bow.
We praise you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen. Let's stand together and sing.