All right. Well, if you have a Bible, please turn with me to Hebrews chapter two. We're going to continue our sermon series through the letter to the Hebrews. We'll look at Hebrews chapter two verses 10 through 18 this morning. It's on page 1276 if you're going to use one of the Bibles that we have underneath the chair in front of you. Here now God's holy true and life giving word Hebrews chapter two starting with verse 10. For it was 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. 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 who 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. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you so much for your word and we just ask now, Holy Spirit, would you be with us and open our eyes to the glory and majesty of the Lord Jesus in these verses?
Pray, Lord, you would give us a better understanding of Christ's suffering and ours as well.
We just pray, Lord, that you would be with us now. Lord Jesus, help us to see you and keep our eyes fixed on you as you are the author and finisher of our faith. We pray you would use this time, Lord, to equip us and grow us in our faith, help us to know you more and equip us to make disciples of our neighbors and the nations. We pray all these things in Jesus name for your glory and for our joy.
You know, seeing Josh up here talk about the youth ministry brings back memories because if you're not, if you haven't been here too long, I used to be a youth pastor at some crazy church that hired me. One of the things that was interesting about youth ministry is I had been in youth ministry as a youngster, as a youngster. Come on. See how old I'm getting. I had been in youth ministry when I was in high school and things like that and when I became a youth pastor, I was kind of surprised that some of these games that we used to do were suddenly banned. You weren't allowed to do these things anymore. Like chubby bunny. You know, you can't do chubby bunny anymore. You remember what chubby bunny is? So chubby bunny is where you take a whole bunch of marshmallows and stuff them in your mouth and the person who can get the most marshmallows in their mouth and still articulate chubby bunny wins. But you can't do that anymore because kids were choking or something which is horrible. But that one's over. You know what else is over is the trust fall. Nobody's doing the trust fall anymore. Remember the trust fall? The trust fall was where what you do is you'd have a kid get up on like a stool and then you'd have a whole bunch of other kids standing there underneath and the kid would just fall. Here I come guys and fall back and then the kids would catch that kid to kind of teach trust. Sometimes they weren't paying attention and the kids went all the way to the floor and slammed down and so as you can imagine I guess they don't do that anymore, no more trust fall. Because if you think somebody's going to catch you and they don't, that doesn't help with trust. Oh, and lawsuits. That's the other thing. It's the other thing. But it's true, right? If you think that somebody's supposed to catch you and they don't, well it makes it pretty hard to trust.
You know we go through so many difficult things in life. I mean life is really hard and so often when we're facing something really challenging, painful, emotionally, physically, we kind of feel like God was supposed to catch us and He didn't. You ever felt like that? You know our default position, our default position is that if God is good and He loves me, then He should catch me every time. He should make sure that everything goes smoothly for me. That's kind of our default position. The fall hardwired that into our DNA. Now the author of Hebrews is writing to people like you and I who are experiencing various forms of suffering and some of them had even begun to drift away. Remember a couple of weeks ago when we had that very stark warning. Do not neglect what God has revealed in His Word or in His Son. Last week, Pastor Michael helped us see what the author of Hebrews is talking about in the beginning of the chapter where he's kind of showing us that you know humanity was created with glory and honor. There wasn't suffering. It was amazing. But then we fell into sin and we don't see that anymore. We don't see that glory and honor. We see sin and misery. And He showed us how Jesus who also in heaven throughout all eternity with God didn't fall but chose to enter into our sin and misery. The thing is though He's gone back. He's been exalted back to glory. So He's had this trajectory of coming into our sin and misery. But then going back to glory and now we're understanding a little more of that trajectory and how his story is our story as far as returning to be in the glory that we once had with God. In this week's passage, the author is really helping Christians understand some things about the nature of suffering. And it's kind of a hard thing to wrestle with but it's so critical that we understand it so that we understand it's a major part of what it means to be a follower or disciple of Jesus. And here's what we need to understand that faith in Christ does not exempt us from suffering in this life but it does equip and empower us to get through it. Faith in Christ does not exempt us from suffering in this life but it does equip us and empower us to get through it. God has reasons for your suffering and we'll talk about some of those in future passages of this book but for now we want to get deep into our hearts the reality that God has not failed to catch us. He is at work and Jesus is the one who gets us through our suffering and so we're going to talk about this in three ways. We'll talk about how Jesus is the founder of our salvation. We'll talk a little bit about the wilderness of our salvation and we'll talk about Jesus as high priest of our salvation. So let's jump and keep your bottles open. We want to walk right through. I want you to see these things in the Word of God. Let's talk about the founder of our salvation looking at 10 through 13 and here what we want to realize is that Jesus has shown us how to get through suffering. Jesus has shown us. Jesus has taught us how we get through suffering. Take a look at verse 10. It says, 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. Now let's just kind of draw out some truth statements that we can deduce from what he said. One of the things that we see in these verse in this verse is that God has always had a plan to bring a portion of fallen humanity back to his presence, back to glory, bringing many sons to glory. That's always been the plan and that God was going to bring these children back to glory through this individual, this founder of our salvation and that is referring to the Lord Jesus. Now this is interesting about that word founder. You see it's got a nuance of not only somebody who's accomplished something but also somebody who's leading something. You could translate that word leader or even pioneer. He's the one to go first. Okay. And so we're seeing that what that means is he's not only accomplished something but he's leading something and that's why it was fitting or it was appropriate that Jesus suffers. It was fitting that the one leading people to glory should suffer. That's what it says and it says actually it says God should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. Now it's important that we understand that it's not talking about moral perfection. Jesus didn't become morally perfect through suffering. That word perfect has more of a nuance of complete finished. Okay. So what we're seeing then ultimately what he's saying here is that Jesus had not yet completed his role as the founder and leader of our salvation until he had suffered on the cross and died on our behalf. Suffering was an essential part of how Jesus gets people back to glory and so it is fitting it makes sense that Jesus would experience suffering as he brings people to glory because we experience suffering as we are brought to glory. You see that? It makes sense that the one who's leading us through suffering to glory would also go through suffering to glory. That's what he's saying in verse 11 for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source now to sanctify us to set something apart. In other words he's saying it makes sense that the one God sent to set apart a people for returning to glory would go through the same things that the people would go through so they can look to him for salvation and for help in their suffering and he's he's
pointing out this fact that God is the father of Jesus. He's also our father right? We're a family and that's what he's getting at in verse the rest of verse 11 and this is where we really see this made out by he reaches back into the Old Testament and pulls in these Old Testament quotes to show us how Jesus shows us how to get through suffering. Look at second part of 11 he says that's why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. God is the father of the Son of God. God is our father. Okay verse 12 saying I will tell of your name to my brothers. That's how Jesus refers to us. In the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise and again I will put my trust in him and again to hold I and the children of God. I and the children God has given me. Now this is amazing because what he's doing here is he's grabbing these Old Testament quotes and he's basically putting them in the mouth of Jesus and what's interesting is that first one I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise. That's from Psalm 22. What else is from Psalm 22? My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? We've already seen Jesus quote part of Psalm 22 and what's interesting about Psalm 22 is it's this dark, scary, where are you God Psalm that ends up in this vindication and in the Psalmist is praising God. This is one of the verses. I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will sing your praise and so you see that trajectory. He was suffering. My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? But now we know that Jesus is exalted and he's telling us of his father. He's telling the congregation. He's singing God's praise and he's showing us how we get through suffering in those next two verses. This is really amazing. It's from Isaiah chapter 8 verse 17 and 18 where he says I will put my trust in him. Behold, I and the children of I and the children God has given me. This is amazing. So in Isaiah 8, Isaiah is writing about how everything seemed to have gone wrong. The people were not listening to God. There was all sorts of trouble on the horizon and one of the things that gave Isaiah hope is God had given him some children and really what Isaiah is saying in that moment is even though everything's going nuts around me. I will put my trust in him and so will the children that God has given me. I see it. This is now in the mouth of Jesus. Jesus is saying I'm going to get through suffering by trusting God. Me and the children God has given me. They're going to do the same thing that in the same way he trust God through his suffering. You and I, the children that he's bringing to glory, trust God through our suffering. That's how we get through suffering. Jesus has shown us that in the same way that Jesus trusted God through his suffering. Now we looking at him, trust God through our suffering as well because Jesus knows how to trust God through suffering. There's no one that knows better than Jesus how to trust God through suffering and he's the one we look to.
God didn't give us a wrestling coach to be our lacrosse coach basically. Think about this. When I was in middle school, I started playing lacrosse and we were really excited. The team was really excited. We didn't have a coach yet but we were getting pretty excited and practicing just by ourselves and then also we found out that we got a coach and it was a coach named Mr. Dolancy. Coach Dolancy and he was a really great guy. So nice but he didn't know anything about lacrosse. He was a wrestling coach. He didn't know a thing about lacrosse. He was like holding the stick wrong. He'd like blow his whistle in games and say, hey, they can't do that. We'd be like, coach, they can do that. That's okay. I mean it was just crazy. He knew nothing about lacrosse. And so we had fun that year but we did not learn anything or win. We didn't win. Either. But then a couple years later when we moved up to a different level, oh, then we had a coach who knew the sport of lacrosse. I mean this guy had played lacrosse in high school and he'd played lacrosse in college and he had coached lacrosse and the things he knew and the ways he was able to show us how to throw faster and move quicker and pass better. All these different things that he was able to show us because he knew it so well. Man, we became so much better. We started winning because we had somebody who knew the game. We knew somebody who was an expert in lacrosse teaching us how to play and the beauty of what we're seeing here is then the most difficult thing that we face in life, right? Our suffering, whatever form it takes,
we can look to someone who knows infinitely what suffering is like and how we get through it by trusting God. Jesus is the foremost expert on going through suffering to glory and so when we look to him, we're not looking to someone who hasn't suffered, we're looking to him who has suffered. He's the expert. He teaches us. It doesn't matter what it is. Maybe you're suffering with some sort of difficult health complication and it's physically painful. He knows physical pain. Maybe it's something more emotional, but he knows emotional pain and he trusted God all the way through. So he teaches us how, right? And the more that we know him, the more that we see him and understand him, the more really we're learning how do we trust God through suffering. That's what he teaches us as we know him more and more. So our suffering should not drive us from him but to him that we would seek him more in his word, that we would seek him more in prayer, that we would seek him more in worship because we want to see how do we do this? How do we follow you who went through suffering to glory? How do we follow you through our suffering to glory? He teaches us. He teaches us and he gets us through the wilderness. That's what we want to talk about next. Look at verses 14 through 16. Jesus is the founder. He's the leader. He's leading us through something, the wilderness of our salvation. See, you have to understand that Jesus is actually taking us somewhere, right? We forget that sometimes. But he's actually, we're on a journey. He's taking us somewhere. Look at verses 14. So since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things. In other words, that you and I, the children who are being brought to glory, we're human beings. We're fully human. Therefore, Jesus became fully human to lead us but also to do something as a human being that no ordinary human being could do. He was able to do something that only a human being who's also fully God could do. That's what he talks about next. Look at the rest of 14. So 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. Now, what he's getting at here is that the problem with humanity is not only that we sin, but that we sin because by nature we believe the lies of the devil, who constantly tells us that we cannot trust God. Through believing the devil's lies, we continue on in sin and we're afraid to die because we fear God's judgment. Now, believing that Jesus died for us breaks the devil's power over us because the cross and resurrection of Jesus show that we can trust God. It shows that the devil is a liar, and so it breaks that power that he has over us. Once we trust God, we can see that he hasn't abandoned us but that his son is actually leading us through something. And this is where he gets into this Exodus imagery. This is really sweet. Take a look at verse 16. He says, for surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. So now we're thinking nation and Israel, but we're also thinking everyone who believes, everyone who believes is the son of Abraham, right? So think about this. He says for it is the offspring of Abraham that he helps. Now that word helps is really amazing because it literally means to lay hold of. He grabs hold of them. It's not angels that he grabs hold of. It's believers that he has grabbed hold of. And in Jeremiah 31, verse 32, it talks about how God grabbed hold of the Israelites and took them out of slavery in Egypt. And so he's actually invoking kind of an Exodus mindset. Here's how we should understand ourselves. We go back in the Old Testament and we see that what happened was Pharaoh had God's people enslaved. He had power over them. They were in slavery. And God removed Pharaoh's power with the plagues and then led them out through Moses. But again, there's also what's really at play here is he grabbed them by the hand really and led them out through Moses. And so really what he's doing is he's placing us in that same story. He wants us to understand that the true Pharaoh is the devil who through his lives had power of death over us. But Christ, the true and better Moses, who we'll talk about next week too by the way, is the one who has grabbed us by the hand and is leading us out of slavery. And the people of God did not go from slavery in Egypt to Canaan, the promised land. There was the wilderness. They went out of slavery into the wilderness and that's what we have to understand. We are in the wilderness. We are being led. We are being taken out of slavery to sin and to disobedience to the promised land. In other words, the reason that we suffer is because we're not home yet. We're not there yet. There's no promises that we will have heaven before we get there. We're on our way. He is leading us just like God led his people out of slavery in Egypt. You and I are being led out of slavery to sin, out of slavery to the devil. And the wilderness comes before Canaan. One of my, there's a movie that I like and you've probably seen it. But it basically involves a scene where a soldier is in Vietnam and he gets shot. And so he's hurt, but he decides he needs to run out of the battle. So he's running. And on his way out he sees his friend, another fellow soldiers laying there hurt and can't move. So he picks him up and he runs him out onto the beach. But while he's going, another guy says I need help. So as soon as he drops off the guy, the first guy he runs back in and he picks up another one, right? And he's running him out. While he's running him out, he sees another guy. So after he drops off guy number two, he goes back and gets guy number three and he keeps doing this. He's bringing all these people out to the beach where they can be safe and where they can be picked up and rescued. And you know, immediately when they're picked up, they're not healed, they're not okay yet, but they're being taken to where they will be healed. Right? They're being taken. And what this passage and this imagery of him taking us by the hand or laying hold of us, it puts us in a position to make a choice. Do we believe the lies of the devil that we're lying by ourselves alone suffering? Or do we believe the truth that God has laid a hold of you in Christ? He has a hold of you and he's running with you in his arms, taking you and me to glory where we will never suffer again. Can we choose to believe that's what's happening as we face these different struggles? Maybe you're having a very, very difficult marital struggle right now. You cannot figure out why his marriage is so tough. It's so frustrating and hard. You have to see yourself in the arms of the founder of your salvation who has not only paved the way through his own suffering, but he's leading you through yours. He's taking you through yours. You're in his arms. He has laid a hold of you and he'll get you there. He'll get you through the wilderness to glory because that is God's plan for you. Along the way, not only is he holding you but he's a high priest. He's a high priest. Let's take a look at that versus 17 and 18. What we see here is that Jesus meets our true needs, our deepest needs when we're suffering. He meets our deepest needs when we're suffering. You think about this. When are you most likely to really begin to doubt God? When are you most likely even to be tempted to sin? When are you most likely to be tempted and even give in to sin when you're suffering? Maybe if you've been through alcoholics anonymous or if you know somebody who has recovered from alcoholism through alcoholics anonymous or narcotics anonymous, you know, they teach something there that's really actually it's so helpful not just for recovering alcoholics but for every one of us and they teach, they teach people there that when you are hult, when you are hurting, angry, lonely or tired, hult, hurting, angry, lonely or tired, you are most vulnerable. It's most likely that that's when you go back to alcohol or to drugs and so what they do is they say when you are feeling that you're hurting or you're feeling angry or lonely or tired, that's the time when you need to surround yourself with your sponsor or with other people who can encourage you, who can help you. They say that the more you do that, the more you get help when you're feeling hurt or angry or lonely or tired, the more you persist in sobriety. Well the reality is we are most likely to give in to temptation to sin or the temptation to abandon our faith when we are hurting or angry or lonely or tired or any type of suffering. That's when we are most tempted to doubt God, to turn away from God or to sin to try to deal with our suffering. So really our greatest need when we're suffering is not that we get out of that suffering. Our greatest need when we suffering is to be assured that our struggles to trust God won't damage our standing with God. And that's what we see here, look at 17. 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 people or because he himself has suffered when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted. And this is where he's beginning now, he's going to develop this theme through the rest of the book, Jesus as our high priest. Now the priests, the Old Testament sacrificial system, the priests were the ones that brought the sacrifices, killed the animals, made the sacrifices to symbolize a payment for sin so that God and his people could be reconciled. And he's calling Jesus the high priest because Jesus is the ultimate priest who offered up the ultimate sacrifice himself on the cross so that his death would pay for our sins and that we would receive the declaration of righteous through faith. And so here's this high priest and he talks about propitiation on the cross. God's wrath was turned away from us, propitiated, turned away from us because it went to Christ instead. And so because the wrath has been turned away, what faces us then is mercy and faithfulness, continued mercy to us, continued faithfulness to us. No matter what we're facing and no matter how tempted we are in no matter of time, how many times we've continued mercy and faithfulness to us. And that's how he's able to help us in ways no one else can. Look at verse 18, for because he himself has suffered when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted. In other words, nobody knows more than Jesus how hard it is to trust God when you're suffering. So nobody knows more than Jesus how difficult it is, how heavy that weight is of trusting God when we're suffering. He knows nobody knows more than him. You know, sometimes we think that maybe Jesus can't truly relate to us because he never gave in to temptation. He never failed. But the reality is because he never failed, he knows even more of how we feel when we're tempted. Because he knows the depths of temptation that we haven't even seen. Think about this way. There's been a number of times since Hannah and I had children where one of my kids has attempted to pick something up that's crazy, heavy, and they're not going to be able to do it. And you know, when I see that, when I see them trying to lift up something that I know they can't lift because it's actually so heavy, I can barely lift it and currently I'm stronger than my children. In that moment, you know, I see them, you know, I've just not too long a little howdy-may, it was like a bag of full of heavy books or something and she's like trying to pick it up and I can see this, it's just not going to happen. And I know it's not going to happen because I know how heavy that bag of books is because I struggle with it. Right? And so my response then is to rush to her. If I know I can barely pick that up, I know she can't. And so I pick it up with her, I help it, I help her, help carry that burden. And you understand, right? Like Jesus knows how unbelievably heavy the temptation to doubt God or sin against God is when we're suffering. He knows. And so because he loves us, when we go to him and say, I'm struggling here, Jesus, I feel like I want to, they're abandon the faith or I feel like I want to do something, I'm going to regret, I need some help. He doesn't shun us, right? The wrath has been turned away. No, he says, look, I know how you feel, I can have mercy on you because I know how you feel and I'm faithful to you. I'm not going to give up on you. I'm not going to turn away from you. I'm here with you. I mean, isn't that amazing? To know that's how he responds to us. Now, let's make this practical. Let's make this practical. How do we do that? Here's how we do that. You know what we need to do? We need to be a people who's realizes that we're all tempted. We all are tempted to doubt God. We all are tempted to sin, especially when we're suffering. And so we need to be a church that knows how Jesus responds to people who are in temptation so that when we say to one another, I need help. I really want to do something. I'm going to regret. I need some help. We rush around that person and we say, Jesus is merciful. He's with you. We're with you. We will stay beside you. We're faithful. He's faithful. We'll be faithful to you. Like Jude says, have mercy on those who doubt. What a wonderful truth. That we get to be a body of believers at church where we can be honest that we're tempted to do things we don't want to do. We're tempted to sin. We're tempted to abandon the faith. And knowing that, if we say that, we're not shunned, we're hugged and we're told we have a merciful, faithful, high priest. And so you need to be reminded of the mercy. You need to be reminded of his faithfulness. And we do that by hearing those things and feeling those things from our brothers and sisters around us, which is why it's so important that we have this community, right? We need to be in a life group. We need to be connected to other believers. We need at least one really good, faithful, gospel-centered friend whom we can be really honest with so that when we are tempted, we can be honest. And then that person can show us the mercy and the faithfulness of our high priest.
And that helps us trust. And that helps us believe that Jesus has shown us how we get through suffering. It's through trusting him. And it helps us believe that Jesus has not abandoned us. He is leading us carrying us through our suffering. We will get to glory. We will get to Caden. And that Jesus, because of the cross, offers mercy and faithfulness and true help to us at all times. So we can sing what we're about to sing, right? We're about to sing. Your plans are still to prosper. You have not forgotten us. You're with us in the fire and the flood. Faithful forever, perfect in love. You are sovereign over us. He's the founder of our salvation. He's taken us through the wilderness. He is our high priest, merciful and faithful. He'll get us there. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Would you help us to trust? Would you help us to see in Jesus? Not only our Savior, but our leader? Would you help us to trust through the wilderness all the while remembering his mercy and faithfulness to us? Help us to feel his presence by the love and care of our brothers and sisters who are going with us to glory with you. We pray these things in Jesus' name and for your glory. Amen.