I'm delighted to be here this morning. I've known Scott for probably 10 years now. I don't know, a longer than that. And when Scott came to seminary, he was just on his way to doing what he's doing today. He weren't in your heart. Lord willing. And it's great to see that that desire has continued and been fulfilled for the puckets were well-loved and comfortable for a few years up on University Boulevard before stepping out in faith, such as this. We have some bicky, my wife and I have some friends, the thanes who worship with you when they're not living in Thailand or traveling to New Guinea or all of places in the world that John fainted. John, he's about 62 and quite blonde hair. He looks like a great white hunter, you know, and he walks all over the world just seeing and telling us, friends like me, like what God is doing around the world. I'd like us this morning to look at Hebrews chapter 2 together and see what God might do in our lives this morning through this part of his word. He's printed in your bulletin, but if you have your Bible, that'd be great to follow along there so you can be familiar with it there. I'm going to be reading, starting in the middle of verse 8 of Hebrews chapter 2, Hebrews chapter 2. And I'll start in the middle of verse 8 because that's where the thought picks up. When 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. It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom are all things exist in bringing many sense to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin, 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, particularly 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. This is the word of God. Let's ask God's help to hear, receive, and apply this word of his. Let's pray together. God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would help us by opening your eyes that we can see the truth in your word. Apart from your Holy Spirit, we don't recognize what is truth from falsehood, and help us by your Holy Spirit to give faith to our hearts, so that we can believe these words, so that we can step out on them and be confident in them, to live according to them. We also pray that your Spirit would take this part of your word and make us not just hearers but doers as well, and I pray that you would help me to know nothing, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we pray all these things in His name, amen. How many people here have gone on that long family vacation in the car? Ever in your life when you were a child, when you were, if you're still a child, when you're grown up, yeah, many people in life, most people in life at some point have that experience, maybe it was a train trip, but usually in North America, it's a car trip because we have roads that go everywhere, big interstate roads, and usually on that trip somewhere along the way, there's this crisis point, isn't there? Where everybody is ready to kill each other. We had, we went on that kind of car trip twice, and then my dad worked for the railroad, and we decided to go on the train from then on, because both when we went to the Ozarks and when we went to Chicago for vacations when I was a kid, we both, both times reached that crisis point, ready to kill each other. And both times, my mom did what a lot of thoughtful moms do when there's that kind of car crisis, you know, dad can only reach around and flail with his hand toward the back seat so long, so she would say, let's sing a song, and so we, she would, and the three boys in the back seat, we'd say, I would complain, but eventually we would join in, she would just keep at it. And eventually, we would start singing, and we would sing, and the time would pass, and the tension would go away, and somehow we'd make it one way or the other. Put a bunch of kids on a school bus, take them to camp, they'll do the same thing, something about beers on the wall, I don't know how many verses there are, because I've never sung from 99 to 1 or 0, but there are all kinds of songs that help us finish trips without killing each other. Or without being killed ourselves, you came to church this morning, you probably maybe didn't have time to sing, when I was a youth worker and a youth Sunday school teacher, one of my kids said, he came in kind of moping one Sunday morning, I said, what's wrong, you said, well, you know, we had a big argument in the car, and I said, you know, I wasn't part of, it was my brother, and I just said, why is it this family always falls apart on the way to church, trying to get out the door together and stay together. And trying to do with a good attitude is sometimes about the biggest challenge we can face on a Sunday, but they didn't have time to sing between house and home church. But yet, the writer of Hebrews talks about church and talks about singing, and singing is so important, or at least that's such a big thing that we do in church, I thought it'd be appropriate to look at these verses this morning. And you have to know something about the people to whom this was written. This was written to the Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews, it was written to followers of Jesus in the first century when the good news about Jesus was beginning to spread. And of course, all the early Christians were Jews in the synagogues that heard the scriptures read and heard the good news of Jesus that he was a fulfillment of, and then they started off on the journey of the Christian life. But because they started off on that journey, life got hard. Life got harder, if you read forward to chapter 10, you'll see they were being persecuted for being followers of Jesus, and they were being tempted to turn back to what was familiar to them, to what was comfortable, to the place where they began, because they weren't sure they were going to make it to the end of that road. Now, you don't have to be on a religious road to have the doubts about whether you're going to finish the road you're on, whether you're someone who's on a pilgrimage of faith, who's wondering, can God get me to the end of this journey? Or whether you're just someone who is trying to make sense out of life in general, you're not sure the God road is even the road that you want to take, still there are times in life, aren't there, when you wonder, am I going to make it to wherever this road leads? So whether you're on a pilgrimage of faith already in your life or whether you're still uncertain about where your road leads, you have times of doubt, and you wonder, are you going to make it to the end? And these verses in this letter to these suffering challenged early Christians tell us about a song that they were to learn to get them to the end of the road. So I want to take a few moments this morning to look at that song and to look at what's involved in singing that song, so that if you're in a moment of doubt or a moment of crisis, or if you've never been really sure where your road is headed, this is a song for you. I want you to see the first thing I want you to see is there is a song that is sung in these verses. We see in verse 12, if you're looking at it in your Bible, you'll see it's indented and put in quotation marks and refers to a song from the Old Testament. And in fact, we heard that song read earlier this morning. I would tell your name to my brother in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise, and we first of all need to find out who this song is being sung to. So that's the first thing we want to look at. To whom is a song being sung that this part of the Bible speaking of? And I want you to see that it is sung to a sufficient savior. It is sung to a sufficient savior. The writer of Hebrews is talking about Jesus as a fulfillment of all of God's plans for the world as as the place where all of history is headed toward that God took to himself a human nature and lived a life just like we live was tempted and tested in every way just as we did yet he never fell. He never turned aside from the road. He always kept on the road moving forward and we are told that when God did that in Jesus that in verse 11 he who sanctifies that is Jesus the one who makes us clean. That's what sanctified can mean and those who are sanctified that is those who follow him all have one origin or want some of your translations might say one family. That is God didn't decide to make a road for us to make it to him by simply standing at the end of the road and saying come on y'all. God came to the beginning of the road himself in Jesus that Jesus is from the same family or Jesus shares in the same human nature that we do. Jesus DNA was distinctively human just as our DNA is distinctively human. Jesus was tired. Jesus was hungry. Jesus needed sleep. Jesus needed fed when he was a baby Jesus went through all the hardships of life that we face. He was tested or tempted in every way this is we are yet without sin and in this verse set of verses that I read ends with saying that because he himself has suffered when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted or tested as another way of translating that word. So we've got a savior who is sufficient because he came to us so that we might go to him. I had a friend when we lived here the first ten years I had a friend where we went to church up in mainland and his name was Kurt Eastman and Kurt was a character he liked to tell a story now and then. And one story he liked to tell was about how when he was in the U.S. Navy during War War II that his U.S. Navy baseball team won the Armed Forces Championship and he was the second baseman and then he would kind of mention that they had a center field or named Ted Williams. Ted Williams was the greatest peer hitter ever to play the game. His swing the swing of his bat is almost like one motion instead of many parts made into one. It just whenever God thought of swinging the baseball bat he had Ted Williams picture in mind. Ted Williams had been a champion with a New York Yankees before he went into the Navy during War War II and when he came out of the Navy he went back and got some more championships. And what Kurt was trying to say with tongue and cheek was Ted Williams carried them to the Armed Forces Championship not that Kurt got them there. He had been there and he could take somebody else there. And that's true of Jesus. When Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and John chapter three they're talking about who can get the wisdom of God, the wisdom that can get you through life. And Jesus says the only one who can get the wisdom of God is the one who can go up to get it in heaven at least quoting an Old Testament proverb because the only one that can go up is the one who has first come down. And it's because Jesus has bound himself to our human nature, poor, rich, every color, every nationality, every language. Jesus has bound himself to the race of fallen humanity by the Son of God taking to himself a body just like ours. And we know because he is the divine one who became human or took to himself a human nature that he can deliver us down this road. In fact, if you look at chapter 11 of the book, our chapter 12 of the book of Hebrews, we were told that he despised the shame of being associated with sinners like us, that he finished the race that he kept the faith that he has entered in already in a human nature. There is a human nature sitting at the right hand of God the Father in Jesus that when we have faith in Jesus, we know that our human nature, that we body and soul one day will be able to be face to face with God ourselves. We can finish the journey. We can make it down the road by faith in Jesus because Jesus is God's guarantee that he has united himself to us that we can finish life's challenges. But the second thing these verses will teach us is what we sing about. We sing to a sufficient savior. Well, what we sing about, we sing about a servant savior because it wasn't simply that God became a God took himself a human nature, but he did something in that human nature. Jesus in verse 9 is described as having been crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. You know, everyone is born into this life with a poison pill on their lips, whether it's in four score and ten, by reason of strength, as the Psalm says, or whether it's even be snatched from the womb before there's a chance to take a breath, everyone born into this world faces death. And Jesus tasted that death so that those who would put their trust in him won't taste that death in a final way that they'll be raised. But not only that, that death doesn't just stand there at the end of the road so that we can try to make the best of things and put it off and try to be healthy and make our life as long as we could. Because we're told down in verse 15, actually I'll read 14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, we've already talked about that. He himself likewise, particularly the same things, and 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. What the writer of Hebrews was telling his weakening, failing followers of Jesus, what he's telling them is that not only does the death stand at the end of life's journey, but it's reached all the way back down the road. There's a slavery which extends from the end of life which is death. There's a slavery that extends all the way back into every moment of life. It's extended by someone, someone called the devil. There is a powerlessness in life because of that fear and that there is a devil who exercises that fear to make us slaves. Now, I don't know how you think about this little three letter word sin. There are many ideas about what it means, and some people take it more serious than another. But if you think of sin as crossing a line, everybody's got their own line where they think that line is, but if you think of sin as slavery, we're not just people who do it, but we're people who are under bondage to it. But somebody does something to us that's wrong and can we respond the right way? We tend to respond in equal terms. We want to get back, or at least we feel guilty or angry in our guilt and our anger drives us in certain directions so that we would pass it on to our children, say if your husband or wife left you and you want your children to be healthy and have good relationships and you're trying your best not to pass on what your own marriage failed marriage did. But it's hard, isn't it? That's a slavery of sin or resentment that we don't have as much as we want in life and it causes us to be bitter or it causes us to sacrifice relationships for the sake of getting that thing or all the things that we do to get places where we're not that hurt our relationships with others that bind us up emotionally, that leave us feeling positive. Feeling powerless, those are the symptoms of this thing which Jesus put an end to. What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that Jesus tasted death and he broke the power. He rose from the dead so he broke the power of death and therefore if you put your faith and your trust in him that power which raised him from the dead will be a power that will help you keep on moving through life and make it to the end where he stands having already been victorious. We sing to a suffering savior, a servant savior because Jesus tasted death for everyone. When my daughter who's 16 now, she's not with us this morning but when she was about four I guess she came in from playing and she was complaining she had something in her eye. She couldn't get it out and you could tell she was rubbing a little chalk and help rubbing their eye. That's just a reflex even though we tell them don't do it. When she came in she wanted me to try to help her so I took her into the bathroom and I propped her up on the bathroom counter and I looked and I could see something that was way down in there and I got a little piece of tissue paper and rolled it up and did a little point and then I tried to lift it out and it went deeper and I tried more and it couldn't see it anymore. She started clenching up, she was trying to be patient and I tried to open her eye and I could feel her muscles start to pinch her eyelids down and I was feeling a sweat beginning to run down my back because this was taking too long. If you're going to do surgery on a child at home you need to do it quick. Don't make it last very long and whether you're taking a splinter out or removing a speck and it was just going from bad to worse and I thought you know we really probably need to go the emergency room but you hate to because that's an hours long ordeal and she'll sit there with that thing in her eye the whole time. And all of a sudden she just burst into tears, she couldn't take it anymore, she just started wailing and I thought oh boy you know I sat back, dropped my arms to my side, she just sat there sobbing, sitting there on the kitchen or the bathroom sink counter and all of a sudden she stopped and she started giggling and I realized what had happened. The tears had washed out, the speck, just like God made eyes, the tears, the pain had become its own cure and we were told that in Jesus death became the cure for death and the fear of death and the slavery that the devil exercises over us all our lives long because it was his death that made death powerless. And that's why he's a servant savior, he gave himself, he made himself a propitiation, a payment for sin, bore in himself the wrath of God, just the just wrath of God towards sin so that people who will set themselves on the journey by faith in him know they know deep down they have confidence that God is no longer mad at them and that God has an interest in them. So we sing to a sufficient savior because he's the God man, we sing to a servant savior because he gave his life so that we could be freed from slavery, the slavery of the fear of death that Satan the devil exercises but I want you to see a third thing that we sing to him as a singing savior himself, he is a singing savior himself. Where do we see that? Well, I mentioned this Psalm that's quoted here, Psalm 22, it's quoted in verse 12, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise, the writer of Hebrews is putting that Psalm on the lips of Jesus that the risen Jesus is in some profound and very real way standing in the middle of his followers. He's leading the singing because he's one of us. He's not only the one we worship but he's the one that leads our worship, that's pretty mind boggling. I grew up in a little church in a small town and I preached and served in a lot of churches like that and you happen to have a very musically gifted pastor and others who are leading with him but that's not always the case. It seemed to me like the church I grew up in was just like every little church that I met in urban areas, in cities, in countries, in the countryside, in small towns because there was either a grey big old soprano or a little skinny tenor that had a good voice and everybody else kind of followed along with that. There was one good singer and my church growing up is Monteloa Ragnan. She sang Oh Holy Night every Christmas and he arose, she sang on Easter. Everybody, you know, nobody else saw her sang a solo because Monteloa always sang the solo and even when the choir sang she sang the solo because nobody else could keep up with Monteloa. She didn't need a microphone and wouldn't have wanted one. What we're told here is there is a voice that anchors the choir. You all are the choir every Sunday, the choir sits out here. You're the performers, God is seated as your audience waiting to hear what you'll say, waiting to be entertained. That's what worship is. Us pleasing God by performing for Him, not somebody up here who gets paid to be good to perform for you. You all are good for nothing by the way if your pastor's paid for good. That's a joke but you do it for free. But we have not only a God who sits waiting to receive our worship, we have a God who sent his son who even today stands in the middle of his congregation as a brother to each one who had had their faith and trust in Him. He stands leading their worship. He's our great older brother if we put our confidence in Him and when he sings, that's what God hears from us. Just like when God looks upon what we do in life, he looks at it through what Jesus did and when he looks at who we are in life, he looks at it through who Jesus is, when he receives our worship, God hears us through his son Jesus. But there's actually quite a remarkable thing about that and we read those verses this morning. If any time an Old Testament passage is quoted in the New Testament, there's a good chance that the whole Old Testament context is being brought into mind. And if you look back at Psalm 22, you see some incredible things because Psalm 22 begins with a very famous New Testament verse that's a quote of this Old Testament verse. It is the words that Jesus cried out from the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now, that was sung by somebody who was wondering if they were going to make it to the end of the road. Somebody who was desperate in need of God's salvation because they were under duress or under attack or under some serious threat of some kind and you'll read about that. And it's only later where he says, I will sing of your praise in the midst of the congregation. Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me from the cross? Because in Jesus on the cross, God was treating Jesus as a sinner even though he never sinned so that those who are sinners won't have to undergo that curse. That little church I grew up in on Sunday nights, we got one pastor who didn't like to prepare two sermons a Sunday, so at least not every week. So some Sunday nights we would have just a hymn saying he would announce that ahead of time and so we'd come and there would be some hymns listed. After a while, the song leader would invite people to make requests. My parents would tell us kids on the way to church. Let somebody else ask for a request this time before you guys speak up. My brothers and I, we'd always pop up with 224. Blessed assurance or 121 onward Christian soldiers and everybody else kind of got tired of singing the gloto boys requests. So my parents would tell us to hold on for a little bit. But one thing we would do with those hymns is just to keep it interesting, the hymns sing leader would after we got kind of warmed up, he would say, okay, now all the women on the second verse. You know, then men on the third verse, left handed, Democrats on the fourth verse, right handed, Republic, you know, and so it mix it up that way. But when you look at Hebrews 2 in the context of Psalm 22, here's what we learn, that Jesus sings the first verse of this song for us. Like God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So that when you're not sure if you're going to finish the fight, finish the race, you're not going to make it to the end. If you're on the journey and you don't know what the outcome is going to be, Jesus sings the song in the car, reminding you that you're going to get there. And I think that you claim to him because he sang that first verse alone. And there's something even more remarkable. And I think it's great to think about as a, as a, as a new church, as a church plant. Because in it's the verses again that I think it was Daniel that read earlier in the service. Not only are we told in Psalm 22, I will tell your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. And he prays that Jesus sings that song. But he goes on to say, verse 27, all the ends of the year shall remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. Why does Jesus stand in the middle of his congregation singing God's song of salvation in our midst? So the nations will hear that song and want to join in it. Isaiah the prophets looked to a day, he said, there will be a day when all the kings of the earth will bring their tribute to the mountain of the Lord. Because God had promised to Abraham, who's mentioned in this passage in Hebrews, God had promised to Abraham. He said, I'm going to make your name great and through you all the nations of the earth shall bless them. So that God was beginning even the days of Abraham to collect people from every tribe and tongue and people in nation. And how does he do it? He does it by the people following Jesus singing with Jesus about God's salvation. There's no such thing as a dichotomy between worship and evangelism. Because seen through the eyes of Hebrews chapter 2, worship is evangelism. We're not hiding in secret doing the weird stuff and then going out and changing our about vocabulary and our way of talking to people and inviting them to come to Jesus. We're standing together singing about what Jesus has done, knowing that he leads our singing and knowing that when people are touched by God, the Holy Spirit in the presence of this worship, that they will do what Paul described in 1 Corinthians 14, that they will fall on their face and worship him to because they'll know he's there. And that's how we art a worship because we know Jesus is leading our worship. Well we sing to Jesus as a sufficient Savior. He's the God man. We sing to him as a servant Savior because he gave himself, he gave his life so that we might make it to the end of life's pilgrimage. And not only that, he sings with us as our elder brother in human nature leading us to the end of life's journey. I don't know if you like Sister Act. I love Sister Act. Whoopi Goldberg is in a witness protection program and hiding from the mafia and somehow I forget exactly how she she ends up with this urban convent of a bunch of nuns. I don't know what to say. It seemed like straight out of sound of music or something. But the problem is and they have this this this choir and the problem is there is so lame. And as I recall, she's a performer in a in a nightclub circus so she's quite a singer and she can't stand here in this bad music. And so she finally even though she hates being there and presents the nuns, she finally gets pulled in. She can't help herself helping them become better musically. And she one thing she does is she sort of liberates them from Northern European music and gets a little soul into them and they begin to rock a little bit and then they sound great. Now one of the points of that was they had the music in them, but they just needed somebody with soul to bring it out. But this part of God's word tells us something even more radical. We didn't have anything. We didn't have a song and we didn't have a tune and we didn't have a voice. But there was someone with soul. The God man Jesus who gave us a voice and gave us a song and continues to stand in our presence where two or three are gathered in my name. There I am in their midst. He said. He did just stand there. He sings praises to God his father and makes that God our father when we put our trust in him. May God put upon your lips even better put in your heart a song that will help you get to the end of the road because the one who leads you in that song is the one who has already fought that fight for you if you'll put your trust in him. Oh man, let's pray. God, we thank you for a savior that sings. May your Holy Spirit help us to tune our hearts to sing his praises, give us faith to cling to him so that we will know the finish line is ours already and that nothing will therefore separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ.