Hebrews 2:5-9

Humbled for Glory

This morning we continue looking at the preacher's first point in his sermon to the Hebrew Christians, namely, that Jesus is far superior to the angels and therefore He has received a name that is much more excellent than they (1:4).

Previously, we noted why the preacher made this point.  The angels were created by God to serve Him in the glory of His Heavenly presence.  And they were sent by God to earth to minister to His people who will inherit His salvation (1:14).

In our passage, the focus of the preacher is specifically upon the mediation of God's heavenly messengers in the giving of the Holy Law of God through Moses to the people at Mt. Sinai.  The Law came to Israel clothed in the glory of the angelic beings (2:2). 

But that revelation of God in the Old Testament was only temporary.  It came with glory, but only for a time to ultimately point forward to the coming of a greater revelation:  the revelation of the Son of God.

When the preacher testifies that the Son is superior to the angels, he is referring to this superiority of the "revelation of God's nature."  In Jesus, we have seen the fullness of God's revelation to man.  When we have looked upon Jesus, the world has seen the Father of glory.  Jesus made God's very being known to us creatures.  Heaven has come down in the person and work of Jesus Christ and the world will never again be the same.

Therefore, the preacher exhorts:  Listen to the Son (2:1).  In Him you have a far superior and perfectly sufficient revelation of God's Word.  There is no greater Word that you can hear but the Son!

But a question is suddenly raised at this very point in the preacher's sermon:  How can we say that Jesus is superior to the angels when he was made a little lower than the angels?  How can Jesus be greater than angels when he came under our condition of humanity? 

The point is raised because of Jesus' incarnation into your flesh.  The Son of God humbled Himself and became a man, such as we are.

But man was created by God a little lower than the angels.  Angels are the apex of God's creation.  Our knowledge of God is derivative of their mediation of God's knowledge.  Israel knew God's law only because the angels came and delivered it to Moses.  Without that revelation, man would continue in darkness and live in this world without hope in God. 

But the angel's knowledge of God is immediate.  They were created to live in the presence of God in Heaven to praise Him continually and serve Him forever more.  They were created as shining lights of glory who perfectly reflected the glory of the Almighty.  They were perfectly designed for the purpose of standing before the glory of the Majesty on High.

But if this is in fact the way God designed the creation, that the angels were superior, heavenly beings created by God above man, then how can we possibly say that Jesus is above the angels when He Himself took on your flesh and therefore was made lower than the angels?

Let's look at our text this morning for the preacher's answer:  Note that the preacher begins this section in v. 5 with these words:  "concerning which we are speaking."  He shows that he is continuing the theme of the first point in v. 4:  that Jesus is superior to the angels.

He then expands on this point by declaring that "God did not subject the world to come to angels."  Now the contrast that is being made here is "this present world" vs. "the world to come."  The idea is that when God made this world, he made man a little lower than the angels (cf. v. 7).  The angels rule in heavenly places as God's vice-regents over man.  Throughout the Old Testament the angels are described as those who sit in the heavenly council of God over the creation.  They serve not only to worship God and serve Him according to His holy bidding, but they also serve God in ruling over His creation.  They are God's protectors of His people on earth and they execute judgment upon sinners according to His will.  We see this especially in the "Revelation of things to come" that the angels will serve in pouring out God's judgment upon the world and upon the fallen angels who will be judge at the end of history.

As such, the angels are superior to man in "this creation."  In this world, the angels were made to rule over mankind, both in glory and in honor.

But as with everything else, this has changed with the coming of Jesus Christ.  Something has taken place in the heavenly courts above so that in the "world to come," the heavenly world, the new creation the angels will no longer rule over man.  This has taken place at the cross of Jesus Christ.  He has exalted man, God's elect, to a position of rule over even the angels in the world that is coming.

So how has this taken place?  What has God done in His marvelous plan to give you such honor and glory even over the illuminating glory of the angels? 

At this point in the sermon, we have only mentioned the creation of man.  We have not considered man's further humiliation and shame in sin and rebellion against God brought about through the fall of Adam and Eve.  The fall has caused a further lowering of man in God's order of creation.  Created in His image, man rebelled against God and therefore reaped the rewards of his rebellion of death and condemnation. 

From the perspective of the fall, if man ever desired to achieve a position of glory above the angels, those hopes have been forever dashed upon the rock of their destruction. 

But God's plan was very different than man's.  Man hoped to achieve such position of glory and honor through his own fleshly labors.  Man saw the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the gift of discernment of a king or judge over creation, and man lusted over that knowledge until he took and ate what he was not supposed to eat.  In his rebellion, man wanted what God had not granted.  Man wanted glory and honor now, not at God's perfect timing.   

But even in sin, man has continued to seek to achieve this glory and honor by his own hands.  From the sewing of fig leaves to clothe their own nakedness, to the raising of towers into heaven to fight against God, to finally succumbing to the ultimate display of idolatry:  the worship of the creature in the place of the worship of the Creator.

But God knows that man can never achieve his own salvation.  He knows that man is desperately wicked and desires only evil continually. 

So before even the foundation of the world was laid, God designed a plan of redemption -- a plan to include giving honor and glory even to man in sinful, rebellious condition before God.

It is this plan that the Psalmist stands in awe and amazement as he meditates upon God's dealings with sinful man (READ vv. 6-8a).  In Psalm 8, the Psalmist wonders in amazement that God even considers man at all.  He asks God, "How can you even think of man that You would care for Him?"

And how has God cared for you?  First, He lovingly made you.  He brought you into existence from nothing.  And He made you in a position of incredible glory and honor.  While you were made a little lower than the angels, another way of looking at this is by seeing what you have been made above.  Out of all of God's creation, He made you precious to Him.  You stand above all the creation of the world.  He made you so wonderfully above this creation that the only creature that stands above you is the glorious angelic, heavenly being who forever lives in the presence of God.

You have been crowned by God with glory and honor and majesty as God's vice-regents over His creation.  Over the days of creation, you were made last as the apex, the final climax of all that God formed upon the earth.

And He has made you so that you would rule over the very works of God's hands.  God has made it all, but He has placed you as ruler over all that He has made.  He has placed everything in creation under your feet that you would rule in righteousness and justice providing governing rule, authority, and dominion of His beautiful and majestic creation.

As His vice-regents, man was given a dominion mandate:

Genesis 1:26-28  26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."  27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

You were given the mandate of God to guard and to protect, to take and to subdue the whole creation until you ruled rightly and justly over all that God had made.  You were made the righteous rulers over God's creation to rule in His behalf over all that He lovingly made for His own glory.

But the fall ruined all of that.  By the fall, man lost his right to rule and rather than reigning in glory, man would now find only the curse of frustration, death, and condemnation.  Even Satan, man's arch-enemy and accuser would now reign above man as the ruler of the this world.  He would accuse you in judgment and prosecute you before the heavenly throne of God.  In rebellion against God, you have surrendered your right of rule to Satan.  That is why Satan had the right to offer the kingdoms of man to Christ in the temptation:

Luke 4:5-7  5 [Satan led Christ] up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.  6 And the devil said to Him, "I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.  7 "Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours."

The apostle John declares:

1 John 5:19   19 We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies [under] the power of the evil one.

Paul declares:

Ephesians 2:1-2  And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,  2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

2 Corinthians 4:3-4  3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,  4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

But God, in His infinite Wisdom, has chosen a Champion for you.  He would come in the fullness of time and take up your human flesh and fight and conquer your enemy on your behalf.

That is why the preacher takes up Ps. 8, which speaks of "man" as God intended as ruler over all creation, and declares how Jesus Christ has come to fulfill Ps. 8 as your representative to restore and even, far greater than mere restoration, to raise you above even the heavenly angels.

Jesus Christ is the true fulfillment of Ps. 8 now that man has fallen.  He has come in your flesh as the Second Adam to do what the first Adam failed to do.  He was made a little lower than the angels that He might take your nature and raise it above all creation and at His ascension, as we saw in 1:2, He was appointed heir over all creation.  The preacher states this emphatically in 2:8, "for in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him."

This is the plan of redemption of you, God's holy elect.  What you could not do, weak in your own sinful flesh, God sent His own Son to take up your condition and place Himself under the Law that through His perfect obedience and mediatorial sacrifice on the cross He would merit the righteousness by which you will be saved.  As the preacher says in v. 9, "Jesus tasted death for you" by God's grace so that you might reign in glory and honor with Him in Heaven.

Now, the Scriptures are clear that the decisive moment of God's plan is the cross of Christ.  We see the result of Christ's work over your enemy in 2:14 (READ).   

Paul says to the Colossian Christians:

Colossians 1:13-14   13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,  14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Colossians 2:13-15  13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,  14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.  15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

Again, the apostle John declares:

1 John 3:8  for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

The Son has gloriously conquered your enemy at the cross and as a result the Father has raised the incarnated Son far above all principalities, both on earth and in Heaven:

Ephesians 1:9-10  9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him  10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.

Ephesians 1:19-21  These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might  20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,  21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 

Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, came down from Heaven into your skin that He might conquer your enemy and raise you to a new position of glory and honor, a position that is now even higher than all the glorious angels that stand before the face of God in Heaven.  Your champion has come to fight for you so that you might rule with Him in glory and honor over the entire cosmos.  By the grace of God, you have become co-heirs with Christ, heirs of God, so that when He appears you will be like Him in glory and you will forevermore share in the glorious victory that He has accomplished by His own hand.

That is why Jesus had to be made a little lower than the angels!!  His humility in no way detracts from his transcendent dignity over all creation.  He humbled Himself in love for you that He might restore you the God given dignity by which you were made as the reflector of God's glory and that He might raise you above even the angels as a display of God's marvelous and eternal grace.

But notice one more point the preacher must make at the end of v. 8:  "but now we do not yet see all things subjected to Him."  This has always been the struggle of the church since Christ has ascended into Heaven, both within and without the people of God.  As you have heard the marvelous display of God's grace towards you this morning, you might wonder how any of this can possibly be true because in your daily experience the last thing you often see realized is your new position of glory and honor in Christ above all creation.  The Hebrew Christians certainly felt the weight of this burden upon their own hearts as the preacher addresses them in the sermon. 

We often feel more like the conquered than the conquerors!  More like the defeated than the victorious!  But Beloved that is exactly God's plan for you.  You now live in the wilderness wanderings of God's elect, as aliens and pilgrims in a world that is not your home.  You are not home!  Home awaits you in glory when Jesus comes back to take you home.  And because of this present transitory moment in your life as Christian pilgrims you often feel the heavy weight of the curse, the burden of sin that so easily entangles you.  [READ vv. 10-18]. 

Beloved, the truth of the gospel is not the absence of the curse, but the presence of Jesus who forever comforts you in the midst of the pain and trials in a fallen world. 

Even as the Son came and suffered, even to the point of death, and then, and only then, was He raised to glory, so you too as His followers are now tasting the sufferings of this age as God's means by which He is refining you into the glorious image of Jesus. 

But here the preacher gives you hope!  This suffering is not the last word in your life.  It is only temporary and there is coming a day when we will all confess with unshakable assurance that:

Romans 8:18  18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18  16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,  18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Beloved, fix your eyes on Jesus!

Amen!

-SDG-