have your Bibles with you this evening, I invite you to open and turn with me to a most wonderful passage in Scripture, to Hebrews Chapter 2. We will be reading verses 5 through the end of the chapter, verses 5 through 18. Here we have a most splendid section of Holy Scripture that reflects very intently upon Christ, and specifically the Son of God coming in our likeness for our salvation. So we come to read tonight Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 through 18. Please hear the word of our God. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, what is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for 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. where 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. where 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 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." That's far the reading of the Lord's Word. May he bless it to us. Please join me in prayer. Father, who is in heaven, how we thank you that even as the book of Hebrews opens up, that we are reminded that you have spoken in many ways and in various times to our fathers in a very piecemeal type of way. And yet, in these last days, these days that we as New Covenant believers are privileged to live in, privileged to have the new covenant open to us that you have spoken definitively and finally to us in your son Jesus Christ. As we meditate upon his person and his perfections and all the glorious benefits and privileges that are ours through him tonight, we pray that we might see Christ. That even after leaving this place tonight, that as it was said of the disciples so long ago, that as the crowd saw them, they perceived that they had been with Jesus. And as we leave here tonight, may all those around us perceive that we have been with the risen Lord. We thank you that it is through your word read and preached and even administered in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that you, O Christ, hold forth all these benefits for us and for our salvation. So grant us your spirit now, we pray, that we might understand and hear and know these things and take them to heart. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. We've been going through this series, if you will, on the nature, the character, the attributes of God. Really turning around in our hearts and our minds, who is the God that we serve? What is he like? How are we to understand him? How has he revealed himself to us? And two weeks ago, we dealt with the whole Godhead, as it were, that God is triune, that He is three persons of one substance, that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that these three, though distinct persons, that they are one God. And yet the great joy and the glory of being a Christian is that we are called into a relationship, that we are called to commune individually with each of these three persons of the Blessed Godhead. And so last week we turned our attention more specifically to God as our Father. And what are the privileges and the benefits that flow to us in the fact that the God who has created and formed and fashioned all things is so determined by His infinite wisdom and grace to be a Father unto us and we to be His children. Well, tonight we wish to look at the second person of the Blessed Trinity, and that is God the Son. And as we've just read together, Hebrews 2, verses 5-18, there are fewer places in the scriptures that have such a concentrated emphasis on who the Son of God is for us in our salvation. It is that in these verses what we see is that the preacher of Hebrews is piling onto us all of what Christ is for us in the covenant of grace, of what it means that the second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature like ours and drew near to us in order to be our Savior and our Redeemer. Now as you note here in Hebrews chapter 2 starting in verse 5, that some of it can be very difficult to comprehend and grasp. And yet as we come into verse 5 and down through verse 9, we see that this whole section opens up with a relatively lengthy quotation from Psalm 8. Right, where the preacher says in verse 6 that it has been testified somewhere, and then he goes in, in the rest of verse 6, down through verse 8, to quote Psalm 8. Now Psalm 8, as it was recorded by David in the book of Psalms, is a psalm that itself extols the creation of mankind. That it extols the way in which God, in Genesis 1, verse 28, determined to create mankind in His image. And Psalm 8 reflects upon this creation and extols man in his created glory and reminds us of the dominion that God himself initially invested us with. Remember that there in the divine council that God determined to make man in his own image and that he was to give man dominion over all things and to place all things underneath his feet. And the preacher of Hebrews, as he begins to open this up, reminds us of how we were created to be. That we were created as the vice regents of God. That we were created as kings that were meant to have dominion. That he had put all things in subjection to us. And that God in his wisdom had left nothing outside of our control. As we read on in chapter 2 verse 8 here, the preacher of Hebrews notes this dilemma or this problem. Though man was created in this pristine glory to have dominion over all things, that yet he laments that at present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. Now the hymn at the end of verse 8 is a reference to humanity, it is a reference to mankind. And we know that this is the result of the fall, that because our first father and mother chose to eat of that forbidden fruit, that rather than subduing all things, that they were subdued by creation itself. And that this has been a lamentable fact, that we who were created in the image of God and created to rule and to have dominion, that by our sin that we have been dominated by sin. And so the preacher of Hebrews brings this to our realization, our consideration, that even though thousands of years have passed since the Garden of Eden to the time in which he was writing, that he still laments that as of now we don't see man restored to that pristine glory that he did have. Then in verse 9, he comes in with the glorious hope of the gospel. And he declares, 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. As the preacher contemplates this, as he turns one eye to humanity and to God's people, he says, we do not yet see all things in subjection to him. But the good news of the gospel is that with our other eye, we behold Jesus. We behold one who was made in our likeness. We behold one who, for a little while, was made lower than the angels, and yet one who was crowned with the glory and the honor that was ours at creation. And this is how he begins to introduce the section. And then in verses 10 through 18, the preacher of Hebrews unfolds for us all that it means that we behold Jesus. Jesus is the second Adam, has come to restore us, to redeem us, to save us, and what all of that entails. And so beginning here in verse 10 and ending in verse 18, we want to consider at least five glorious ways that the Son of God who has come in our likeness now communes with us in grace. Five things, as it were, that it means that the second person of the Trinity came in our likeness to restore us to the glory that we once had in Adam. We have five characteristics or attributes, if you will, of the Son of God. And the first thing we note of Jesus as we behold Him is that He has become to us our trailblazer. He's become to us our trailblazer. The preacher of Hebrews in verse 10 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. Again, we need to be a careful reader here and we note that as the preacher says, for it was fitting that he, that that first pronoun he, that that refers to God the Father. That he extols God the Father as the one by whom and for whom all things exist. And that the Father here has said in verse 10 that He is delighting in bringing many sons to glory, that He is delighted in bringing a people to Himself and restoring us to the pristine glory that we had once at creation, indeed even a glory that far surpasses that. And yet the preacher notes here that God the Father was pleased to make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. The word founder here, as it's recorded in the ESV, though some translations use a different word, it is a relatively colorful word. It's a word that more literalistically means the trailblazer or the pathfinder or the one who has gone before us. My family and I, one of our favorite pastimes is that we enjoy going on hikes. We enjoy being dropped out into the wilderness. We enjoy looking at a trail and we enjoy hiking that trail through the mountains and through the forests and perhaps around streams. And if you've ever had the opportunity to hike, you know that one of the great joys of hiking is that other people have gone there before you, that the path is usually well-worn, that it is well-trodden, that even, and in some cases, they'll have signs so that you're continually looking for your sign marker to know that you are on the right trail and that you are not going to stray to the right or to the left. Now this summer as we went hiking over in Isle Royale, the island in the middle of Lake Superior, at one point we were trying to follow this trail. And this trail was incredibly difficult to follow because it was over rocks and it wasn't 100% clear where it was supposed to go and where the signs were pointing. And before we knew it, we had strayed off of the trail. And when you stray off the trail, you begin to doubt yourself, you begin to lack confidence. We began to see that we were stepping over logs and trees that we didn't remember going around before. And the trees were coming down and hitting our head. And we were thinking, if this was the well-worn trail that it was supposed to be, then we shouldn't be coming upon these things. And some half a mile down the road, we decided we don't think that this is a trail that we were meant to follow. We don't think that we're on a trail at all. And so we backpedaled and we walked back and indeed we found that we had been led astray, that we had gone off the path, that we had gone off of the trail that we were meant to follow. What the author of Hebrews teaches us here is that Christ has come and that he is the founder of our salvation, that the founder of our salvation has been made perfect through suffering, that he is the one who is the trailblazer, that the path to glory that we are walking on, It's a path that Christ himself has first walked. This is us following in his footsteps that we are following in his way. You think of the Israelites as they were freed from the land of Egypt and as they wandered about through the Red Sea and in the wilderness that all the years in which they wandered that God led them by the cloud of pillar in the daytime and the fiery pillar in the nighttime. Preacher of Hebrews teaches us that this is what Christ is to us. That the Son of God come in our likeness as this founder, that he is this trailblazer, that he is the one who has marked out this path before us. A path that is often accompanied by suffering and by affliction. You know, what a glorious comfort it is to us. That as we walk this road, as we make our way, as it were, as pilgrims to the celestial city, as we endure all the temptations and the afflictions and the sufferings and the challenges, that all we need to do is look down and to see that our path has been paved in the blood of Jesus. And what a comfort it is to know that Christ himself doesn't call us to walk upon a road that he himself did not first walk. And so we have Christ as our trailblazer. And how assuring and certain this is that so long as we follow Christ and go wherever he leads us that indeed we too shall come forth into the glorious grace and the majesty of heaven itself. So the preacher of Hebrews tells us here that one of the ways we commune with Christ is that he is our trailblazer, that he is the one who has gone before. No sooner has he said that than we see the second characteristic of the Son of God for us in verse 11. And the preacher goes on and he says, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. Again, we have to understand who our pronouns are talking about. And in verse 11, as we read, for he who sanctifies, that he there doesn't refer to God the Father, but once again, it refers to God the Son. And here the preacher of Hebrews notes that Christ, that the Son of God in our likeness has come to us as one who sanctifies us. And not only does he sanctify us, but that we are being sanctified by him and that we all have this one source. Again, as the ESV translates this as one source, that can be a little confusing. Again, literalistically what it means is that we are all of one. That we all come from God the Father, that He is in our likeness, that He is in our nature, and that He is one who sanctifies us, that He is the sanctifier and we are the ones who are sanctified. Most of us understand that to be sanctified simply means to be set apart. To be set apart for a special use or a task or a mission. We read of in the Old Testament of the Levites who were sanctified to the priestly office. The Levites were set apart from all the other tribes that it was they who were to serve at the temple and at the altar and offer the offerings. and they had their sanctified utensils that they cleansed in order to offer as worship for God. They sanctified, in its basic definition, it simply means to be set apart. And yet Hebrews, perhaps more than any other book in the New Testament, as it speaks of sanctification, it doesn't just mean of all we're being set apart. Neither does it mean, as we sometimes talk in our systematic categories of being made holy. But sanctification, from the perspective of the book of Hebrews, has always found in its goal that in sanctification we are restored to fellowship and union with the Father. That this is the purpose of us being sanctified, that this was the purpose of Christ, come in our likeness and in our flesh to sanctify us, that is to restore us to fellowship in union and communion with God the Father. That Christ in His life and by His death has found a way to destroy that barrier that kept us from the Father and to usher us into the glorious presence of God Himself. What is said of Christ here is very similar of what Christ said of himself in John 14, 6, where he said, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through me. And we rightly noted last week that when it comes to God being our Father, that he overflows with love towards us as his children. And yet this fact remains that because we are sinners and because we have sinned, that though the Father loves us, that even in our sanctified state that we don't have immediate and direct access to the Father Himself. but that we need one to bring us to the Father, that we need one who is like unto our nature and one who is like unto the very nature of God Himself to mediate for us and to bring us into the very presence of the Father. If we could think in such hypothetical terms that if Christ had never assumed our nature and come as the mediator between God and man, then there could never be a relationship with God the Father. The preacher of Hebrews holds out this glorious truth of Christ that this is who the Son of God is to us, the one who sanctifies us, the one who brings us into fellowship with God the Father. That it is only Christ that can do this. Now this is why in a very practical way when we offer our prayers to God the Father that we are taught that we ask for everything in the name of Jesus. Because it is only through Jesus that we can approach the Father, whether through prayers, or whether personally, or whether one day in glory, that we are completely and utterly dependent upon Christ to unite us to the Father. And the preacher of Hebrews here tells us this is what the Son of God has done. He has come to sanctify us in order that we might be brought into fellowship. Now the third characteristic of the Son of God that the preacher of Hebrew speaks of here is that in grace Christ himself becomes our brother. And you observe that there in the end of verse 11, that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. Now here our sonship isn't so much viewed as our relationship to the Father. But as the preacher of Hebrews contemplates our sonship, he does it through the lens of the relationship that we now sustain with the Son of God. To put it very bluntly, that when you have the Son of God and you have the other sons of the Father, that what does that make, the Son of God and the sons of the Father, but that it makes them brothers. How often do we sit back and contemplate this glorious truth that the Son of God has become to us our brother. That we are united to Christ and as we are united to Christ that He becomes to us our elder brothers. How often do we contemplate this? You think of Jesus and his earthly ministry as he was teaching his disciples, and the crowds were gathering all around. And Jesus, a biological, so to speak, brothers and sisters, and his mother comes to him. And the crowds say that your family is out there for you, Jesus. And how does Jesus respond to them? But he says, who are my brothers? And who are my sisters? And who is my mother? But it is whoever does the will of my Father in heaven. It is he. who is my brother or my sister." Well, you know, we see something far more glorious here than Christ simply calling us brothers as the preacher tells us here that not only is He our brother, but He is not ashamed to call us brothers. Those of you who have earthly siblings, whether it's a brother or a sister, and they're a younger brother or sister, you probably know the experience all too well. There are times in your life where you're ashamed that they're your brother or sister. I had a twin brother. I had perpetual shame in him growing up. I didn't want to be known as the brother of my twin brother. And when he would do something humiliating, or he'd do something embarrassing, you kind of cover your eyes and you say, I don't know whose brother that is, but that's not my brother. In our earthly sense, and because of our sin, we can so easily be ashamed of our brothers and our sisters, particularly when they do things that we don't like, or they say things that we disagree with, or they become people that just aggravate us and get on our nerves. Yet the preacher says here that not only is Christ our brother, but that He is not ashamed to call us brothers. That He's not ashamed to own us. We see the unity of the blessed Godhead here. That as the Father has been pleased to adopt us into His family and to call us sons and daughters of God, that the eternal Son of God, who is clothed in the very unapproachable light of His Father, who basked in glory from all of eternity, that as the Father adopts us by the Spirit to be His sons and His daughters, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, doesn't stand at the side and go, what are you doing? What are you doing, Father? Weren't you pleased with me? Why did you have to bring more into our family? Why did you have to adopt them? He doesn't stand over us as a resentful, as a bitter, as an angry brother, but he is not ashamed of us. He is pleased to own us as his own. He is as a big brother that defends his little brother and comes beside him and says, I have all joy and delight in telling people that you are my brother, that we are united in this way to one He is not ashamed to be called our brother. More specifically, what does it mean that Christ is our brother? And you note here, very interestingly, that in verses 12 through 13, the preacher of Hebrews, as he unfolds this, that he cites three different Old Testament texts. And this colors out for us what it means that Jesus Christ is our brother in our likeness. And you note there in verse 12 that as the preacher has said, he's not ashamed to call them brothers sane. And then he picks up this quote from Psalm 22, verse 22, where the psalmist says, I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. Most of us are familiar with Psalm 22, aren't we? As many of us know, Psalm 22 opens up with that great cry of dereliction that Christ himself took upon his lips on the cross, crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And as Psalm 22 unfolds in the first half, we see the suffering and the affliction of Christ crucified, the Son of God come for our sins. We see the way in which poetically he talks about being surrounded by the bulls of Bashan, how all have risen their head against him, how they are striking him, and how they are killing him. We even see in that first verse that separation, so to speak, that existed between the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son upon the cross so that all of the Father's favor and the countenance was removed from the Son so that He felt the dark night of His soul overtaking Him, crying out, Why have You forsaken Me? We would think that as this unfolds, the depth of the agony and the suffering and the pain of Christ, that what we might see in Psalm 22 is that He has reasons to cast us off, that He has reasons to despise us. Yet in Psalm 22, as we come to this passage of Scripture that is quoted here in verse 22, the psalm takes a decided change in tone. Rather than lamenting and weeping and speaking of the pain and the agony, the psalm ends on a note of victory and triumph. And here as these are put into the very lips of Christ himself, that Christ speaking through the psalmist now declares that in light of his suffering and his death, that he is now pleased to tell your name to my brothers. That he comes as one who is like us, one who is united to us, one who is our elder brother to reveal to us and to show us the God that we serve. And you note here that he says in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. We could preach a whole sermon on this in the midst of the congregation, both in the Hebrew and the Greek. It is the word for church. And as Christ is our brother, we are reminded that by faith, even tonight, our brother stands in the midst of this assembly. That it is our brother who is leading us in worship and praise and adoration to the one Father that we have. that as our brother he is pleased to reveal and to show us God. Then he comes in verse 13 and he says, and again I will put my trust in him. And we might scratch our heads and say what do these few words have to do with Christ being our brother and not being ashamed to be our brother? The second passage that is quoted comes from Isaiah 8, verse 17. We won't look into the context of Isaiah 8, but I encourage you to go home tonight to read Isaiah 8 and then again read into the glorious chapter of Isaiah 9 that a child, a son has been born to us upon whom the government shall be on his shoulders. And in Isaiah 8, just briefly, what is going on is that Isaiah has gone forth to declare the word of the Lord to the people of God, and they have rejected him, that the king and the people have turned a deaf ear unto the prophet Isaiah. that they have rejected His message, that they have scorned Him, that His life is now one of great suffering and anguish and affliction, and yet Isaiah rises up in Isaiah 8, 17, and as he looks at the apostate people, and as he looks at the darkness that's pervading the world, he declares that, yet I will trust in God. And my hope rests in the God of my salvation. And what we see here is that Christ himself, enduring even a greater suffering and affliction than Isaiah, that Christ comes as our elder brother, not only to show us God, but to show us the godly life. Those of us who have been blessed with older brothers and sisters. Sometimes we are rightly apt to look at them and we think they are our heroes. These are examples of men and women of whom the world is not worthy that we aspire to be like our elder brothers who have loved us and protected us and cared for us. And here in this verse, this is what we are called to do when it comes to Christ. Christ has shown us the godly life. That Christ, the Son of God, has lived the perfect life, that He has lived the life that we are to emulate. That we follow in the steps of our elder brother who through challenge and carnage and suffering and affliction yet trusted and hoped in God. And then the preacher at the end of verse 13 quotes again, and he says, Behold I and the children that God has given to me. This citation strangely comes from Isaiah 8, verse 18, which means it comes right after the previous quotation, and yet you see that the author introduces it with the and again, which likely means that behold I and the children God has given me is meant to teach us something particular and something unique. And again, within the setting of Isaiah chapter 8, that here Isaiah is lamenting that all the people have strayed from God and they have closed up their ears, and yet Isaiah says, behold I, and he refers to his own literal children who were named in the way that God wanted them to be named as the glorious, gracious remnant that God still had. And Isaiah says, behold, here I am, and here are the children that God has given to me, that we are the family of God. And as Christ takes this verse upon his lips in here, here Christ is declaring that he is our elder brother and he has come in order to bring us into the very family of God. And he has come to pay the ransom that was due for us in order to assure that indeed we are brought into the household and the family in union with the Father. And so we see thirdly here that the Son of God is to us our brother. And yet the preacher of Hebrews goes even further. And he goes further declaring that Christ, the Son of God, has also become to us our deliverer. Our deliverer. And we read this in verses 14 and 15, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things 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. How loaded these verses are. And the preacher of Hebrews teaches us here that the Son of God has come and he has become like us. How startling and amazing are these words that since the children therefore share in flesh and blood, he, that is Jesus, himself likewise partook of the same things. That the Eternal Son of God, as we heard from Romans chapter 8, that He came in the likeness of our sinful nature, that the Eternal Son of God came in our flesh, and He came in our blood, and He did this because He knew that we needed to be saved. And not only did He come into our likeness, but we read here that through death that He might destroy the one who had the power of death. That He has come in our flesh and blood to lay His life down as a sacrifice for our sins. That He has come to die the death that we should have died. And we read the result here that He has destroyed the one who has the power of death. That is the devil. And you note the focus of the death of Christ that we have here. That yes, Christ died for our sins, but as the preacher reflects upon the cross of Christ here, it is not so much the forgiveness of sins that he emphasizes, but that he emphasizes the destruction of the devil and the works of the devil. The Son of God has come into the world for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. And as Paul wrote in Colossians 2.15, that not only has the cross offered us the forgiveness of sins that we need, but that through the cross Christ took that handwriting that stood against us, and he nailed it to the cross, and he exposed the forces of hell and the devil to open shame, and he triumphed over them. This is the aspect of the death and the cross of Christ that Hebrews is speaking of here. Not simply the sacrificial lamb, but the conquering deliverer. So that we are delivered and that we are freed. And again, it's not so much a freedom from the forgiveness of sins that Hebrews speaks of here, but what is it? It is the deliverance from the fear of death itself. This is the great curse that hangs over our head, that the soul that sins must die. And we've said this before, and it's good for us to continually remind ourselves of this, that our world would have us to think that death is natural. And yet death is unnatural. We weren't created to die, but we were created to live. And if you can think of death in the abstract, or more particularly, even think of your own death, and you don't have some degree of shuddering, then we haven't come to grips with the reality of death. That death is the very antithesis for what we were created for. That it is the very power that works against God Himself. That there is a very true and a very legitimate fear to death. Or as Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15, there is a sting to death. There is a power to death. Death is to be trembled at to some degree. And yet through the cross what we see. as if Christ has conquered death and the devil in order that he might deliver us from this fear. So that when we come face to face with our own death, when we come to the prospect that we too shall lie in the grave one day, that unlike the world, we have no need to fear and tremble in its presence. Christ has taken the fear out of death. Christ has assumed the sting of death. Death might not pain us. And so we see that the Son of God has become to us our Deliverer. He has set us free from being enslaved to the fear of death. What a glorious thing this is. A Savior not only for life, but a savior for death. And then we read lastly here in this glorious description of Christ, the Son of God has also become our helper. And you read that chiefly in verse 18 that we read, for because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. And as we read this little four-letter word, help, we need to understand that it is very active in its meaning. Sometimes we conceive of helping people and the help that we give in relatively passive ways. And that we're kind of these proverbial cheerleaders that stand on the side and root for people, maybe pat them on the back with how difficult it is for us to sacrifice of our time and of our energies and of our possessions in order to help one. But the help here that is offered to us from the Son of God isn't a help that is passive. It's not that He's some proverbial cheerleader that's just saying, I'm cheering for you, and I hope all goes well for you. But the help here means to supply somebody with something that is needed, that He makes up for our insufficiency, that He sees a lack in us, and that He overflows in great abundance with all that we stand in need of. And we note here that within the context of verses 16, 17, and 18, that the help that Christ himself offers to us is a help in the midst of temptation. And this is what we read earlier in these verses, right? 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 a faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people, for because He Himself was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted." I thought that the Son of God Himself should not only be made in our likeness, and should not only die the death that we deserve to die, but that the Son of God should open Himself up and to be made liable to temptation. to the temptations of sin. And it is only Christ who knows how deep and powerful temptation is, as He was made like unto us in all things, save this, that He never sinned. Christ knows the strength and He knows the power of temptation. And He conquered it. And now as He contemplates us, and our temptations? When he sees how easily we cave to temptations? When he sees how we so often fail to stand in the midst of the world and the flesh and the devil? Dare I say that if we were in Christ's place that we would look upon another and we would hate them? And we would point our finger at We would resent them and we might say something to them. I withstood this temptation. What's wrong with you, you blockhead? Yet what do we see of the heart of Christ? That when we are tempted, He helps us. That He who has conquered temptation now supplies us with everything that we are lacking in order to help us in the midst of our temptation. And as He beholds us in our weakness and our temptation, what do we read? That He has become a merciful and a faithful High Priest in the service of God. And that Christ, the Son of God, is pleased in our temptations to give us His very own Spirit. To give us all the graces that we need. To give us a way of escape that we too might stand in the hour of temptation. What a glorious thing it is that when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. And so Christ has become to us our helper. Two weeks ago, we looked at this blessed truth that God is triune, that he is three persons of one substance, that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And by faith, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit call us to Himself to commune with Him and to share with Him and to have a relationship with Him. And as we looked last week, our communion with the Father is chiefly one of love. But our communion with the Son is chiefly one of grace. And the preacher here holds forth for us all the glorious things that the Son of God has become to us. That he has become our trailblazer. That he has become our sanctifier. That he has become to us our brother. That he has become to us our deliverer. And that he has become to us our helper. This is who our God is. This is who our Christ is. This is who the Son of God is. And this is how He has chosen in His grace to relate to us in the covenant of grace. Amen. Please join me in a word of prayer. Gracious and glorious God, how marvelous are You and how marvelous are all your works. What joy fills our hearts when we think of that love with which you have loved us, O Father, that we should be called sons and daughters of God, for so we are. And how we rejoice tonight that by your spirit you have shed abroad in our hearts your great love for us. And yet we thank you that our contemplation of you doesn't end there, but even as we turn to contemplate the Son of God, as we think of all that He has become to us, as we think of all the benefits that freely flow to us by His grace alone. that he should be the founder of our salvation, having paved the way with his very own blood, that you, O Christ, should be the one who sanctifies us, that it is through you and through your name that we can come unto the Father, that it is you who is not ashamed to call us brothers, that it is you who has delivered us even from the fear of death, and that it is you who helps us in every temptation. We thank you that you are the perfect and the glorious Savior. That there is nothing left undone for our salvation that you have not done. And that there is no way in which you do not relate to us and help us and nourish us in this journey of faith.