Y'all are all sitting in the wrong place because if you're up here at the front facing the congregation, wow, that was some powerful spirit-filled singing if I know what that sounds like. It says the Lord inhabits the praises of His people. Friends, do you know that means He's here with us right now? We feel the presence of our Lord condescended to earth. Heavens are His throne and the earth is His footstool. Praise God. I want to talk this evening about kind of an existential question. A soul-searching question. You know, we just sang a soul-searching hymn. It seems like today the greatest offense you can do another person, even another Christian, the greatest offense that someone will take is if you suggest that They deserve to go to hell. That's not the way the old hymn writers felt. That's not the way the old preachers preached. J.R. Respos down in South Georgia, someone came to him carrying all the rumors that other folks had cooked up against him and told him this bad news and he just looked at him, contemplated and he said, perhaps it is so. Perhaps it is so. And then he said that he was relieved they didn't know how bad he really was. Friends, can you feel from your heart the words that we just sang? If my soul were sent to hell, thy righteous law proves it well. My sins against His law, my sins against His grace. In Job chapter 7, I'm sort of jumping into the middle of a great story here that I don't have time to get into tonight, but you know the story, in summary at least. Job was being confronted by men who had come to help. They didn't help. They made matters worse, and it was a downward spiral. Job, who had had the very right attitude at the outset of this trial, begins to descend himself into a place of inner anguish. And in this chapter, among other places, in his words, Job almost, well, not almost, he outright wishes to die or Never to have been born. My condition is so bad. My wretchedness so great. He says in Job 7.15, My soul chooseth strangling and death rather than life. I loathe it. I would not live all way. Let me alone, for my days are vanity. And then he asks the question I'd like you to consider tonight. What is man that thou shouldst magnify him and that thou shouldst set thine heart upon him? He's talking to God. He's ignoring his comforters, he's responded to them, and now he's looking up at God and he's saying, Lord, who am I that you should even care who I am? And he's not asking this in the sense of an amazing sense of being a felt recipient of God's grace. He's asking this in a sense of despair. He's saying, Lord, I'm nobody. I'm insignificant. I'm less than insignificant. Who am I that you would even care about me in the midst of this miserable circumstance in which I find myself? What is man that thou shouldst magnify him, and that thou shouldst set thine heart upon him, and that thou shouldst visit him every morning, and try him every moment? How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle? I have sinned. What shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself? And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? For now shall I sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be. There was a fiction writer some years ago who imagined a place in the cosmos, a building in which a man could enter and gain a true sense of his place in the universe. And when a man would enter this building, the inevitable result was he would come out a stark, raving, mad lunatic. He would come out in utter despair because he would have had a glimpse of the vastness of the universe. of the numbers of galaxies and star systems and planets out there and the number of men that had existed in the human race and his tiny insignificant place in the midst of that grand landscape and he came out feeling utterly meaningless, useless, and worthless. What is man that thou shouldst magnify him? Of course that echoes in another place in scripture, a few pages over in the 8th Psalm. But here these words are spoken in a different tone. Because here man has not entered a place of solitude to reflect on himself. Man has entered into that great universe to reflect on its maker. And David says, O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, who has set Thy glory above the heavens. Excellent. It excels. It means it surpasses. It's superlative. It's beyond everything else. How excellent. How much Your name excels everything else in the earth. You've set Your glory above the heavens. Lord, your beauty is manifest in creation, and he gets into that in this psalm, but he says, your glory is far above creation. And then, rather than in despair, in awe, he considers the intricate, detailed attention that this grand creator of the universe, whose name is excellent above the heavens, his glory above the heavens, the intricate detail with which he engages in the affairs of men. and not just men, but little tiny men, babies. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon, and the stars, which thou hast ordained, here's the question again. What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Not, Lord, I'm so insignificant and worthless, let me curl up in a ball and die. But, Lord, I'm so insignificant and meaningless in myself, how in the world is it that you, the God of the universe above all, could come down to earth and commune with me? For thou hast made him, man, a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yet beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas, that famous verse that Englishman Matthew Murray read and just was simple-minded enough to believe the Word of God. He said there might be paths in the sea and he went out there and discovered them and just one more in a multitude of scientific discoveries and revelations that add to the detail of our understanding of God's grandeur and intricacy of His creation and properly understood add to the glory of His name which is why he ends the psalm the same way he began it. Oh Lord our Lord how excellent is thy name in all the earth. Now I'm turning over to the New Testament, to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews, the second chapter. Hebrews, the first chapter, is where Paul was writing to these Jewish Christians, believers who had experience in the first century, first-hand or second-hand through the apostles or their disciples, understood the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and had begun to follow Him. And we're now, as the book of Hebrews progresses, going to be challenged by Paul and the Holy Spirit to remember why they had embarked on that journey in the first place and to not look back like Lot's wife and wonder about whether they really needed their Jewish roots and family connections and And the things that they were beginning to miss, like Israel did when they were carried out of the bondage of Egypt, looking back on the leeks and onions and saying, Lord, what have you done bringing us out of there? They're looking back and they're wondering and they're being challenged. And some of them were not ready for the challenge. And the challenge that presents itself to them is, one of the challenges is a challenge to the very deity of Christ. A challenge that says, well, he was a good man. He was a good teacher. Maybe he was even an angel. People were willing to give him that much credit and say, you know, maybe, at least, maybe he was an angel, but he's not God. This message that is growing out of the life and the death and the burial and resurrection of this man, Jesus of Nazareth, the message that's going forth from here, they said, is a wrong message. It's not that the Lord Jesus Christ isn't the Lord Jesus Christ. He is simply a man or, at best, an angel. And so in the first chapter, Paul answers that soundly from scripture using the Old Testament scriptures to debunk that idea and say, when God talks to Jesus, this is a question I love to ask my kids, keep them on their toes, what does God call Jesus when He talks to Him? The answer is He calls Him God. And if God calls the Son of God, God, then I don't have to worry and have any doubts about whether or not He is in full possession of the deity of the triune Godhead. He is God and very God. And so Paul says in Hebrews chapter 2, therefore, because He is higher than the angels, because He is another order above angels and mankind, because He is very God Himself, therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him, God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with diverse miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will? For unto the angels hath He not put into subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him?" We just read that from Psalm 8. Thou madest him a little lower than the angels," and we're going to see here in a moment that he's now not talking about mankind in general, but he's specifically talking about one man, one man who is both man and God. He is higher than the angels according to Hebrews chapter 1, but he was made lower than the angels according to Hebrews chapter 2, made a little lower than the angels. and crowned him with glory and honor, and it set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him." That's a powerful statement of God's sovereignty and of the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ with His Father. God is over all. Christ is over all. Two beings can't be over all unless they're one and the same being. And nothing is not under Christ. Let me say that without the double negative. Everything is under Christ. He rules among the armies of heaven and over the inhabitants of the earth. There is none who can stay His hand or say unto Him, What doest thou? He is the sovereign God Himself. And yet as we spoke this morning about the landscape of human existence that's littered with the debris and the effects and the consequences of sin in the form of suffering and pain and anguish in our lives. The Holy Spirit understands what He says next. He understands that we see not yet all things put under Him. All things are under Him, but we can't really see it that way yet. We need to know it. We need to have the assurance of it. We need to lay hold on the promise that all things are in subjection to Christ, but at the same time, the real experience, the real day-to-day human existence experience causes us to doubt that and we wonder is God really in charge when this tragedy occurs or this movement is rising up and shaking its fist in the face of God and it seems that he's nowhere to be found to answer this affront to his dignity and maybe his very deity. But we do see Jesus, verse 9 says. We don't yet see Him fully in His exalted glory. We will one day. We don't yet see Him in that exalted condition. But by His grace and goodness, the Lord has given us today a glimpse of His Son. We do see Jesus in this state in which He walked the earth 2,000 years ago. We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels. He was incarnate. He was made in the form of a man. And what I want to speak to you about tonight is the importance of the incarnation. Now I'll admit to you that most of my Christmas sermons end up being Easter sermons. I usually end up focusing on the resurrection and on the cross, which is the central turning point of all history. And I probably won't be able to help, I won't be able to avoid doing that tonight a little bit too. But I actually want to focus tonight on the thing that sometimes I try to de-emphasize. I try to encourage my congregation and my family to not focus on the babe in the manger. Not just focus on the sentimental, gentle scene, which probably wasn't nearly as gentle and mild as we like to paint it. All the stench of the oxen in the stall and all the straw sticking to a newborn. Well, I'll just stop. It's just a mess. Not a scene, really, worthy of adoration or attention, unnoticed by virtually the whole world when it occurred. just another birth to just another poor mother in just another poor forgotten country on the backside of the world. But it was essential in God's purpose and plan that His Son, who held the nature of eternal spirit, for God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, His only begotten Son, the second member of the Trinity, The Word who spoke the world into existence, the One whose name is excellent above everything else and whose glory is above the heavens that we read about there in Psalm 8, it was necessary that this great God Himself come down to earth in the form of a man. I want to give you some reasons from Scripture tonight why the incarnation was crucial to the purpose of God. And I had to stop short right in that very verse because the first reason is right in front of us staring us in the face and I told you we wouldn't get away from the Easter part of this sermon either. We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, why? For the suffering of death. Can God die? A God who can die is not really the God we want to talk about, because I want to find the God who made man who doesn't die, and if that one dies too, I want to go one notch above Him. I want to keep going until I find the God that's there all the time, and that's the God I want to talk about. God, who is true God, very God, supreme over all, by the very definition and meaning of that concept, is a being who is eternal, and by the very definition of that word, therefore He is a being who cannot cease to exist. He is self-existent. This is one of the fundamental attributes of God. His self-existence. We sang tonight, He is the great I am. Not the I was, not the I will be, but the eternal I am. He's always there and He's always been there and He always will be there. Because He is in the ever-present now in His own consciousness. The God who is self-existent. Now just philosophically for a moment, think with me about this. If there's a God who exists in and of Himself, nobody made Him, nothing was before Him, nothing will be after Him, and nobody can change Him or influence Him, a God of that nature, a God of the description I just gave, is a being who by His very essence and nature cannot die. But as you churchgoers and Bible readers know, it turned out to be an important part That's understating it. It turned out to be the central part of his purpose toward men that he must die. In order to die, I don't know exactly, I haven't done a lot of angelology study, but it doesn't seem to me that angels die. So he had to take on a form of existence lower even than the angels. He had to come to earth as a man to die. Now you don't see that on many birth announcements. We welcome new little John Smith into the world, 8 pounds, 6 ounces, 22 inches long. He's on his way to the grave. You don't often see that celebrated in connection with the beginning of life. But for this being, it was not the beginning of his life. The beginning of his walk as a man, he came to this earth from that very hour. Even when he was just 12 years old, he said he must be about his father's business. He had his mind from the earliest days set on the cross of Calvary. That was the reason he came to this earth. It's a wonderful blessing that he did many things besides. It's a wonderful blessing that he set forth the perfect example. It's an incredible testament to his nature that he was able to fulfill the law to a jot and to a tittle. And that is what made his death meaningful, that he was the spotless lamb to be sacrificed. It was a wonderful blessing that he performed miracles and healed and taught. It's a wonderful blessing that we have his words recorded. But none of these things were the primary purpose for which he came to this earth. He came to this earth to die for the suffering of death. We see Him now by the eye of faith and future anticipation, crowned with glory and honor. But He came to this earth to die that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. Every man experiences death. We go the way of all the earth. The saying is, it is one common element of human existence that ties us all together. We all will suffer death unless the Lord comes back during our lifetimes and sit for centuries, for millennia before us. Millions and billions of people have already suffered death. The Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth to die like all men die. For it became Him, verse 10 says, that is, it behooved Him, it was appropriate to Him It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." Now this doesn't suggest that the Lord Jesus Christ wasn't already perfect in the sense we usually use the word. We use perfect to describe One hundred percent, well, we can't even think of another word for it. Perfection. One hundred percent flawlessness. That's what we mean by perfect. In King James English, the word perfect more often means complete or mature. And there was something that the Lord Jesus Christ came to do on His way to die that was also an important reason for His incarnation. He came to earth to die. We already got that very clearly stated at the outset. But on His way to death, Christ came to suffer. We talked some this morning about sufferings, and Brother Zach related some more powerful thoughts on that subject after this morning's service. That unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake. That it's a gift of God that we could suffer for the cause of Christ. Remember the apostles felt that way. They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame, suffer persecution for the cause of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth to suffer. He came to earth to suffer as our perfect example of how to endure sufferings. It still boggles the mind when you stop and think about it that someone who had done no wrong could be so slandered as he was, have so much ill spoken against him, be falsely accused, be unjustly tried. It makes our blood boil when there's a terrible court case in our day today, when we see injustice perpetrated through the alleged justice system. It makes us upset. Friends, there's never been a more unjust court than the one that tried the Lord Jesus Christ. They took the evidence of liars and they took evidence out of context and they ignored contrary evidence. A judge wrote a book that thick about all the things that were wrong with the trial of Christ. It was a mockery even to the justice system of its day. But like a lamb as dumb before its shearers, he opened not his mouth." He didn't protest. He didn't say, you've got the wrong man. He didn't say, I've done nothing wrong. He did put the judge in his place a time or two when he said, don't you realize all the power I have over you, Pilate said. And Jesus told him, you don't have any power over me that my father hasn't given you. He just meekly waited. His place, His conclusion, His purpose for which He had come to earth. God made Him a man so that He could suffer and so that He could be perfected through His sufferings. On the next page in my Bible, Hebrews chapter 5, We read in verse 5, So Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest, but he that said unto him, Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee. His father made him the priest. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, this is referring at least to Gethsemane, unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared, The Lord God answered the prayers of his son in Gethsemane and you've got to put all the accounts of those prayers side by side and interweave them together to realize he wasn't asking to avoid the cross because he said, nevertheless, Father, not my will but thine be done. And then he said, except this cup, if this cup cannot pass for me, except I drink it, That was his prayer, and God answered his prayer. He gave him the cup, and he drank the cup to the bitter dregs, and he poured out his life on Calvary's cross, and through that entire experience leading up to the cross, as he was pressed above measure, as his sweat appeared as it were great drops of blood, though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. I can't understand that, I can't wrap my mind around it, that God, in a form of a man, had room to learn, but He did. He probably learned His ABCs growing up in His home, or His Aleph Beths, or whatever they called them there in Hebrews, and He learned how to perhaps work alongside Joseph as a carpenter, and He learned some things growing up, and then He grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men. And then he learned through suffering how to suffer, how to be obedient. He didn't learn it for his own benefit, he learned it for our benefit. He learned it so that we could see his example and say, Lord let me suffer like you suffered. Not just let me suffer, but let me suffer in the way you suffered. Let me suffer in a way that honors my father as you suffered and honored your father. Let me suffer in a way that magnifies the glory of your name. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and being made perfect, reaching that completeness as a man, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him, called of God and high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." Back to chapter 2 now. So we see already that Christ, His incarnation was necessary so that He could die, and His incarnation was necessary so that He could suffer. For both he that sanctifyeth, verse 11, and they who are sanctified are all of one. For which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the church while I sing praise unto thee. A purpose of the incarnation was so that Christ could identify with His children from among the human race as their brother. He is God. He is altogether God. He is worthy of our worship. He's worthy of all the glory we can ascribe to His name. And yet He came to earth as a man so that we would see Him as a man. We would know Him and relate to Him as a man. And forgive me if you've heard this illustration before. It's not original with me. I think I heard it on James Dobson's radio program years ago. And I don't even remember the author's name he was interviewing. But it was a dad of small children who'd written a book about conducting devotions, family worship, Bible study in your home with your children. And one of the examples from his book that he shared on Dobson's program was when he took his young boys one time down into the basement. He tried to teach them about the incarnation the night before in Bible study and they were looking off out of the corners of their eyes in different directions and not really following all the big words and not really understanding the scripture points he was making. And so the next night he took them down into the basement where it was dark And he flipped on the light suddenly, and of course they saw cockroaches scurrying around. He covered one of the cockroaches with a cup, a clear cup, and they looked at that cockroach that they'd trapped inside the cup. And he and his little boys squatted down around the cup and looked at that cockroach for a few minutes, and of course, being little boys, they loved every minute of this. And while they were looking at the trapped cockroach, the dad posed a question to them. He said, why don't you try to talk to that cockroach? And so they did. They called out to him. They said his name. They tried to carry on a conversation with the cockroach, and the cockroach was as oblivious as the boys had been the night before in the other Bible study. The cockroach just didn't get it. It didn't relate to them at all. And so they brainstormed for a while. The dad said, what could we do, if we could do anything, to be able to communicate with that cockroach? And finally, one of the boys hit upon the answer. He said, Dad, what if we could become cockroaches? That was the answer. What if we could be cockroaches and we could speak a little cockroach language to each other? They have some way of communicating. You know, they just discovered a couple of weeks ago that dolphins actually have names. We can't pronounce their names. It's a certain exact pattern of squeals and squeaks that come from other dolphins, but they understand their own name and they respond to it, and I'm sure cockroaches do the same thing. You could be down on a cockroach level having a cockroach conversation with that little trapped cockroach in the glass, and you could understand each other. Friends, the level of humiliation, the level of dissent for the Lord of Glory to come down in the form of a man was far greater than if you and I were transformed into cockroaches to speak to that little bug. But it was important that He do this. It was important that He communicate with us man to man, that He relate to us and that we relate to Him. as brethren. So a purpose of His incarnation was to demonstrate His kinship to those whom He would save, saying, I will declare thy name, speaking of His Father, unto my brethren, speaking of you and me, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee, and again I will put my trust in Him, and again behold I and the children which God hath given me. He leaves heaven a triumphant King In full glory and resplendence, He comes back to heaven a mere man. Now, of course, He's more than a man, but He's every bit a man. And He comes back with a host of men. And by men, I mean men, women, boys, and girls. He comes back with a host, His family, and now He presents His family to His Father, and He says, Behold, I and My servants, My subjects, my brethren, your children, Father, I bring them to you. He was not ashamed to call us his brothers. For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same. He became one of us. And here's another reason he did that, that through death, that first purpose that we identified in verse 9, through death he would accomplish something. He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. He came to earth in the form of a man to destroy the devil. You know, the smart kings, and I never was one and wouldn't have been one if I'd lived back in the days of castles and knights, because I would have bottled myself up like they did at Helm's Deep. I would have waited there for the enemy to come and dash themselves against my walls, and I would have thought, we'll be safe inside these walls. But the smart kings didn't do battle that way. They left what was important in the place of safety, and then they rode out to battle against the enemy on their own turf and defeated them in the field of open battle. The Lord of Glory said He beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven. Perhaps the same instance that Revelation describes as the dragon gathering up a third part of the stars and carrying them with him. This was a great cosmic battle that took place before there was any human history recorded. And we don't know a lot of details about it, but it was a terrible mess. It was a great conflict between good and evil. And Satan was ejected from heaven. God didn't do battle with Satan in heaven. He kicked him out of heaven. And having been kicked out of heaven, he now sends his champion, he now sends the captain of our salvation riding out to do battle with the devil on the devil's own turf. The prince of the power of the air, the God of this world. Other terms that scripture uses to describe Satan as having a level of reign, a level of authority and power in this earth, certainly subject to the higher power of God, but nevertheless a real and dangerous power exercised by Satan throughout human history. And the Lord of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ comes to earth to do battle with Satan on his own turf. And he even gives him an hour as he prepares to go to Gethsemane. He says, the hour of darkness has come. This is your hour. But his hour encapsulates Satan's hour and he squeezes the life out of this serpent and dashes his head to pieces, bruises the head of the serpent with his own heel, suffers a death wound himself as he brings a death wound to the serpent. He came to this earth to achieve victory over the devil. The prophecies had said that this would be done by the woman's seed. And so it was necessary that He come as a man, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. I love the tense of that verb, He had the power of death. And friends, even when He had the power of death before the momentous events at the cross, the Lord Jesus said that we ought not to fear those who can kill the body. We shouldn't have even been afraid of the one who, oh, all you can do is kill people? That's no big deal. The one I serve can raise people who are killed. The one I serve can give life. The one I serve can cast body and soul into hell. All the devil could ever do at the worst was kill somebody. And then the Lord took that power away from him too. Remove the sting of death. Remove the fear and torment of the grave. in his momentous victory over the devil himself. A fifth reason he was incarnate is revealed in the next verse, that in the same great work through death when he destroyed the devil, him that had the power of death, he also delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. I count three things in this verse that we're delivered from. We're delivered from death and you might think that's the worst, but you know death usually happens, well I guess it always happens, instantaneously. It may be preceded by months of suffering, it may be preceded by a half-second split scream, an impending awareness of death that hasn't even fully permeated our consciousness and then we're gone. But the death itself, that instantaneous separation of our immaterial being from our material being, when the dust returns to the earth from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it, that's just an instant. Just like the instant of conception when your life began. Like the instant of regeneration when the Lord of Glory takes up occupancy in the hearts of His children. The instant of death is really not as bad as constantly dreading it. You can live your whole life in powerlessness, worried about the things that are going to happen and most of them never do. It's not the actual thing that usually is the hurt. It's the fear of the thing. And if we have the proper view of what Christ has accomplished at Calvary, we not only will exalt His name that He conquered death, hell, and sin, and the devil himself, but that He, having conquered death, has therefore delivered us from the fear of death. And consequently, the third thing in this verse is He's delivered us from bondage. Who can enslave you if you are an heir and a joint heir with a triumphant, risen Savior? Who can enslave you? There's an old saying that nobody can take advantage of you without your permission. You know the company that stays for three days, this is a four day meeting so everybody be on your toes about this. They say company and fish, I think it was Benjamin Franklin said company and fish both begin to stink after three days. And sometimes folks, you know, have somebody visiting and they just won't ever leave and they think, what do I do about it? And they write Ann Landers and Ann Landers says, tell them to leave because nobody can take advantage of you unless you let them. Well, friends, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, nobody can enslave you unless you let them. You are set free from death, from the fear of death, and from the bondage of sin by the blood of Christ. And this was one of the essential purposes for which the Lord was made a man and went to the cross of Calvary. Yes, He went to Calvary to secure our eternal bliss with Him, our home in heaven, but He also went to the cross to secure your present deliverance from fear. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God. He came, we already read about in the fifth chapter how the Lord described him, made him a priest after the order of Melchizedek, not a Levitical priest, not a priest of the order that was subject to Melchizedek because Abraham, Levi in the loins of Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek and without controversy the Lesser is blessed of the greater. And so Melchizedek was that symbol of the supreme priesthood. And after that order of priesthood, Christ came. And so you might say, well, the Levitical priests were unapproachable. I mean, we knew they were men, but they had all these special robes and went through all these special routines that we couldn't even see. We weren't allowed in all the places that they would go. We couldn't go inside the tent. We certainly couldn't go inside that most special part of the tent in the back. There were things going on there we didn't even understand, and couldn't relate to, and couldn't reach out to, and couldn't touch. And so if that was the glory of the Levitical priesthood, the unapproachableness of the Levitical priesthood, then surely you would think the Melchizedekian priesthood, which was above that, must have been even more remote and unapproachable. It was a one-of-a-kind priesthood. Melchizedek stood as a figure of Christ. And Christ came a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. So he must be unapproachable. But notice what the verse just told us. It behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, it behooved him to be made a man, in other words, that he might be a merciful as well as a faithful high priest. He came to earth as a man that we might approach him. that we might know that we have not an high priest who is not touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. To use a much overused expression today, he is relatable. You can connect with him. You can have a relationship with him. He calls you his brother. You can call him your brother. Your exalted, divine, elder brother. You can bow down before Him and call Him God, for He is that. But you can wrap your arms around His neck and weep on His shoulder, for He is like you, a merciful High Priest. And He came, the verse also says, to make reconciliation for the sins of His people, which is, after all, the work of the priesthood. And there that exalted, lofty, distant Levitical priesthood that for centuries offered sacrifices that did nothing, didn't even pay the interest on the sin debt, didn't roll the debt back, didn't push it down the road, did nothing but symbolize the fact that a debt had to be paid. did nothing but symbolize the need, the human need for reconciliation with God, did nothing but symbolize the fact that we could not reconcile ourselves to God, because as Hebrews points out, even the ones performing those sacrifices were themselves alienated from God. They themselves needed to be sacrificed for, so how in the world could their sacrifices for you or me have ever availed anything? They couldn't have. It was all not a show, not a farce, not an empty exercise, but it was all a lesson. And it was all a lesson like the law itself, which was designed to point us to Christ and to say, Lord, these men can't do it, even though we've set them apart, even though they have a special place, an exalted place among us. They can't bring us to you. We can't bring ourselves to you. How in the world can we come to you? And so this divine priestly being comes in the form of a man to demonstrate mercy to us and faithfulness to God, to represent, yes, He represents God to us, but friends, He represents us to God. He's the last Adam. Adam who stood as not only our forebear, our progenitor, our ancestor, but stood as our representative. It was as if we all had one big class election and we said, all right, Adam, Adam, he's our man. If he can't do it, no one can. And Adam went up there and represented us to God and fell flat on his face. Friends, Goliath represented the entire Philistine army, and when he fell down, they didn't contest the fact that he had represented them, and he had failed, and they were now the defeated enemies of the Israelites. It's silly to argue about whether or not it's just for us to fall in Adam, because the folks who argue that never seem to complain about the fact that the believer is represented in Christ. He stands as our proxy, our go-between, our daisman, our mediator before God. And just as perfectly as He represented the interests of God to man, the message of God to man, so He perfectly represents His brethren to His Father. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He ever lives to make intercession for us. He stands there in this role because as High Priest, He has made reconciliation for the sins of the people. And friends, for the first time in the history of the world, There was a priest who didn't have any sins of his own to make reconciliation for. And so the blood he shed, his own perfect, spotless, sinless blood, he didn't have to worry that it was contaminated with one ill thought, with one bad motive, with one word, deed, or action, or thought of disobedience, or hesitation, or contrariness to God in any of his purposes. In His complete perfection, He represented us to the Father and made reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able now to succor them, that's us, that are tempted. Lord, I've been wronged. He was wronged. Lord, I've been unjustly accused. No, you don't understand. Unjustly accused. It's not true. He was unjustly accused. Lord, I've been betrayed. He was betrayed in the house of his friend. Lord, I've been hurt. He was hurt. You see, friends, there is nothing we can experience in this life that Christ can offer not only His divine grace toward us in that need, but He can offer us and provide for us His human relation to that need. Tempted in all points like as we are, yet never one time even slipped. Never one time became hasty. Never one time flew off the handle. Never one time misjudged someone else's motives. Never one time spoke rashly against the Heavenly Father. Never one time said, why me, Lord? He behaved himself with utter perfection through every trial, but he experienced those trials. And so now he can turn to us and say, I've been there. I know what you're going through. He is able to succor, to comfort. to encourage, to edify them that are tempted. Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle," What's an apostle? That's one who is sent out as an emissary, right? So there were the 12 apostles, then there was the 13th apostle, then there was another 13th apostle because one of them died. So we've got this batch of apostles, and then we have several other minor apostles in there, like Barnabas, who are named as such in the book of Acts. Apostle is both a title for those men of the Twelve, but it's also a description of the role that they carried. They carried the role of being sent with an authoritative message. Christ is the Apostle of our profession. That means He was sent from God. He came down from heaven to earth. and it says he is the high priest of our profession which means he represents earth back to God. He represents his brethren back to his heavenly father. He came down from heaven as a man and now as a man and as God he represents us to his heavenly father. Consider the apostle and high priest of our profession. Jesus Christ, who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath built the house hath more honor than the house. For every house is built by some man, but he that built all things is God. And Moses verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after. But hear verse six, Christ as a son over his own house, Whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end? Do you see now, we're not being led by some alien species, some remote being who has no relatability, no connection with us. We are being led by the Lord of hosts, yes, who is also the captain of our salvation, who leads us forth in victory, and we can follow Him with confidence because He came as a man. In His wisdom and grace, God didn't send angels to be preachers. In His wisdom and grace, God didn't send an angel to attempt to make atonement. In His perfect and eternal plan, God sent Himself. And He came down to earth as a man. to die after suffering, to show His kinship with us, to destroy the devil who had the power of death, to deliver us from death, fear, and bondage, to be a merciful as well as a faithful high priest, and to make reconciliation for the sins of His people. Thinking about these things helps me appreciate why Christ came in the form of a man. It helps me appreciate and get even more excited about the final chapter, presaged in Philippians chapter 2. He made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. We've spoken of those things from Hebrews chapter 2, but now let me give you another glimpse here. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Back in Genesis there was a group of brothers who resented their sibling. They despised Joseph, they tried to kill him, and then they sent him off into captivity and didn't see him for decades. And then when they went down and saw him again, they were in terror. Friends, this God who made himself man is coming back, riding out again out of the fortress of heaven, riding down to earth again, coming back in all his glory, And the question is, are we going to be terrified at the sight of this one who was made like us, who we rejected and despised, or are we going to joyfully fall on our knees before him and joyfully welcome him with arms as he has welcomed us in his and praise his name forevermore. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. May God bless you.