Going through Hebrews, we are in Hebrews chapter 2 this morning. And I don't know how well I'll do explaining this in the sermon, but you need to understand that when God's people gather together, something happens to them They can't see, they can't understand with their eyes and their five senses. But the Bible tells us about it. And it tells us that we're essentially lifted up into heavenly places where we are with Christ who's in heaven. And there are a host of angels who gather together and worship and praise our God at the same time that we do. And I'll be talking a little bit about that because Hebrews 1 and 2 is filled with this talk about angels. And I'll try to explain that as we go along. Let's start off with a story from about 25 years ago about Paul Simon. Any of you listen to him? At this point in his career, he was a rather washed up folk singer. He was recently separated from his singing partner, Art Garfunkel. He was recently divorced from his wife, then Carrie Fisher, and I did not know he was married to Princess Leia for a while. And he was stinging from his most recent solo album, which was a commercial failure. And so Simon was in full midlife crisis mode. So what did he do? Well, as someone put it, he did what any other famous borderline washed out musician would do. He went to South Africa. From here, Simon would reinvent himself. He was stricken by the haunting melodies of the choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They started collaborating together, and they would make several songs on the album that would contribute to what would eventually become the album of the year in 1987. It was called Graceland. And the most popular track off of that album was You Can Call Me Al. And it's a song that seems almost completely meaningless when you sing it, until you realize that it's an autobiography of Simon's own midlife crisis. It's a story of a beer-bellied man who's soft in the middle, who needs a shot at redemption, which he seems to find everywhere that he looks, where he sees scenes of cattle in the marketplace and scatterlings of orphanages and so on. So that same author who said that you would just go to South Africa, what else would you do, right? He said, the jubilation that this man experiences while surrounded by the new sights, sounds, people, languages, and customs, leads Simon to conclude that he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity in that song. And then it prompts him to declare, amen, hallelujah. So that's their story, but I can't help but wonder, the Ladysmith are a Christian group and they had a deep influence upon Simon in those years. Angels in the Architecture, that line from that song, is a clear reference to the way that Christians have engraved, literally, heavenly beings into the very fabric of their church buildings for a thousand years. For Simon, these angels may have been purely secular, but for Christians, it's always tied to the church and to heaven and to true worship of the Creator God. As I think about Hebrews 2, I don't know why this illustration came into my mind. It's because I have four girls. So what else is going to come into my mind? I liken it to what my girls do with their hair, and which I can't possibly duplicate. They have three strands that they turn into one braid, right? So there's basically three strands in this passage, and it turns into a single beautiful braid. So the strands are, as we think about what he's talking about, Christ and the angels. Then there's a strand of Christ as a man. And then there's a strand of the death of Christ. And when they're woven together, they form this incredible braid. of worship. And there's too much here to focus on all of that in a single sermon, so next week I'm going to say the death of Christ for that time. So I'll be skipping over those kinds of portions of the text today. So what I wanted to do this morning is help us think about the rest of these strands, these other two strands, Christ and angels and Christ as a man and find how that's a natural way, both of thinking where we left off last time and also leading us to this braid of worship. So it's been a while. It's been a month since we were in this. So last time, we focused on the many Old Testament citations in chapter 1 that find their way into the architecture of Hebrews in the first two chapters. Now, I want you to remember that Of those quotations, and there's about a dozen of them, the vast majority come from the Psalms. Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 22, Psalm 34, Psalm 45, Psalm 91, 97, 102, 104, and 110 are all cited. Now of these, the vast majority have one thing or another to do with angels. So Psalms and angels, why? Well, let's consider angels first, and then we'll see how this leads naturally to a discussion of man in the citations. And then last, we'll consider the Psalms. Now, in doing this, we need to remember how the preacher got us to Hebrews 2. So the basic argument of the book of Hebrews will be that Christ is better than various things in the scriptures. And when we say the scriptures, we mean the Old Testament. The first thing he wants us to tell us is that Christ is better than the angels. Various explanations have been given for why he would want to start here. Probably the most common is that people think that his audience had somehow fallen into angel worship, and so he's trying to correct that. The problem, though, is that it's not at all clear that there was any angel worship going on with these people. So perhaps something else then. And this is my thought. I think that early fathers like Justin Martyr understood exactly what our author might be getting at. Justin says in his first apology, the word of God is also called angel. And remember, word is that word that's used in John 1, 1 for Jesus, isn't it? So it says the word of God is also called an angel. And Irenaeus, who's this contemporary in the second century AD, similarly calls Christ the ruler among kings, the prophet among prophets, the angel among angels, the man among men, son in the father, God and God, king to all eternity. So they're referring to the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. I don't know if you caught this in Stephen's speech, but he says that Moses saw the Lord and the Lord spoke to him and the Lord spoke to him and the angel spoke to him. It's right there in Acts 7. This is the person, this angel of the Lord in Exodus 3 and so many other places, who covenanted with Abraham and Israel. He was worshipped by Moses and Joshua. He bears the very name Yahweh in his person. He forgives sins. Jude refers to him as Jesus, saying that Jesus saved a people out of the land of Egypt. which is exactly what the angel himself said to the people of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give your fathers. Hebrews begins by talking about Jesus as the son and comparing him to angels. Why? He wants to make it crystal clear that this person who appeared many times as an angel is greater than the angels. See, angels are called the sons of God, but only this angel is called the begotten son. The sons of God watched and sang at creation in Job, but the son was himself the creator of all things, including the angels. Angels minister before the throne of God, but the son sits on the throne of God. and so on. So his argument actually helps us to clarify in our minds that the angel is not like other angels because he's the son of God. The first chapter concludes by asking, are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? Now this is referring to the heavenly host, to the created angels. And for the most part, commentators do a nice job explaining the meaning of that verse. For example, Archant Hughes says, angels minister to believers. And then it quotes a psalm for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your way. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. By the way, Satan quoted that one to Jesus from Psalm 91. He says angels have dramatically delivered believers from prison. Angels rejoice at the conversion of sinners. They are present within the church. They watch the lives of believers with interest. They carry away believers at death to the place of blessedness and other such things. And all those things are true and found in the Bible. And yet listen to the confusion that he and many others introduce in trying to pin down the origins of that last verse of Hebrews. Chapter 1. He, like so many others throughout the centuries, cites Psalm 34 7 at this point, thinking that maybe Hebrews has this in its mind. And this is what that Psalm says. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and he delivers them. Now, yes, as an angel, the angel of the Lord is doing something for those who inherit salvation. So in a sense, he's ministering to them. Yet this is no ordinary angel. People are to fear him. It says in that verse, he delivers them. It's the language of the Exodus. Now, let me explain what I mean via an old Irish parchment called the Lieber him. Norium tells the story of Patrick, who sang a song when an ambush was laid against him in order that he might not sow the seeds of the gospel on Ireland. on the Isle of Ireland. It's come down through the ages and it's still known to us today. It's called St. Patrick's Breastplate or the Deer's Cry. It's a very famous prayer and it goes like this, Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me. Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me. Salvation is of the Lord. That's a wonderful little prayer. Where might he get these ideas? So the Wikipedia suggests that its origin might be Ephesians 6, where the Christian puts on the armor of God to protect him from the snares of the devil. It comes in his poem just after a section that says I bind myself today to the virtue and the ranks of cherubim in obedience of angels in service of archangels Let me suggest another fountain of origin for this prayer It's Psalm 34 7 the angel of the Lord in camps around those who fear him and delivers them Patrick's prayer is a song of worship And it reflects the Old Testament theology of the angel. The early church knew full well who the angel of the Lord was. Why wouldn't they derive their theology of Christ from him in the Old Testament? Now in Hebrews, this idea of angels being ministering spirits is then used to introduce a particular act of ministration that they were involved in. Now this comes in the first and second verse of chapter two, the giving of the law. So the first verse, we're going to skip that for a minute because it's a warning. And the second verse says, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. Why in the world would he mention the message or the word being put into effect by angels, and where does that even come from? Okay, so let's deal with the second question first. This is a very common idea in the New Testament. Hebrews talks about it here. Stephen talks about it in his sermon at the very end. He says, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. The law is delivered by angels. Paul talks about it in Galatians. Why then the law was put into place through angels by an intermediary? The origin of this seems to come from Deuteronomy 33. The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us. He shone forth from Mount Paran. He came with ten thousands of his holy ones with flaming fire at his right hand. The idea is found all over the ancient world. If you go read the law code of Hammurabi, it makes it very clear at the very outset, in the introduction of that code, that he was called by the name, he was called by name by the gods Anu and Bel. And they said to him, bring about the rule of righteousness in the land of Babylon. Law has its origins, you see, not down here. And this is a word that we need to hear in our day. But up in the heavenly realms, God used angels to deliver his word to the peoples of the world. The angel of the Lord is the chief lawgiver to Moses. He is Paul's intermediary between angels and the Lord. At any rate, the point that's being made is the message given to Israel through angels was reliable. They taught Israel laws about the way that invisible things around them work. Things like justice, goodness, righteousness, and holiness. Things that modern man thinks are purely man-made, cultural, relativistic conventions. Just as simple to overthrow as casting out a loser on survivor. Just a tiny democratic or judicial activist vote away and law is overthrown because we just made it up after all. But you see, no amount of pretending that these things don't exist in invisible places is going to make it go away. Law is transcendent. It comes from heaven itself. And the point is Israel learned firsthand that every transgression or disobedience must receive a just retribution. It was proven time and again their violent history and the deadly things that happened to their people for breaking the law. But angels also taught Israel good news of what is necessary to be saved when you break those laws. Perhaps this is why Hebrews uses the word logos. They came and delivered the logos, which is broader than the law that Stephen and Paul talk about. It was all part of the message that they were sent to give. Do you remember it was the angel who declared, good tidings of great joy that shall be for all peoples. And you may think, well, okay, so I believe the angels gave the law, but what's the point of this? Why would he bring up the idea of angels giving the law and who cares? What has to do with what I believe is the climactic reason that Jesus is better than angels. And he derives his warning in the first verse from this. It is this simple but staggering news. Jesus became a man. I was thinking earlier this week that, you know, in a modern age where nobody believes in God, maybe the most staggering thing is that Jesus is God. But in old day, when everybody believed in God or gods, the staggering thing is that Jesus became a man. God became man. This starts off rather generically as he goes along in his sermon. Now as I read this next few verses, keep in the back of your mind what I said the first week that Luke might be the preacher, alright? How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard. Well, God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will to hear the obvious similarities to Pentecost there. Something has happened, he is saying. And this picks up now back on the very first verse of the book. In these last days, God has spoken to us by his son. But who is the son? He's everything that's been discussed, but more. This son has come among us. This son has given us a message about salvation. He is the Lord who declared it and whose disciples gave it directly to our preacher of Hebrews, who seems to be a second generation Christian, just like Luke was second generation and had to investigate carefully everything that he wrote in his two volume book, Luke and Acts. This Lord has proven his power at Pentecost through the spirit that he sent in the signs and wonders all to demonstrate that he desires this message should continue to the ends of the earth. The point here is not to deny that Jesus had some relationship to the giving of the message of the Old Testament. In fact, I think he gave that message. Rather, it's to contrast what kind of a person has brought the New Testament message with the Old Testament message. In the Old Testament, He gave it as an angel and it came through angels. And this differs greatly from the last days. For the giver of the New Testament gospel message was no angel. Rather, he was a man. Not an angel man. Angels are called men. He was a human being. Not a demigod. Not a half-man. He's a fully human person. And this explains why suddenly the preacher seems to change the subject, when in reality he's simply getting to the climactic point that he's been patiently driving us to really for a chapter and a half. Verse 5, for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking. So he's continuing to think about angels, but now he adds the world to come. When did he speak about that? He says of which we are speaking. The world to come, he brings it up when he starts talking about salvation in verse 14 of the last chapter and in verse 3. What a glorious subject. Did you miss that he spoke about salvation twice already? When Christians talk about salvation, they're not talking about salvation from a temporary vice like alcohol or salvation from wars or bad governments or abusive husbands or people who shoot other people in Colorado Springs. Salvation refers to eternal life beyond death, eternal life in the world to come. So this phrase world to come is actually very fascinating in the Greek. The verse literally reads, not for two angels did he subject the coming inhabited world. He chooses a word for the world here that's not cosmos. It's not aeon or age. The word is oikomene and the root word is a house. So it's a house that is populated. That's the world to come. Some of the references in the New Testament are solemn and liturgical. Liturgical. Keep that in mind. He's speaking about the future inhabited earth where the rule of God reigns in perfect harmony with the divine will through humans. Through human sons. And as such, this world to come is God's eternal temple. It's inhabited by Christians who rule in justice. Listen to how the apostolic father Clement, he's probably even before Justin and Irenaeus, how he speaks about this. Listen to how it's tied to the law. He uses this word oikomene. For you through your works have revealed the everlasting structure of the world to come. You, Lord, created the earth. You are faithful throughout all generations, righteous in your judgments, marvelous in strength and majesty, wise in creating and prudent in establishing what exists, good in all that is observed and faithful to those who trust in you, merciful and compassionate. Forgive us our sins and our injustices, our transgressions and our shortcomings." That's going to be the way of it in eternity. The point is angels are not those who administer things in this new world, like they did in the world that we're in now. Men administered these things. This is a change from the present way that things operate. And that leads to this vital citation from another psalm, Psalm 8. If you have Psalm 8, you can open it there or you can just read along in Hebrews, starting in verse 6. It's 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 a little lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now, like the previous Psalms, this one also has, in its original meaning, something to do with Jesus Christ. It's a Psalm of David, and as Dr. Clowney puts it, David wrote not as a private individual, but as the Lord's anointed Messiah called to suffer as God's servant. It begins by praising Yahweh, who is also called our Lord, Adonai. And as we've seen in previous Psalms, this is a title that's often used to talk about the sun. This Yahweh's glory is above the heavens in the Psalm, and it can be seen through all natural revelation. This God then gains glory on earth. However, He does it in an unusual way, through the mouths of babies and infants, and in frail and feeble people of the earth. And then he gains fame, and he does it by defeating his enemies. And this strange juxtaposition of the feeble and the powerful, as David contemplates this, and the God who is known through nature, causes him no wonder. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man? The word is Adam. What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? So man and the son of man, is that just a way of saying the same thing? Now catch this. This is the part Hebrews now quotes. It takes the son of man, not as referring to any man, but as referring to a specific man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And here's how he does it. First, he quotes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. He's not quoting the Hebrew, he's quoting the Greek. And it says, you made man a little lower than the angels in the Greek. The Hebrew says you made him a little lower than the Elohim. That is the gods or the heavenly beings or the sons of God. And that becomes then angels in the Greek. And yet in making him lower, God has crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. And I give you just a diversion here for a couple, maybe just a paragraph, putting everything in subjection to man who's made lower than the angels. This is one of the places that Jews and early Christians went to in their non-biblical writings to give a motive for the temptation in the Garden of Eden. Did you know that? The basic idea is that Satan understood exactly what's being said here. God gave man. What is man? The devil says. God gave him dominion over the earth. But Satan thought, I deserve dominion, not him. After all, He's made from the mud, that man. Furthermore, everything was put into subjection to man, and that included Satan himself. In the Psalms, the angels are commanded to worship the Son. And that's actually been quoted in chapter 1, in Hebrews 1-6. In Genesis, Adam's the one who's supposed to cast out the devil, isn't he? So the idea, it was taken then backwards that Satan was commanded to worship Adam. And thus, in a book called The Life of Adam and Eve, Satan refuses to bow before Adam and is so enraged by the idea that he tempts our parents to sin. Anyway, it's the best motive that I've ever heard for the temptation and I think it's rooted fairly solidly in scriptures like this as We continue on David seems to be looking backwards to the first Adam, but when God gave him dominion over the earth, but Hebrews Seems to be looking forward to the second Adam who reclaims that dominion that Adam lost. Its focus is on the Christological title, Son of Man. It is to the Son of Man that everything is put into subjection. So look how he puts it. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. So the exposition from Hebrews is that all along the Messiah was in view in Psalm 8. Therefore in Psalm 8 it is predicted in a shadowy way that the Messiah would become a human being. Now this is so important because it gets at the heart of what the news, of what is new about the last days, about the New Testament, and about even the message that is delivered. Verse 9, we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor. So remember, he's been talking about how the sun is greater than all the angels. And all of a sudden he goes, now he's been made lower than the angels, but he's been crowned with glory and honor. And you go, how does that work? To believe in Jesus is to believe that in the New Testament, God made Christ lower than the angels. In other words, He became a man. Now, never before and never since in all of history has God become man. He didn't seem like a man. He didn't just look like a man. He wasn't partially a man. He wasn't an angel man. He's a human being. But to believe in Jesus is also to believe that he has been crowned with glory and honor. And many don't believe this because they can't see it with their eyes today. In fact, Hebrews has just said at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. Why? I'm going to tell you why. It's because today is the day of salvation. And if everything was in subjection to Him, there would be no more time for salvation. Once all things are put under His feet, there is no more salvation. Every knee will bow on that day, simply because the King will return triumphantly. People will be forced to submit. have no choice. This is the king and you're going to bow down when today they refuse to submit. Too many people, however, do not see the glory and honor because they're looking for all the wrong things. You see, they're looking for the power, like John and James, who wanted to call down fire on their enemies. Or they're looking for the beatific vision like Philip, who said, Oh Lord, just show us the Father. That's all we need. They're impatient. They want the eschaton now. They want the second coming now. They want the glorious power now. What they do not want is crosses. It's like the woman pastor at the reimagining conference many years ago in Minneapolis when I was living there. And this conference made worldwide headlines and this woman said, I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff. That's her conclusion of what Christianity now is. We've gone beyond all that stuff. Friend, you may think that that's not what you need, but the reality is that's the only thing you need. It's all that you need. It is sufficient because you see, in order for man to be exalted above angels, and that's what the Psalm is saying. For a little while, he's made lower, but he's going to be crowned with glory and honor. How does that happen? A man has to fulfill what Adam failed to fulfill. This is why Jesus is called the second Adam, the second man. Jesus had to become a man, else man would be doomed to hell. Not some of us, all of us, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus coming as man has its ultimate human act in his death on the cross, doesn't it? As I said, we're going to look more at that next time. But we can say today that the glory and the honor that Jesus is crowned with in the verse in verse nine is because of the suffering of death. He's crowned with glory and honor because he suffered and died. Glory comes through suffering. He had to suffer death so that in verse 10, he for whom and by whom all things exist, you see how he keeps putting that in there? In bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. What a radical, crazy, backwards plan that is. a stumbling stone to Jews. And God doesn't become man. Foolishness to Greeks. Well, sure, demigods become men, but they don't die on crosses. And yet it's the enduring message of 2000 years, and many have come under its power and sway as they have understood that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ, because only in Jesus Christ is God fully present to be propitiated, and man is fully present to make atonement for sin. Salvation is the hope that's set before us by Jesus Himself. He told us how we might be saved and He said that it's through Him that this would happen. It was all put into motion when the Son of God became a Son of Man. Jesus as man saves men and women and children. No one else can do that. This is the reason why Hebrews has the first of many warning sections right here. Beloved, you must pay closer attention to what you've heard, lest you drift away from it. The worries of this life that you have choke out the seeds of the gospel. The complacency of giving into its pleasures and giving up meeting together, as it will say later in the book, these things cause us to drift away. And yet if the message delivered in the Old Testament by angels had swift retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? You see now how he's arguing? It's all the more sure because God as man now gives us the news. The gospel is good news. It's the news of how sinners can be reconciled and forgiven by and to a holy God. There is no other message on earth that compares to this. Nor is there a message that's capable of transforming individuals, families, cities, nations, or the whole earth if God be so pleased. It's the power of God to salvation because it's the living, kind, gentle words of salvation in Christ. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. And he offers you rest if you will just believe in him. Do you see the difference between the old and the new? In the old, the angels may have declared salvation, but they did it as angels. And so there was no salvation yet, legally speaking, because angels can't save you. But Jesus as a man delivers the message that I'm going to save you because I've become one of you. I can make atonement for your sin because I'm perfect and I'm one of you. But friend, one day this good news will no longer be offered. In the same way, if you turn your back on it, there's no good news left for you. All there is waiting is the punishment and retribution for transgressing and disobeying the law of God. If you will not stand with Christ, you will stand by yourself. And woe to him who has to stand before the tribunal of heaven without an advocate, even Jesus, the just and the justifier of those who have faith in him. With this, let's consider that strange question as we kind of move to the end now of why Psalms, right? I brought this up. Why does he keep quoting Psalms? I think that's an interesting question. I don't know anybody that I've read that's ever asked it. But it struck me that maybe he's doing something here in quoting Psalms. Could have quoted just about any other place in the Old Testament if he wanted to, but he didn't. This is the braid that now comes from these strands, and it's the braid of worship. I'm going to cough again. Hebrews in telling you about Christ and in warning you about belief and in showing you his deity and his humanity is Leading you to the very heart of worship and Beautifully he does it by quoting songs to you There's been hints of this all along. The language of Hebrews 1.7 and 1.14, going back to those, talking about angels, they're called ministering spirits or ministers of flaming fire. The word used there is liturgos. Do you know what English word we get from that? Liturgy. Ministers, you see, serve in God's temple, even as the holy ones in Isaiah 6. In Revelation 5 and other places in heaven, they lead in the worship of God. The church was trying to depict something of this theology for the people in the buildings when they put the angels in the architecture. Has not the church known this forever? The so-called divine liturgies of Chrysostom and Basil, which are 1,500 plus years old, and they're still used in Eastern churches, are infused with angels from beginning to end. Gregory, Augustine, and Chrysostom all spoke of angels coming to assist in the worship of God's people. Do we ourselves not call the angels to praise God during the doxology? Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts. You wouldn't do that if they couldn't hear you, would you? Hebrews itself has already done this in that citation of Hebrews 1.6. Praise Him, all ye angels. Angels are among us and assist us in the liturgy of God in heaven. Now, however that works, I don't know. But I don't have to know it in order to understand for it to be true. Remember, angels gave the law also. But the law is at the center of Israel's worship. More angels in the architecture with the law. The world is to come, is the home of God. It's a temple. More angels in the architecture of Hebrews 1 and 2, or more worship. And even the way the author is composing his message is worshipful. It's a theological masterpiece. It's citing songs and he's even being a wordsmith and a poet is one commentator says the structure of the comment is artful and it's replete with alliteration and assonance. So if you're hearing this in Greek, you would, you would kind of be swept up just in the way that the thing is written. But see, ultimately this is summarized for us in one more Psalm quotation and two quotations that come from a poetic section of Isaiah. I and then Isaiah it's Isaiah speaking. I will put my trust in him and Behold I and the children that's God's people that God has given me Because I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise and that I all of those eyes become Christ in Hebrews. Let's think about how this works. I So the citation from the Psalm, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. This comes from one of the great messianic Psalms, Psalm 22. Edmund Clowney has a wonderful short little article on this. I'm going to read a kind of a long section of it. This is what he writes. When Christ comes, a song comes. For Jesus Christ is a singing Savior. This psalm begins with the cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus made that cry His own on the cross. But the Hebrews passage reminds us that the whole psalm is Christ's. Not only the cry of abandonment at the beginning, but also the vow of victory at the climax in verse 22. Jesus had sung that psalm often before he went to the cross. Indeed, he knew and sang all the psalms in the congregation of God's people. Think of the meaning the psalms had when he sang them. If you would open a new experience of worship, meditate on the psalms as the psalms of Jesus. You have noticed that there are we psalms written in the first person plural. We are thy people and the sheep of thy pasture. Jesus sings those psalms with us. He is the singing shepherd. We are the lost sheep He has brought home rejoicing. He sings over us in Zephaniah and with us and for us. Jesus can sing the We Psalms with us because He sings the I Psalms for us as our Savior. Lo, I am come in the roll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God. Christ would explain his suffering and glory from the Psalms because he experienced the agony and the ecstasy the Psalms predicted. His cry, why have you forsaken me, came from the pit of his anguish, abandoned by his friends, ringed about by his enemies, seen in the Psalms as wild bulls, roaring lions, baying hounds. Jesus knew the ultimate horror, the hell of forsakenness by his Father. What songs of agony Christ sings, the songs of His suffering that sealed salvation. Our Lord became our brother to die in our place. He teaches us honest songs. Heart cries to God. My days are consumed like smoke and my bones are burned as a hearth. Yet Christ's songs of suffering rise to faith in God. In abandonment He cries, why? But His question leaps from the depths to the heights. My God! He cries even in his forsakenness, thou art holy, save me from the lion's mouth. Indeed, even before God answers, the anguish of his anointed turns to a vow of praise in the midst of the congregation. I will praise you. Beloved, we may be surrounded by a host of angels even right this very moment. They might be assisting us somehow in worship. We know that they are even in worship now of the living one, just as we are. But Jesus, you see, Jesus is the singer of Israel and he sings for us as our brother. Indeed, later in Hebrews, he will become the ultimate minister or liturgos in the temple of heaven, because he has become a man. What angel is there that can say this? Christ is greater than the angels because Christ has become a man. He's taken our infirmities, humbled himself, emptied himself. He's died for us and is honored in his resurrection from the dead. And now he's glorified and sits at the right hand of the Father, always living to make intercession for us. You know, in John's gospel, John says that Isaiah saw the glory of Christ and spoke of him. He's talking about Isaiah 6. When he sees the Lord in the temple, he says, that's Christ. Hebrews is now quoting Isaiah 8 a couple chapters later. And in it, Isaiah is acting as representative of Israel. He's crying out in faith to the Lord for himself and the people he represents, which are called his children. But Hebrews sees Isaiah speaking in the person of someone else, to use Calvin's language. This is Jesus. The idea is that Jesus, as representative, leads us to faith in God. Who is us? His brothers, the children that the Father gave him. You know, in that verse from Psalm 22, the ESV translates that word as congregation. In the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. You know what the Greek word is? Ekklesia. The church. He does this as he sings. He does this as we worship. It's why worship is such an important means of grace. Because during it, we come no closer to God on earth. May the singer of Israel lead you to trust in him today. Praise him in the church because he's greater than angels and he leads us in triumphant procession in the glorious temple gates of heaven. Father, would you please bless the hearing of your word today? It's such a fantastic thing that this preacher of Hebrews says and the way he starts off his sermon having us think about heavenly things so that He can draw our attention to how the great heavenly person who made all things has become a man and has died for our sins so that we might be saved. There's no greater news than this, and it's right here up front in this great book of Hebrews. And I would pray, Lord, that as we hear that message, that no one here would leave without having trusted in Christ Because if that word that was delivered by the angels proved so effective and true, how much more that word that was delivered by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself about salvation. How will we escape if we neglect salvation? We might die when we walk out of this place today. Lord, please help everyone in here. Give them faith to trust in Christ, we pray. Pray that your gospel would be powerful, that it would go forward in the power and the mercy and the kindness of Christ to save sinners. I ask in Jesus' name you would hear our prayer. Amen.