final sacrifice. That's why when he came he said, I am the Lamb of God. John preached about him saying this is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. So the question for us is whether or not Christ is enough for us. Just the same question they were facing. Because if Christ is enough for them, they realize all of the sacrifices were fulfilled in Christ. So that they never have to sacrifice an animal again because the final blood sacrifice has been paid. You remember it from last time. We said, what is the Old Testament? The Old Testament was a sonogram. It was a sonogram. It was a picture of the child that was supposed to come. But once the child is born, stop looking at the sonogram. The child is here. We're not supposed to cling to the old covenant sacrifices as though we don't have a new covenant mediator. Christ is here. We never need a sacrifice again, because as the Hebrew writer will tell us over and over again, He made the once and for all sacrifice that truly put away sins. Not like the day of atonement they had to repeat every year. He put away sins forever on the cross. And if you believe that, then the sacrifice has ultimately and finally been made for you. Now, can you imagine what it would be like? Your friends, your family, if they were coming to you in the first century, they were saying, come back to the temple. What if this is what you really need? They're saying, what if you need to just, why don't you make sure? They're saying, I know that you say you trust in Jesus, but what if God is still smiling on the old covenant sacrifice? Why don't you come and lay your hands on the goat's head? Lay your hands on the animal's head. Why don't you come confessing your sins over them? Just slaughter the animal. And they were telling their friends and family members, in case what Jesus did didn't really cover all your sins. Then you'll have backup. Then you'll have insurance. You'll have something just in case the cross wasn't what we were looking for. You see, this is a real test of faith because if someone truly believes what he's saying is if you turn back to the old covenant sacrifices, you have no salvation in Christ at all. This was a formal temptation they were giving to Christians in the early church that if they would confess their sins over an animal, they would reject Christ, and that is what the Hebrew writer calls crucifying the Son of God afresh, and denying the blood sacrifice of Christ had ever put away their sins, because there is no trust in Christ if you're thinking you need backup from something else. Now, we take this on in many other ways, right? There's a popular teaching, they call it Pascal's wager. Sometimes people use this in evangelism and it is a false way to try to convince people to put their faith in Christ. They go to people and they say, well, if you think about it, if you think about it, this is the wager. What if, what if God is real and heaven and hell is real and Jesus is the only way, if you put your faith in him, they say you'll be covered. But just think, he's not real this is where they go wrong right say if he's not real you put all your faith in him and he's not real you haven't lost anything you still lived your life here on earth but just in case he is real notice the lack of faith in their language just in case he's real put your faith in him so you have insurance because if hell is real you don't want to go there Well, as we thought about this morning, that kind of half-truth or fractured truth is no truth at all. That kind of half-faith or fractured faith is no faith at all. If you're saying, just in case he's real, that's no kind of biblical trust in Christ as our Savior. The Hebrew writer wants us to move into what he calls the full assurance of faith, to trust in Christ, to know that what he accomplished was real, that what he accomplished was enough, that hell is a real place where people really go, and there are people who are there now. That glory, eternal life, is a real destination where people really go, and people are there now. And he's telling us Christ is our only hope. So if you've heard this, you know this, but the warning comes fresh because he says, if the word that was spoken by angels, he talks about the old covenant and how God used angels during the old covenant era. If that old covenant was steadfast and every transgression and every sin was righteously punished, how could we possibly escape a greater punishment? So great a salvation, he says. If we are neglecting, if we end up having neglected, so great a salvation. That key word there in verse 3, as some of you know, is the word neglect. Again, he's not talking about frontier evangelism. Have you heard about Christ? Do you know who Jesus is? This is not what he's saying. He's saying you know who Christ is. The gospel is nigh to your hearts, it's in your hearts, it's in your mouths now. What he's saying is to hold fast to what you have, because it's something you do have. Salvation has come to your household. If you're here today, man, woman, and child, that means salvation has come into your household. Your whole household knows the gospel. You are being trained and brought up under the gospel. And what the Hebrew writer is telling us is there would be no worse fate than to be not far from the kingdom of God, and to breathe your last breath, having neglected this great salvation, which is greater than anything the old covenant ever had." And this is what the writer is saying in verse 3. It was spoken to us by the Lord, and it was confirmed by all the apostles. And those of you who wonder about signs and miracles and whether or not God still does those things, ordinarily, We have no reason to expect God using signs or wonders or miracles in our day and age. God is free to act however he wants, although it seems that his design was to use miracles in the past, 2,000 years ago. And primarily, this is what he has used them for. Look at verse four. God bore witness to the Lord's message and the apostles' message with signs and wonders and various miracles and these gifts of the Holy Ghost, like the gifts of tongues. Someone sent me a message just this week asking, should I expect gifts to be taking place? Like the gifts of tongues, should they be breaking out in churches today like they were 2000 years ago? And I think here we have a clear answer that the answer is no. Again, God is certainly powerful enough to use tongues if he wants to reach a remote people in a foreign tongue. But I see God using missionaries all over the world over these recent decades that are training hard to learn the languages for frontier missions because God seems to be using that process now because he used tongues and other miracles to confirm that Christ and the apostles had the real new covenant that they had always been waiting for. The Hebrew writer will key in on this. You heard Jeremiah say, behold, days are coming when I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant of old, which they broke, although I was a husband to them. He's saying there will be a new covenant. And so when the new covenant arrives, God didn't want anyone to wonder. He gives signs and miracles from the heavens, the gifts of tongues so that the gospel spread to all nations so they could know. In the first century, this was the new covenant, and this was the final Messiah that they had been waiting for. So the warning for us is, if God has confirmed us in Christ, and confirmed that He is the Christ, this is the message of salvation. Then all we need to do is remain in Christ. Think about these messages in the Gospel of John. Abide in Christ. Abide in me, he says. Remain in me. That means to live your whole life and your whole existence in Christ. Not in a fleeting sense, in a temporary sense. To remain in Christ. with your thoughts, with your heart, with your minds, with your actions, so that the life we now live, we live by faith in the Son of God who died for us, and now who lives in us. We live by faith in Christ. And it's a severe warning, and all it's saying is this, it's very, very simple. Remain where you are, because anyone who is departing from Christ may pass the point of no return and it will be impossible for them to come back if they're playing games with their salvation. Now we live in a day and age where warnings are very cheap. As one preacher said, it's difficult today to even buy a hammer in a hardware store without finding a cupboard in warnings. Warning, hammering your hand may cause discomfort. Don't sue our company, right? This is the day and age that we live in. So we need warnings that actually pop out to us and they grip us and they let us know this is something of horrifying significance for someone that passes the point of no return. As Esau at the end of this book would have attempted to come back with tears and heartfelt emotional repentance, but it wasn't enough because Esau had already crossed the point of no return. It makes me think of a warning label I once saw. Sounds like a simple thing, but it was actually quite severe and even dangerous. I had to clear out a bathtub and I asked my grandparents who lived nearby if they had anything that could clear a drain, a seriously clogged drain in a bathtub. And they said, sure, we've got something to clear right up. They sent me to the shed behind their garage and I pulled out this massive Massive white plastic gallon jug of corrosive acid that had sat there for who knows how many decades And I remember seeing this warning label like no warning label I'd ever seen Thick bright bold letters skull and crossbones literally on this label saying warning this is a flesh-eating acid. You can use this to clear your drains, but what you have to do, I believe it was hydrochloric acid. You had to take it to the drain, turn it over, you had to wear gloves, put a bucket over the drain, stand at least 12 feet away from it, because even breathing the gases could cause severe damage, or even in severe cases, death. And I remember turning this, I followed all the directions, the warning was so severe, I take the warning seriously when I see the warning like that. And so I turned it over, I put the bucket over, I stood back, and I remember actually hearing it searing as it was burning away whatever was in the drain. I remember it glug, glug, glug, and seeing the steam coming up as the bucket was actually vibrating as it was glugging away under there with this deadly hydrochloric acid. I can think of an even deeper warning, and it's something, you can actually find this online, it's probably one of the most terrifying warnings that exists in America right now in the form of a sign. Somewhere in central Florida, there's a place where people love to dive within a cave. that is known as a deadly, deadly cave where many divers have lost their lives. It's not off the coast of Florida, it's in a sinkhole somewhere in central Florida, and it's known to have these treacherous underwater caverns with what they call a network of narrow tunnels and pitch black pockets of lightless caves down there that plunge as far as 300 feet deep in the deepest spots. Now, if you go underwater, you can see photos where people have taken a picture of this warning sign. Again, this is a parable for us to remain in Christ, to stay on this side of the warning sign. You can find photos taken in the dark underwater where you see this pitch black cave behind it, and you see this massive glaring warning sign that reads as follows. Capital S-T-O-P. Stop. Prevent your death. And this article reads, but two experienced divers ignored the sign. The sign at the mouth is black and white, its macabre message is clear. Stop. Prevent your death, it warns. There is nothing in this cave worth dying for. Next to those words, there is a picture of the Grim Reaper standing over skeletons with a finger beckoning the diver in as these skeletons are covered with scuba gear who have died down in these caves. Dozens of people. A vice chairman of a national cave diving society said, it's alluring for people to continue going into this cave because it's like a Venus fly trap, he said. He said, down there, there's bright and glowing different forms of animal life and plants. He says, you get down there and people get fascinated and there's so much to see. And he said, people get distracted and it gets deep very quickly. So some people have called this the Mount Everest of cave dives because it has claimed many lives just like Mount Everest. So one day at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, Two experienced divers decided they would enter down into the waters of the cave and go past the warning sign where they were warned not to cross. They decided one friend for safety would stay on the surface where it's safe, and that as they dive at 2 o'clock p.m., he would stay by the surface and meet them at a rendezvous at 3 o'clock p.m. Well, the friend at the surface arrived on time, clock rolled around to 3 o'clock, and the two experienced divers were nowhere to be found. He went diving a little bit further in the shallows. He came back 30 minutes later, and at 3.30, after an hour and a half, his two friends were still gone. He took another break. He came back 30 minutes later. At 4 o'clock, his friends were still gone. By 6 o'clock p.m., the man called the police. It wasn't until Monday morning that a fresh crew of a rescue team of expert divers located their bodies trapped down beneath the tunnels at a depth of 260 feet in what they called one of the most dangerous and complex areas of the cave system. Now, the tragedy of this cave is, of course, that this loss of life can easily be prevented, right? What's the precious remedy here to keep from dying in this cave? Obey the warning sign. Stay on this side where it's safe. But even worse, there were two family members who died together on Christmas Day because they did not follow this warning sign. They took their fresh, scuba tanks they had received for Christmas, they decided on Christmas Day they would go down into the waters and that they would dive together and explore the depths as they went past the warning sign and past the point of no return. When those bodies were recovered, they took them back to a medical examiner to determine the cause of death. Now you might be sitting here thinking, it seems that the cause of death is rather obvious, doesn't it? It seems that some people went past the warning sign that warned them they would lose their lives if they went past it. And there was a senseless loss of life. For what? For an afternoon adventure. For a hobby. You might think it seems fairly obvious that the cause of death would be drowning. But not exactly. Because there is an even more subtle, even more sinister cause of death At extreme deaths, it is very common that people will die of nitrogen poisoning down deep in the waters. The article says, nicknamed the Rapture of the Deep, or what divers call Martini's Law, because they say that the deeper you go as the oxygen flows and you're breathing this recycled air, they say it's like drinking from a cocktail on an empty stomach, and they say the deeper that a diver goes, the more drunk the diver starts to feel. And they say that altered state of consciousness can prevent the diver from even recognizing that they're losing oxygen, so they don't know the trouble that they're in. This is what it's like when people are going out of bounds, and people start separating from the church, and people start wandering away from Christ. The diving instructor said, you have a lack of judgment and you lose some of your inhibitions as you're getting nitrogen drunk. And he said, some people freeze up in the waters and they have what we call a whiteout. They have a whiteout as they begin to suffocate in the waters. This real life example makes me think of one of the most terrifying things I've ever read in a book where an adventurer was traveling through the heart of a mountain Decided he had to go through the heart of a mountain as the tunnel kept narrowing narrower and narrower as he went until he's crawling on hands and feet and he feels the floor of the cave pushing up into his chest and he feels the ceiling of the cave pressing down on his back and pressing down on the back of his head and pressing down on the back of his chest as his breathing gets tighter and tighter and tighter. And he felt that he just had to keep going and that if he kept going further, he could actually slip through and he would break through to a wider entrance. Not realizing that the reality was the further he went, The greater and greater the danger was as he began to press in. The book described it like the weight of the mountain itself was pressing down on his back as he was losing oxygen with every passing inch. And if someone died in these circumstances, what could have been done to prevent this kind of senseless death? The answer is fairly simple. We have been given a warning and God calls us to obey the warning sign. Stay where you know it is safe, is all God is saying. Remain in Christ. Abide in Christ. Never find yourself playing games with your faith, because we need to know there are many that have crossed this point of return and they never come back. This is especially weighty for our children, because the statistics are horrible about the number of children that leave the home, they go off to college, they hear new messages, they start wandering from the church, they stop reading their Bibles, and they don't realize they're being poisoned slowly and slowly over time as they're losing sight of Christ, they're losing spiritual oxygen, and they did not obey the warning sign and remain in Christ where it was safe. What God is warning us of is a fate worse than suffocating the hollow of a cave as it presses down on your back. It's a fate worse than being lost down in the deepest caverns and dying in the waters. It's a fate worse than any flesh-eating hydrochloric acid. These warnings are given to us with the most utmost seriousness. It is my responsibility to communicate that to you and it is your responsibility to heed the warning. God is warning us to stay far away from death and hell, the lake of fire, and what he calls outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's very, very simple on the one hand. What God has given us in Christ is enough, and all he calls us to do is to remain in Christ, and to rest in Christ, and be safe in Christ. Why would we not want to obey the warning sign and simply remain in him? if God has given us what he calls here so great a salvation. And that's what we think about here. It is a great and it is a glorious salvation. The warnings are so severe here in the book of Hebrews, but there's also a sight of absolute glory that he gives to us. He gives us this taste of glory and what he calls the world to come. You can see this back in chapter one. You can see that God has laid the foundation of creation in the beginning in chapter 1 verse 10. And then the Hebrew writer says this in 111, they shall all perish, but you remain. The old heavens, the old earth, the old covenant, the old kingdom, none of them are going to last. They're all waxing old and what he calls becoming obsolete. They will wax old like an old garment, ratted and torn up. And like a vesture, they'll be changed. We're going to have new heavens and new earth. We're going to have a new life in Christ. We're going to have physical bodies, but they're going to be able to last forever. Now, beloved, if I could get an absolute taste of that and share it with you to fuel us on this journey, if only I could describe to you what it's going to be like, but I have only just tasted it myself. All I know is it's going to be greater than anything you could ever explore on this physical earth. You have people losing their lives to look at glowing plants in the water because they think it's this glorious thing they've never seen before. God is going to show us a glory that you could never imagine. And although this is not exactly what this verse is about, it's true that eye has not seen and ear has not heard what God has prepared for his people. That verse continues, God has shown us by his spirit. So actually we have a taste of what the life to come will be like. Or in chapter six, as it says, we have tasted of the heavenly gift and of the world to come. Now what is that going to be like? All I know is that we live in a world where there are sounds and frequencies all around us that some animals can hear. But our human ears are not able to even comprehend them or pick them up and hear them. We live in a world where there's a color spectrum of light and colors all around us. Our current bodies are like an old monitor that can only show us 16 colors or something like this. When there are other animals that can see the sharpness and the clarity, greater color and greater vision. Greater tastes and greater sounds. I don't know what the new heavens and the new earth are going to be like, if there are going to be colors that we've never seen, sounds that we've never heard. But I know that at the center of it all is going to be the Son of Man, exalted and radiant and glorious right in front of us. And we will be able to perceive by faith in absolute and perfect, blissful, uninterrupted worship for eternity. We come here and we try to prepare our hearts for worship. And we're constantly fighting against every kind of distraction. It happens all around us. There's no solving it in this life. And we feel like we catch a glimpse for a moment. We catch a glimpse of glory. We catch a taste. We catch just enough. Don't even mind any of the sounds. All of our children make these sounds. These are the kinds of distractions we're constantly navigating in this world. This is normal. But what we're fighting for is to get a glimpse of the taste of something that is going to last forever. That is the world to come that we are speaking about. And so the Hebrew writer begins to delve into this here about this new world that the new Adam has prepared for us. And so he says in verse five, for unto the angels, he never said he was going to put the new world into subjection. And that's what I'm talking about. He says the new world of which we speak, but in a certain place he testifies. And that certain place is Psalm chapter eight. He says this, what is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you visit him. You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him. with glory and honor. You did set him over the works of your hands, and you have put all things in subjection under his feet. Can you imagine the condescension of an infinite, almighty, all-wise, flawless being who decides to come down here and fellowship with you and I? Now I know that some of us might just be thinking that you're incredible, right? You might just think that you're glorious. Of course God wants to dwell with you. Of course God wants to fellowship with you. Far from it. We are stained with sin. We are polluted with falsehood and corruption. God is too pure to even behold sin in his sight. For him to come down to us means he had to come down in Christ, which is the new man, the new Adam, who made this possible for God to dwell with us. So there's something incredible here when he says, what is man that you are mindful of him? Son of man. that you would condescend to come down and visit with him. The best thing that I can think of is something you'll hear me return to time and again, and it's because I truly, truly adore them, and it is my own children. If I think of my children, you might think of your children, there's nothing in my children's skill set that even comes close to the average adult walking this earth, even a below average adult, shall we say. My children can't jump any higher, they can't build anything like an adult could, they can't solve anything mathematic, they can't read, they can't write, and yet I find that I adore them, I love them, I am mindful of them more than anyone else. There is no adult on this planet, except for one, and she may actually be, she's sick at home, she may be listening on live stream right now. There's only one adult on this planet that I am mindful of the way I'm mindful of my children. And it's because there's a certain wonder that we find in our children. And that's right. That's the way God feels about us. We can't bring anything special to the table for God that impresses Him. We can't build something useful for God. God is Spirit. He lives forever. If He was hungry, He wouldn't tell us, is what He says. Nothing we can do that God needs. And yet, He loves us. He condescends. There's a real sense in which He adores us. He adores His people. And I think this is just like we find in our own children. It's because they bear our image. They bear our image. There's a certain bond that we have with our own family, where we see ourselves reflected in them. And we're not trying to make this out to be some kind of sanctified narcissism. This is a healthy instinct that we have to see our image proliferating throughout the world, because that is what God called us to do. He called us to be fruitful and multiply, because when we see that image, the image that we're seeing is not really just our image, it's God's image. We reflect God's image. All that wonder from your children, all that wonder in your own being, it comes from God's image that he's deposited in you. And so we're lower than the angels. And yet, for whatever reason, God decided to create his image bearers that he would crown with glory and honor and subject the entire world to humanity. The Hebrew writer's point here is, as fascinated as ancient people were with angels, he's saying angels are not going to rule the world to come. They're not going to be the leaders of the new heavens and the new earth because they're not even the leaders of the old heavens and the old world. They had a part in transmitting the old covenant and but ultimately Christ is bringing something greater. And even since the dawn of the world, it is man and not angels. It is man that he has set to rule over the world. Please turn back with me to Psalm chapter eight. Let's look at it in a bit more detail. There's something very important that we need to see here in Psalm eight. I'll give you a moment to turn there. As we contemplate here, Man, that original term in Psalm 8 is a very rich term. It's actually the term Adam, the term Adam here in Psalm 8. The psalmist begins with praise to God for His glorious creation in verse one, who set His glory above the heavens. Remember, that's where we're going. We talked about Christ who was above the angels in His deity. He's made a little lower than the angels in His humanity, and yet He's crowned above the heavens. This glory above the heavens, Christ is going to receive a crown of glory, and He will actually be crowned above the heavens, the King of heaven. Now here's where it's appropriate to think of our children. This is a highly biblical example that I'm giving you, like it or not. Verse two, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of your enemies that you might still the enemy and the avenger. One of the purest forms of worship that you'll ever see. is a young child praising God, praying to God, singing to God, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. This is how God ordained it. And it humbles us, it reminds us, when we become adults, no matter how intellectual we might pursue some facet of theology, the purest thing that God wants is pure love and adoration for Him out of a childlike heart. This is what He establishes. And so, the psalmist goes on, what is Adam? He says in verse four, that you are mindful of him, and the son of man, that you visit him. What is Adam? That is a great question. There's a sense in which Adam is one, and there's a sense in which Adam is universal. The first man was named Adam, A-D-A-M, but that Hebrew word, Adam, also means humanity. Why was the first man named humanity, Adam? It's because he's the representative of the entire human race. And you know it from our studies in Romans. When Adam fell into death, the whole race of humanity fell into death. Because he was the Adam who represented the universal Adam, all of us in humanity. So what we needed in Christ was a new Adam. We needed a Christ that was not stained with the sin and the pollution that we are. We needed an Adam that came from off the grid. He wasn't born of a human father and a human mother. He was born through a human womb of his mother and came from off the grid, down from heaven, from above the angels. This is the one who became a little lower than the angels so that he could earn this crown of glory and life for us. And so this is where in verse six, he says, you made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. What is this Psalm originally mean? Well, it's Genesis one. It's Genesis 2. It's talking about subdue the earth, have dominion, be fruitful, multiply. Adam was the first king in the world. He was crowned with a dominion over all the animals, beasts of the field, creeping things, birds, fish, everything. Adam had dominion over it. Now, of course, when Adam failed, God didn't give up his original design. He renewed this design. He redeemed his creation. And he did this by bringing forth the last Adam. So this is where, back in Hebrews chapter 2, the Hebrew writer brings it home for us. And he explains. He in Psalm chapter 8 when he described this glorious dominion in this crown of glory he is now giving us an exegesis of Psalm 8 here in Hebrews 2 we're getting an Inspired Bible study from the Hebrew writer of the Old Testament passage And what he's doing is he's hinging on this word all in the psalm. You see this in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 8 He says when he said he's going to put all things in subjection under his feet Here's his exposition. In that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. He's saying if God's perfect Adam is going to have dominion over everything, universal dominion, then nothing is going to be left out of God's kingdom. God's kingdom is going to rule over everything from shore to shore. He will have dominion to the ends of the earth. Now, the Hebrew writer is dealing with a problem. He has a bunch of people in his church. They say, we hear what the psalm says. It says dominion over everything. We hear that you're telling us Jesus fulfilled this psalm, but what's the problem? saying, we don't see it yet. You said he's going to rule over everything. Why didn't the kingdom be perfectly fulfilled after Christ was resurrected? Why isn't all of the world Christian culture now? Why isn't the kingdom of God reigning over everything? Why do we have people who still hate God's name, hate his son and hate his gospel? This is what the Hebrew writer is dealing with. He's saying, yes, Christ fulfilled this, but we don't see it ultimately consummated yet. That's what we're dealing with. He brought the catalyst or the beginning of God's kingdom, but he hasn't yet brought it to completion. So in the meantime, this is what we call, you've heard this before, the already and not yet. The already and the not yet. What he's saying is we do not yet see everything under his dominion, but we do see something already, We do see something already. And if you see this, and you hope in this, and you trust this, you will see what's coming in the age to come. It says, we don't see all those things yet, verse nine, but we see who? Jesus. We see Jesus. We see the one who is made a little lower than the angels. He's answering all the problems that their friends and their countrymen had been causing them to question and putting doubts in their mind. When they're saying, how can you say he's hyper-exalted above the angels when he died in a human body on the cross? How can you say he's above the angels when he's a human being? And Psalm 8 says, human beings are below the angels. This is the glory of God's plan of exaltation through humiliation. He's saying the Son of God came to be humbled even to the point of death, even the shameful death on the cross. The one that was above the angels was made lower than the angels to save people like you and I. Now how is that a comfort to us now? Well, the reality is, I hate to break it to you, but you are lower than the angels. You and I are not above the angels. We don't have this shining spiritual radiance like the angels do. We talked about it last time. If an angel just manifested and appeared in the midst of the congregation, you would fall down like a corpse in front of the angels. But the Hebrew writer says Christ is the one before whom the angels have to shield their eyes from his glory, otherwise they would fall like corpses before the exalted God in human flesh in Christ himself. This is the one that is hyper-exalted, but he entered in a state of hyper-humiliation. to be one of us, to save us. And so the Hebrew writer says this in verse 9, crowned with glory and honor, but through the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he should taste death for every man. Now, if you're reading carefully, if you're following this train of thought, there's a problem there in verse nine, where many people attempt to take this passage and certain other passages in Hebrews, and they try to turn this into a universalist gospel. We were talking about this at lunch. Universalist salvation, as though God's not gonna have justice on anyone, as though even people who worship Satan or end up denying Christ and go past that point of return, as though this tasting of death is even for them. It's not. for them. It's for God's chosen elect people. Now, someone can put their finger on the black ink of this page and say, how can you say that? It says, chased death for every man. Every man. How can you say someone is left out if it says every man? And the reason is because you have to understand what he is saying in this context. He's talking about the high priest's sacrifice on the day of atonement. You can see this right at the end of the chapter. He himself became, verse 17, a merciful and faithful high priest for us, so that he's making reconciliation for the sins of, here it is, The people, the people. So up in verse 9, it says taste death for every man. Who is the every man? It's everyone among, verse 17, among the people. Who was that in the Old Testament? It was the people of God in the Kingdom of Israel. So please understand, there's a definite context here. There's always a boundary for God's salvation. Otherwise, He wouldn't need to give us a warning sign to stay in bounds. It's not for people who are out of bounds. He calls us to stay in bounds and remain in Christ because it's for all the people who remain in Christ. How did the high priest offer his sacrifice in the Old Covenant? He offered the sacrifice for the sins of one people, and it was the people of Israel. He didn't take it into the holy place and say, God cover the sins of the Philistines. God cover the sins of the Amorites that you said would be cursed for everlasting generations. He didn't say, God cover the sins of all these random people that hate you God, hate your message, and would never come to faith in you. He said, God cover the sins of your people, but cover the sins of all your people. And so the Hebrew writer will continue to unpack over the course of this book that this message was for the people who were God's true people. You might have heard it rightly referred to as the invisible church. There's a church within the church, we might say. There is a visible church that is under the covenant, they're under the gospel, and this is the church that the Hebrew writer and I am preaching to now. And that's why there's a warning, because there are some people who are in the visible church who might not listen to the warning, but all of God's people who are in the invisible church, who are members who live in Christ. They will always obey the warning. They will always remain in Christ. They are all the people that he was making the sacrifice for. Because as we'll see in verse 3, and it will go on and on throughout the book, or chapter 3 rather, and forward, they are the people who received the message and it was mingled in their hearts with faith. We know that the salvation comes by faith, and so God is speaking to His faithful people who believe His message, the ones for whom Christ tasted death. So He was the one who was above the angels, He became below the angels, and now we're going to finally consider how Christ was crowned above the heavens. which is our subject for the rest of this chapter. We see that transition in verse 10 where it says, for it became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things to bring many sons to glory. Once again, this is Israel language, the sons of Israel or the children of Israel. He's talking about bringing his new covenant Israel, which includes you and I. We share this faith. I know some people don't believe that, but this is the atonement he's talking about. Jew and Gentile alike, there is no difference in Christ. Every one of us is a son of God by faith in Christ. Every one of us is the bride of Christ by faith in Him. It became Him means, this is some of that archaic language, it means it was becoming for Him, which means it was appropriate, or it was fitting, for Him to do this. That's what the older language means. It was right for Christ to become one of us and to taste death for us. It was right for God to make what He calls the captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings. And here's another place. If you're thinking carefully, if you're following the train of thought, there are going to be lots of little theological issues that the Hebrew writer is solving, and he's untying these knots for some of his confused people in the congregation. Here, in making the Captain of Salvation perfect through suffering, What does it mean that Christ became perfect through suffering? You might be saying he was already perfect. He was the son of God. He was the lamb without spot or blemish or any such thing. This is one of those topics that the Hebrew writer is going to dive into full force because he's going to teach us that even though Christ was perfect, he didn't get a pass to go around the trials. He didn't get a pass to go around the suffering. He was humbled, He was trained, He was chastened, He was brought through the trials, through the suffering, just like every one of us. Do you realize how much respect God deserves from us for having done this in His Son? Do you realize God is a God of such power, He can snap His fingers and make something so, but He decided that His Son would be a front-liner, who would be born in a manger, walk this earth for 33 years, be crucified, dead, and buried for our sins, and to do this the hard way, so that when we look to God in our sufferings and we look to God in our trials, we will never be able to say, you don't know how this feels, God. You don't know how hard this is, God. You don't know how painful this is, God. because the Son of God will be able to look at us and say, you do not know of what you speak. You know only a fraction of the infinite suffering that Christ endured under the wrath of God that would take us an eternity to endure. A payment that we could never make was the payment that the God-man was able to make. as his deity upheld him to make the sacrifice to taste death for every one of us. Captain of our salvation. And so he's dealing with this challenge, he's dealing with these questions for his people, and so he says this is the reason why he's not ashamed, verse 11, to call us his brothers. Do you see the glory, brothers? That when we call one another brothers, we're not just calling one another brothers. We're calling Him our brother. He is our brother, and He's not even ashamed to call us His brothers. We're dealing with a Hebrew people that were so confused. They were saying, I want to worship angels. Angels are glorious. Angels are radiant. How are you going to worship this man? They were dealing with Hebrew folks saying, you heard what the Shema says, worship only God. Now, ironically, they were getting off and worshiping angels. But once again, they're saying, how are you even going to worship a man because he's lower than angels? Well, here it is. The one who became human did it because he was still God, but he was not ashamed to take on our nature because this was right. It was becoming for Him. It was fitting for Him. This is the way God wanted to do it. And when the Father gave the message to the Son, although it may not have been these exact words, the message was clear from the Son. It was the Son's Amen to the Father's plan, that He would fulfill everything. Christ is the Amen of God. And so He says here, He's quoting from Psalm 22, I will declare your name among my brethren. In the midst of the church, I will sing praise to you. He came down among us. He sang a hymn or a psalm with his people before he went to the cross. And he says again, I will put my trust in him, but not just I. Now he's quoting from Isaiah and he's saying, behold, I and the children which God has given to me. So the son is placed as it is like a father figure. We are called like his children because he's so exalted above us. He reflects the image of the father, but he's also called our brother because we have this intimate connection with him. And so he says in verse 14, for as much as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also took likewise. partook of the same, so that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, which is the devil." You've heard this constantly in our Sunday school. Why did Christ come on his mission? Well, there's two answers to that question, and we can see both of them here in our passage. In verse 15, he came to deliver us. But in verse 14, he came to destroy the devil. These are the two reasons why Christ came. He came to destroy, and He came to deliver. He came to bring judgment, and He came to bring salvation. And don't ever get a lopsided view of God, where you end up becoming confused and thinking, God is all love with no justice, or God is all law with no grace. He is all glorious, all gracious, all just. He is everything. His attributes are maximal. He came to bring justice on evil and mercy and salvation upon sinners who deserve the judgment of evil. He'll destroy the devil, who he calls here the one who had the power of death. Now, if you followed along in our Revelation study, you know Satan was the one who, in a sense, had a right or a privilege to accuse believers to death in the heavenly courtroom. Revelation 12, Christ defended the heavenly courtroom and knocked him out of the courtroom. That has already happened. It is case closed. God's people have been forgiven of all their sins, but soon Satan will be crushed underneath our feet. the end of the age. Christ will return to destroy the devil ultimately, and he continues to undo the works of the devil in the church now. So he comes destroying the devil and delivering his people, and he's delivering a people who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Now when we talk about bondage here, what do we mean? Slavery. People were enslaved. Why were they enslaved? We were spiritually enslaved because we were lost. We were in darkness. But we are what he describes being under the power of death, but not just the power of death. He goes further. People were suffering. Satan is an oppressor. He's a persecutor. People who were subject to the fear of death. Now some of you may have been touched by this, and some of you may not have. If you've never been touched by deep fear, anxiety, and depression, go ahead and take a moment to thank God that you have never suffered deep depression, deep fear, and deep anxiety. Because if you know someone who has, you know how much it can affect their world. It rocks their world. It affects their existence. Christ is coming, bringing a spirit of freedom and liberty from fear. He's coming to alleviate our fears, to give us hope and peace and rest. And here to the Hebrew people, you could say He's bringing the great Shalom. that the people have always waited for. What does this term Shalom mean? It is the great and perfect peace and wholeness that God sows into the hearts of His people. And He gives us a taste of it now. We don't always have it, but we have a taste of it. So He calls us to hold on to it. we're going to have it forever. What is this shalom, this great peace, this freedom from the fear and from the fear of death that he's liberating his people from? What he's giving us is a shalom that has no concerns at all, no worries, no anxieties, not even the shadow or hint of fear would enter into your heart of mind when we enter into this perfect peace. This fear of death, I can tell you from my personal experience, I have no doubt is one of the things that the Lord used over the course of time to soften my heart for my own salvation when I was finally born again. I remember before I was a believer, Being a teenager, walking along, just living my normal day, living my normal life. And because my mind is occasionally given to some philosophical thoughts, every once in a while it would hit me. While I was just, I remember walking some dogs one time, I was walking to a park. house-sitting for, at the time, my boss. And I remember just walking these dogs along, the most beautiful, peaceful, sunny day you can imagine. I'm literally walking some wonderful dogs to a park, and all of a sudden, it hit me that this life is certainly going to end. Certainly going to end. And since that time, I have heard from people who have had this kind of realization of their mortality. And they describe The same thing that I experienced. One man said, I fully realized my mortality when I was a teenager. And in his words, although I wouldn't agree with this, he said, which no teenager should ever have to go through. What I was gripped by was an existential terror and dread. As my heart was pounding, my pulse was racing. I was looking around. Remember, these dogs are right next to me. There's a perfect, calm, peaceful day all around me. But internally, what I realized is this death is real. And although I was only a teenager, I could die today, I could die in 10 years, 60 years, whenever it might be. But the one thing that I could not do was escape death. I realized that one day, whatever I did was not going to be around anymore. I wasn't going to be around anymore. It was the fear of death. It was a problem I couldn't solve, but it's a problem that God has solved for us in the person of Christ. He is the one who took on The fear, the terror, the dread, the shame for his people on the cross. Do we know what it means when we hear the words, the father turned his face away? When we think of the words of the Psalm when he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? when the favor of the Father departed from the Son of God for the only time in his everlasting existence, when he didn't feel the Father's warmth, he didn't feel the Father's smile upon him, he entered into the fear of death, the dominion of death, and the suffering of death. So we think of that great parable the deep caverns where men went down and died under the suffocating weight of something that looked like a kind of wrath. Christ was the only one who could swim into those depths of the wrath of God and go down all the way to the bottom for us and pay the full penalty for every last one of the sins of his people and put them away forever. And he's the only one who could then come back from the point of no return and come back in the resurrection from the dead to be that merciful and faithful high priest that we need. So as we, Lord willing, will continue to meditate on this, both now and in the coming weeks, we will continue to look toward this faithful high priest that was the only high priest was tempted in all ways like as we are, ready to offer sacrifices like every other high priest, ready to be earnestly compassionate and merciful toward his people, but was the only high priest that went to the altar and sacrificed himself for his people. As we close, you might think of Abraham and Isaac climbing up the mountainside. Isaac looks at Abraham, what are we doing father? going to make a sacrifice to Yahweh, the everlasting God. Where is the animal for the sacrifice, Father? God will provide the animal for the sacrifice. They get to the top of the mountain, and God provides in that great and glorious type, the image of Christ. He spares Abraham's son, and he puts the ram down on the altar, and he slaughters it there, as Isaac, like us, are spared from the wrath of God. But when the father directed Christ to go up to the mountaintop, anyone who was watching him carry that cross to Calvary, as they look, if anyone had asked him and said, what are you doing? He could have just as well said, I'm going to make a sacrifice to Yahweh, the everlasting God. Who are you? I'm the great high priest. Where's the animal for the sacrifice? You know what he would have said? I am the Lamb of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we bow. Father, we bow before you. We repent in dust and ashes, Father, for our sins. We repent of our coldness and we repent of our hard-heartedness, Lord. We pray that you would bring the scalpel of your word fresh Through passages just like this, these great and serious warning passages in the book of Hebrews, Lord, we pray that you would bring them home into the deep chambers of our heart and you would cause us to be born again if we don't know you. For those of us that know you, Father, with a full and assured faith that lives and breathes and has its existence in Christ, We pray that you would sprinkle our conscience clean from the guilt of sin, because that is what Christ came to wipe away. Came to wipe away every tear and to wipe away every guilt and every stain from our consciences. And that is why we come back to you day by day, Father, as you teach us here in this book. Although the final sacrifice is made, we end up staining our conscience time and again. So help us to come back, Father. Help us, as you say, to boldly draw near to the throne of grace and the full assurance having our hearts sprinkled away from an evil conscience so that we could know and taste and even now see the glory of our everlasting salvation and our redemption in Christ. We pray that you would bless this message to our hearts and help us to hold fast to what we have and to rest in your son. We pray these things in Jesus' name for your glory. Amen.