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If you would, please turn in your Bibles for our scripture reading.
Our scripture reading this evening for the text is from Hebrews chapter 2,
Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 through 9.
You can find that on your Pew Bible in page 1188.
Write our text this evening, Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 through 9.
Hear now the word of God.
For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking.
It has been testified somewhere,
What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels.
You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.
At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him.
But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels,
namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death,
so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
This ends the reading of God’s word.
May be seated.
Let’s ask God’s blessing on our time this evening.
Father in heaven, we ask as we come to your word this evening,
we ask that you would open up our hearts and minds.
Lord, we do not want to just read this word and be dead to it.
We need your spirit to bring illumination.
So we ask, Lord, that you would open our hearts and our minds to see the truth that you have for us,
that you would make it alive, you would make it to pierce our hearts,
that it would do its work of being living and active.
Lord, we ask that you would be with me as I seek to expound your word,
that you would guard my words, that they would be from you,
and that anything that is faulty in error,
you would cause it to fall away and not be taken up and embraced.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, the title of the message this evening is Destined for Dominion.
What is your destiny?
Nearly every hero wrestles with this question.
What is my destiny?
Many heroes go on quests to discover the answer.
We love to read stories of humble characters rising to greatness through courage and service to others.
Some heroes aspire to greatness. Others have greatness thrust upon them.
But all of them come to that moment when they finally step into their calling, their destiny.
Some turn down opportunity after opportunity, seeking some point of escape.
But if they’re truly a hero, there comes a moment in which they finally accept their responsibility
and courageously step into their role.
We like to read these stories because we want to know what our destiny is.
Are we also destined for greatness?
I think we can also hear an echo in each of these stories.
The true hero, who at his moment of crisis, when he considered his crucifixion destiny,
said in John 12,
Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.
But for this purpose I have come to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.
See, rather than shrinking back at the moment when suffering came,
he courageously embraced his destiny to taste death on behalf of his people.
Our passage this evening from Hebrews chapter 2 is dealing with the question of destiny, I think.
We’re going to look at our passage this evening under four main headings.
Number one, what we were made for, dominion.
What we don’t see, dominion.
What we do see, Jesus, the Death Eater.
And finally, what this means, which is union with the Death Eater.
So point number one, what we were made for, dominion.
Our text this evening starts out with a negative assertion.
Chapter one has been contrasting God’s Son with the angels,
and the assumption has been that these are very exalted beings.
Angels are the messengers of God who dwell in his very presence.
They are glorious, exalted, spiritual beings, which we might even be tempted to worship.
In fact, those who encountered them throughout our redemptive history,
from Abraham to the Apostle John in Revelation, often tried to do so and were forbidden.
But Hebrews stops us in our tracks in this passage with a negative assertion.
As exalted and glorious as angels are, they were not given authority over the new age,
over the new earth in the age to come.
The assumption being made here is that we understand that it is human beings
who have been promised governance in the age to come.
Now this is a big assumption, and we’re going to take a closer look at it later on in the evening.
For now, we’re going to travel through the argument that the writer of Hebrews follows
in support of this opening point.
If we look in verse 6, we see the writer quotes from Psalm 8,
which is what we sing in our opening in worship this evening.
Psalm 8, verses 4 through 6.
What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels.
You have crowned him with glory and honor.
And then he makes a little skip and says, putting everything in subjection under his feet.
He omitted the line, you have given him dominion over the works of your hands,
which occurs in Psalm 8 if you were to look back there.
But I think it’s just that the writer of Hebrews is just getting to the point
of what’s being made in Psalm 8 and quoting as little as he needs to
which is that he’s putting everything in subjection under his feet.
Psalm 8 is a short but famous psalm that talks about how God uses weak things to bring him glory.
The first few verses talk about infants bringing God praise.
In the verses that come just before the passage that’s quoted in our text,
David is gazing up at the night sky.
He becomes overwhelmed with wonder that in the midst of this vast universe made by God,
little puny men and women should be given such an outsized role in creation.
Not only does God clearly care for mankind, but he’s even given them dominion.
Now David is clearly thinking of Genesis here, which is why we read it earlier in worship.
God created man and woman after his own image as we read earlier
and he gave them dominion over creation.
Adam’s first task in this regard was to name the animals.
God could have just told Adam their names, but instead he delegates that authority to Adam.
This dominion mandate given to mankind is a dual task, to make use of it and to care for it.
The writer of Hebrews doesn’t want us to miss the fact that there’s nothing in creation
excluded from man’s dominion.
He makes that point in verse 8, now putting everything in subjection to him.
He left nothing outside his control.
Now scientists have long observed ironically the significant disadvantages
that mankind as a species has in relation to other animals.
In terms of fur, we’re almost naked, at least most of us are.
We only have two legs, we have no tail, our hearing, eyesight and smell,
even when we’re at our best, is subpar compared to many species.
We’re significantly smaller and weaker than a large portion of the animal kingdom.
We require more shelter, more frequent meals than many other mammals.
Our skin is rather fragile compared to the armored scales or spines that other animals possess.
As a species, it’s often been observed our main obvious advantage is our mind.
Yes, we require more accessories to survive, but we’re also quite a bit better at inventing shelter
and accessories than on the other member of the animal kingdom.
But that being said, when compared to angels, even though we don’t know a lot about them,
it seems like they would be a more likely candidate for ruling the world.
But neither the writer of Hebrews nor David, who penned the Psalm,
is concerned about whether man’s authority is deserved.
He simply observes that man has been given dominion.
This is something that unbelievers regularly ignore in their assessment of the world.
By throwing out the history of Genesis, they try to build their anthropology on a bad foundation.
They view man as a parasite on creation at worst and a necessary evil at best.
But of course, the Bible has a very different view of creation.
In the biblical worldview, creation was given to mankind to rule and care for.
We’re neither parasites struggling to gain control of a planet we don’t deserve
nor a necessary evil needing mitigation.
Creation care is an important responsibility that Christians should care about,
but that should never be pitted against our authority as stewards to rule this world for God.
This means the biblical ideal is not the untamed wilderness to remain untamed.
God intended Adam to develop and cultivate creation, not merely leave it untouched.
Even the very good creation was not at its ultimate potential.
God told Adam and Eve that he wanted the earth full of their offspring,
using and ruling the earth for his glory.
Consider for a moment the difference between angels,
which appear to have been created instantaneously with a fixed number from the moment they were created,
and mankind, which is conceived, born, and gradually develops in maturity.
This process of cultivation and development is what God intended for mankind to do
as his image bearers to all creation.
It’s popular for people, even unbelievers, to make reference to the image of God
as a reference to human’s inherent value.
But another aspect of bearing God’s image is that we are sub-creators and rulers.
We name the animals and domesticate them and make them serve us and our ends.
God’s intention for mankind is to expand, to cover the earth,
and subdue the unruly wilderness to serve our purposes,
not to attempt to submit ourselves to the purposes of unguided nature.
Mankind was created for greatness.
We were created to serve God, to serve as God to creation, as its ruler and caretaker.
But as anyone who takes a moment to look around will tell you,
that’s not how things look right now.
Which brings us to our next point, point number two, what we don’t see, which is dominion.
What we don’t see, dominion.
As soon as the writer of Hebrews finishes stating that dominion of all creation was given to mankind,
he immediately counters it with a reality check.
Look at the last sentence in verse eight.
At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him.
The him there is mankind.
Despite the glory mankind was destined for, the reality on the ground is far from that.
Instead of ruling creation, mankind looks like it’s in a losing battle against nature.
Not only is the creation around us plagued with what Paul calls in Romans eight bondage to decay,
but even as individuals we find, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, our outer natures are wasting away.
Nature sometimes looks like it’s on a runaway course towards destruction with no one in charge,
and instead of making things better, in many cases mankind is only making things worse.
Who thought it was a good idea to take a virus and make it exponentially more contagious and fatal?
Humans, apparently.
We can find countless examples from just the past few years to highlight the fact
that mankind’s attempted dominion of creation is failing pretty miserably.
This is bad for creation, but it’s also bad for mankind.
We were made for loving dominion over creation.
This is our purpose to bring God glory.
Have you ever tried to use a hammer to drive a screw into a wall?
It doesn’t work very well because that’s not its purpose.
If you ask anyone who’s depressed whether they have a strong sense of their own purpose in the world,
the core of most deep depression is a deep feeling of a lack of purpose.
As a human race, we’re chronically depressed because we’re failing to fulfill our purpose.
So why don’t we see proper dominion happening at present?
Well, our passage doesn’t explicitly spell this out,
but I think the writer has an assumption that can be deduced from the next verse.
In verse 9, he presents the solution to the problem that we’ve been looking at as Jesus.
In the next point, we’ll take a closer look at what Jesus is doing,
but I want to highlight the last part of that verse there because of the suffering of death
and that he might taste death for everyone.
Why would it be important for Jesus to taste death?
Well, I think we get a helpful insight into the mind of the author
if we flip forward a few chapters in Hebrews.
If you turn forward a few pages to Hebrews 7, verses 23 and 24,
we find this talking about the priesthood.
He says, the former priests were many in number, Hebrews 7, 23 and 24,
because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.
But he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever.
We’ll talk more about this passage when we get to it in our series on Hebrews,
but at this point, simply notice the way that the inevitable reality of death
limited the Levitical priesthood.
And I think there might be something of a similar thought going on
in the writer’s mind in chapter 2.
In the background of our passage, mankind is prevented by death
from exercising his full dominion.
That’s why Jesus had to come and take care of the death problem.
Death plays an integral role in the decimation of our ability
to exercise our originally determined dominion.
Rather than rulers of creation, we find ourselves captive to our own inevitable death.
As Romans 5-12 says,
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men.
But Adam’s seed didn’t just bring death to humans.
It brought down a curse on the whole of creation.
Romans 8-21 calls it a bondage to corruption or decay.
All of creation is on a disintegrating path, wearing out, decaying.
Creation is groaning under the specter of death
ever since its ruler and representative rebelled against his creator.
So when we look around, Hebrews observes,
it doesn’t look like mankind has the authority given him.
But if you notice the next sentence,
there is something that we do see,
which brings us to point number three, what we do see.
Jesus, the Death Eater.
While we don’t see humanity living up to its destiny of dominion,
we do see one man who is living up to it.
Look at verse 9.
But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels,
namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor,
because of the suffering of death,
so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Do you know what Jesus’ favorite title for himself was?
It was something that no one else called him except Stephen when he was dying.
It was the Son of Man.
People have scratched their heads about this phrase ever since Jesus first used it.
But if we were more familiar with the prophet Daniel,
then we might not be so puzzled.
Turn, if you would, in your Bibles to Daniel chapter 7.
Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.
And there we read,
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven,
there came one like a son of man.
And he came to the ancient of days, and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion and glory, and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed.
Keep your place in Daniel 7, because we’re going to come back to it in a few moments.
Now, by itself, the phrase son of man is simply used to denote an ordinary human,
which is why Daniel’s vision is so extraordinary.
A human being is given God-like dominion over all creation.
Who would ever be worthy of such a thing?
Daniel’s vision never fully makes sense until Jesus arrives on the scene.
Here, finally, is a human being who’s crowned with glory and honor,
given all authority and power and dominion.
And why is he given it?
It comes, as a result, in verse 9, the suffering of death,
so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.
Ever since Adam, the intended rulers of creation have been forced to taste the bitterness of death
all around them in creation, as well as their own inevitable impending death.
Yet here, by the grace of God, we observe a man,
not an angel, who has come and eaten death.
In Revelation, chapter 1, Jesus introduces himself to John in verses 17 and 18.
He says, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one.
I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore.
I have the keys of death and Hades.
Jesus ate death for lunch.
He drank it down to the last drop, swallowed it whole, tasted the complete bitterness.
Jesus didn’t just observe death or smell it.
He tasted it. He suffered it. He died.
He became a complete human being.
He made himself lower than the angels who worshiped him
and went to that suffering of the cross.
He drank the cup of death.
But dying was never meant to be the end.
Remember what Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 28 following his resurrection.
All authority and power has been given to me.
I’ve received dominion.
The dominion that Adam lost through his disobedience,
Jesus regained by perfect obedience.
That’s what Hebrews wants us to see here.
That’s what Hebrews wants us to see here.
Even though humanity lost the right and ability to govern creation as they were originally intended,
Jesus has come down, fulfilled that destiny,
so that even now one of our own species, a human being, sits on the throne.
A man has been reinstated as the ruler of creation.
This is cause for great rejoicing.
But there’s actually more.
And that brings us to point number four, what this means.
Union with the Death Eater.
As wonderful as it is to have our team win, to have our favorite player dominate,
see our relative gain the gold,
it would not mean very much in the long term if nothing changes in our life.
We can cheer for our favorite team winning the Super Bowl, the World Cup, or any other championship.
We can live vicariously through the victories of our children.
But living vicariously is vastly inferior to actually living.
It’s amazing how much joy we can experience by living vicariously through others.
And the picture in our passage could be misunderstood that way at first.
Okay, so we’re not living our destiny of dominion.
But one of our guys is, yay, a fellow human.
But that would miss the real predicament that we are in.
We didn’t fall just from top place as rulers to upper or even middle class.
We’ve become total slaves to sin and death.
The real comfort doesn’t come from living vicariously,
but from an expectation of the ripple effects that directly affect your life.
Fans can watch a football game with an investment in the individual success of their preferred player.
But that cannot compare to the investment of the player’s teammates.
Their success is directly predicated on and linked to the success of their star player.
When he wins, they all win.
Too many people want to think they can have the benefits of the win by remaining spectators,
even avid fans of Jesus, but never becoming part of him.
The problem is you cannot have vicarious eternal life.
Eternal life has to be possessed directly.
You have to become part of the team.
We call this union with Christ.
You and I have to become so closely linked to Christ that his win is our win.
When that happens, when your life becomes utterly entwined within Christ’s life, astounding realities become yours.
When we go back to Daniel 7, we find a refrain in verses 18, 22, and 27.
Verse 18 of Daniel 7,
But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever and ever.
Verse 22,
Until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High,
And the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom.
Or verse 27,
And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the saints of the Most High.
His kingdom shall be an everlasting dominion, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.
Now, we can’t know exactly what this will look like,
but it’s repeated again from the very mouth of Jesus in Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3.
He says in chapter 2 verse 26,
The one who conquers and who keeps my words until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.
He will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.
Or Revelation 3, 21,
The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
Union with Christ means that what he did, you did.
What he does, you do.
What he possesses, you possess.
Now, if we look back at our text in verse 9,
there’s a final phrase that says,
By the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.
One note on that final phrase, taste death for everyone.
Taken by itself, it could sound like everyone is automatically saved.
And if this were the only thing that the scripture, that the entire Bible had to say about salvation,
we might be able to assume that, but it’s not.
The scriptures are clear that the only way to be saved is in Christ, and that not everyone is or will be saved.
So that leaves us with three options for interpreting this verse.
One would be to say that the Bible contradicts itself, and it made a mistake here among other places.
Or two, you could say that this passage trumps everything else the Bible has to say on the subject of salvation.
Or three, you can say, I need to try to reconcile this less clear statement in scripture with passages that are clearer.
Now, as Christians, we believe that the Bible is authoritative and without error, which eliminates the first option.
In terms of option two and three, Christians throughout history have held to the position that scripture must interpret scripture.
And so we must use the clearer passages to understand the more difficult, leaving us really with the third option.
I would suggest that it’s far easier to see how everyone in this passage might be shorthand for everyone who is saved,
everyone who is united to Christ, then to use this passage to overrule all the other places that say everyone is not saved,
that say not everyone is saved.
The options boil down to either everyone is saved or they aren’t.
And if not, then what is this passage saying?
Well, the simplest and easiest explanation, in my opinion, is to simply understand everyone to be shorthand for everyone who is saved.
The writer’s point is not to focus on the extent of who receives salvation,
but a particular aspect of salvation that the recipients of salvation receive, namely that Jesus tasted death on their behalf.
Jesus tasted death for every one of those who are part of him.
When you’re connected to Jesus, he takes away the bitter sting of death.
As we close, I want to highlight a few applications that come from the teaching in this passage.
We find that Paul uses this doctrine in some unexpected ways in his letter to the Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians.
In 1 Corinthians 3, 21, for instance,
Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for dividing about which teachers they prefer.
But his argument in chapter three probably would catch us off guard.
3, 21, he says, Let no one boast in men, for all things are yours,
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future,
all are yours and you are Christ’s and Christ’s is God’s.
He says, Why are you arguing about your favorite teacher?
If you’re in Christ, you literally own everything.
Or a little later in chapter six, he rebukes the believers for taking each other to court with another unexpected argument.
First Corinthians, chapter six, verses two and three.
Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?
Do you not know that we are to judge angels?
How much more then matters pertaining to this life?
Stop taking each other to court, work out your disputes,
because you’re destined to rule the world and even sit in judgment over angels on the last day.
I would have just said, get along because you’re one body,
which is something Paul does say in other places.
But here he leverages this amazing implication from the destiny of the saints.
We don’t have monarchs in America,
but we could still understand the concept of a king telling his sons to get along,
because you’re going to be king one day.
Stop being petty when you’ve got such a weighty destiny.
I don’t think we are accustomed to thinking in these terms.
We often speak of our inadequacy, our unworthiness, our frailty, our own unreliability.
And this is certainly true of ourselves and especially when compared to Christ.
But Hebrews doesn’t want us to focus exclusively on our past.
Faith is the focus on the future, the future in Christ.
Faith unites us to Christ, and in Christ we finally become what humans were meant to be.
God never intended angels, as powerful and glorious as they are,
to be given dominion and responsibility over creation.
They aren’t said to be made in his image.
Only mankind was given that great privilege and responsibility,
which was utterly squandered and destroyed by sin, dooming them as slaves.
Yet in Christ, we can become the image bearers of God that we were intended to be.
You see, sometimes people who aren’t Christians are afraid that becoming a Christian
won’t make them change, make them boring, or not allow them to be themselves.
In reality, the opposite is true.
You will never be able to truly be yourself outside of Christ.
You were created for greatness beyond anything that you can imagine,
but the only path to that is by being united to Christ by faith.
Apart from Christ, you won’t just be a lesser ruler.
You’ll remain a slave in this life to sin and death,
and face far worse after that for eternity.
Come to Christ in repentance and faith, and discover your true identity and destiny.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven,
we are in wonder, like David, that what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man, that you care for him.
You made him a little lower than the angels,
crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.
And yet we have squandered that destiny,
and now can only find that our true purpose,
our true calling, as we were made to be within Christ.
Lord, we ask that you would draw us in,
you would make us a part of Christ by faith,
unite us to him that his win would be our win,
that we would find our true humanity in the God-man.
Lord, we ask that if there are any here tonight who do not know themselves to be a part of Christ,
you would open their eyes, show Christ to be precious,
and give them a desire to be united with him this evening, even now.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, in response, if you would turn in your hymnals,
we’ll be singing hymn 515, More Than Conquerors.