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In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

Before concluding our look at chapter 2, I want to linger one more day over verse 10. Recently, I was praying through the passage. I don’t always do this, but I find it to be a good way to meditate on Scripture. Its meaning often seems to open like a flower when I turn it into prayer. Anyway, I was arrested, and inspired, by the word author (translated pioneer in later versions). I thought to myself, God writes wonderful salvation stories. I’m not just thinking about the moment of conversion, but the on-going story of salvation. (Salvation come is in three tenses: we have been saved; we are being saved; we are yet to be saved ). It is a ‘God-story’ from start to finish, and God is still writing it in our lives right now. This also spurred me to pray by name for people I know, that the Lord will write them into His great big salvation story – an epic which spans the ages.

PRAYER: Lord God, I pray for ——– that you will author your salvation story in his/her life

 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

It is as much a heresy to deny the full humanity of Christ as it is repudiate His total divinity.

If a Jesus not quite God is, as someone put it, ‘a bridge broken on the farther side’, a Jesus not quite man is a bridge broken on this side of the chasm.

At first glance, verse 10 may appear strange. ‘But we thought Jesus always was perfect,’ we say. Quite right. He was, and is. But what this is talking about is the perfecting, or completing, of His human experience. The One who was to die to rescue human beings, and then represent them as Priest before God had to be flesh and blood. He had to fully share their humanity. This is something we’re going to see in the remainder of the chapter.

After what has gone before it, it is not surprising that chapter 2 concludes in this way:

 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. ¹⁷ For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. ¹⁸ Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

So it is in this sense that Jesus was perfected – that He was given a fully human experience. He knows intimately what it is to suffer and be tempted. He became like us in every way – apart from the sinning.

 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Jesus was willing to experience the bitterest taste of all that we might know the sweetest of outcomes:

 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Someone noted that just as David cut off Goliath’s head with his own sword, so Jesus used the devil’s weapon against him in order to destroy him. Ever since death came furiously riding into the world on the back of sin, we humans have been ‘scared to death of death.’ It was one of the Marx brothers who quipped, ‘It’s not that I’m scared to die; I just don’t want to be around when it happens!’ I guess he speaks for us all. Many a true word… But Jesus can remove the fear from death for those who trust in Him.

Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Saviour took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death (Verses 14,15: The Message).

I remember the late, great David Watson using this vivid illustration in one of his books. He said he was out walking in the countryside with his family when a bee started buzzing around his daughter’s head. He put his arm around her to shield her, and the bee stung him instead. He went on to say that, having drawn the bee’s sting, it was no longer interested in his daughter and flew away. This is what Jesus has done for us in His death on the Cross, said David. He has drawn death’s sting.

For relection: No Longer Slaves (Official Lyric Video) – Jonathan David and Melissa Helser | We Will Not Be Shaken

God didn’t put angels in charge of this business of salvation that we’re dealing with here. It says in Scripture,

What is man and woman that you bother with them;
    why take a second look their way?
You made them not quite as high as angels,
    bright with Eden’s dawn light;
Then you put them in charge
    of your entire handcrafted world.

When God put them in charge of everything, nothing was excluded. But we don’t see it yet, don’t see everything under human jurisdiction. What we do see is Jesus, made “not quite as high as angels,” and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place. (The Message).

Note the order. Here we have God, then the angels, then man ‘at number three in the charts’ (as someone put it). What staggering humility that God, the Son, should stoop so low: becoming, for a time, even lower than the angels He Himself created. But now the great reversal has occurred, and Jesus is in His rightful place above the angels.

But He humbled Himself for our sakes.

Furthermore, our Lord set this pattern of ‘downward mobility’ for all His followers to note and pursue (see John 13:1-17; Phil.2:1-11). He shows us ‘God’s law of gravity’ that ‘what goes down must come up.’

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because,

‘God opposes the proud
    but shows favour to the humble.’

⁶ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. (1 Peter 5:5b,6).

PRAYER: Lord God, may I be content to take the lowest seat at the table, and trust you to say ‘Come up higher’ in your way and time.

God didn’t put angels in charge of this business of salvation that we’re dealing with here. It says in Scripture,

What is man and woman that you bother with them;
    why take a second look their way?
You made them not quite as high as angels,
    bright with Eden’s dawn light;
Then you put them in charge
    of your entire handcrafted world.

When God put them in charge of everything, nothing was excluded. But we don’t see it yet, don’t see everything under human jurisdiction. What we do see is Jesus… (The Message).

It is obvious that when the first man sinned the loss was great. One of the lasting effects of the fall is that people now come nowhere near close to fulfilling their governmental potential. One day, In Christ, it will be fulfilled, but not yet. Not fully.(Although, even now, the more we submit to Jesus, the greater will be the leadership authority we exercise. This is one of many great paradoxes of the Christian faith: see Matthew 8:9).

So, as yet, we do not see humans ruling as originally intended, but ”What we do see is Jesus…”, succeeding where man failed.

‘Ponder these verses: ”We wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21), ”We see Jesus” (Heb.2:9), and ”We shall see Him (Jesus)” (1 John 3:2). The first is the plea of the sinner; the second is the privilege of the saint; the third is the promise of the Scripture.” Warren W. Wiersbe: ‘With the Word’, p.813.

PRAYER: Lord, day by day may we see you more clearly, love you more dearly, follow you more nearly. I also pray for…that he/she/they may come to see, love and follow you.

It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6 But there is a place where someone has testified:

‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

    a son of man that you care for him?

7 You made them a little lower than the angels;

    you crowned them with glory and honour

8     and put everything under their feet.’

Jilly and I are enjoying a book by Tyler Staton: ‘Praying like monks, living like fools.’ In one of the early chapters he writes about how stillness and silence help us to recognise our smallness before an infinite God. In a telling paragraph he says:

‘I spent twelve years in New York City. I grieved the loss of the stars, but I relished the view of the skyline. My favourite view of the Manhattan skyline was always the angle from Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. I was always strangely comforted when I looked across all those tombstones at the city spires behind them. Every one of those stones represents someone who was living fast, making plans, and dodging every obstacle in the way of their preferred future. In other words, someone with a will who did their best to bring their will to bear on the present moment. Now they’re a memory and the city is filled with new people living even faster and making more plans’ (pp.44,45).

It is good for us to be aware of how small and fragile and temporary we actually are.

But although we are little people we are deeply loved by God. The measure of His love, as we will see, is that He lowered Himself to rescue us.

Warren Wiersbe, writing about Psalm 8 – which is quoted in Hebrews 2 – says:

‘The universe is vast and full of grandeur, so why should God pay any attention to weak and insignificant men and women? But He does!’ (‘With the Word’, p.312).

Prayer: Lord I thank you that your eye is on the sparrow; that ‘Thou Lord seest me’.

‘In that day,’ declares the Lord,

    ‘will I not destroy the wise men of Edom,

    those of understanding in the mountains of Esau?

9 Your warriors, Teman, will be terrified,

    and everyone in Esau’s mountains

    will be cut down in the slaughter.

10 Because of the violence against your brother Jacob,

    you will be covered with shame;

    you will be destroyed for ever.

11 On the day you stood aloof

    while strangers carried off his wealth

and foreigners entered his gates

    and cast lots for Jerusalem,

    you were like one of them.

12 You should not gloat over your brother

    in the day of his misfortune,

nor rejoice over the people of Judah

    in the day of their destruction,

nor boast so much

    in the day of their trouble.

13 You should not march through the gates of my people

    in the day of their disaster,

nor gloat over them in their calamity

    in the day of their disaster,

nor seize their wealth

    in the day of their disaster.

14 You should not wait at the crossroads

    to cut down their fugitives,

nor hand over their survivors

    in the day of their trouble.

15 ‘The day of the Lord is near

    for all nations.

As you have done, it will be done to you;

    your deeds will return upon your own head.

16 Just as you drank on my holy hill,

    so all the nations will drink continually;

they will drink and drink

    and be as if they had never been.

17 But on Mount Zion will be deliverance;

    it will be holy,

    and Jacob will possess his inheritance.

18 Jacob will be a fire

    and Joseph a flame;

Esau will be stubble,

    and they will set him on fire and destroy him.

There will be no survivors

    from Esau.’

The Lord has spoken.

19 People from the Negev will occupy

    the mountains of Esau,

and people from the foothills will possess

    the land of the Philistines.

They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria,

    and Benjamin will possess Gilead.

20 This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan

    will possess the land as far as Zarephath;

the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad

    will possess the towns of the Negev.

21 Deliverers will go up on Mount Zion

    to govern the mountains of Esau.

    And the kingdom will be the Lord’s.

Civilisations rise and fall.

Great civilisations rise and fall.

Wicked civilisations rise and fall.

Nations (just like individuals) will reap what they sow (15). Edom’s sin included pride, as we saw yesterday, and ‘passing by on the other side’ when his ‘brother’ was in need (11,12). Indeed, he gloated over his brother’s downfall. But there will be a price to pay. The tables will be turned (17ff). How good it is to know, amidst all the upheavals of history, and the machinations of wicked powers, that the Kingdom of God has come and is coming (21b). Ultimately it will triumph. Evil will be overthrown and the King will rule over all.

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.” Revelation 11:15.

That day is coming.

The vision of Obadiah.

This is what the Sovereign Lord says about Edom –

We have heard a message from the Lord:

    an envoy was sent to the nations to say,

‘Rise, let us go against her for battle’–

2 ‘See, I will make you small among the nations;

    you will be utterly despised.

3 The pride of your heart has deceived you,

    you who live in the clefts of the rocks

    and make your home on the heights,

you who say to yourself,

    “Who can bring me down to the ground?”

4 Though you soar like the eagle

    and make your nest among the stars,

    from there I will bring you down,’

declares the Lord.

5 ‘If thieves came to you,

    if robbers in the night –

oh, what a disaster awaits you –

    would they not steal only as much as they wanted?

If grape pickers came to you,

    would they not leave a few grapes?

6 But how Esau will be ransacked,

    his hidden treasures pillaged!

7 All your allies will force you to the border;

    your friends will deceive and overpower you;

those who eat your bread will set a trap for you,

    but you will not detect it.

“It takes the entire Bible to read any part of the Bible. Even the brief walk-on appearance of Obadiah has its place. No one, whether in or out of the Bible, is without significance. It was Obadiah’s assignment to give voice to God’s Word of judgment against Edom.

 Back in the early stages of the Biblical narrative, we are told the story of the twins Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25-36). They came out of the womb fighting. Jacob was ancestor to the people of Israel, Esau ancestor to the people of Edom. The two neighbouring peoples, Israel mostly to the west of the Jordan River and Dead Sea and Edom to the southeast, never did get along. They had a long history of war and rivalry. When Israel was taken into exile – first the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. and later the southern kingdom by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. – Edom stood across the fence and watched, glad to see her old relative get beat up.” (From Eugene Peterson’s introductory remarks in ‘The Message’).

Edom was proud.

Pride is at the root of all sin.

It makes you seem big in your own eyes, but, in truth, it makes you small.

It is also deceptive. It fuels an arrogance that cause you to think you are impregnable.

Truly, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov.16:18). This was the case with Edom.

Remember this:

“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2 For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, 3 how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

Some years ago a survey was conducted among a number of growing churches in the United States. The results were written up in a book called ‘Move’. It makes for fascinating reading. It revealed that (surprise, surprise!) the number one catalytic factor for spiritual growth is the regular reading of Scripture and engagement with it: what you read gets a hold of you to the degree that you do something about it. It changes your life.

The writer to the Hebrews asserts that if we are not to “drift away” we must “pay the most careful attention” to that Word which was first announced by the Lord (and His apostles) and attested by the Holy Spirit in supernatural ways.

My mind goes back to 1:3 which speaks of Jesus “sustaining all things by his powerful word.” There the reference is to the universe. But it is also true to say that our spiritual lives are also sustained by that “powerful word.” We do not live on bread alone..!

Prayer: Lord, May I be able to say with the psalmist, “I will not neglect your word” (Ps.119:16).