Hebrews Lesson 29 October 13, 2005
NKJ Psalm 119:9 How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.
Hebrews 2
Tonight we are going to cover verses 12 down to 16. This is getting into the heart of a very important and crucial section for understanding the whole dynamic of God’s plan for the spiritual life in the Church Age. God’s plan for the spiritual life in the Church Age is not like God’s plan for the spiritual life in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament it was based upon the revelation of God that was incomplete and partial. It was given first through the Torah and then through the prophets. The spiritual life was based on the faith rest drill – learning what the Word of God said and applying those principles and promises. There was no indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There was no filling of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual life did not advance as a result of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit was given in the Old Testament it was not for the purpose of sanctification, even for those who had the Holy Spirit. It was for the purpose of empowering them in the realm of their leadership with respect to the nation Israel. That’s why when you go back to the Old Testament the only people who have this special ministry of the Holy Spirit are the craftsmen who made the furniture for the tabernacle and for the craftsmen who worked on all the gold and jewels and everything in the tabernacle and temple as well as certain military leaders, governmental leaders, kings, priests, and prophets. Those were the only ones who had any kind of relationship to the Holy Spirit. That relationship was either related to giving them wisdom and guidance in leadership or with respect to priests or prophets with reference to inspiration of the Word of God.
When we come to the New Testament it is the Holy Spirit that is a crucial difference. We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We are also filled with the Holy Spirit. The concept of the spiritual life for sanctification was pioneered by the Lord Jesus Christ during the First Advent. His spiritual life in His humanity was based upon His relationship and dependence upon God the Holy Spirit. That is at the core of understanding this section from Hebrews 2:10 down through the end of chapter in 2:18. It is all built around the idea that Jesus Christ came at the First Advent to present the kingdom. John the Baptist said to repent for the kingdom was at hand. When Jesus showed up on the scene after His baptism He said to repent for the kingdom was at hand. When He sent out the disciples He said that their message was to be that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. That was the message. It was the promised kingdom from the Old Testament. The Jews knew what the message was but they failed to respond.
As a result they also rejected Jesus as the promised king or Messiah so the kingdom was completely postponed. Jesus Christ was crucified. He arose from the dead. He ascended to heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the Father. That seating at the right hand of the Father, what we call the doctrine of the session, is directly related to the postponement of the kingdom. We have studied this in the past. We have gone to passages such as Daniel 7 which depicts the Son of Man coming to establish the kingdom at the end of the Church Age. We know from New Testament revelation. We know from Psalm 110:1 that when He ascended and was seated at the right hand of God the Father He says to sit at His right hand until His enemies are made a footstool.
This indicates that there is something going on in this period of history where the enemies of the Messiah are being defeated so that Christ is in the position of being seated. That is related to His priesthood. That is the back drop for what is going on in this section.
In this section there is an emphasis on this group of brethren - the group that is called the metachoi in other passages. Here they are referred to as the brethren, the children. These are believers who are being trained to be Christ’s associates and to rule and reign with Him during the Millennial Kingdom. The way in which we are sanctified is the same way that He was sanctified. There is a parallel there that is very important to understand.
Now let’s get the context again. We’ve gone through the first couple of verses and we need to pick up the context.
NKJ Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
The significance of that phrase is “as the creator.” As the creator, as the sovereign God of the universe, God has the right to establish a plan and fulfill that plan. So when it says it was fitting for Him there is a reminder here that He is the creator God. Creation is not some secondary nice little interesting doctrine that Christians get interested in because they don’t like evolution. Creation is foundational to the whole message of the Scripture. That is why whenever Paul went to Gentiles he didn’t start with the cross. He started with creation. Usually he didn’t get very far because they rejected that so he didn’t even get to the cross. You see that in His messages in Acts 14 when He goes to Iconium, in Acts 17 when He goes to Athens. He focuses first of all on the doctrine of creation because if you don’t understand that, you can’t fully appreciate the message of the gospel.
So we go from the beginning – creation – to the end result which is bringing many sons to glory. That gives us the process. It gives us the goal, the direction of God’s plan. In order to do that, He sent Jesus Christ to fulfill something beyond just salvation in terms of justification - beyond dying on the cross as a substitute for our sins.
In order to accomplish the plan it was proper for Him (God the Father) to make the captain. A better translation is pioneer or trailblazer. He is the one who set the precedent for the spiritual life.
I pointed out last time that the word salvation doesn’t refer to coming to the cross and expressing faith alone in Christ alone. That’s what we refer to as phase 1 salvation. It is talking about phase 2 salvation – the spiritual life.
NKJ Hebrews 2:11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,
Verse 11 carries on with that idea. The idea here is in the process of sanctification. We call it experiential sanctification or progressive sanctification.
Here it is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in His role in sanctification. A few people out there out ought to be asking a question. “Wait! I thought it was the Holy Spirit who was the member of the Godhead who was responsible for sanctification.” It is. I want to come back and explain this in a second.
The Greek text stops right there. It says, “All of one.” One what? If you have a King James Bible or even a New American Standard, it inserts in italics the word Father. It’s not in the original. That is why it’s in italics. Father doesn’t’ make sense in the context. That’s some translator’s interpretation based on his faulty theology. While it is true that we are of one Father, Jesus Christ is not in the same sense that we are. The focus here and throughout this section is that Jesus Christ is fully human and we are fully human. Because we are of the same nature and because we are both true humanity, Jesus Christ can die for the rest of the human race and Jesus Christ can set the standard, set the precedent and pioneer or trail blaze a new path in terms of the process of sanctification. On the basis of that He is not ashamed to call us, that is Church Age believers, brethren because we follow Him down that same path. That’s the thought flow in this particular section.
Now when it says “both He who sanctifies” that is the Lord Jesus Christ, we have to understand the role of the Son in sanctification. It is the role of the Holy Spirit in sanctification to help us to understand the Word, to fill us with the Word, to bring the Word that is stored in our soul back to memory, to help us understand how to apply the Word. All of this is assumed under the doctrine of the illumination of the Holy Spirit. That’s not the way the God the Son is involved in sanctification. So how are we to understand that? How is God the Son involved in sanctification?
Let’s go back to a very basic chart. I am not sure that I have shown this chart to this congregation. I want you to know that we are not making changes in fundamental theology. We just have a different aspect and ratio on an overhead. We no longer have a top and bottom circle. We have to go with a left and right circle.
Three stages of salvation
1. Phase 1 takes place when we trust Christ as Savior. We talk about this technically as justification. That is Paul’s terminology in Romans. He doesn’t use the term salvation to describe that point at which the believer expresses faith alone in Christ alone, receives the imputation of righteousness, is justified, receives the imputation of eternal life and is regenerate. For that He focuses primarily on the initial stage which is justification.
2. Phase 2 The second stage is our spiritual life. We are born anew as spiritual babies in justification. Like newborn babes we are to desire the sincere milk of the Word. I Peter 2:2 We grow by the study of the Word and the Holy Spirit.
3. Phase 3 salvation is glorification.
We talk about positional sanctification when we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. We studied the doctrine of sanctification last time and I pointed out that sanctification means to be set apart. The root word in the Greek is hagiosmos which is related to the verb hagiadzo. But when we come to the New Testament we study concepts related to holiness, you have to go to the Old Testament to understand holiness. Holiness in the Old Testament is based on the verb qadash which means to be set apart to the service of a god. I usually love to shock people by saying that the female prostitutes and the male prostitutes in the phallic cult and fertility religions were referred to by the male noun and the female noun forms of qadash. They were holy. That always gets people confused because you think that holiness means being morally pure. It doesn’t mean that. It can pick that up as a secondary idea from certain context. The root idea is to be set apart to the service of God. The prostitutes in the fertility religions were called qadasheem or qadashote on the basis that they were set apart to serve their god. That’s what Christ is doing in His spiritual life. He is learning to serve God as He grows spiritually. It is not just doing away with sin. It is primarily learning to serve God.
That is the process that Christ went through without a sin nature. Adam would have gone through the same process. He did not have a sin nature. He still had to be sanctified. He had to learn how to obey the Lord. It doesn’t imply disobedience. You don’t have to commit murder to learn not to commit murder. You don’t have to be disobedient to learn to be obedient. But you have to go through that growth process of learning. That is the experiential phase of progressive sanctification. It’s built on what happens to us as believers at salvation when we are positionally identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, positionally set apart to God.
Then as we grow spiritually we learn to apply the word. There is a progressive or experiential phase where we learn to apply doctrine and learn to live in a manner consistent with our positional sanctification. Then in glorification there is ultimate or complete sanctification. There is not longer any sin nature.
We speak of phase one as being freed from the penalty of sin which is spiritual death. At the instant of faith alone in Christ alone we receive new life. We are spiritually alive. In phase two of the spiritual life we are freed from the power of sin. In phase three we are freed or saved from the presence of sin. This is also referred to as the three tenses of salvation. We are saved from the penalty of sin when we trust Christ as savior. We are being saved from the power of sin as we grow and mature in the Christian life. When we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord we are saved from the presence of sin. Phase 2 and phase 3 grow out of positional sanctification.
This is where we go to our familiar charts with the circles. On the left we have the eternal realities and on the right we have the temporal realities. The circles represent our position in Christ. We are in Christ at the moment of faith alone in Christ alone. We are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection according to Romans 6:3. This is referred to as baptism. The significance of it is that we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection so that there is a positional death to the old sin nature. It is not an experiential death. You still have one. I know you didn’t know that but you do. With baptism by the Holy Spirit we are positionally sanctified. That is why the author of Hebrews can refer to Jesus as the one who sanctifies us - positional sanctification not experiential sanctification. He is the one who positionally sanctifies us by virtue of the fact that we are identified with His death burial and resurrection. Then on the right side we have our experiential circle where we walk in the light, by means of the Holy Spirit and in the filling of the Holy Spirit. All of these terms are expressive of different aspects of our ongoing spiritual growth.
So the concept of he who sanctifies relates to the positional work of Christ at the cross. Those who are being sanctified, that is the process of sanctification indicated by the participle, refers to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who are advancing in their day to day spiritual growth, experiential sanctification.
We had this chart last time to explain the growth process. The green speaks of growth. The dark area represents living in darkness. That is when we are in carnality. As we advance to the various stages of spiritual growth from spiritual birth to spiritual adulthood to spiritual maturity we spend different amounts of time in spiritual growth and different amounts of time in carnality. When you are a new baby believer you spend a little bit of time in fellowship, walking by the Spirit, abiding in Christ, walking by the Spirit, and growing. You spend a lot of time in carnality because you don’t have any doctrine in your soul. So when Lordship people come along and look at you they are going to say that you aren’t saved because your life looks like an unbeliever. And well it should. You don’t have any doctrine yet.
As you grow you will start to apply doctrine while you walk by the Spirit. You will spend more time in fellowship. There will be more time for growth. There will be more time for momentum. When you are spiritually mature you spend more time walking by the Spirit and less time walking according to the sin nature. Spiritual growth is referred to in Scripture as abiding in Christ – “abiding in Me” as Jesus said in John 15. It is described as being in fellowship, which is walking in partnership with God the Holy Spirit. It describes forward momentum. The carnality area is walking according to the flesh where the sin nature is in control. We are out of fellowship. There is reverse momentum. If you stay out of fellowship long enough, you will decrease in growth and you will act like an unbeliever and think like an unbeliever. You will pretty much shut down all of the doctrine that is in your soul.
Those charts basically give us an understanding, an overview of the doctrine of sanctification.
As I was wrapping up last time I couldn’t remember if I finished the last two points or not. The last two points relate to where we need to go this time.
11. The key person in sanctification or spiritual life of the believer is God the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit operates in the area of positional or experiential sanctification.
Paul wrote.
NKJ Romans 15:16 that I might be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
That is His role.
There is a process in sanctification. That is why we call it progressive sanctification or experiential sanctification. There is a mechanic. We have a chart that relates to testing. That is the core dynamic. That is at the center of this whole section in chapters 2, 3 and 4. It is the concept of testing. Christ is tested in Hebrews 2:10-18. The Old Testament believers are tested and fail in chapter 3.
NKJ Hebrews 2:18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.
NKJ Hebrews 4:14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
At the end of chapter 4, at the end of this section we are reminded that we have a high priest who was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin. Hebrews 2:18 which is in the middle of the exhortation and 4:15 focus on the fact that Jesus Christ suffered and was tested just like we are. That’s the pattern. Therefore for that to have any significance He had to have a nature just like us. So many people think that Jesus handled the problems out in the wilderness. He went 40 days without food because he was God. He could do it. Have you ever tried to go 40 days without food? Some of us can’t go 40 hours without food. Some of us can’t go 4 hours without food. How in the world could He go for 40 days without food? He must have relied on His deity. No! If He relied on His deity that would have destroyed the whole thing. It was that He did this in His humanity. Then when He was tired and hungry and worn out, He gets tested by Satan. There are three temptations in the wilderness. That relates to His humanity. Is He going to rely upon God the Holy Spirit to sustain Himself and to stay in the plan of God or is He going to bail out and yield to the test and take the short cut to glory and seek the crown without going through the cross? So Jesus is tested not only in the wilderness but throughout His life living with sinners, living with parents who are sinners, living with siblings who are sinners, being involved in a carnal political system and a system of tyranny and the whole environment. Jesus Christ had to go through one test after another and He has to handle that on the basis of doctrine and reliance and dependence on God the Holy Spirit. And He does that without sin. That is what qualifies Him to go to the cross. That is what makes Him our high priest, someone who understands our weaknesses and sustains us and helps us no matter what we are going through. Whatever you are going through, it is not unique to you. Everybody else goes through similar things. Jesus Christ went through the same thing and therefore He can aid us. That is the primary message throughout this particular section.
So we go to our chart for a brief overview. Phase 1 is salvation. Phase 2 has a different blueprint. We have a process going on here that we will break down in a minute so don’t try to get it all down. The chart is on the internet by the way. This describes the process of spiritual growth. You are either walking by the Holy Spirit (that top circle indicated in the green) or you are walking according to the old sin nature ( that is the area on the bottom side indicated by the red) One or the other depending on whether we are exercising our volition to apply the Word and walk by means of the Spirit. Then when it is all over with there is an evaluation at the Judgment Seat of Christ. If we have produced gold, silver, or precious stones (divine good) then there is rewards and inheritance. If we have been disobedient, walking according to the flesh, then there is a loss of rewards and temporary shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Let’s break it down a little bit. At salvation we trust Christ as savior. We get a new life. We walk by the Holy Spirit and have a new resource for understanding the Word of God and for applying the Word of God. That is God the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless it is still dependent on our volition, to exercise our volition to walk by means of the Holy Spirit. There are going to be various tests. This is what James refers to in James 1:2-4 as tests of faith. We are going to learn something. We are going to go to school and then God is going to give us a quiz. That is what life is all about. If you don’t like going to school and taking quizzes then you are in the wrong business in the Christian life. It is learning doctrine and taking quizzes, learning doctrine and take quizzes until we get our report card at the Judgment Seat of Christ. So we are to count it all joy whenever we encounter various trials because we know that the testing of our faith (doctrine in the soul) produces endurance. Every time there is a test we exercise our volition. When we are positive and we are walking by the Spirit, there is the production of divine good. There is production of the abundant life. It is a quality of life, a capacity for life and it produces evidence or a testimony in the angelic conflict that God’s will is good and perfect. That is Romans 12:2.
Furthermore it develops endurance. The more we are consistent the more endurance we develop as according to James 1:2-4. That in turn produces maturity. That word teleios translated perfect in James1:4.
NKJ James 1:4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
That is the cycle. We go through that cycle every time we learn doctrine. We get tested and there is growth. It is God the Holy Spirit that produces the growth.
But when we are negative and we try to handle life’s problems and adversities apart from dependence on God the Holy Spirit, it produces sin and human good and temporal death. It produces sin from the sin nature in terms of personal sins, mental attitude sins, sins of the tongue and overt sins. It also produces human good, all of those good works that are the product of living on our own without being dependent on God. This leads to temporal death. That term is used many times. It produces dead works according to Hebrews 6. That in turns leads to a weakness in our soul and instability. James uses the word dipsuchos. It has the idea of two souled. You are unstable. You can’t make up your mind. One minute you want to live like a believer and the next minute you don’t. It leads to increasing instability in life and poor decision making. This in turn leads to spiritual regression and a hardened heart. This is the overview. This is the process.
When we die and are absent and face to face with the Lord there will be an evaluation at the Judgment Seat of Christ. That which is produced by walking in the Holy Spirit is rewardable. We receive rewards and inheritance and privileges and position in the Millennial Kingdom. When we log maximum time in the sin nature there is loss of reward and temporary shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ. So what matters is to understand where we are going and where God is taking us because that final disposition at the Judgment Seat of Christ determines what we do in the Millennial Kingdom. It impacts eternity. So the basis for living the spiritual life in the Church Age is laid out by Jesus Christ during the incarnation. It is designed to produce this cadre that is going to rule with Him in the Millennium Kingdom.
The Old Testament picture for this is when David is in the wilderness. David is the anointed king. The word for anointed is mashach, the messiah . Saul is still the king. Saul is in carnality. Saul is out of fellowship and under divine discipline. At this stage Saul even though he is not an unbeliever is a type of Satan. He is hostile and antagonistic to God’s anointed. He has run David out of town. Now David is operating like a vagabond down in the wilderness. As Saul continues his meltdown because he is a dipsuchos believer, more and more people have to flee the court. They have to get away from the capital. They have to get away from Saul. So they aligned themselves with David and all live down in the wilderness together in temporary quarters. They are the outcasts of the society. That is a type of the church. Jesus Christ has been rejected by the world. He has been rejected by Israel. He came to be their king. He was rejected. He is now in absentia. He is bringing together a cadre of outcasts. We are that cadre of outcasts. So when David finally assumed the throne of Judah, who was put in a position of rulership? It was those mighty men that had gathered to his banner when he was down in the wilderness. That is the picture from the Old Testament of what Jesus Christ is doing with the Church Age believers. I want you to notice as we go through this passage that there is an emphasis on this group in verses 11-14.
NKJ Hebrews 2:11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,
He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
In verse 12 there is a quote from the Old Testament, Psalm 22:22.
NKJ Hebrews 2:12 saying: "I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You."
Then in verse 13 there is a quote from Isaiah 8:17-18. Here the term shifts from brethren to the children.
NKJ Hebrews 2:13 And again: "I will put My trust in Him." And again: "Here am I and the children whom God has given Me."
Then the term “children” is used again in verse 14.
NKJ Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
So the focus here is on us. These terms, brethren and children, refer to Church Age believers and demonstrate that the process here of Jesus Christ’s sanctification is directly related to modeling and preparing and pioneering sanctification for us as Church Age believers.
Let’s get into the details
NKJ Hebrews 2:12 saying: "I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You."
Hebrews 2:12 introduces a quote from Psalm 22:22 to substantiate the point that the writer has just made in verse 11 that He is not ashamed to call them brethren. That is those who are being sanctified. He is proud to call them brethren. Then there is this quote to substantiate this from Psalm 22:22. What is interesting if you know your psalms is that Psalm 22 is a psalm that is frequently referenced to what Christ quotes on the cross.
NKJ Psalm 22:1 To the Chief Musician. Set to "The Deer of the Dawn." A Psalm of David. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning?
In the Hebrew that was the title of the psalm. When Jesus was on the cross when the sins of the world began to be poured upon Him, He cried out to the Father not just the first verse but the first 16 or 17 verses in the psalm. The thrust of those first 17 verses is a reliance upon God in the midst of rejection and hostility when someone is being attacked and assaulted and their life is being threatened. Psalm 22 talks about dependence upon God to sustain in midst of trials. But there is a shift that takes place beginning in verses 19-22. In verses 19-21 there is a prayer in Psalm 22 that relates to resurrection.
NKJ Psalm 22:20 Deliver Me from the sword, My precious life from the power of the dog. 21 Save Me from the lion's mouth And from the horns of the wild oxen! You have answered Me. 22 I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.
The writer talks about his life being attacked. His life is being threatened. As it applies to Christ He dies on the cross. Rather than staying in the grave, He is going to be resurrected from the grave.
Following the typical pattern of a lament psalm, there is praise at the end. At the end (This is put in the mouth of the Messiah.) He declares praise to God because He has delivered Him in the midst of adversity.
“I” refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. The “You” refers to the character, the attributes of God the Father, specifically in relation to His ability to deliver and aid in the midst of adversity. Jesus is presented here as praising God because of what God has done to deliver Him in the midst of all of this hostility and antagonism and in the midst of the pressure of adversity. So this verse is used by the writer of Hebrews to talk about the fact that in the testing process of sanctification Jesus Christ concluded everything by the time of the resurrection and praised God because God’s grace was sufficient to sustain Him in the midst of all those pressures and all of those tests. Now you and I will never face tests to the same level of intensity that Jesus Christ did. If God the Father was able to sustain Him and the grace of God was sufficient to sustain Him in those trials, then the grace of God is sufficient to sustain you in those trials. If the Word of God was sufficient enough to sustain Jesus in His trials, then the Word of God is sufficient to sustain us in the midst of those trials. That is the point that the writer of Hebrews in making – that Jesus Christ is our pioneer. He went through all of these tests and at the end He was able to praise God, to declare God’s character, God’s sufficiency and God’s power to the brethren. In the midst of which is a synonymous parallelism to the first stanza. In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to you.
The point here is that the Messiah is able to sing the praises of God to us because just as God sustained Him through doctrine and through the Holy Spirit and through grace, so God the Father is able to sustain us.
Then we have two more quotes. The first if from Isaiah 8:17 and the second one is from Isaiah 8:18.
NKJ Hebrews 2:13 And again: "I will put My trust in Him." And again: "Here am I and the children whom God has given Me."
This is simply a way of citing the next verse.
Now that sounds like a great promise, doesn’t it? But there is a lot more to this than meets the eye in the English. This is an incredibly strong statement in the Greek. It is a quote from the passage in Isaiah. At the end of Isaiah 8:17 there is a statement that “I will trust in God.” The word for trust in the Hebrew text is qavah. It is the same word that we have in Isaiah 40:31.
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.
The word qavah has to do with confidence, a hope, a confident expectation with the ability to completely trust in God because you know where you are going. Once again we come back to the concept of a sense of our personal eternal destiny. We know where God is taking us. We know that every decision we make today is gong to affect eternity. The decisions we make today determine who we will be and what we will do in the Millennial Kingdom. We must live today in the light of eternity. So the word qavah indicates a sense of trust. The Jewish translators of the LXX took the phrase “I will trust in Him” and translated it into Greek. They did something even more profound. What they did was to put it in a way that the writer of Hebrews could come along and quote this as an indication of the profound trust that the Lord Jesus Christ had.
In the Greek you have an interesting grammatical construction. When you want to say certain things, you take a participle and then you add the verb eimi before it. This is called a paraphrastic participle. It is like saying, I am running. I am would translate the eimi. Running would translate the participle. But in certain kinds of constructions it has an extremely strong meaning. Here you have the word eimi (I am going to trust Him.). It is a helping verb. It is not attached to a present participle, but it is attached to a perfect participle. Now a perfect participle indicates completed results. It indicates completed results of an already performed action. This is where it gets difficult to explain. When it says I am and then it uses a perfect participle it is like saying, “I am already complete in my trust.” That’s the idea. The perfect participle indicates action that has already taken place, action that is already complete. It emphasizes as an intensive perfect the ongoing thrust of the act of trusting. What makes it even more interesting is that eimi verb is in the future tense. So you have a future tense “I am” with a completed action participle. In essence what this does in combining together is to make a statement that I have already completed an act of trust in the past with results that not only continue in the present but I am so certain of my completed act of trust that it will continue on into the future indefinitely without exception. It is about the strongest way you can say that you have trusted in the past with results that continue in the present and go on into the future.
Here are a couple of ways we could express it in English.
Literal Translation: I have already put my trust in Him in the past with results that continue from the present into the future.
Or we could say…
Since in the past I trusted fully in Him I shall always trust in Him in the future.
It is a statement of profound confidence and a trust in God based upon an action that has been completed in the past. When this is taken in this context of verse 13 and applied to the Messiah, what this is showing is that the entire life of Christ was a life that was based on the bedrock foundation of trust in God - a trust that was so profound that when it is completed initially in trust it continued throughout His life and on into the future. That is the model for how we should trust Christ. There should be a view of faith in our soul that we trust God. It is a bedrock confidence so profound that it continues in the present and goes on into the future so that no matter what happens ,no matter what the adversity, no matter what the test, no matter what the problem, no matter how overwhelming it may be whether you lose everything, whether all your hopes an dreams are shattered, whether it is the result of financial collapse or some meteorological disaster like Katrina, whatever it may be that your trust in God is so profound that the result is perfect stability in your soul. You have determined to trust in God. You have determined to trust in Christ. You trust in God and the sufficiency of His grace, the sufficiency of Scripture, in the sufficiency of the cross so that no matter what happens you are unshakable and you are stable. It is built on the precedence set by the Lord Jesus Christ. So the writer of Hebrews makes a simple statement connecting the sanctification of the Lord Jesus Christ and the sanctification of the believer. Then he supports that with two quotes from the Old Testament that reinforce the sufficiency of God’s grace in the life of the Messiah in the midst of trials
In the original context of Isaiah 8, Isaiah is prophesying regarding the coming collapse of the Northern Kingdom of Israel due to the Assyrian invasion. In the midst of that he talks about the fact that the people are not trusting in God. Nevertheless he is trusting God.
I am going to turn back there for just a minute to pick up the context.
NKJ Isaiah 8:11 For the LORD spoke thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying:
The people of Israel were not trusting in God. They were operating on paganism. They were living like those around, using the same value system as the people around and they were blaming their problems on other factors rather than their own failure to trust God and going out under the fifth cycle of discipline. They were claiming that it was a conspiracy
NKJ Isaiah 8:12 "Do not say, 'A conspiracy,' Concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, Nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.
NKJ Isaiah 8:13 The LORD of hosts, Him you shall hallow; Let Him be your fear, And let Him be your dread.
In other words don’t be afraid of the things that are happening to you. Don’t be afraid of adversity. Don’t be afraid of the test that you are going through. Don’t be afraid of losing anything. What you need to fear is the Lord.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of the Lord is the foundation of the Christian life so don’t fear what man can do to you but fear what God can do to you.
NKJ Isaiah 8:14 He will be as a sanctuary, But a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense To both the houses of Israel, As a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
A sanctuary means a place of protection. It is God who is our source of protection.
NKJ Isaiah 8:15 And many among them shall stumble; They shall fall and be broken, Be snared and taken."
In other words, for us God’s grace to us is a place of security; but to unbelievers it is a trap, a stumbling block or a trap.
Peter picks up on that in I Peter 2 and relates it to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then we get down to verse 16.
NKJ Isaiah 8:16 Bind up the testimony, Seal the law among my disciples.
In other words it is the Word of God that this is a source of strength.
NKJ Isaiah 8:17 And I will wait on the LORD, Who hides His face from the house of Jacob; And I will hope in Him.
That is the quote that we find in Hebrews 2.
Let’s go back to Hebrews 2.
NKJ Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
Hebrews 2:14 makes application in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. “Inasmuch” is a weak translation of the Greek epi plus oun. Oun draws a conclusion. Epi reinforces that. Therefore since. As a conclusion to what we have just learned about the sanctification of God the Son in His humanity and His process of spiritual growth. Therefore based on that reality.
“As” indicates in the same manner.
The word “children” is you and me as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The word translated partake of the flesh is the Greek verb koinoneo in the perfect active indicative indicating completed action in the past. It is an intensive perfect emphasizing the present results of a past action - that we are presently having been born in flesh and blood. We are true humanity
The Greek word paraplesios is an adverb in like manner, in the same way. So it starts with us as creatures, flesh and blood, and says, “in the same way that we are.” Jesus Christ is true humanity in the same way we are. He is not handling these things in His deity. He has to handle them in His humanity. That is the point.
He shared in the same what? The same flesh and blood. He shared in the same trials and tests.
Let’s take a minute to think about that. Through death. What kind of death? Spiritual death when He bore the judgment of sin on the cross.
He destroyed the power of Satan which was broken at the cross. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t still powerful. It doesn’t mean that he’s not the god of this age or the prince and power of the air. He has been permanently and fatally defeated. This was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prediction in Genesis 3:15 when Jesus Christ spoke to the serpent and said that the he would bruise the seed of the woman on the heel but the seed of the woman would bruise him on the head, a fatal wound. At the cross Satan’s power was secured at the cross so that the devil who has the power of death and the source of death in the human race was defeated by Christ’s work on the cross.
Another verb that is interesting is the verb metecho meaning to share, to participate. It is a parallel to koinoeo. It is the root from which we get the word metachoi meaning those who share with Christ - those who will rule and reign with Christ in the coming kingdom.
NKJ Hebrews 2:15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
This is the whole principle laid out by Paul in Romans chapter 6 – that we are born in bondage to the sin nature. But the instant you put your trust in Christ and you are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection the power of the sin nature is broken. You are no longer a slave to sin. You are a slave to righteousness. Paul writes.
NKJ Romans 6:11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s the foundation for Paul’s whole development of the spiritual life in Romans 6-8, the three key chapters related to sanctification. Christ died to destroy the power of the devil.
Bondage to what? To the sin nature. At the cross we are saved positionally from the penalty of sin and in sanctification we go on and on and on being freed, saved or delivered from the power of the sin nature that ongoing enslavement of the sin nature during phase 2.
NKJ
Hebrews 2:16 For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He
does give aid to the seed of Abraham.
There is one more verse and then we will be up to the last two verses.
This is the last point that he makes before he drives it home to a conclusion.
What is this all about? He is making the point that God doesn’t sustain the angles like He sustains us. There is not plan of sanctification for the angels like there is for us. There are no problem solving devices for the angels like there are for us. God the Father isn’t coming along to sustain the angels like He did us. The Messiah didn’t appear as an angel to provide aid to the angels. It is to us as the seed of Abraham.
Indeed is the Greek word depou that means indeed, with certainty.
The word translated aid is the Greek word epilambano which has the idea of taking someone by the hand or to help them along. The whole principle is that He does not help angels. God the Son established a spiritual life pattern to give help for us, not the angels.
He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Now who are the seed of Abraham? That is those who put faith in Christ just as Abraham did. This is seen in Galatians 3:6-9.
NKJ Galatians 3:6 just as Abraham "believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." 7 Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed." 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.
So who are the sons of Abraham? Does that make us Jewish? This is a pop quiz. No. What makes you Jewish? You are a son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are sons of Abraham because we follow his pattern of faith alone in Christ alone. His faith anticipated the coming of the Messiah. Our faith looks back to the accomplished work of the Messiah. It is still faith alone in Christ alone. The principle laid down in verses 12-16 is that God’s plan was such that the Son would come and establish a pattern as the pioneer of the spiritual life that the Son would come and establish a pattern or a precedent as a pioneer of a spiritual life that would not be based on the Mosaic Law, not be based on Old Testament dynamics but would be based on dependence upon God the Holy Spirit. This spiritual life as it was pioneered and perfected by the Lord Jesus Christ was then bequeathed to the Church Age believes so that by following His pattern, by following the trail that He blazed, we would be qualified in the same way that He was qualified so that we could rule and reign with Him as His companions, as overcomers, in the Millennial Kingdom. This is based on the function and operation of His high priesthood which is what is spelled out in the next two verses. We will have to come back next time to develop those ideas.