Clough Hebrews Lesson 16

Christ Fulfills Man’s Destiny and Now Leads – Hebrews 2:11-13

Turn to Hebrews 2; we’ve hit an area of Hebrews that’s kind of involved so we just have to take it slow and if you have a hard time following, it isn’t you, necessarily. It’s just hard material and I’ve never taught this book before so that adds to the problem. It’s just a very difficult work so you’ll have to pray that the Holy Spirit will give you an extra amount of illumination. Hebrews 2:5-18 is the third unit we’ve studied since Hebrews 1:1. This particular section deals with the topic that I summarize as: because Christ is the only one to whom God has subjected the world to come, God has made Him, by suffering, the only Redeemer for man.

Last week we spent the entire time dealing with the overall argument to the section. To make a long story short (because we’ll go back through the details of the argument as we go on verse by verse), we tried to show that there are two ways of viewing sanctification. First of all, what is sanctification? Sanctification is that part of the plan of God that deals with your life from the time you become a Christian until the time you die. We use the word sanctification to refer to that because most theologians use the word sanctification to refer to that, and rather than invent new terminology we’ll just stick with the classic terminology. However, there’s also a wrong way of viewing sanctification and that way is very prevalent in evangelical circles; in fact, in fundamentalist circles. So let’s look again at the two different ways of viewing it. First the correct way and then the incorrect way.

The correct way in the book of Hebrews is that sanctification is built at every point on justification. Justification deals with that point in time when you become a Christian. When Jesus Christ credits to you His righteousness and God the Father legally declares you as one who participates, one who has to your account credited that righteousness. That’s the doctrine of justification. Sanctification is built on the doctrine of justification at every point. We mention this because there’s a tendency to look at justification as completed, finished, and then you never bother with it because now after you’ve become a Christian, now you’re dealing with sanctification and you wind up with the two boxes butting against one another. Well that’s true chronologically but it’s not true logically. The book of Hebrews thoroughly undermines that notion and gives us the true Biblical doctrine. I found a verse that probably conveys it far more clearly than I did last time and that’s Hebrews 10:10, This clearly ties sanctification to justification. “By which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

By the way, that verse, verse 10, is one of the key verses of this epistle and that was the verse that inspired John Calvin to dedicate his commentary of the book of Hebrews to the King of Poland and the reason he did so was because Catholic propaganda has infiltrated Poland. And Calvin, to use his terms, wanted to get rid of the vomit from Poland and therefore wrote a commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews and verse 10 was one of the verses in this book that he used to attack Catholicism because it says Jesus Christ offered His body hapax, once for all, and therefore obviously the doctrine of the mass is destroyed because the mass is the re-offering of the body of Christ.

Hebrews 10:10 shows that justification is the only reason why Jesus Christ is sanctifying us at any given point in time. In other words, Christ can’t make a move, even if He wanted to, to sanctify you or to sanctify me unless He had clearance to do that. And the only clearance He has to work in your life at any point is justification. So justification underlies every point of sanctification in your life. Every change that Jesus Christ makes is on the basis of His finished work for you on the cross. It is never to be separated from the finished work… this is why even 1 John 1:9, when we confess our sins, that goes back to the cross. Everything is cross-based. If this doctrine of sanctification is followed it will prevent you from going over into what we described last time as using Christ for your sanctification.

In other words, I use… this is the doctrine of works, this is human viewpoint sanctification, so prevalent in evangelical circles, I use Christ for my problems. I take aspirin for a headache, I use Christ for my other problems. Now that is the kind of deal where, perhaps you have problems in your life, maybe it’s in a marriage situation, maybe it’s in dorm life, maybe it’s in academic life, some area of life you have a problem, and probably this problem is embarrassing to you or it’s very, very aggravating to you so say out of fifteen critical spiritual issues that you could deal with at the present moment you pick out on your own initiative, without the leading of the Holy Spirit, you pick out this one particular problem whatever it is that’s of prime embarrassment, and you say I am going to have Christ change my life because of this problem. Now that’s using Christ as your personal carpenter or plumber. You hire Him, so to speak, to make changes in your life.

Now that is not sanctification. That is not the Protestant Reformed Biblical doctrine of sanctification. The Protestant Biblical doctrine of sanctification is that Jesus Christ has His blueprint all worked out for your life and He’s going to make the changes as He sees fit. Now this is what is always so difficult in counseling, for example, because generally speaking when people want counseling they don’t want sanctification. What they want is an answer to the immediate problem without the strings attached. But God the Holy Spirit can never be secured on any other ground except total commitment, in the sense of the known areas of your life. It’s very threatening to turn your life over and let the Holy Spirit work what changes He desires at His rate in His order according to His schedule. Now that is not what most people bargain for when they want counseling. But that is the only mental attitude that the Holy Spirit honors. And that is the only mental attitude that will ever get rid of these problems. You get rid of them by not getting rid of them; you get rid of them by going back to a positive volition toward God and letting Him solve the rest of the problems as He sees fit.

So we’ve learned at least this rough approximate overview of sanctification. On one hand sanctification is built completely upon God’s program of justification, it hangs completely on His time schedule and so forth; not negating the role of volition but the initiative comes from God. That’s grace orientated true sanctification. On the other hand you have a sanctification of works where Christ is used to solve problems by your schedule. And He is, so to speak, employed to clean this room up but not the next one, because the next one we have things in there we kind of like. And that’s the false works type sanctification and Christ, unfortunately, “doesn’t work,” (end quote) on that kind of an operation. So when you see what we are looking at in Hebrews that’s one of the big things at stake here.

Now let’s go to Hebrews 2:11 and try to work the logic between verse 9, verse 10 and verse 11. Wednesday night class is the class that those who have quite a bit of background in the Word and therefore if this does seem difficult for you, all I can say is I’m sorry, I sat where you sat at one time too and just stick with I, you’ll get there. Verse 11 starts with gar in the Greek, gar is an explanatory particle. This means that what is following in verse 11 is to explain what has previously been stated. So obviously every time you see a gar you say now whoa, hold it, what has happened before this, and one of the keys in reading the Bible is to watch these particles, for several reasons. They’re the signals as to the kind of logic that the author is using and if you miss the particles you’re going to miss his argument. His argument assumes that you’re looking at these particles; they’re very important. Of all the vocabulary in the Greek these particles are the most critical.

So in Hebrews 2:11 God points back to verse 10, but when you go back to verse 10 you find there’s another gar, and that points us back to verse 9. So verse 9 is where we come to rest and it flows from verse 9, then verse 9 is explained in verse 10, then verse 11 is explained in verse 10. In Hebrews 2:9 Jesus Christ is seen as fulfilling man’s destiny, therefore “we see Jesus,” and when “Jesus” is used alone it speaks of His humanity, or at least it emphasizes His humanity, “[but] we see Jesus,” well, the “but” again is a contrast; “but” what, all right, you go back up. Verses 5-8 that preceded verse 9 was a quotation from Psalm 8. Verses 5-8 quoted Psalm 8 and Psalm 8 taught man’s created destiny. So verses 5-8 are not talking about Jesus Christ, they’re talking about all men, all mankind. Then verse 9 is talking about one particular man, Jesus. Since Jesus, as a particular man, is a part of the whole, then the destiny of verses 5-8 are going to apply to Christ in verse 9. So the words of verse 9 refer back to the words of verses 5-8, the destiny of mankind is fulfilled in Jesus.

Well, what about the destiny of mankind that’s fulfilled in Jesus? Well, first, “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels,” that’s a quotation of verse 7, “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels,” refers to the power of man and so forth, it refers to Christ becoming incarnate in verse 9, Jesus Christ had true humanity. What is the definition of Christ the Council of Chalcedon in 451 BC came out with, “Christ is true humanity and undiminished deity united without confusion in one person forever.” That’s the whole doctrine of Jesus Christ in one sentence. Guys worked months coming up with that sentence so it’s a good sentence to memorize. People ask you, what do you think of Jesus, “true humanity and…” just give it to them and then you can spend the next two or three hours discussing each word of that sentence.

All right, here is the true humanity; He was “made lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.” That is the ultimate destiny of man and only one member of the human race has ever attained man’s ultimate destiny and that’s Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ has reached the goal line. Even today Adam, though he exists face to face with the Lord as a dead believer, Adam has not reached his final goal, but Jesus Christ has. Jesus Christ has reached the final goal, Jesus Christ can’t develop any more as a man. He’s peaked. And He has completely fulfilled what a man is, with no improvement for all eternity. Jesus Christ has totally and completely fulfilled His purpose as a man. That’s why He’s crowned with glory and honor.

Now the calling of Christ in verse 9, His calling, all men have a calling, Adam had a calling to keep the Garden, the calling of Christ was to die vicariously for all members of the human race. This is why in the last part of verse 9 it said “taste death for every man.” That was His calling. Christ attained the calling, therefore Christ was “crowned with glory and honor.” Then verse 10, which was an explanation of verse 9, “For it became Him,” that’s the Father, “for whom are all things, and by whom are all things,” now the Father is given a title, or given in apposition here this clause, and you might underline it or point to it in your notes because it’s very critical, “for whom are all things, and by whom are all things.” That phrase in there is to draw attention to the fact that God is the sovereign creator. Because God is the sovereign creator, it means that the plan of salvation perfectly fits together. That’s why it says, “For it became Him,” this man in verse 10, as I pointed out last time, comes very close, this is the closest place in all of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments where you have an argument that appears to start on a human viewpoint basis.

It appears to say… it sounds like what the man is saying is this: it seems to me reasonable that God is thus and such. Now the moment anybody says that to you, that’s a human viewpoint argument because finite man does not have the equipment aboard to make any statement about what God is or is not. So if somebody says “it appears reasonable to me that God is,” the immediate counter is well, it appears reasonable to me that he is not, period. And there you have two opinions, like two crossed swords off in outer space some place and there’s no way to tell whose sword is right, because both proceed off a base of human viewpoint autonomous reason. But it saves the day by this phrase, “for whom are all things by whom are all things.” That phrase, in verse 10, preserves verse 10 from becoming a human viewpoint argument because what he’s saying is it became Him, that is the special One who has revealed Himself in the pages of Scripture, now knowing what I do about God’s nature in the Word, then I can say it is reasonable that thus and such be the case. So the argument in verse 10 is not based on autonomous reason; it’s based on derived inference from Scripture.

“… in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings,” and this is the moral sanctification of Christ. So we must now compare three things. Let’s compare man before the fall; let’s compare man after the fall, and then let’s compare Christ. And let’s see how all these compare together so we can get down an idea of what is being sanctified and how it’s being sanctified. Before the fall man had to learn; he had to learn, he was given a commission to do something. God just didn’t make Adam perfect; He made Adam in the sense he was without sin, but Adam was to progress, not become bigger in size, not evolve into some higher being but he was to progress in the sense of spiritual life. So Adam was to learn under tension. You see, a perfect environment had tension in it. The tension was whether or not he was going to obey God. So there was tension, even though it was a perfect environment. So just because you face tension doesn’t mean you face something bad. Tension in itself is not bad in Scripture; if it was bad it wouldn’t have been in Eden. So Adam was to learn under tension.

Now after the fall Adam was to still learn under tension but now something new has been added. Besides learning under tension Adam must now learn in a cursed situation. So he faces the curse, or we would say cursed conditions. So what has been added the fall? Not an addition of tension that wasn’t there before, not an addition of work that wasn’t there before, he worked before the fall. The thing that is added is death, the results of sin, the curse, that package has been added. The assignment that God gave man before the fall was to learn +R, righteousness. It was to learn obedience. And this learning of obedience can only be by history, by historical experience. This is why God gives us historical experience, why history is so meaningful and so important to the Christian. It’s a complete caricature of the Christian faith to argue that Christianity is saying pie in the sky some day some where; it’s not that at all. It may be saying pie is in the sky but the way you bake the pie in the sky is by doing something right here. So it’s foolish to argue that Christianity has nothing to say but this moment now, it has everything to say in this moment now because this moment now determines what you’re going to freeze forever. You, so to speak, you change what you’re going to be for all eternity by what you’re doing now. So the present moment is very important, precisely the opposite thing most critics attack Christianity for.

The cursed condition, then, is what is added. That’s the extra burden. Now let’s see, in the simple story of the Garden, how is the cursed condition reflected, so you can get some concrete illustrations of the cursed condition. What would be a simple naïve picture of the cursed condition in the Genesis story? [someone answers] All right, sweat, the physiology of the human body was changed. Funny how some animals perspire, but when man perspires it’s due to a metabolic insufficiency besides nervousness, and man has one of the most inefficient bodies, engineering wise, that comes down. And this cause perspiration because our bodies use so much energy and burn it as heat when we don’t need to. The ideal form of a machine is you use the energy and not waste it as heat. That’s why a gasoline engine is so efficient; it’s wasting way more than half the gas, about 80% of the gas just going off heat. One man had the proper idea last week I saw, he was frying his dinner on the engine block of his car. A gasoline engine makes a far better stove than it does an engine because most of the gasoline is going to heat, that’s all. So the human body has been changed physiologically.

What was another simple sign of cursed conditions? Weeds, now just think of this, keep it simple like this and then you can always reason to the more complicated things. Visualize the situation before the fall. Was Adam supposed to plant something and grow something? Yes he was. Well then, what’s the difference? The difference is there’s something competing with him now. In other words, Adam rebelled against God, now the ground rebels against Adam. Adam rebelled against God, now his body rebels against him. So we are the rebels and now we are stuck in a rebellious environment that rebels against us. So the added thing is this cursed condition. So whereas before the fall he was to learn righteousness, learn obedience, the assignment hasn’t changed. After the fall he is also to learn obedience and righteousness. What has changed is that now it’s harder to learn righteousness because you’ve got this perpetual rebellion in your heart, in your body, in your environment.

Now along comes Jesus Christ; Hebrews is going to argue that Jesus Christ chose, not just to learn under tension, now the moment Christ became incarnate He would had to have learned under tension, it’s part of being a man. But Christ chose to identify with you and with me even more than that. Jesus Christ chose to learn under tension and under part of the cursed conditions in the sense that Jesus Christ had to sustain His life, His ministry, in an environment that was constantly demonic around Him. Jesus Christ was constantly exposed to many, many different kinds of testing; He was constantly exposed to an evil environment. He was exposed to an evil environment physically so that His soul, Jesus Christ’s soul and we’ll just put the word mind here because that’s what we’re interested in mostly tonight, the soul or the mind is affected from two sides; it’s affected spiritually and it’s affected from your body. You can take chemicals and produce bizarre behavior and you can rebel against God and produce bizarre behavior. The bizarre behavior is centered here but it comes either from the spirit or from the body.

Now Jesus Christ did not have a fallen spirit, that’s important to notice because we’re going to compare him with the regenerate man. Jesus Christ did not have a fallen spirit, but He faced spiritual attacks upon Him constantly, attacks which were far greater in magnitude than Adam ever faced in the innocent environment of Eden. Jesus faced a totally hostile environment constantly, day after day after day after day. Jesus Christ faced deprivations physically so that He was tired and you can read in the Gospels where He would be exhausted, he would be so exhausted at times, showing the effects of the evil environment upon His body. He would be so exhausted at times He’d just have to try to get away so He could have time with God and just sleep. In several places in the Gospels it says people would chase Him, everywhere He went they would try to seek Him out, He’d never have a moment’s peace.

So Jesus Christ learned under tension just like Adam but He also suffered under this curse. He came walking into a fallen world and it opened Himself up to all sorts of pressures. Now the interesting thing is, that if Jesus Christ learned obedience in His case in the world, mixing with the world, facing a fallen environment physically and spiritually, then if we, at the point of regeneration, our human spirit is recreated after Christ’s, this is why God doesn’t take you home when you become a Christian. God leaves you in the middle of a fallen environment to learn the same lessons His Son had to learn in a fallen environment. Jesus did not learn in Eden, He learned in a fallen world. And therefore even though by regeneration it’s true we have the new nature, the Holy Spirit regenerates at the point of salvation, just because you’re regenerate doesn’t give you sanctification. Regeneration doesn’t produce sanctification by itself, regeneration is just the first step and the regenerate nature has to be sanctified, so that just as Jesus Christ did not have a fallen spirit would correspond to our regenerate spirit, Jesus Christ, true, He had a body that was mortal, it’s hard to categorize Christ’s body because it was mortal, it wasn’t like a resurrection body and yet it wasn’t completely like ours. It wasn’t so marred and so on by sin; it’s a very difficult question on Christ’s body.

But nevertheless, looking at it from the standpoint of what He learned, He had to learn under pressure and be sanctified in a fallen environment. Therefore in verse 10 it says, “it became,” or “it was suitable for the Father who had decreed everything, that in the process of bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Why was it becoming to God the Father to make the captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings? Because the captain of our salvation is a man. He’s part of the human race that is now fallen and therefore one reason that Jesus Christ did what He did the way He did, is because this makes Him qualify as the high priest that can help us.

Look at it this way; God the Father and God the Son had a conference, they figured out how to bring about salvation, and God the Son said if you make man such as You’re planning, who is going to have to learn on the basis of historic experience, and after he falls he’s going to have to learn the same lessons that You required of him in Eden in a fallen situation, if You expect Me to be the high priest to them I have got to go through the same thing. And so God the Son goes through the same kind of situation we go through, and therefore Hebrews is going to argue, this qualifies Him to be the one who can empathize with every situation that you can face. Jesus Christ in His humanity has gone through it all and thus He is the perfect Savior. He’s not just a theoretical Savior, He got…as a seminary professor once said to me, He had dirt on his toenails and it was his way of saying that Jesus Christ walked on this earth, facing the kind of things that we face.

Now that was verse 9 and 10 and that’s why it says “became Him.” Now we can go to Hebrews 2:11, “For,” because now this amplifies even further this identification of Jesus Christ with fallen man; not with pre-fall man, with post-fall man Christ is identified. So, “For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified,” hagiazon, this is the Greek word for sanctify. In this form it is a participle with an active voice. That means the subject does the acting; it is a participle and in this form this participle means the ever abiding character. So it’s part of the ever abiding character of Christ, it’s not the Father here in verse 11 it’s the Son, “For the Son,” the one who does the sanctifying, “this one, and they who are being sanctified,” and here we have the same word, hagaizomenoi, and in this way it is written passive and that means the subject receives the action. So you have the word used twice, once for Jesus Christ when Jesus Christ does the sanctifying; then the next time it’s used it refers to you and to me. We are the ones being sanctified.

Now this is interesting because this advances the step one more. Jesus Christ, let’s take His life here, from the point of the virgin birth, up until His death on the cross, during that time Jesus Christ was being sanctified, passive; Jesus Christ was being sanctified by God the Father. Now after He ascends to heaven, rises from the dead and ascends to heaven, sends His Holy Spirit and starts the Church, Jesus Christ now does the sanctifying, active voice. In other words, Christ has taken over the administration of sanctification from His Father’s hand. That at the point the Church began an amazing thing happened, that the process of sanctification was being put into effect by not only God but God-man, that there’s a man at the helm of the universe tonight; at the helm of your life. And He’s the man who has lived through everything you are now living through and He is the one who is designing, not just your salvation initially but Jesus Christ is designing for you and for me our sanctification at this moment; the design, the administration had come into His hands.

Let’s turn back and look at John 17:19; Christ, before He died, was aware that He was going to take over this function. “And for their sakes,” He’s talking about believers, this is the true Lord’s prayer, it’s the prayer that He prayed before He died, “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself,” now that’s before the cross, before He died, Christ is sanctifying Himself for our sakes, not just for His own, but for our sakes; He has us in mind, our names come in under that “for their,” “for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” The implication is if Christ doesn’t sanctify Himself we can’t be. See, Christ faced a lot of responsibility, didn’t He. A 33 year old man faced a lot of responsibility, the sanctification of every member of the human race, besides their salvation, besides their justification, besides their glorification. All that was resting on His shoulders in Gethsemane.

Now when Jesus Christ sanctified Himself in order that we might be sanctified, the reason is that He is, so to speak, moving Himself into a position where He fulfills ideal manhood. Since Christ has reached the point and the goal line, and He’s out of the race, He’s sitting on the sidelines, He’s out of the face, now He can act as the coach for those that are still in the race. He has run the race, finished it, and now He’s helping us run the same race, and He can help us because He ran it; ran it all the way to the end.

Coming back to Hebrews stop at Romans 8:26-27, this shows you some of the mechanics that Christ uses in our lives to sanctify us. Here’s the mechanics that goes on, you have never felt this. Some of you have never been aware it’s been going on, but it has. The process described in verse 26-27 has been going on ever since you were born, and particularly since you were regenerate, since you became a Christian. Day after day this has been going on, in fact this is the process that would explain, if you could look at it, this is a process that explains the queer things that happen in your life and the order in which they happen. It’s all by design. Here’s what happened. Verse 26, “Likewise, the Holy Spirit helps our infirmity,” not plural, singular, “infirmity” refers to our weakness, our sin nature, our flesh, “for we know not what we should pray for as we ought,” what that’s saying is that you don’t know how… it’s not talking about praying in the sense of petitioning any little thing, the prayer in verse 26 in the interpretation refers to the prayer for sanctification. This is the prayer where you cry out God, what is the matter with me, do something.

And that prayer that you pray, verse 26 says you can’t say anything more than God, do something because you don’t know what you should ask for. And that’s the thing, that’s not talking about you don’t know how to make petitions in normal every day prayer, that’s not part of the context here in Romans; the context has this is the prayer the Holy Spirit is, “for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought,” see the context is our infirmity, our weakness, we don’t know what we should do, that’s why you can’t design your own plan of sanctification, you have to take it as the Lord gives it to you, “but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” The Holy Spirit, in other words, knows what you need, what I need, and He constantly makes intercession. So the Holy Spirit makes a perfect petition. I’ve often thought what it would be like if we could hear the Holy Spirit’s petition, you know, and hear Him say now they need a little rough edge knocked off, right about there, and if you could literally hear the Holy Spirit pray for you as an individual before the Father you’d probably go duh, because you knew what was coming. So it says that these petitions can’t be uttered, so we don’t get on what’s going on between the Holy Spirit.

But now in verse 27, this is the Son, not the Father, the Son, “And He that searches the heart,” and that’s the title for Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation, He that searches the hearts and the reins,” “He that searches the heart knows what is the mind if of the Spirit, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God,” and that’s why Romans 8:28 works. Romans 8:28 in the context of Romans works because the Holy Spirit makes the petition, Christ hears it, Christ designs the sanctification. Romans 8:28 works because it’s personally coming from the hand of Jesus Christ. That’s why all things work together for good, even the bad things. In fact, in Romans 8 the key is the bad things.

Back to Hebrews 2, “He that is doing the sanctifying,” that’s referring to Christ, “and they who are being sanctified,” before we go any further let’s make sure we understand the word “sanctify.” There are lots of definitions of sanctification and maybe the best thing to do is stick with the Bible and think of the concrete pictures of sanctification. If you want to see sanctification don’t think of sin, necessarily, because Adam had to be sanctified before there was sin. Christ had to be sanctified and He had no sin. So if you just think of getting rid of sin you’re wrong; that is a partial view of sanctification. Sanctification is not just getting rid of sin, that’s a wholly negativistic attitude and that is not soundly Biblical. If it is, how do you explain Christ being sanctified. Are you going to make Him a sinner? So that can’t be what the word sanctification means. Sanctification can’t mean just getting rid of sin. It must mean something else.

Well, if you think of Genesis 1 of the whole universe, the universe of Genesis 1 and compare it with the universe of Revelation 22, what’s the difference? Can anybody name a few differences between the universe, just the obvious differences, the glaring difference between the universe as it leaves the hand of God after the six days of creation, Genesis 1, and the universe as it finally terminates in Revelation 22. [someone answers] Well, all right, words of moral qualification are used of both but can you think of anything physical. [someone answers] There’s a difference in the number of people. [someone else] All right, in Genesis 1 Adam is not continuing in the presence of God, is He? Remember Genesis 1 it says “and in the cool of the day, when God came walking in the Garden,” in other words, apparently God came to see him once a day. So He wasn’t continually in the presence of God. But in Revelation 22 all men are continually in the presence of God. In Genesis 1 you have the universe lighted by the sun, the moon and the stars; Revelation 22 the universe is lit by the glory of God. Was there any sin here? Does that make the difference. No, sin doesn’t make the difference. Sanctification, in its primary verb form means to set apart, so in the light of from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 what it means is making fit for the presence of God, becoming fit for the presence of God.

Now, let’s see how, if you get that idea of sanctification it takes a lot of the negativism out of the Christian. Making fit for the presence of God; that’s sanctification. When Adam was originally created even Adam was not fit for the ever-abiding presence of God. When Jesus Christ was born as a babe in the manger, that babe was not fit for the presence of God as Christ is now at the Father’s right hand, crowned with glory and honor. Now let’s ask ourselves, what then, is the process of becoming fit for the presence of God. The process very simply in Scripture is a process of historical obedience and without that no creature made in God’s image is ever fit for the presence of God. It boils down to it’s that simple; there are thousands of details, involved theology with it all, but summarized down to the bare minimum that’s it. Sanctification means becoming fit for the presence of God by historical obedience to Him. Adam had to be obedient to the command in order to become what he should have become. Jesus Christ had to become what He was by obedience to the Father.

Now if you’ll take this view of sanctification you see what it does? Where does that put sin? And the results of the fall? Lot’s of crud that’s in the way but your ultimate goal is not to get rid of sin. That’s what’s wrong with a lot of Christian passion over sanctification and sweat with the thing. It’s wrongly based. The goal of sanctification is not just to get rid of sin in itself; the goal of sanctification is to get rid of sin so you can come in the presence of God; it’s wholly an inadequate, partial, weak, emaciated view to say that sanctification is jut getting rid of sin. That’s not it at all, you’ve missed it completely to view sanctification as just getting rid of sin. That is a false view and it will wind you up in frustration as fast as anything I know. Do you know why it will? Let me show you what happens.

Let’s go to the wrong attitude of sanctification and why you’re lucky if you don’t wind up in the nut house starting out this way—human viewpoint basis of sanctification, getting rid of sin. You start out with that motive, I’m going to get rid of sin—wrong motive, because if you start with that motive the way you get rid of sin is works and you’ve tubed yourself right from the start, doomed yourself to complete frustration. You can’t do it. Now if you start off with the divine viewpoint motivation which is to see the presence of God, then the way you get rid of sin is going to be by grace, because the very grace itself is going to bring you closer to God. In other words, the way you are being sanctified is triggered by the motive that you have in being sanctified. If your motive is wrong your method is wrong. It’s as simple as that. If you have as a motive just getting rid of sin your method is going to be by your works because ultimately you’re not interested in God’s presence, that’s not the ultimate overriding concern; the ultimate overriding concern is getting rid of the sin. But if the overriding motive is to get into the presence of God and see Him for what He is, then you’ll be open t His methods of getting of the sin, because your ultimate concern really isn’t the sin; your ultimate concern is to get to know Him. Now you see where all sorts of wrong motives get twisted in here and we come out with some sort of a half-Biblical, half-humanist type thing and everybody gets frustrated. So if you’ll think of these terms, and we’ll go over this again and again as we go through Hebrews.

Now in verse 11, after it says “they who are being sanctified,” it says, “are all of one,” that means of one design, and here is the most beautiful apologetic for the Christian faith or beautiful characteristic of the Christian faith in this day when gurus trot around and try to seduce the western world with Oriental religion. It’s interesting that in Christianity He who does the sanctifying, Jesus Christ, and He who receives the sanctifying, that is man, are all of the same design, they “are all of one.” Do you know that this means? It has some rather interesting repercussions. It means that in Christianity progress increases your manhood, it doesn’t decrease it. In Oriental religions salvation is always escape into the nirvana, a destruction of the individual man and an escape into the great void or the great blob, “it,” get rid of male and female and become an it, or get rid of the personal and merge into the impersonal chaos and the void.

All Oriental religions go to this; they wind up saving man by destroying man. It’s only in Christianity that the One who does the sanctifying at the Father’s hand, not a Martian, and He’s not a computer, and he’s not some sort of an indefinable nirvana, He’s a man, He has feet, two feet like you do, He has a mouth and nose and two eyes just like you do. And He’s above every creature, over all of God’s universe, over all the cosmos; no matter what life exists on any other planet the top creature is made like the creatures of this planet, with our form. Now that may sound bigoted and very prejudicial and that’s too bad but that’s what God’s Word says and so if it sound prejudicial in this generation that’s a good sign because it shows that we believe in the truth. Truth is always found prejudicial to a generation of relativists.

“For He who sanctifies and they who are being sanctified are all of one,” now here’s a beautiful statement in verse 11, “for which cause,” that is God’s common design, “He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” And then are quoted two passages from the Old Testament. The first one in verse 12 is Psalm 22. Let’s turn to Psalm 22 and look at Psalm 22:22. Now the interesting thing about these psalms here in the book of Hebrews, have you notice how frequently they’ve been coming up. Here are the psalms that we’ve already dealt with: Psalm 8; Psalm 2, Psalm 45; Psalm 97; Psalm 102; Psalm 104; Psalm 110. Seven psalms this man has already gone through in 24 verses. Of those 24 verses 11 of them have been a direct quotation of the Psalms. So this author has chosen 11 verses from the Psalms and then to those 11 verses he’s added 13 of his own. Now that’s the ratio this man quotes Scripture; 50% of his message is taken directly from the book of Psalms, the rest of it is a commentary on the book of Psalms. Do you get the impression that he expected his readers to know the book of Psalms?

Now Psalm 22 in verse 22 deals with what Jesus Christ did after He died on the cross. See up to verse 21 it’s Christ praying on the cross, notice Psalm 22:1, if you’ve ever gone to a Good Friday service you know verse 1, that’s the words Christ spoke from the cross. “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He was quoting Psalm 22 on the cross, because Psalm 22:1-21 speak exactly of His work on the cross. Notice, for example, verse 16, how they pierced His hands and His feet, and that’s why, in verse 17 and 18, “They part My garments among them, and cast lots for my vesture,” see, that’s all talking about Christ. Now He’s praying, all this time Christ is praying. Now look at this because you’ve got to follow through Psalm 22 and Isaiah 8, we’re heading into a situation where I’ve got to cover Psalm 22 and Isaiah 8 and it’s going to be hard so stick with it, don’t lose the forest for the trees here. I want to take you to these passages to show the background, then the author of Hebrews is going to pull it back and drop it right down on top of believers. And it’s going to be very tremendous the way he does it.

First in Psalm 22 what does he pull out of this Psalm. What is the context just before the verse he quotes? Complete despair, isn’t it? Psalm 22:2, “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but You don’t hear, in the night season, and am not silent.” Now look, all during this time Jesus Christ is hanging on the cross in complete separation from God. Separation not in the sense that He’s permanently excluded but separation in the sense that He cries to God for deliverance and He doesn’t. Now just because we live on the other side of the cross we tend to think, oh you know, Christ said well Father, it’s going to be three hours, that’s 180 minutes, so I’ll just hang here for 180 minutes, all automatic. No it wasn’t. When Christ was nailed to the cross He did not know how long it would take. When Christ was nailed to the cross all He could pray was Father, get Me off of this. And Psalm 22 is what He was praying. And all the time He was praying, for the first time in His life, He never had any sensation that God was hearing Him. He was cut off, separated completely from the Father with absolutely no sensation that His prayers were going three feet out of his mouth; complete shock of separation from God. That’s the context.

Now at Psalm 22:22 He says, and verse 22 and the rest of this psalm is the happy part of the psalm, this is after the prayer was answered this is after Christ rose from the dead, “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee. [23] Ye who fear Jehovah, praise Him; all ye, the seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all ye, the seed of Israel. [24] For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried unto Him, He heard.” So what has happened? Psalm 22:22 is the verse that separates the sad and the happy part of this Psalm. It’s the verse that separates from the time Christ prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and never got an answer to the time He got an answer and when He finally got the answer He said, when I get this answer I’m going to give praise, that is, I’m going to relate this experience to My brethren so they will understand when they have the same kind of thing, when God doesn’t answer and God doesn’t answer and God doesn’t answer, I too went through it, and I know what it’s like because I hung on the cross and prayed and prayed and prayed and never got an answer. And then the answer came, and now the answer has come, I share this with My brethren.

All right, do you see why the author of Hebrews picks this Psalm up now, because it’s very easy for Christians to say oh well, you know, Christ had no sin nature, no sweat, had constant communication with the Father, you know, if I had a hotline to God I could take it too. Wrong. Christ didn’t have a hotline on the cross and for three hours He bore an infinite amount of suffering for you and for me, and all during the time He suffered, all during the time He suffered not one prayer was ever being heard. Later the prayer was heard, in the Hebrew sense, answered, but all during that time it was unanswered. So what does that prove? That shows that Jesus Christ, as man, totally experienced zero answers to prayer under the most extreme situation that you’ll never face and I’ll never face, He faced it, we won’t. Your pressures may be bad, your sufferings may be great but they don’t hold an ounce to the sufferings of Christ in His humanity on the cross. So if Christ, then, as a man, could hack it under those conditions, trusting that somehow God would answer it eventually, then we can too. But when we don’t and when we panic and when we’re in a situation where we pray day and nigh, day and night, just like Psalm 22:1 and don’t get an answer, the high priest says I know what it’s like because I lived through the same thing.

Let’s turn to Isaiah 8 and see the other passage that the author of Hebrews pulls out. To understand this one we’re going to have to take a quick… four points on the background of Isaiah at this point in time so you’ll understand what these verses are talking about. We don’t have time to exegete the whole 8^th chapter of Isaiah so let’s just do these two verses. I’ll give you the background, if you want to check me just go ahead and read the background.

The first point on Isaiah’s background is that he has taught the Word of God for many years to Israel, over and over Isaiah has taught and taught and taught and taught and taught and taught and been faithful to accomplish what God told him to do.

Second point, over those same years, over and over and over and over and over, negative volition , negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, the nation rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected what Isaiah taught and taught and taught and taught and taught. That’s the situation we’re coming up to in verse 17-18, a familiar situation. See, teach, teach, teach, teach, teach, teach… ho-hum.

Third point, Isaiah warned the people that the fifth cycle of discipline was about to descend; in other words, judgment was imminent, that because they had rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected, judgment was coming and it was painful to Isaiah because you hate to see the people you love fall into this kind of thing. Isaiah was a man, he had the passions of a man, and it wasn’t easy for him to take. Nevertheless, that’s what happened.

Then he says in Isaiah 8:16, after predicting the fifth cycle of discipline, “Bind up the testimony; and seal the Law among my disciples.” Now the fourth thing that he does is that he contracts his ministry and he gives the Word, he restricts the Word to those on positive volition. He gives up his public ministry and in the last days of his life pulls back and say all right, I’ve done all I can, I’ve taught, I’ve warned, I’ve warned, I’ve warned, now you, the people who believe the Word of God, you write it down, you keep it in your notebooks so when it comes to pass in 586 BC you’ll know what’s happening. Store it because it says here, “Bind up the testimony;” that means the testimony that God’s words are going to come true; write them down, he says. And then when it happens, I’m not going to be around to say I told you so, but when it happens then you’ll know why it’s happening, how it’s happening, and maybe if you pay attention you’ll find out how to minimize the suffering in your life.

In the middle of all of this, of having taught the Word and been rejected, of seeing judgment come and seemingly totally helpless to avoid the judgment, what does Isaiah do? Isaiah 8:17, that’s the first verse quoted in Hebrews. “I will wait upon Jehovah, who hides His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him.” Now that’s exactly what Jesus Christ did in Psalm 22. God did not answer prayer and at that time Jesus Christ, and the time when He prayed and He prayed and He prayed, because He was in, so to speak, the fifth cycle of discipline, He was taking the rap for Israel and for us, and in the middle of the darkness and damnation and judgment, in all of that, when Jesus Christ prayed and prayed and prayed and God hid, as it were, His face from Him, what did Christ do? How did He get through that time? He said I cast Myself upon Jehovah, even if He doesn’t answer My prayer, I trust Him anyway. Now that’s Isaiah’s attitude. God, can’t You revert this judgment? Can’t you waken these people up? And God never answered Isaiah’s prayer. God grant them illumination so they can understand the words. No illumination came. But God if you don’t give illumination judgment is going to come. Still no illumination, the heavens are quiet, silent, no words. And so Isaiah, in a last moment of desperation tells his disciples to write this stuff down and we’re just going to sit here and wait on the Lord. There’s nothing else we can do, we have done everything we can do. And in that situation there’s nothing left to do except wait on the Lord.

All right, now he goes in the next verse is furthermore what he’s quoted, “Behold, I and the children whom the LORD has given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion.” I won’t go into Isaiah’s two sons, Maher-shalal-hash-baz and Shear-Jashub which are Hebrew words that refer to certain doctrines that Isaiah taught. Two themes permeated Isaiah’s teaching. One was the fifth cycle of discipline is coming; that was the first child’s name, hasten to the spoil, that means hasten enemies, hasten you people who are disciplining Israel, come, get your spoil now. It’s a call for the fifth cycle of discipline. But simultaneously with the call Isaiah had another message, the remnant will return. The nation will be destroyed but there will be a remnant that returns. And so to show that God’s future plans would surely come about, God gave Isaiah two children and he told him to name them certain names to illustrate these theological themes.

Now let’s tie this together, turn back to Hebrews and we’ll close. Why does the author of Hebrews use these particular passages. In Hebrews 2;12, he uses Psalm 22 to show us that Jesus Christ knows what it means to be in a situation where the Father never answers prayer; the most desperate condition any man can be in. The men in the POW camps in Vietnam, at least had a sense that God was answering prayer. But Christ on the cross didn’t have one, not one sensation God was answering prayer; not one. That is the most desperate situation any man can be in. That’s worse than physical suffering; Christ has gone through that, that’s why verse 12 is there. That’s to show you that Messiah identifies with the worst possible situation you will ever face. [“Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.”]

In Hebrews 2:13 he says “I will put my trust in Him,” that’s to show you that like Isaiah had to put trust in the darkest hour, when he had prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and it seemed like the iron wheels of judgment kept turning and coming toward him closer and closer, he could do nothing except stand there and watch the steam roller come and say I put my trust in God. Isaiah had to do it and so he says Messiah had to do it; Isaiah stands for Messiah in this passage. “And again, Behold I and the children whom God has given me.” What function did those children have to Isaiah and his generation? They were evidences that God’s program goes on. Now why is that taken? Because Christ, as Messiah, replaces Isaiah, and Isaiah’s two children are replaced by you. The Church, us, the children, the sons that God has given Jesus Christ, we, the called out ones for the last 19 centuries to Christ, are a testimony to Christ’s humanity, that the Father is working. Did you ever stop to think of that; even though Christ is glorified at the Father’s right hand, to Him we are a testimony because when He looks down and He sees us, He knows that the Father is working and bringing His plan to completion, generation after generation.

But Isaiah’s two sons had another function; they were the evidence to the people of that day that God wasn’t through, that even though it seems the heavens were brass, and seems as though God never answered prayer, He will. In fact, He’s ordained, elected, sovereignly chosen nation will not be destroyed; there will be a remnant left. So the children testified to this. So the Church today testifies to the completion of God’s plan of salvation.

All right, then verses 11, 12 and 13 to summarize: the Old Testament shows that the Messiah was one with His brethren. In Psalm 22 He was a man. In Isaiah He was obviously a man. That He identified as this man with every conceivable human situation.

Point two, Jesus is the Messiah, which is the assumption of this whole book of Hebrews, therefore Jesus cherishes believers as His brethren as fondly as Isaiah did his two sons. Jesus understands our suffering as much as Messiah is pictured in Psalm 211. That is to show back with verse 11 that He who is doing the sanctifying does know what He’s doing and He isn’t divorced from understanding you, empathizing with you completely in every situation you’re in. Don’t ever say the Lord doesn’t understand, in a human way. He understands you in omniscience, I’m not talking about omniscience, we’re talking about the Lord Jesus Christ in His humanity understands you and understands me and for that reason the Father couldn’t think of a more appropriate being to be the superintendent or the boss of the sanctifying program beginning 19 centuries ago. How fortunate that we have one who has been through the race and finished, and He’s the One that’s calling the shots in our sanctification. It should be a time of comfort, it should mean a lot to you in this sense.

Father, we thank You….