Hebrews 2:10-18 - Shared Blood - March 25, 2020

Do you know what today is? Yes, it’s March 25. Do you know what else it is? It is Annunciation Day – the festival in the church year that commemorates the day the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive and give birth to the Son of God (Luke 1:26-38). Do you know why the Church settled on March 25 for the Annunciation? It’s pretty simple: March 25 is exactly 9 months from December 25 – Christmas Day. So, let me be the first, and likely, only person to wish you a happy Annunciation Day! By sheer chronological coincidence, our text from Hebrews for this evening has everything to do with the announcement of Jesus’ birth because it talks about the Son of God becoming our brother…taking on our flesh…sharing our blood.

Have you noticed that every time some major disaster like our current pandemic occurs, people – especially public figures – like to talk in terms of one big human race, as if we were one big family of brothers and sisters who worship and pray to a common God. In Tweets and prayer meetings distinctions are cast aside as Jews and Muslims and Christians and atheists join hands in prayer for help and relief. It sounds good, it’s heavy on virtue signaling, it might even “feel” like the right thing to do in a crisis situation. But it’s a blasphemous heresy. We are not one big, happy family who worship the same God as Jews and Muslims and atheists. Oh sure, we are brothers and sisters in the sense that we all come from Adam and Eve, but that’s where the relationship ends. In fact, one time when Jesus was busy and was told that his blood relatives were looking for him, he said who is my mother? And who are my brothers?...whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother (Matthew 12:48, 50). He also stated in no uncertain terms that no one comes to the Father except through [him] (John 14:6). Don’t get caught up in the ecumenical fervor during this crisis. Take care of your family and love your neighbor, but know that the family of God only consists of those who believe in Jesus as their Savior (Galatians 3:7; 3:26). And yet, as important as that is – and I do think worthy of consideration in these days of crisis – I only bring it up to show the sharp contrast with what the author of Hebrews says in these words. While sin has not only divided nations and faith – but also separate sinners from God – Jesus, the Son of God, crossed enemy lines, he humbled himself to become one of us: since the children share flesh and blood, he also shared the same flesh and blood.

The obvious question is why? Why would the Creator share his creature’s blood? Sharing anything these days is fraught with risk. We aren’t supposed to share the same 6 feet of oxygen as other people, much less blood. So why did God’s Son do it? He had to become like his brothers in every way…so that he could pay for the sins of the people. Indeed, because he suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Jesus had to become one of us in order to save us. And, as one of us, he had to experience everything we do, including suffering. Why? Why did Jesus have to suffer? Because, as Isaac Newton described in his 3rd law of motion: for every action there is an equal reaction. [1] That’s how God designed it already in the Garden of Eden: obedience equaled happiness and life; disobedience equaled suffering and death (Genesis 3:16-19). We know that from experience, too. We regularly suffer as a result of our own sins. I think just one example will suffice. Consider the 4th commandment: honor your father and mother that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. When we disobey this commandment by dishonoring God’s representatives in the home, church, and state, does it hurt them? Yes. Does it often come back to bite us? Yes, as you may discover if you try to go out on a “non-essential” errand over the next month. Or you may have observed this in the case of all those young, seemingly invincible young people who partied on Spring Break – in breach of government warnings – and came home infected with Covid-19. When we disobey God and his representatives, we not only hurt others, we often wind up hurting ourselves.

Jesus suffered too. But he didn’t suffer for his own sin because he didn’t have any (2 Corinthians 5:21). In spite of that, God considered it fitting to bring the author of their salvation to his goal through sufferings. Many people are horrified by this – that God would actually orchestrate his own Son’s suffering and death. False teachers have labeled it “cosmic child abuse.” [2] They consider a God who would do this to be a monster. In what way was it fitting for God to cause Jesus to suffer and die? The answer lies in verse 17: he had to become like his brothers in every way…so that he could pay for the sins of the people. Those who consider God to be a monster make one of two fatal mistakes: they either don’t take the Law seriously or they don’t understand the beauty of the Gospel. They allege either that God is a liar who doesn’t really care about sin or Jesus’ crucifixion was just a sad and meaningless tragedy and we are still doomed to suffer for all eternity for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). But the Bible makes it clear that God is both serious about sin (the Law) (Hebrews 10:26-31) and that Jesus did suffer for the sins of the world (the Gospel) (1 John 2:2). And so the biblical truth is that it was God’s boundless love not his anger, that drove him to cause his Son to suffer. It was his love for us. He loved us so much that he cause his own Son to suffer more than anyone ever has. God caused his Son to suffer and Jesus willingly suffered for us and for our salvation.

How? How did Jesus suffer? Hebrews says he suffered when he was tempted. I think it’s easy for us to think that Jesus was immune from temptation; that it was all just a show – that he was like Superman and the bullets of temptation just bounced off of his chest. Now, as true God, Jesus certainly could have been a Superman, but as true man, as our substitute he had to face them all, just like we do. We see this most clearly in his temptation in the wilderness. Satan tempted Jesus to give in to his own physical desires, to serve himself by turning stones into bread, to test God by throwing himself off of the temple, by offering Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if he would only bow down and worship him (Matthew 4:1-11). And the temptations didn’t end when Jesus left the wilderness. Satan would come back over and over. He would be back in the person of Peter when Peter rebuked Jesus for speaking of the necessity of the cross, his suffering and death (Matthew 16:22-23). Satan would be there in the Upper Room slithering into the crack in Judas’ heart created by greed and filling it with the darkest form of evil imaginable: the betrayal of the Savior to the hands of darkness for a few silver coins (John 13:27). And Satan would be there on Good Friday in the jeering voices of the crowd who shouted if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross…and we will believe (Matthew 27:40, 42). Jesus suffered when he was tempted, which means that he is able to help those who are being tempted. He’s no stranger to the temptations you face. He knows what it’s like to have panic and fear and anxiety and frustration well up inside (look no further than his struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46)), he knows how easy it is to doubt God’s promises and be paralyzed by the thought of death. And the good news is that he has already confronted those temptations and he has conquered them for you. Therefore, he is able to help you, to strengthen when you are being tempted – and when you fall, to raise you up through his forgiveness.

Finally, since Jesus shares our common flesh and blood it was also necessary for him to share our common fate, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). Hebrews says that Jesus shared in our flesh and blood so that through death he could destroy the one who had the power of death (that is, the Devil) and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. This section really got me thinking as I studied it this week. I wondered how and why it is that to a person, generation after generation, we just keep on doing the devil’s will rather than God’s. “What power does he have over us to make us behave this way?” The answer of Hebrews is that the devil’s power over us is our fear of death. Since the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), as long as the devil can keep us sinning, he can hold death over our heads as our rightful punishment. And as long as we are afraid of death, we will do anything, even things that are destructive to ourselves and others, in order to ignore it, deny it, avoid it. Don’t we see that fear on clear display today? In the mass panic, the hoarding, the frenzy to get tested – the fear of death is alive and well, even in our supposedly advanced society. Our world is clearly still in the grip of the Evil One (1 John 5:19).  

So what’s the good news? Would it be good news if I told you to not be afraid, to not worry about Covid-19, to ignore all the guidance given by governing authorities, to stop washing your hands and maintaining social distancing? No. That would be reckless and irresponsible. The good news is that while Jesus came into this world in the appearance of a slave – he was no slave of the devil. He was unstained by sin. He never fell for the devil’s lies. He didn’t fear death, he embraced it. Even as his final breath left his lungs, Jesus obeyed his Father, all the way up to his final, fearless prayer: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46). He shared in our death, and through death he swallowed up death; by taking away our sin he destroyed the power of death and freed us from our slavery to the devil (1 Corinthians 15:55-57). Because of Jesus, there is no reason to fear death. Death, for believers – whether it’s caused by Covid-19, cancer, or a car accident – is nothing less than the gateway to eternal life. The devil has lost his last and greatest power over us! In the end, that’s why Jesus shared our blood, he shared our blood and our temptation and our suffering and our death so that he could swallow up our fear of death.

And that, dear friends, is why we should celebrate the Festival of the Annunciation today and why we will, Lord willing, celebrate Christmas together in just nine short months. That’s why we shouldn’t fear invisible viruses or nationwide lockdowns or running out of toilet paper. Instead, we should trust Jesus, especially when we are suffering and when we are tempted and when the fear of death has us in its grip. We trust Jesus because he became our brother so that by sharing our flesh and our blood he could defeat suffering, temptation and even death itself. And if Jesus has freed us from the fear of death, then that means we are free from the fear of everything else, too – including invisible viruses and social and economic turmoil. Jesus shared our blood so that we might share in his glory – and that is why we can be fearless, joyful and confident even in these uncertain times. Happy Annunciation day! Amen.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/46561-newton-third-law.html

[2] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/cosmic-child-abuse/