“Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”
In the coming week people all over the world will, in one way or another, each according to their personal and cultural traditions, be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
Many will not be. To them Christmas is a day to party, if they acknowledge it at all. I’m not talking about them today. I’m talking about those who believe that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us; who believe that the Father sent His Christ to redeem mankind back to Himself through death on the cross, and then raised Him bodily on the third day according to the scriptures, and that He ascended in His glorified body into Heaven with a promise to return. I’m talking about those people.
They’ll be celebrating the birth, because of all that came afterwards.
On this special day of the year the baby in the manger is the focus in most minds. We plaster the image on greeting cards, door hangers, window decorations, manger scenes made of wood or clay and set up on top of our television or fireplace mantle, or made of plastic and arranged on our front lawn; it’s just all over the place.
Church bulletins, Sunday School Christmas plays; a few years ago at my daughter’s church a couple dressed as Mary and Joseph came out to center stage with a real newborn baby while my daughter sang “Heaven’s Child”. It was effective and beautiful.
And it’s appropriate. I have no problem with it at all; except maybe the ones that put a halo over his head and over Mary’s. As a kid I never could figure out why he was wearing that flat yellow hat. But other than that, it’s all appropriate and good.
But there’s something I want to bring into sharp focus for you today, and perhaps give you some things to ponder during the course of this week and as you rise to celebrate your Christmas day.
I want to call your attention to the fact that this was a real baby.
Stating the obvious? Sure. I’ll concede to that. But I state the obvious for a perhaps not so obvious reason.
REAL BABY/REAL MAN
I think there is a tendency with any historical figure, and increasingly so the more special he or she becomes in our thinking, for us to sort of idealize that person to the point they lose substance and become more of a symbol than a person.
Daniel Boone symbolizes the free spirit of the American frontier. As time goes by, fewer and fewer people really know anything about him as a person, and if they learn anything, they learn about his exploits and his settlement of numerous towns named after him.
I mentioned the name of Daniel Boone in front of my daughters not too long ago and they said, “who?”
But if they ever study him in school, it will be information about his life, not his person that they study. The man becomes his works.
When it comes to God now, that tendency is just magnified. We teach and believe that He became a man, that He walked and talked and ate and slept and did all the physical things natural to a man; but since we know that He was also fully God, there is always a sort of almost subconscious placing of Him in the status of superman in our thinking.
But while being fully God and never less than God, He was not physically superior or different from other men in general, in His humanity.
Isaiah said, “He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.” (53:2)
As we read in our text, He took the same flesh and blood that we all have in common with one another; not to be a superman, but to go to His death for us!
Someone named Scott Sharpes borrowed this from the Wesleyan Bible Commentary
(1986 p. 221)
“Here he was:
The eternal one, caught in a moment of time.
The Omnipresence corralled in a cave manger.
The Omnipotent cradled in a helpless infant who could not even raise His head from the straw.
The Omniscience confined in a baby who would not say a word.
The Christ who created the heavens and the earth cradled in a manger in a cave stable.
For when God would draw near to a cold, cruel, sinful, suffering humanity, he placed a baby in a manger in Bethlehem. “
We have to bring to our conscious mind the fact that this was a baby. A helpless infant, needing His mother’s breast, and His diaper changed, and the loving protection and care of a family. Just like any other child.
We have to understand that and be mindful that He grew up, grew out of his shoes and his clothes just like any other growing child, and learned how to do things in life just like any other growing boy.
We have to realistically comprehend all of this, before we can lay hold of a real and significant awareness of what a Man He was.
That’s what I want to talk to you about today. On this Christmas Sunday, I want to tell you that this was a Man among men, and, not ignoring that He was God; but simply looking at Him as a Man, He was the greatest hero that ever lived, and the man that if He was held up for proper examination, every growing boy should want to emulate in his own life.
HE PARTOOK OF THE SAME
“He Himself likewise also partook of the same”
Jesus was the perfect example of what a man should be, in very sense of the term. One of the things that has always bothered me about Hollywood portrayals of Him, is that they make Him out to be a pasty, foppish thing like “Tiny Tim” (remember “Tip Toe Through the Tulips”?), or a reclusive, dour looking fellow with His hands up His sleeves and staring at the ground as He walks, like a Benedictine Monk.
I guess Robert Powell’s portrayal in Franco Zepherelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth”
wasn’t too bad. But I’ll bet He didn’t have blazing blue eyes…
I’ve just never seen Him portrayed the way He is revealed in the gospels to us, and that puzzles me. If you’re going to make a movie about a real historical character, but you don’t consider Him worthy just as He really is to be portrayed accurately, then why are you making a movie about Him in the first place?
The world has too long, been given a blurry, sorry, pathetic, unbiblical view of the Son of Man.
I wonder how many middle-aged men and women outside of the church, left the church as teens because they were brought up in a Sunday School that showed them either a witless sissy, or a condemning judge and nothing more.
“Be careful little eyes what you see”
“Be careful little hands what you do”
“For the Father up above is looking down in love”?
If he loves me, why do I have to be so careful? Is He gonna zap me with lightening, or what?!?
J. B. Phillips, in his book, “Your God Is Too Small”, responds to an old children’s poem that says,
“Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as He.”
He writes:
“This word ‘mild’ is apparently deliberately used to describe a man who did not hesitate to challenge and expose the hypocrisies of the religious people of His day; a man who had such ‘personality’ that He walked unscathed through a murderous crowd; a man so far from being a nonentity that He was regarded by the authorities as a public danger; a man who could be moved to violent anger by shameless exploitation or by smug complacent orthodoxy; a man of such courage that He deliberately walked to what He knew would mean death, despite the earnest pleas of well-meaning friends! Mild! What a word to use for a personality whose challenge and strange attractiveness nineteen centuries have by no means exhausted.
Jesus Christ might well be called ‘meek,’ in the sense of being selfless and humble and utterly devoted to what He considered right, whatever the personal cost; but ‘mild,’ never!” - J. B. Phillips “Your God Is Too Small” Macmillan paperbacks, 1960
And that reminded me of C. S. Lewis’ lion, Aslan, who in the stories is symbolic of Christ. When one of the children asks another character in the story, “He isn‘t safe then?” The character chuckles at the thought and responds, “’Course he isn‘t safe! But he’s good.”
I chose the text that I did today, from Hebrews 2, because if you read it and think about it, and then think about what He did, you have to be amazed, to think that He had to partake of flesh and blood in order to complete His mission.
There was no other way.
And then when you stop to think of what that mission entailed and what He knowingly went to and willingly went through to do it, then you have to be bowled over by His courage and His resolve.
I wonder what kind of life any of us would lead, if we knew that at our baby dedication, or at some other event very early in our life, someone had approached our mother and told her what kind of death we were going to die?
How much courage would any one of us muster to go about our daily life and function with any degree of normalcy, if we knew for a certainty that one day we were going to be wrongfully and publicly accused, beaten, humiliated and then tortured to death?
Is today the day? Will it be tomorrow? Will I still be here at Christmastime next year?
We’d be basket cases!
But what a Man He was! His stated mission; His life’s work; the goal He marched toward with deliberateness was “…not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” Matt. 20:28
THAT THROUGH DEATH
Have you ever stopped to ponder the idea that at any point, He could have spoken the devil out of existence? Isn’t that what we would do?
I guarantee you with great confidence and conviction to say so, that we would!
Do you want to know why I am so certain? Because people do it all the time, by refusing to believe in a personal devil. In a very real sense, they ‘speak’ him out of existence by refusing to accept his existence. You see, if he doesn’t exist, then they don’t have to deal with the sin issue in their own lives. It’s just a behavioral thing.
When I was in the Air Force, my last year in the military, at Castle AFB in California, my Squadron Commander, a Colonel, was an outspoken Christian and a faithful member of a local protestant congregation.
I got into a discussion with him one day, and I’m sorry I don’t remember anything else about that discussion; what started it or why it came to this point, but one thing he said has stayed with me these 30 years because it shocked me, hearing it from a Christian.
He said that he didn’t believe in the existence of Satan. He said that references to a devil in scripture were symbolic of evil, but there was no created being with independent will and substance named Lucifer or Satan.
And I’ve heard it since. Most recently, on a website I was browsing that focuses on end times and the nearness of the rapture and the tribulation. The webmaster’s desire is to teach people what the Bible says concerning the last days and perhaps win some to Christ with the gospel message.
He invites comments from people by way of email, and with the exception of those containing profanity, he posts all the messages he gets, whether for or against him or his God.
In one of those messages posted on his site, the sender is berating him and all Christians for our beliefs in Heaven and Hell and the possibility of any kind of after-life, and for believing in the devil.
If there really was an all-powerful God, he asserts, He wouldn’t let a being like Satan continue to exist and get away with stuff.
Well, his ignorance is exposed, of course, in many ways, but simply in the fact that he doesn’t realize God isn’t letting Satan ‘get away’ with anything.
But in His infinite wisdom and love and grace, and speaking of His humanity, in a degree of nobility and courage that no other man has ever shown, He lets out the leash and lets Satan play out his hand, so that through death He might render him ultimately powerless.
Was this a Man? A Man for men to emulate?
Both in the beginning and at the end of His almost 4 year ministry, He entered the court of the Gentiles at the Jerusalem temple and physically drove out the people misusing that which His Father had designated a place of prayer for the nations. Do we see them tackling Him and holding Him down until He cools off? No. They scatter like cockroaches when the light goes on. For forty days and nights He lives, destitute of worldly comforts, in the desert, answering temptation with scripture and sending the devil away unsatisfied. Day after day near the Galilean sea, or on the Judean hillsides or in the streets of the Holy city itself we see Him standing up to the abuse of the most powerful men of His day, and shutting them down with Godly truth, unafraid to invoke their wrath. On the night of His arrest He stands boldly and declares His true identity to the very crowd He knows will kill Him for who He is, and after a beating that leaves Him looking something less than human, through crushed and bloody lips He declares to the local representative of the strongest army in the world, ‘you would have no authority over Me if it were not given you from above’.
Was this a Man?
Do you think all those things prove Him a Man of strength and honor and bravery?
Well listen to this.
“…He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil…”
He did this as a Man. He became a Man to do it.
The God, who spoke light itself into existence; who made the flood and then made it go away; who piled up the mountains and put the very stars in place; who could have simply spoken Satan and his minions out of existence and got on with things; became a Man, to snatch out of Satan’s own hand, his power to hold the fear of death over our heads.
Was this a Man?
THE DELIVERER
Pause for a moment and consider the word, ‘deliver’, as it is used in our text.
“To free from. To release” The same word is in the Greek text of Luke 12:58 in a legal sense, but is translated ‘settle with’, in the sense of appeasing an opponent and being released from his hold before he can drag you up before the judge.
Jesus shared with us in flesh and blood in order to deliver us from the one who tortured our souls with the fear of eternal death. He came and shared with us in our weakness and put hope and joy in our hearts.
It’s the message of Romans 5:1,2 that I love so much. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God”.
A man named Brett Blair submits this illustration:
Long ago, there ruled in Persia a wise and good king. He loved his people. He wanted to know how they lived. He wanted to know about their hardships. Often he dressed in the clothes of a working man or a beggar, and went to the homes of the poor. No one whom he visited thought that he was their ruler. One time he visited a very poor man who lived in a cellar. He ate the coarse food the poor man ate. He spoke cheerful, kind words to him. Then he left. Later he visited the poor man again and disclosed his identity by saying, "I am your king!" The king thought the man would surely ask for some gift or favor, but he didn’t. Instead he said, "You left your palace and your glory to visit me in this dark, dreary place. You ate the course food I ate. You brought gladness to my heart! To others you have given your rich gifts. To me you have given yourself!"
Christ left His palace in Glory, Christian, and came down to our cellar. He became like you and me, God veiled in flesh, to deliver us by the cutting away of that same flesh.
By now, (probably long before now) someone is silently asking, “What has all this to do with Christmas?” It has everything to do with Christmas!
The baby in the manger was real! A real baby boy! Who would become a Man; a real Man, among men, and be our deliverer.
We’re going to see His face! Did you hear? His face; because He has a face. He’s a Man!
Remember the words of the angel. “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” Luke 2:10,11
Did you hear it? ‘born for you’ a gift! The first Christmas gift! And… ‘a Savior’
The angel didn’t say, ‘a King’, he didn’t say ‘one who will be a great teacher’, he said, ‘a Savior’. The baby was already, by virtue of His coming, our Savior. Our Deliverer.
Do you fear? Are you a slave to the fear of death? Do you push the thought of your own demise out of your head because it frightens you to think about one day flicking your last light switch; reading your last newspaper; hearing a loved one say “I love you” for the last time? Do you fear it’s pain? Do you fear the passage?
Stop. Do not fear. You’ve been delivered. The Deliverer doffed His regalia, came down to the lower places, ate your coarse food, gave you words to cheer your heart; but He went farther than the good Persian king.
He set His face like flint, marched into the enemy’s stronghold, let him do his worst, then snatched from his very hand, all the power he held over you. Took it away; and set you free.
Is He tame? No. Is He mild? No. But He’s good. And He’s noble, and courageous, and admirable and worthy of praise and adoration.
“Born to raise the sons of earth; born to give them second birth” - C. Wesley
What a Man!
