Greater Than All Things

All right, well good morning and welcome. Glad that you're here with us opening God's word today. We're gonna be in Hebrews, the book of Hebrews 2:5-9. It's the verses that Marshall read for us earlier in the worship gathering. Thanks Marshall for reading those. Hebrews 2:5-9, as we continue in our advent sermon series that we're calling "Greater Than". And we're looking at these first two chapters of the book of Hebrews, which are showing us how much greater than, all these wonderful things that Jesus is greater than them. And in our first week we saw that Jesus is greater than the prophets. Those who spoke from God, God spoke to them to give His word to His people through them. Jesus is greater than the prophets. And last week we saw that Jesus is even greater than angels. Today, we see that Jesus is greater than all things. As we read through these verses, we see that Jesus is greater than all things. I'm not much of a storyteller. At least, I'm not a very good one. I tell them a lot. I'm not very good at telling stories. Maybe I should say it a little bit that way. Maybe you've come to realize this in time. This is like where you're like, "No Dan, you're wonderful at telling stories." Nevermind. Y'all are gonna wake up and it's gonna be all right. Maybe you've come to realize, if you know me, that I do this thing. I do one of two things, actually. The people who sit closest to me in the office when I start telling a story, they normally roll their eyes because they've already heard the story like 10 times, right. Anybody else like that, just kind of tell a story over and over? Okay, good. Three of us. That's wonderful. But the other thing that I tend to do is I start telling a story without actually having a point to the story. Maybe you're wondering if that's what's happening right now? It's not, there is a point to this one. My wife tells me that I so often tell stories that just have no point to them. And what happens is that I find something funny. I find a lot of things humorous in life, okay. It's just who I am. And I find it funny, something that nobody else finds funny, and I think you're gonna find it funny. And so I just start telling the story, but I give no context to the story. And I have no purpose in telling you the story. I just start telling the story. And what I've come to learn about storytelling, or even in writing or even in preaching, is that you have to have a plan for your story, right. When you're going to tell a story, you need to have it kind laid out. You need to know where you're starting and where you're going and how you're getting there. The story should be going somewhere. Well, did you know that "The Bible" is actually a story? I think a lot of people think of "The Bible" more as a collection of a bunch of stories, just kind of a bunch of random stories. You turn to this one and it's its own story, and then you turn to the next one and it's just like a different story. There's just like a collection of stories in here. Or even in some parts, it's a collection of sayings or truths. And we think that "The Bible" is just a collection of all these different things, each one meant to tell us how to live or something like that. But "The Bible" is actually one big story when you keep it all together. It's one big story when you read it from beginning to end. It is all telling one big story. From beginning to end, "The Bible" is telling the story of our saving God redeeming a people for Himself from every tribe, tongue and nation. People from all over the world, He is redeeming. And before the story even began, God had a plan as to how it was going to happen. God had a plan as to how this story was going to unfold. And sometimes even when we see the story, we make the mistake of thinking that God's plan, something happened and something kind of thwarted it and He had to come up with a new plan. We're gonna see today that that's not at all the case. That the story that God lays out in "The Bible" and the story that has taken place and has been taking place since the beginning of time and will continue to take place into eternity, is the story that God had planned. It's the story that God had planned. In our passage today, we get a little bit of a glimpse of that story. The author of Hebrews has the whole story in mind as he's writing this passage. And we get a little bit of a glimpse of how God unfolded that plan in His Son, Jesus Christ. We see how Jesus was central to the story, that He's always been central to the story. From the time that God first planned it, He has been central to the story. And we see that the central role that Jesus played happened by Him becoming a man, by Him taking on human flesh, by Him stepping into the creation and becoming a man and living a perfect life and dying and rising again. Now, in chapter one, we saw that the Son of God had an exalted position because He was the Son of God. We saw that this person has existed from eternity past. This person who stepped into creation as Jesus, He existed from eternity past in this exalted position. And He was in that exalted place simply because of who He was. It's simply because He was God, the Son. Just by His being alone, that's what He deserved. But in chapter two that we're looking at today, we read that the Son has an even higher exalted position now because He lowered Himself for a time. He lowered Himself for a time by becoming a man, by stepping into creation. And our passage today helps us to understand this a little bit more. And what I want us to see today. I think this passage answers the question, why did the Son lower Himself to become a man? Why did the Son lower Himself to become a man? If He already had this exalted position, if He already had this place in Heaven, why did He lower Himself to become a man? Well, I wanna show you two reasons. The first one is this. Why did the Son lower Himself to become a man? It was to fulfill the plan of God for mankind. It was to fulfill the plan of God for mankind. You see, God had a plan for mankind. God had a plan for mankind and that plan never changed. And we get just a little bit of a glimpse of that in verse five. Take a look at what verse five in Hebrews 2 says. It says, "It is not to angels that He has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking." All right, so we're gonna dive into this and what He's talking about a little bit further in just a minute. But I want you to notice something. First of all, notice that He has subjected something. That's past tense, right. He has subjected something. It's already happened. What has He subjected? It's the world to come. That's the future, right. So in the past, God has already planned and has already guaranteed something for the future. This is telling us about God's plan from beginning to end. What we see here today is enveloping the scope of all of history, that which has taken place already from eternity past and that which will take place into eternity future. And we see this plan laid out in "The Bible". "The Bible" shows the plan of God unfolding in five different stages. First we see the creation, right. We find this in Genesis 1 and 2. We find God creating. But then second, we see man sinning. We call it the fall or the fall of man, when man fell from the glory of God and He fell from right relationship with God. That happens in chapter three of Genesis. But then we see this promise, this promise of a Savior, that God continues to promise throughout time until the day where the Savior shows up on the scene in the section of "The Bible" that we see as redemption. When the Savior comes and redeems a people for Himself. And finally, in the final stage we see the new creation, the day when Jesus will return, when He will set all things right. And this is kind of the framework of "The Bible", and God has a plan for all of this. He's planned all of this since the beginning of time. And I wanna take a minute just to show you how God's plan for humanity, how we see that in creation. 'Cause this will help us to understand our passage a little bit better today. Look with me real quick in the book of Genesis, all the way back to the very first chapter of "The Bible" in 1:26-28. It says, "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; Male and female, He created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'" You see, God created man in His own image. You and I were created in the image of God. And it was His plan for us to have a relationship with him, to live in relationship with him. And not only that, but to rule over the earth. God created us in His image in order to reflect His glory. He created everything. He creates everything. And then He creates man and He says, "In my stead rule over all of this. I'm giving it all to you." We were to rule over the earth as we stood under the rule of God. And that's why He says to multiply and fill the earth. We're gonna multiply the image of God and fill the whole earth with His glory. That was what God created us to do. That's what He gave for us to do. We were to rule the world under the rule of God. Now, in verses 6 through the beginning of verse 8 in our passage today, the author of Hebrews quotes from the book of Psalms 8:4-6. Look at what he says. "But there is a place where someone has testified: 'What is mankind that you ask mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under their feet.'" Now, the Psalm is marveling at what God has done. He's marveling at the fact that God would care for us, that God would want relationship with His creatures, that God would do such a thing. And the Psalm is originally talking about mankind as a whole, but it's talking about man in his ideal state. It's talking about man when God first created him. It's talking about man in God's original design. But we know that the first people decided not to obey God and they sin. And when they sin, it distorted the image of God within us. We still have the image of God but it's distorted. It's not clear. Anyone who sins is not a clear picture of God, right. It's not a clear picture of His image, and that's when things began to go wrong. That's when brokenness entered into the world. That's when things like disease entered into the world. That's when frustration and chaos entered into the world. That's when death entered into the world. But here's the thing, is that God was not surprised by any of it. God was not surprised by any of it. Sometimes I think people read "The Bible" and they think that this is like someone throwing a wrench in God's plans and God is stuck trying to figure out, "What am I gonna do?" God is not trying to figure out what to do. God has had a plan. And God did not create man and then just kinda sit back and watch the story unfold, right. God is not somebody who's just up there watching some cosmic TV, right, and just seeing what's gonna happen next. Me and my wife, we play this game, right, when we watch movies. I call it best TV watcher, okay. And the best TV watcher is the one who guesses what's gonna happen at the end of the movie. Does anybody else do this? I mean, maybe you call it something different, surely, because it's a stupid name. But maybe you do it and you know what I'm talking about. You sit there and you're trying to figure out what's gonna happen next? What's gonna happen at the end? What's the surprise twist ending gonna be? Is everything gonna be okay or not? That's not God. That's not what God does. God saw everything from beginning to end, and He had a plan for it all. God's plan was indeed to put all things in subjection under man, just like He talks about in the Psalm, just like we see it in Hebrews 2 when He quotes the Psalm. But more than that, His plan was to be fulfilled by sending His Son to become a man, Jesus Christ. His plan was to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. God, the Son in human flesh. It was God's plan from the very beginning that He was going to send His Son to fulfill this plan. So the psalm is talking about mankind as a whole, but He's specifically talking about His Son who became a man in order to fulfill the plan of God for mankind for us, on our behalf. It's talking about the Son who became a man in order to fulfill God's plan for mankind, since we could not do it ourselves. It was God's plan all along that He was going to glorify His Son by sending Him as Savior for the world. See, God's plan, it never waivers, and God's plan is never diminished, and God's plan is never thwarted. God has never had a plan B. If you read the creation story and you read the fall and you read what happens when man first sinned and you think, "Oh, now God's gotta figure out something else," friend, you're wrong. God has never had a plan B. God has only had a plan A, and that plan A has always been His Son. It has always been Jesus Christ. It has always been the only plan. Look at Ephesians 1:9-10. It says, "He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment

- to bring unity to all things in Heaven and on earth under Christ." It's always been the plan to bring everything in subjection under Christ. Take a look at 1st Peter, 1:20. "He," it is Jesus, "was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake." He was chosen to be the Savior before man ever even sinned in the first place, before man was ever even created in the first place, before anything was created in the first place. He was chosen to be the Savior of the world. Friend, that means that God has planned for it all along. That means when man sinned, He already had a plan in place. He wasn't sitting around for a couple thousand years going, "Man, what am I gonna do? I gotta come up with an another plan." Until finally that first Christmas rolls around and He says, "I got it. I got my new plan." That's not what happened. That's not what happened. God has had the plan all along. And that means when He put the curse on creation, when man sinned and He said, "Now things are gonna go wrong in creation. You're gonna feel frustration. There's gonna be chaos. You're gonna feel pain. You're gonna feel suffering. You're gonna suffer death." Even when He spoke that over creation, he knew it was a curse that He Himself would step into in the person of Jesus Christ. He knew that He would give Himself up as victim to it. He knew that one day He would step in and feel pain, that He would sweat, that He would feel utter exhaustion on some days, that He would get sick and He would be hungry and He would be thirsty, and one day He would die an excruciating death on a cross for the sin of mankind. He knew that all along and He subjected Himself to it. It was His plan to step in. He subjected Himself to the world as a man, but He did it in order to subject the world to Himself. You see, in all that He did, He was conquering sin and death. He was conquering what has gone wrong. He was doing the work to set it all right and to fulfill the plan of God that He has had since before the creation of the world. And friend, you better believe that if God is faithful enough and that God is powerful enough to fulfill this great plan that He had for all time to save the world, if He is faithful enough and powerful enough to fulfill that plan, then you can trust Him with your life and you can trust Him in whatever situation or circumstances may come your way. You can follow after Him knowing that He is the faithful and powerful God. It doesn't necessarily mean that in that moment things are gonna go the way that you think that they should go, but it does mean that you can trust Him in His plan. It does mean that you can trust that He will be faithful to His people. It does mean that you can trust him, that He is powerful to overcome all things. Jesus, the Son, lowered Himself to become a man in order to fulfill God's plan for mankind. How is it that He fulfilled this plan of God, though? That brings us to the second reason that the Son became a man. It was to bring redemption and begin the new creation. The Son became a man in order to bring redemption and to begin the new creation. In creation, we see God's plan was to subject the world to man. Then in the fall, we see man become subject to the world. Remember, in Genesis 3 when God spoke the curse. He told them that it was from the ground that you were made, and you were made to rule over it, but now, instead, it's to the ground that you will return. You will face death. You will face the effect of sin in death. And we become subject to sin and we become subject to death and we become subject to the world. But God, in the very moment that He told them all that was going to go wrong, promised a Savior. He promised that a Savior would come to set it all right. And in redemption we see God, the Son, take on the fullness of humanity and enter into the world in order to set all things right. So verses 8 and 9 in our passage say this. "In putting everything under them, God left nothing that was not subject to them. Yet, at present, we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. God's plan was to subject the world to man. His plan was to crown man with glory and honor, and He fulfilled that plan in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ. And now He has begun the new creation. He has begun something new. There is now a man who is crowned with glory and honor as God intended. There is a man who has put all things in subjection under His feet as God had planned. There is now a man who has lived the life that God intended for man, a perfect, sinless life, and that man has come and He has paid the penalty for our sin. He has paid the penalty for our sin so that we may be forgiven. And He has risen from the dead in order that we could have eternal life in right relationship with God. That man has paid the penalty for our sins so that we can be made new in Him. And friend, for every single person who puts their faith, who puts their trust in Jesus Christ, they are made new. That new creation, it begins in the very moment, that new creation for you begins in that very moment when you put your faith in Jesus. It's not that all things are set completely right already, but it does begin right now in that the Lord gives you a new heart, a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone, that the Lord puts His spirit inside of you and gives you new life. He begins that new creation in us. But here's the thing is that that new creation is not yet complete. This is something that a lot theologians call, the already, not yet. It's that the new creation has already begun. We see it in Jesus. Just like 2:9 shows us, we see it in Jesus. And He begins it in us when we put our faith in him, but it has not yet been brought to completion. That time is still to come. At the present we still feel the effects of sin. At the present we do not yet see everything in subjection to man. At present we still live in a fallen world. At present we still face a lot of hardships, a lot of really hard things. At present some of us still get that call, saying that it's cancer or that it's Alzheimer's or that it's whatever it may be. Some of us are still watching a sibling or a parent or a child or a friend stuck in addiction. Or maybe you're here today and it's you that's stuck in addiction. Some of us are still dealing with families that are falling apart, that are broken and are full of pain. At present, some of us still get that call saying that it's cancer or that it's Alzheimer's or that it's whatever it may be. Some of us are still watching a sibling or a parent or a child or a friend stuck in addiction. Or maybe you're here today and it's you that's stuck in addiction. Some of us are still dealing with families that are falling apart, that are broken. They're full of pain. Some of us are still grieving the pain of a loved one that we've lost. Whether it was recently or it was long ago, we're still grieving in that pain and it's hard. And for some of you, this is your first Christmas or maybe even your first holiday without a loved one. Or maybe it's your first Christmas or your first holiday after everything fell apart in your family. Or after you got the call from the doctor or whatever it may be, maybe this is your first Christmas in that situation and it's hard. What do you do? What do we do in this time where we still suffer the effects of sin? What do we do in this time where we have this already, but we also have this not yet, where we still live in a world that has fallen, it's broken, it's affected by sin? What do we do? Well, first of all, whatever it is that you're facing, you grieve it. You grieve it. You cry if you need to. You grieve it in whatever way you need to. It's okay. It hurts. We live in a world that is still full of pain and it is still full of suffering. You grieve it. You grieve that things have gone wrong in whatever the situation is. As Christians, we grieve that things have gone wrong in the world. We grieve the result of our sin. We grieve our sin. We grieve that the world does not look the way that God created it, the way that God designed it. But we also remember, we also remember that it's not the way that things will always be. We can grieve it for now and we can feel the pain now and we can cry now and we can can do whatever now, but we do it remembering that it's not the way that things will always be. And we let these things be a reminder that this world is not worth living for. Because even the best things in this world fall short. Even the best things in this world, we can't have our hope in, because even the best things of this world will not last. But we let it be a reminder that there is one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We let it be a reminder that there is one who is faithful. We let it be a reminder that there is a Savior that we can trust in and we can turn to and we can look to. We grieve those things, but we let them be a reminder of who it is we need, and that's Jesus Christ. It's Jesus Christ. And as we think about those things and as we grieve those things and as we remember, we look to Jesus and we see that He is crowned with glory and honor, that He is sitting at the right hand of the Father. We know that He has gone on before us and has fulfilled God's plan for mankind and that He will bring us with Him one day. We look to what He has done on the cross and we remember that He has paid the price and we know we can look forward, that He will return to pick up what He has purchased, and that's you and me, friends. That's every person who puts their faith in Jesus Christ. We will go to be with him. He has gone on before us. We look to His death for our sin and we look to His resurrection as the guarantee that glory is coming for all who are found in him, that we will share in His glory because He shares it with us. What He has He gives to us. And scripture tells us that as He reigns, we will one day reign with Him when He returns and He puts sin and death away once and for all and He sets all things right. Friends, we look to Jesus so that we can rest in the already and we can put our hope in the not yet. We can rest in the already because we can look to Him who has risen from the dead, who has already risen from the dead. We can look to Him who has already lowered Himself into pain and suffering, but is already crowned with glory and honor. We look to Him and His resurrection and His glory and honor and know that they are already the guarantee that one day we will have the same things. And we trust in Him that He has begun to reverse the curse of sin and death and that we will share in all things with him. And we have our hope there in the day that has not yet come, but we know that it's guaranteed because of what Christ has already done. We can rest in the already but have our hope in the not yet. We don't have our hope in this world. We don't have our hope in this age. We don't have our hope in the things of this world that we know are passing away. We have our hope in the fact that Jesus Christ is going to return and He is going to set all things right as they should be. Friends, we have a Savior who is greater than all things. We have a Savior who is greater than our failures. We have a Savior who is greater than sin. We have a Savior who is greater than all of creation. We have a Savior who is greater than death itself, who has come and He has tasted death on our behalf, as the author of Hebrews tells us, in order that we may have eternal life. He has taken death upon Himself. He has entered into it before us and He has conquered it so that now, not only are all the things that we see in this world subject to him, but even death itself is subject to Jesus Christ. He owns it. He has conquered it. He holds the keys to death in Hades, He tells us in Revelation 1. And He has gone into it before us and He has risen from the dead. It is subject to him, and therefore, friends, we can trust in Him. We can put our hope and our faith and our lives in Him, knowing that He is greater than all things. People are constantly under the illusion that we are the answer to our own problems. People are constantly under the illusion that we are the answer to our problems, but "The Bible" says just the opposite. That it's us, it's our sin that has brought dysfunction into the world. It's our sin that causes brokenness in the world and has brought it in. We are the problem that has caused the problem. And we cannot be our own Savior, and friends, Christmas is a reminder of this. Christmas is a reminder of this. It's the reminder of a need for a Savior outside of ourselves. It's a reminder that we needed somebody else to step into creation in order to save us from our own sin. But it's the truth that He has done it, that it has happened, that our Savior has come, that God, the Son who existed from eternity past, has entered into creation and has become a man. He has lived a perfect life. He has died for our sin and He has risen from the dead. And He sits at the right hand of the Father now and forever until the day that He returns to bring us home with him. Friends, Christmas is a reminder that we are in need of a Savior and that that Savior has come. That's what we celebrate. That's what we celebrate. But while it's a reminder of our need for a Savior, it should point us every day to the fact that we need to turn to Him in all things, in all things. Not just at one point in our lives, but every day to live in submission to him, every day to live in trust in Him, every day to live in trust in the one who has fulfilled the plan of God for His people and subject ourselves to him. "This is the message of Christmas that I want you to see: that the exalted Son of God lowered Himself from His proper status and subjected Himself to the world in order that He might subject the world to Himself." Jesus has come and He has subjected all things to Himself. And even though we still look around today and we still see the pain and we still see the suffering, and we still see the things that have gone wrong, we can rest in the already that Jesus has come and He has done the work and we can put our hope in the not yet, that He is coming again and will set all things right once and for all, and that we will live with Him forever. We rest in the already knowing that Jesus is in control and we hope in the not yet, knowing that glory is coming. We're gonna ask the band to come on back up as we close out today. And we're gonna sing one last song in response. And I want you as you sing to let it be a reminder to you that we serve a Savior who has come and He has done the work of salvation. And we serve a Savior who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And we serve a Savior who is one day coming again. And so we're gonna sing this Song as a reminder of that and as a response to that, and us responding and saying, "Yes Lord, we trust you. We trust you now in the already and we're putting our hope in the not yet." Won't you pray with me before we sing? God, we are so thankful that You are the Savior of the world, that You have not let Your creation go, but that You have sent Your one and only Son in order to set all things right, in order to set all things as they should be. And Lord, we know that Your promises are sure. You have proven that in Your Son, Jesus, and we are looking forward to the day when He returns and all things are set right. Lord Jesus, I pray that You would remind us of that every day and every moment in every circumstance. Lord, we sing to You in worship. We submit ourselves to You in worship. We love You, Lord. It's in Jesus name I pray, Amen.