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Hebrews: Exalt the Son

I have no doubt that before Pastor Jacob Manyiel and his family lay down to go to sleep in their home in Sudan on the night of May 22, 2003, they said their prayers—asking for God’s blessing and continued protection through the night. They had good reason to ask for a special angel guard to be stationed outside their little hut, because Sudan is a divided nation, where civil war has raged for twenty years.

Pastor Manyiel, a Presbyterian minister, served a large district, as the only pastor in a cluster of several villages.

Most of the people in Longchok Village were sound asleep when government soldiers from the northern part of the country quietly surrounded the village. Then suddenly, without warning, they began to fire their weapons. 50-caliber machine guns, grenades launchers, and assault rifles sent their deadly missiles rocketing through the flimsy walls of the huts and set the grass roofs on fire.

Pastor Manyiel, his wife, and their four children awoke with a start. Seeing their house afire, their natural instinct was to run out into the street. But when they looked out through the one door, the roaring flames revealed—not an angel guard around their home—but government soldiers, rifles at the ready, proclaiming that anyone who dared leave the house would be shot on the spot. The pastor and his family had to choose between death by burning, or death by shooting. They stayed together as a family, and died in their home.

Meanwhile, the same scene was being played out in nine other villages around the area. All told that night, 59 unarmed civilians were killed, 15 were wounded, and another 15 were abducted, probably to be abused and then sold into slavery.

The crime that brought the wrath of the government down upon them? Being Christians.

The headlines daily reveal that being a praying Christian is no guarantee of the right to live a peaceful, unpersecuted life. One expert predicted recently that at least 165,000 Christians would be put to death for their faith in the coming 12 months.

Friend, I have to ask myself: If I lived in Sudan, or in Indonesia, or in China, or North Korea—countries where being a Christian can get you in big trouble—would I be a Christian?

Would I hold firm to the hope I have in Jesus?

Would I be willing to go on the radio and proclaim my faith in Him?

How about you?

It’s comparatively easy to be a Christian in some parts of the world.

But when the book we’re studying today was written, it wasn’t an easy thing. And some of the people who had committed their lives to Christ were apparently wavering—wondering whether they had done the right thing or not.

We’re talking about a time not long after the city of Rome went up in flames in A. D. 64. While historians have pretty well discounted the story that Emperor Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned, the fact of the matter is that many of the citizens wanted to blame their emperor for the destruction that left tens of thousands homeless and the greatest city of the era in a shambles.

Casting about for someone to shift the blame onto, Nero hit upon the Christians. After all, wasn’t it their Founder, who had proclaimed that the world would be judged by fire? They’d probably set the fire in order to bring God’s judgment on the city, he proclaimed.

Immediately soldiers were sent out to round up anyone accused of being a Christian, and those who confessed their faith were tortured until they would reveal the names of other Christians. These too, were rounded up and thrown into prison. In order to curry the public’s favor, Nero made the occasion of the execution of these prisoners a great celebration. He opened his private gardens to the public, and as evening drew on, he had Christians tied to stakes, covered with pitch, and burned as torches to light the revelry.

After all, hadn’t their Leader proclaimed that they would be “the light of the world”? Other Christians were sewn into the skins of animals, and had dogs sicked on them as part of the entertainment.

This is the spiritual climate in which the book of Hebrews was written. Scholars have observed that it isn’t a letter per se—in the form of the other letters in the New Testament. Some have suggested that perhaps it actually was originally a sermon, perhaps preached by the apostle Paul, which was written down and preserved for later generations.

And once again, I have to ask myself the question: If conditions in my country were the same as what those early Christians had to face in Rome—would I have the courage to be a Christian? Or would my faith in my Savior begin to waver?

I hope that I would remain strong—by the grace of God. And I think that if I were thrown into prison for my faith, could take only one book of the Bible with me to read—well, maybe Hebrews would be a good choice.

Because it was written to address the concerns of people whose faith was being severely challenged. People who had seen friends and loved ones tortured to death for their faith.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Pastor Gong Shengliang, leader of a 50,000-member Christian church that has been outlawed in China. As we prepare this broadcast, the news from his prison cell is grave. He has undergone repeated beatings and torture, and it is not known whether he will survive. If he does, it will be to spend the rest of his life in prison. For his faith.

If you faced that kind of prospect, would you still be a Christian?

Why?

That’s the question the book of Hebrews answers.

Because it’s written for people who were trying to decide whether remaining faithful to Jesus was really worth it all or not.

It starts out with a proclamation of what a wonderful thing God has done in sending Jesus to our world. Because, you see, God has been trying to communicate with the people of our planet for many years—through prophets, through angels, by any means He could.

But now, He’s given us the ultimate communication of Himself, by sending His own Son as His representative to reveal Himself to His people, and to serve them in love!

It must have seemed a fantastic idea to people of that time—who had been raised on stories of Greek gods who came down to earth, but not to share the love of God—usually they came down to rape and pillage and steal.

But Jesus came to serve. To humbly meet our needs, while preparing us to go to heaven and reign with Him eternally.

He came, not to lord it over us, but to serve as our high priest and intercessor. To help us even when our faith is faltering.

To understand this book, it helps to put yourself in the sandals of those to whom it was written. Imagine the thoughts that were going through their minds—what was the meaning of the suffering their comrades had endured? And, come to think of it—what about the sufferings of Jesus Himself?

Is there any point to all of this suffering?

“Yes, there is!” Hebrews declares. Jesus suffered—shedding His blood as a sacrifice to open the way for us to reign with Him in heaven.

There’s coming a time—according to chapter 2, verses 5-8—when everything in the world will be subjected to human rule. But it’s not that way yet. “As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them,” verse 8 confesses. But then verse 9 shares this powerful perspective: “But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

Jesus’ suffering was not pointless. He suffered for us. For you, for me. In our place.

And not only that, He shed His blood—not just because that’s what happens when they thrust a thorny crown on your head and drive nails through your hands and feet. No, friend, that’s not the reason why Jesus bled!

He shed His blood as the great culmination of the sacrificial system God Himself had given to Moses on Mt. Sinai—at the same time He gave him the Ten Commandments.

Hebrews gives us a quick refresher course in how the sacrificial system worked, then proclaims “the main point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens”! (8:1, 2, NRSV). We have a high priest—One who offers His own blood, once for all, to redeem us from sin and death.

He suffered and died for our sins. And to put an end to sin. Listen to chapter 9, verses 24-26 from the New Revised Standard Version: “For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, . . . but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again. . . . But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

Did you catch that—He suffered once, for us, to remove sin. God wants to get rid of all the sin in the universe. And the only way to do that is to pay the penalty Himself. By sacrificing Himself.

The book of Hebrews was written for people whose faith might have been wavering because of persecution and suffering. It reminds them—and us—that the suffering of Jesus was not in vain. It had a purpose. And it didn’t go on and on, over and over, for ever and ever.

Jesus suffered once, then was raised up to be at the right hand of God. And that can encourage us, when we suffer for our faith. We can know that we will not have to suffer for ever. To Pastor Gong, there in that Chinese prison cell, Jesus says, “Your suffering will soon be at an end. And then you can look forward to spending eternity with Me in our wonderful, eternal, heavenly home.

One of the great chapters of the Bible is Hebrews chapter 11—the faith chapter—that recounts the experience of dozens of believers who clung to their faith in God despite trials, suffering, persecution, even execution.

It’s there to remind us that these people lived, not just for this world, but “for a better country, that is, an heavenly one,” (11:16, KJV).

It’s there to encourage us to live our lives in this world, but with our hope set on something better. Set on Jesus, the Son of God, who suffered for us and is now exalted, living in heaven, preparing a place for us to live with Him for ever.

I want to be there with Him. Don’t you?