SPEAKER_00: We're going to be in Hebrews, so you can get your get your Bibles out.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: If you're new to the Bible, the book of Hebrews is at the end of your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2 is where we're at.
SPEAKER_00: I got an extra Bible here for Bryce.
SPEAKER_00: Bryce, here's your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you are watching like the Avengers or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, and you get like really into it, uh, and you know all the backstory and how the world of Avengers works or how the Lord of the Rings works.
SPEAKER_00: What is that called?
SPEAKER_00: The lore, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: The lore.
SPEAKER_00: All of the kind of the um the fabric that makes up the story.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's Star Wars.
SPEAKER_00: I had a friend that when he uh I was a kid, he was a trekkie.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody have a friend that was a trekey?
SPEAKER_00: A trekky, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: They know kind of the ins and the outs of who Spock was, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and how he fits in, you know, to this world and how it, who's in charge and the conflicts that exist.
SPEAKER_00: And the text that we're in this morning in Hebrews is biblical lore.
SPEAKER_00: It's a zoomed-out picture of how God created the world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not normal Bible genre.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the Bible is in stories, right?
SPEAKER_00: Of we zoom in really close and we hear a story about Abraham, or we hear a story about Moses, or we hear a story about Joshua, and we're seeing how God works in a specific time through a particular person, right?
SPEAKER_00: And yet then there's other times where we have material in the Bible where it's instruction.
SPEAKER_00: You know, here's a letter written by Paul about how the church should handle itself, or Paul's maybe writing a letter to respond to a problem of a messy church, like in Corinth or in Galatia.
SPEAKER_00: But then sometimes, like in the book of Hebrews, you have lore.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what uh young people nowadays call it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, you young people, you're laughing at me.
SPEAKER_00: Because you know your what's your favorite lore?
SPEAKER_00: What's your um is it Avengers?
SPEAKER_00: Avengers, no?
SPEAKER_00: Lord of the Rings.
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: Lord of the Rings?
SPEAKER_00: You're a Lord of the Rings guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Doctor Strange, okay.
SPEAKER_00: So he's a yeah, that he's a part of a world, right, with all this inner workings, and you know how Doctor Strange fits in to the Avengers.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at our text.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be in Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 through 9, and we will see, we will see what this particular text uh gives us.
SPEAKER_00: So, starting in verse 5, it says, For he has not subjected to angels the world to come that we are talking about.
SPEAKER_00: But someone, somewhere, has testified what is man that you remember him, or the son of man that you care for him.
SPEAKER_00: You made him lower than the angels for a short time, you crowned him with glory and honor, and subjected everything under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: For in subjecting everything to him, he left nothing that is not subjected to him, as it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him.
SPEAKER_00: But we do see Jesus made lower than the angels for a short time, so that by God's grace he might taste death for everyone, crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death.
SPEAKER_00: What in the world is going on here?
SPEAKER_00: What is this text about?
SPEAKER_00: First of all, let's just go back a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1 in Hebrews, God spoke, it says, in the past through prophets, right?
SPEAKER_00: So this is a letter.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know who the author is.
SPEAKER_00: It's probably not Paul, but it's somebody that was a contemporary of Paul and familiar with Paul's material.
SPEAKER_00: And so it starts off right off the bat, and it says that God has worked in the past through prophets.
SPEAKER_00: He's spoken through prophets, but more recently has spoken through his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this letter is written to Jews.
SPEAKER_00: It's written to Hebrews who are spread out, probably what we call the diaspora spread out around Europe, uh, southern Europe, Asia Minor, kind of modern-day Turkey across the Israel region, all spread out.
SPEAKER_00: And they are followers, they've become convinced that Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism as the Messiah, but they're questioning whether or not they want to wholeheartedly follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so the writer of Hebrews is taking them back to their Jewish roots and saying, look, Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism, and there is a warning to be gleaned from our own history about failing to respond to the message of God.
SPEAKER_00: So God has spoken in the past through the prophets and is now speaking through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is God's messenger and is better than the angels.
SPEAKER_00: Just look at the seven passages from Psalms and 2 Samuel.
SPEAKER_00: So back in chapter 1, there's these different verses, these kind of proof texts that are thrown out to prove that Jesus, as God's messenger, was better than the angels.
SPEAKER_00: But then we got into chapter 2 last week, and this was kind of the summary that I would give to it.
SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to the message of Jesus, because the people who ignored the message of the angels were punished.
SPEAKER_00: And the message of Jesus is better than the message of the angels.
SPEAKER_00: So the argument worked from a lesser to greater.
SPEAKER_00: So if you responded to this message that was brought through the angels to the children of Israel, if you responded in obedience to that message, or if you didn't respond rather, and there was there was a discipline and punishment, how much more do we face a judgment and a punishment for rejecting the message of Jesus, the message of salvation?
SPEAKER_00: And so now we get into verse 5, which picks up where we read with this lore.
SPEAKER_00: And right off the bat, he talks about this, he gives us this thesis statement in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: For he, meaning um God, has not subjected to angels the word world to come that we are talking about.
SPEAKER_00: This is his, this is basically another one of those uh thesis statements.
SPEAKER_00: We had it in verse five of chapter one as well, that um the world that God created, he did not subject to angels the world to come, the the world that we are talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And then to prove this point, he's going to quote from Psalm chapter 8, verses 4 through 6, which I want to show you in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, look at this timeline here on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see this timeline?
SPEAKER_00: Here we are at the end of our Bible reading Hebrews, right?
SPEAKER_00: If we go back in time, just a little bit, 50 years maybe, Jesus lived on the earth, born, died on the cross, was raised from the dead, and then ascended up to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Then we go way back in Bible history to the book of Psalms, written by David and the contemporaries, from David's time on through Israel's history.
SPEAKER_00: You have the Psalms being written.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 8 is found there early on, and then we obviously go back to the beginning to Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: So when we look at this passage in Hebrews, where we're at in Hebrews 2, what we see the writer doing is spanning all of this history and kind of just sweeping, bouncing all the way back and all the way forward.
SPEAKER_00: So he's talking in verse 5, right here, he's saying, he's talking about the world to come.
SPEAKER_00: So beyond this point, he's saying that when we look into the future, the world that God spoke about, this future time, God has not said the angels are going to rule in the future.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he's gonna say, no, look back at Psalms, and Psalms 8 points back at creation.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna say, look back at this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: God created the world to be subject under humanity.
SPEAKER_00: God's using humanity to reign and rule over the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so are you tracking with me?
SPEAKER_00: He's kind of doing these broad sweeps through biblical history.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at Psalm 8, which is what we find in Hebrews, starting in verse 6, 7, and the first phrase out of verse 8 in Hebrews chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: So Hebrews or Psalm 8 says this What is man that you're mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you care for him?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
SPEAKER_00: You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.
SPEAKER_00: You have put all things under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: So leading up to today's sermon, I pointed you to the Bible project video on Psalm 8, which is an excellent resource.
SPEAKER_00: If you didn't watch it yet, I'd encourage you this afternoon, go and watch it because they visually depict how this verse is seated or how this psalm is seated within that first section of the book of Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: Strategically, this psalm interplays with the first book out of Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: And the writer of Psalms is saying, look, here's how God is working to bring about his purposes in the world, and he's pointing back to the first chapter of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: So we have here Genesis chapter or Psalm 8, and Psalm 8 is referencing Genesis chapter 1, and here it is.
SPEAKER_00: You made what is man that you're mindful of him, the Son of Man that you care for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the angels.
SPEAKER_00: So here's creation, the creation account.
SPEAKER_00: God has made mankind a little lower than the heavenly beings, or lower than the angels, and yet has crowned him with glory and honor.
SPEAKER_00: This is a poetic depiction of what God has done in creation.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: You have given him dominion over the works of your hands, you have put all things under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: Just in case you're like, wait, what did this look like?
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back further to the first chapter of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 1, verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: This is at the on the sixth day of creation, God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
SPEAKER_00: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: There's God making, or he's stating in advance, here's the plan.
SPEAKER_00: Let's create humanity, but it's we're going to create him in our image.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we as believers in the Bible see a difference between animals and humans, because God did not make animals in his image.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Let's make humans or people, Adam, in our image according to our likeness.
SPEAKER_00: And then what does he say about humans?
SPEAKER_00: They're going to have dominion.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, the creatures that crawl on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So in Genesis 1.26, God's saying, Here's what I'm going to do, and then what follows is God doing it.
SPEAKER_00: So God created man in his image.
SPEAKER_00: He created him in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: He created them male and female.
SPEAKER_00: God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: God also said, Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed.
SPEAKER_00: This will be food for you.
SPEAKER_00: For all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky and every creature that crawls in the earth, everything having the breath of life in it, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so.
SPEAKER_00: God sought all that he made, and it was very good indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Evening came, and then morning the sixth day.
SPEAKER_00: So we've gone all we've moved from Hebrews chapter two to Psalms, then we move from Psalms even back further to the very first chapter, right?
SPEAKER_00: All pointing to how did God make the world?
SPEAKER_00: How did God make the world?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see why we're calling it lore here?
SPEAKER_00: The word zoomed out super far back, all considering this thesis statement that when God created the earth, when you look at this Genesis account, do you see here that God's creating angels and saying, Angels, listen up.
SPEAKER_00: I made all this, I made humans, I made animals because you're gonna rule over it.
SPEAKER_00: Is that how God set it up?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis chapter 1, God creates humans and says, Humans, I want you to bear my image.
SPEAKER_00: You're created in my image, and you will rule over what I'm creating.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the Bible account continues on.
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of stories about angels.
SPEAKER_00: We see crazy things that angels are able to do.
SPEAKER_00: They have much greater power than humans.
SPEAKER_00: Their capacity to kill and to do war and battle is far greater than what humans are capable of.
SPEAKER_00: Their ability to move around the earth is far greater than what humans are capable of.
SPEAKER_00: Their existence, we don't see anything about angels dying.
SPEAKER_00: There's no reference to angels ceasing to exist or experiencing the death that humans experience.
SPEAKER_00: We could very easily say that angels are much more powerful than humans.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God's design, according to Genesis 1, is that he entrusts humans with the responsibility of ruling over creation.
SPEAKER_00: So when we get to the text that we're studying here, we see that God is creating, or we can see it here, that God made humans lower than angels, but crowned him or crowned them with glory and honor.
SPEAKER_00: God subjected everything under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: Now, jump back over to Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: The way that the writer of Hebrews lays this out is in what is called a chiasm.
SPEAKER_00: A chiasm is kind of like, if you're looking this direction, it would be a like an arrow moving this direction and this direction, with a, and the ideas mirror each other.
SPEAKER_00: So if these two ideas are on the top part of the triangle or of the chiasm, the the following thoughts are going to mirror but in reverse order.
SPEAKER_00: So pulling out of Psalms 8 and then quoting that, we have God made the humans lower than angels, but crowned them with glory and honor, and God subjected everything under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: The next point that is dealt with in Hebrews chapter 2, verse 8, is this right here, the second point, not this point.
SPEAKER_00: So the writer is saying, look, humans are lower than angels, but yet God entrusted humans with authority over the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But before we get to this point, let's talk about this thing.
SPEAKER_00: This is what's fascinating to me.
SPEAKER_00: This is where, this is why I love, this is why I love being a Christian uh Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Why um the philosophy of Christianity is more appealing to me because it's so honest and it gives so much freedom.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like this take it or leave it.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be um God's God says, hey, this is how, this is the law, this is the way that I designed the universe, this is how it is, but you're not compelled to obey.
SPEAKER_00: You have God's like, hey, I'm gonna give you the full um freedom, full autonomy to either believe these things or not believe these things.
SPEAKER_00: And there's an actual observation that's made in verse eight that is very honest.
SPEAKER_00: Look at look at um look at verse eight.
SPEAKER_00: For in subjecting everything to him, we could say to humans, Adam, he left nothing that is not subjected to him.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, everything means everything.
SPEAKER_00: Like when God says, I'm gonna subject everything to mankind, there's not anything that's left outside of that realm.
SPEAKER_00: But look what it is, it says as it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him.
SPEAKER_00: That's a very honest statement.
SPEAKER_00: Because uh in Genesis chapter 1 and Psalm 8, it's saying, look, humans are over everything.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what is your human experience?
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever have you have you ever set a goal for yourself?
SPEAKER_00: Like we're coming into January, there's human, there's um uh what is it called when we make goals at the beginning?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, your resolution, New Year's resolutions, right?
SPEAKER_00: How successful are you at your New Year's resolutions?
SPEAKER_00: I know that I'm I'm not batting, I'm batting like not well, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could, maybe I could uh you know be in the major leagues with my batting average on New Year's resolutions, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: What does that tell us?
SPEAKER_00: We have difficulty even subjecting, even um leading ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We can decide, hey, I want to kick this habit, and yet it has this nasty um tendency to resurface itself.
SPEAKER_00: You can say in the morning, like today I'm gonna eat healthy, and by the end of the night, it's like, oh man, why did I eat that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or we can say, Man, you know, this week I'm gonna be a nice person.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be really nice this week.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get in your car and you're driving down the street, and quickly that resolution goes out the window.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of humans ruling and being completely in control is an illusion, right?
SPEAKER_00: We do not yet see everything subjected underneath him.
SPEAKER_00: There are two ways that humans relate to what is real.
SPEAKER_00: There is a leadership role that we as humans have over the created order, but it's so oftentimes a misuse of the things that God made.
SPEAKER_00: How are we using the oceans, the birds?
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, you would think that those of us that are Christians, that we would be the chief ecologists, right?
SPEAKER_00: That we would have the greatest care for the world based off of the instructions of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: That there is this design that God had for humanity in the beginning, that we would care for the created world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know when Christians decided to leave that calling, but that was not how the writer of Hebrews saw it.
SPEAKER_00: The writer of Hebrews is like, no, no, humans are supposed to have everything in subjection underneath them based off Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: But this is our lived experience, is that humans, we don't see everything subjected to them.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a misuse, there's a human misuse of what God created, but there's also the subjugation of other humans.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at just how women have been treated throughout history, or how other races have been subjugated.
SPEAKER_00: Humans, rather than subjugating.
SPEAKER_00: The world and being a good steward over the created order, instead we have humans misusing what God created or subjugating fellow humans and misusing them.
SPEAKER_00: The human experience in the world is anything but good ruling.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, our lived experience does not align with how God designed it.
SPEAKER_00: So the writer of Hebrews is saying, look at Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: Like God set the world up for humans to rule, and yet this is the reality.
SPEAKER_00: We do not yet see everything subjected to Him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, every one of us, our human experience is that there is this internal sense of justice, that wrongs need to be righted.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you go and watch, you watch, I don't know if you watched a whole lot of Oprah or Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Phil in your life, but both of those characters deal a lot with like conflict in families.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've ever seen those episodes where it's just like they bring people on, and it's like, you know, my dad was like a murderer and he was a horrible person and he skinned puppies and then he, you know, it's like the most horrible, wretched human being, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Phil brings him out, you know, and it's like, let's have a reconciliation moment.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just forgive him.
SPEAKER_00: And those of us who are watching it, they're like, well, forgiveness is an awesome thing, but that's injust.
SPEAKER_00: Just offering forgiveness randomly to somebody that bad, that's not like a writing of wrongs.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make the world a better place.
SPEAKER_00: It may have this person may be holding on to bitterness, and so by you know, offering forgiveness, that person is, in a sense, released from the pain of their human experience.
SPEAKER_00: But is that is that a justice?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, us humans, we struggle so much with this theme of like forgiveness and justice, and there's this internal crying out for wrongs to be righted in an equitable way.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we don't know how to write wrongs.
SPEAKER_00: We know how to put people in jail.
SPEAKER_00: We know how to have people serve time and you know go through some kind of restorative process.
SPEAKER_00: But but human justice is just this beggarly attempt and such a warped and and you know, no matter who you are, you've been on one side of it or another, where you've even maybe been on the wrong side of the justice system, trying to be bring about justice, but it's been inequitable.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's your human experiences is like you know, see and can sense like something that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like the hope as a child of being married to somebody wonderful, right?
SPEAKER_00: And having this beautiful family.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get married, and the person that you're married to is just horrible to you.
SPEAKER_00: And it's an awful broken relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not causing any sense of fulfillment and wholeness.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it's this sense of brokenness, even accentuating the concept of brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe, you know, it's just like you're going, you're going to school and you're like, man, if I could just get this job and make the world a better place, you know, and I could we could create things as a scientist, you know, or and I could have this awesome, we could invent things.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get into the workplace and you realize that there's office politics, and there's, you know, one-upmanship, and there's this inability to cooperate together around a scientific study because people just have their ego involved.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this brokenness that just exists.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, why can't we just make the world a better place?
SPEAKER_00: And so internally, we're wired so that we there's there is a true sense of like the world could be so good, but then the more we do life, people hurt us and we experience this reality.
SPEAKER_00: We do not yet see everything subjected to him.
SPEAKER_00: And we see instead of humans taking care of the Chesapeake Bay, we see garbage getting poured into the Chesapeake Bay, right?
SPEAKER_00: Rather than seeing the streets, you know, clean.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're driving, Blake and Bryce and are driving through downtown, and what was it?
SPEAKER_00: It was like garbage all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: Remember it?
SPEAKER_00: Just from the night before.
SPEAKER_00: There's a street across from where Reggie, or right around the corner from where Reggie lives, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's a group that comes through every morning and they pick up all the trash right there.
SPEAKER_00: And by three or four hours later, the whole thing's trashed.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm talking about, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the brokenness that exists in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that Genesis 1 tells a story is that's not how God designed the world.
SPEAKER_00: God designed the world in a way where humans were ruling in cooperation with him and bringing about this beautiful work in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what happened?
SPEAKER_00: Humans rejected God's design.
SPEAKER_00: That's the story of Adam and Eve, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we get to Genesis 3, we see that Adam and Eve, rather than taking up their rightful position of ruling and reigning with God, instead they reject God's design, and death comes upon the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: And so the problem that you're facing when there's brokenness at work or school isn't all that you thought it would be, or that relationship, that romantic relationship isn't all that you thought it would be, each one of those instances is really bumping into the death and the brokenness that occurred in Genesis chapter 3, when humans decided they didn't want to do the world how God designed it, they decided, hey, I want to do the world how I want.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is what I love about God is that he gives humans that freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_00: That God's like, because like if God created the world where it's like, here's this beautiful design, but then he forced us all to do it, then we would just be robots.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he said, look, this is the right way to do it.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I want, this is the beautiful design, but then they had freedom of choice.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have all this brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: There's this internal sense of beauty, but then brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: And people are spending their lives trying to escape from brokenness, chasing a band aid to patch on to the brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's work, maybe it's this substance, maybe it's this relationship, maybe it's an identity through notoriety, maybe it's I maybe I could become famous, maybe I could become wealthy, and I could patch up the brokenness that I'm experiencing.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible comes along with its lore and it says, No, there's a different way that God designed this, and that's where verse 9 is.
SPEAKER_00: He says, remember in verse 8, he says, we don't yet see everything subjected to him.
SPEAKER_00: So he's going to make a play on this word see.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see everything subjected, but what we do see is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He was made a little lower than the angels for a short time, so that by God's grace he might taste death for everyone, crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death.
SPEAKER_00: While humans have a long history of failing from the Genesis 1 mandate of being fruitful, multiplying, subduing, ruling, and having dominion, we now have Jesus, who is called the second Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't just come to champion this subduing and ruling.
SPEAKER_00: Now just think about this, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus comes as the new Adam, the new human.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus could have just subdued, he could have ruled over the world perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: But he died.
SPEAKER_00: Where does death fit into the picture?
SPEAKER_00: Death fits into the picture to bring us and to rescue us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus could have just done it.
SPEAKER_00: He could have fulfilled God's Genesis 1 mandate himself.
SPEAKER_00: He could have been the perfect ruler.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he will when we get to the book of Revelation, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we go and look at Daniel and what it prophesies, we get to the book of Revelation, we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of Genesis chapter 1, but he's not good to do it alone.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was sent into the world by God the Father, he took on flesh so that he could fulfill the Genesis mandate, but first taste death for everyone, crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just good enough to take on humanity, if that weren't humiliating enough, but to subject himself all the way, submit himself to the Father to the point of death as the sacrifice in our place so that we could, so that we could be forgiven of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: A human needed to pay for the guilt of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody needed to stand in our place, and that's what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just close with this.
SPEAKER_00: This passage, Ephesians chapter 1, Ephesians chapter 1, quotes this same psalm, Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: But before we get there, Paul, who's writing this letter to a church that was gathering in a city of Ephesus, Paul says, I'm gonna, I'm praying for you that the eyes of your heart, this is the word cardiac, like where we have cardiac arrest or the word cardiac, it's as if your eyes have a shutter.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever studied photography, you know on your your um camera, an older camera, that the shutter opens, lets in light, and then it closes.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's picturing the heart as if it has eyes or it has this lens that opens up and lets light in.
SPEAKER_00: But he's saying, I'm and so I'm praying that your heart will, that the light will come in, that you may know.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what comes into the heart, that your heart may know what is the hope of his calling, and what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.
SPEAKER_00: So how strong is he?
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: He exercised his power.
SPEAKER_00: God exercised his power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where we're getting close to this subjugation language, right?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is raised from the dead by the Father, he takes up his seat in heaven at the right hand of the Father, far above every ruler and authority and power and dominion, every title given, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what authority that Jesus is given.
SPEAKER_00: And he subjected everything under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: That's Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: That's the quote from Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: He subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the point.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible comes to us and says, here's God's grand story.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how the world was made.
SPEAKER_00: Your human experience is one where you're looking at a world of brokenness where things don't work, how we know they ought to work.
SPEAKER_00: And if there was no Jesus, we would be stuck in trying to educate our way out of it.
SPEAKER_00: If we could just get smarter, maybe we could improve technology, maybe AI could fix it, maybe just a better Tesla could make it better.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a hundred Elon Musks could make it better.
SPEAKER_00: Depending on how you think of Elon Musk, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just we need maybe smarter people.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible comes along and says, no, it's not an ecological problem.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a psychological problem.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a relational brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all symptoms of an underlying spiritual problem where humans have rejected God's design.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: God isn't mad at you.
SPEAKER_00: God's radically in love with you enough that he would send his son into the world to take the penalty for our sin on the cross, to pay for our sin on the cross, and then to open up the gates and say, look, you want to be reconciled back to God's way?
SPEAKER_00: You want to be restored and renewed so that you can join Jesus in this new reigning and ruling over humanity, to be on the path toward the recovery of the human race?
SPEAKER_00: It's open, but it's not mandated.
SPEAKER_00: It's just here's the here's how it is, but you have absolute freedom to reject it.
SPEAKER_00: Some people struggle with the idea of an eternal damnation, that there's a hell where people live permanently separated from the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: How could God, if he loves people, how could he possibly do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the idea of hell is giving people what they wanted.
SPEAKER_00: It's just saying, look, you lived your life, you wanted to be independent and live your life independent of who God is, then you can spend eternity in living that out, in experiencing that as an eternal being.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be something where it's this is speculation.
SPEAKER_00: This is an I can't point to a verse.
SPEAKER_00: But hell is not something where it's going to be like, oh man, I wish I decided something else.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a horrible existence, but it's going to just be an eternal existence of living out freely, separate from God, who loves you and designed you for more and has a great plan and there's a great lore that's laid out.
SPEAKER_00: The question, if you're wrestling with Christianity, if you're considering the philosophy, the big idea of Christianity, it's not one where it's just, yeah, take it as a pill and just decide, like, well, I'm going to accept this.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's it extends itself and says, Does the way that it prescribes the human existence, does it line up with your human existence?
SPEAKER_00: It's not asking you to take a blind leap.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying, yeah, there's points in this that you can challenge.
SPEAKER_00: It's as much of a philosophy and a hypothesis about how the world works as any other.
SPEAKER_00: The problem you run into, as you, if you want to reject it, is there are some historical correspondence.
SPEAKER_00: You have to deal with a person of Jesus and some very real proofs around the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, if you're considering Christianity, there's difficult stuff to understand from the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Did the Old Testament advocate slavery?
SPEAKER_00: What about the role of women?
SPEAKER_00: What about these passages that God gave to Israel about cutting their hair or marking their bodies?
SPEAKER_00: How do we handle those things?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of good answers to that, but the Bible and Christianity as an idea is not something that you just decide, oh yeah, I get it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to accept that.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you, especially if you're young, wrestle through the idea of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I'm a Christian is because I feel like it corresponds with reality the best.
SPEAKER_00: And the difficult things, the difficult issues that arise within the Bible, I feel like the answers I've found satisfy the challenges that have been brought up against it.
SPEAKER_00: And the wonderful thing about living in the age of the internet is those answers are readily available to the honest.
SPEAKER_00: So the somebody who's intellectually honest can go and read a book by C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis or William Lane Craig, who destroys in an honest uh debate with an with an atheist, William Lane Craig is feared by atheists.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a great idea, it is a good idea, but I don't I would just encourage you, if you're considering Christianity, to uh consider it with an intellectual honesty.
SPEAKER_00: You will not get all your answers.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible itself is honest, it comes along and says, yeah, we do not see the whole thing played out.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are what we would call, when it comes to technology, an early adopter.
SPEAKER_00: And that's basically what the Bible is looking for is an early adopter.
SPEAKER_00: It says this is the philosophy on how the world works.
SPEAKER_00: Take it or leave it.
SPEAKER_00: And there's some parts of it where you're gonna just have to have to trust.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, did was Jesus born of a virgin?
SPEAKER_00: That seems like a pretty far out um claim.
SPEAKER_00: Is um did God create the world?
SPEAKER_00: Is that the origin stories?
SPEAKER_00: Is Genesis 1 and 2?
SPEAKER_00: Is that a good origin story?
SPEAKER_00: All of those things you have to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: For me, myself personally, as I've wrestled with those things and listened to some of the best thinkers, both atheists like a Sam Harris or a uh a Dawkins, and then compared those things to like a William Lane Craig.
SPEAKER_00: I'm happy with how the answers, the philosophy is answered, but I commend it to you.
SPEAKER_00: I commend the idea, the Christian idea, the lore to you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's uh let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for um our time together, that there is a an honesty about the text, that we don't yet see everything.
SPEAKER_00: Um and there is this idea of living by faith.
SPEAKER_00: For those of us that have decided to trust you, thank you that we have some real footholds to place our our feet in as we're um trusting your word.
SPEAKER_00: But God, there's things that are difficult to understand, and there are things that are frustrating in our human experience.
SPEAKER_00: One of them is living in a city like Baltimore where people are dying, and where there are uh people that are stuck in addiction, and where there's poverty, and where those people are mistreated, and where um people who are supposed to be running the city are deeply corrupt and um being found out on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, it hurts to be human sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our families are broken, sometimes we hurt other people, sometimes we're angry at ourselves, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, God, that you would continue to work in our lives, that you would do what Paul prayed for the Ephesians, that you'd open up our eyes, that you'd open up our eyes to the to the to the to the truth of the gospel message, that you would make yourself known.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, make it clear.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your work through your word.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.