It Became Him To Suffer 1-26-25 PM
I. Suffering completed Jesus (Hebrews 2:10).
a. The word “became” carries the idea of being right or fitting.
i. It was fitting that God, for whom and by whom are all things, to allow Jesus to suffer in order to complete Him.
ii. It was proper for God to do this.
b. The sole reason for allowing it was for me and you to be brought to glory.
i. We are the sons there.
ii. In order for us to have the hope of heaven, Jesus had to suffer.
iii. Our hearts ought to rejoice and cause us to shout thanks to the Lord for His willingness to do what He did.
iv. Without that, there would be no way for you and I to come to glory.
c. Jesus is here called the Captain of our salvation.
i. In the book of Acts, this word is translated Prince.
ii. Later, in Hebrews 12, this word is translated Author.
iii. He is the Leader of the saved.
d. He was able to become the Leader of the saved through suffering.
e. Suffering perfected, or completed Jesus.
i. Not in the sense that Jesus was incomplete or in any way unfit to be our Leader.
ii. Thayer gives the meaning of the word, to bring to an end proposed.
iii. This simply means that the suffering qualified Jesus to be the Captain of our salvation.
iv. The suffering He endured allowed Him to complete the goal, or work, that God had intended for Him to complete.
f. All the pain and agony through which Jesus went on the day of His physical death, all the nights with no home in which to lay His head, and all the verbal attacks and threats He endured, allowed Him to be our Savior.
II. Suffering allowed Him to call us brethren (Hebrews 2:11-13).
a. The coming of Jesus to this earth allowed us to be together.
i. We are of one in the sense that He put on flesh and became like us.
ii. He sancitifies us through His offering of Himself and we are sanctified, set apart, by Him from the world.
b. Isn’t it amazing that Jesus is not ashamed to call you and I His brethren?
i. As weak and sinful as we are, Jesus is not ashamed of us.
ii. He loves us so much He was willing to come and suffer.
c. The Hebrews writer then points out three different passages in the Psalms and Isaiah that show God always intended for the Messiah to be like us in the flesh.
i. Psalm 22:22.
1. There is something we really need to note here.
2. We know the word translated church in the original language is “ekklesia”.
3. The Septuagint Version, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, translated the word ekklesia as congregation or assembly.
4. The word brethren is used to describe those in the church.
5. Notice what F.F. Bruce wrote, “The employment of this word is a synonymous parallelism with "brethren" in a Christian context indicates that those whom the Son of God is pleased to call his brethren are the members of his church.”
6. If one is a brother to Christ, that one has to be a member of His church.
ii. Psalm 18:2.
iii. Isaiah 8:18
d. Without Jesus suffering for us, there is no way we could call Him our brother and we could not be brethren in the church.
III. Suffering allowed Jesus to destroy Satan (Hebrews 2:14).
a. Humanity is clothed in with flesh and blood and Jesus was well.
b. Jesus had to share in that in order to die.
c. The purpose of the death of Jesus was to defeat Satan.
i. Satan used death as a weapon to cause man to fear as is pointed out in the next verse.
ii. Jesus took Satan’s weapon and used it to conquer Satan.
iii. Jesus subdued Satan by His death and resurrection.
d. This verse tells us something about the goal of Satan.
i. His goal is to destroy mankind.
ii. He wants us to be eternally separated from God.
iii. Until Jesus died on that cross, Satan was winning.
iv. There was nothing mankind could do to overcome Satan.
v. Now, through the death of Christ and His resurrection, you and I can overcome Satan because Jesus overcame Satan.
e. An angel could not have done this for us and the Hebrews writer is pointing out that fact that Jesus became a man to die for men because only He could do that.
IV. Suffering allowed Jesus to remove our greatest fear (Hebrews 2:15-16).
a. Death has long been one of man’s greatest fears.
b. We fear the unknown, we fear punishment, we fear the separation of death.
e. Jesus took all of those things away for His brethren.
i. His death allowed us to look with joy at death because it brings us to God.
ii. We can say “come Lord Jesus” because we don’t have anything to fear in Christ.
f. Jesus took on our nature to aid us.
i. This is the meaning of verse 16.
ii. He did not become like an angel because they didn’t need Him.
iii. We needed Him and He became like us because we needed His aid to avoid the pain and fear of death.
V. Suffering allowed Jesus to reconcile us to God (Hebrews 2:17).
a. The word “behooved” carries the idea of owing something, a moral obligation.
i. Since Jesus bowed to the will of the Father to help mankind, He became obligated to all that needed to be done for man.
ii. This, of course, included all the suffering He faced.
b. It allowed Jesus to be merciful, or compassionate, towards us as the Hebrews writer will point out in chapter 4.
c. He is faithful to God in carrying out the duties of the High Priest.
i. He made the sacrifice for us.
ii. He did the will of the Father.
d. By doing all this, Jesus reconciled us back to God.
i. Sin separated us from God as we have mentioned many times.
ii. The suffering Jesus endured allowed for us to be brought back to God.
iii. If He hadn’t become our sacrifice, we couldn’t be right with God.
e. The writer will go into much greater detail later in the book about just how Jesus did this for us.
VI. Suffering allowed Jesus to aid us (Hebrews 2:18).
a. Jesus was tempted and knows that through which we are going.
b. Because of His being tempted, He can aid us, the meaning of succor, us who are tempted.
i. He suffered more than we will ever suffer.
ii. He was also tempted by Satan to sin.
c. We can look to Him to aid us in time of need as is also mentioned in chapter 4.