The Best Man

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You know, for many people, Peter Pan is a sweet childhood story, and maybe you know the movies probably better than you may have known the book—like the old animated Disney version of Peter Pan, or the Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams' Hook from years ago, or Pan from 2015. There was even one that came out last year. Americans love the story. Peter Pan, Captain Hook. But there's a darker side to this story that you may or may not be familiar with.

It was actually the theme of the movie that came out called Finding Neverland a couple years ago with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, and it's the story about the author J. M. Barrie. J. M. Barrie lost a 13 year old brother in an accident when he was young, and to comfort his mother, he started speaking like and acting like his older brother. And his mother called him by his older brother's name and treated him as if he was his older brother. It's an odd story. And Barrie, this was so imprinted on him as a child that he wrote a story about a deathless boy, Peter Pan. And in many ways, the story has two characters that personify much of the way people think about death. You have Peter Pan, who is kind of an expression of denial of death, of the boy who can't die. And the other is Captain Hook, who's being followed around by a crocodile who swallowed a clock, representing his own coming ending and threat of death, absolutely afraid.

You know, we live in a Peter Pan society. We live in a society that is so afraid of death that we have extracted it from our culture, we've eradicated it from our view, we've sanitized it so it doesn't appear in front of us. We Americans spend tons of money denying the aging process, doing everything we can to look younger than we are. We have sanitized funeral and mortuary services to sort of clean up death, sort of stick it to the side. We don't want to look at that. Our language is all filled with euphemisms about death—passing on, departing. Many people have a hard time even saying the word die or death, especially about themselves or people they love. And when we do have to confront death, we flip from denial and fear to anger. We're much like Dylan Thomas' famous line:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But anger and denial are just expressions of the same thing—fear, a deep fear of death. It's the one thing we can't talk about.

You know, Christians are often exactly like the rest of the culture in this too. This is because we are also in a posture of denial and fear. Peter Pan, Captain Hook. Our architecture even tells a story. If you've seen the old country churches, it used to be you had to walk through the graveyard to get to the front door. It reminded you every Sunday, this is what life is about—life and death. And yet, we now have churches that look mostly like shopping malls. We've removed that from our architecture. And Christians themselves have a lot of vague and unhelpful words about death.

The fear of death really holds us in captivity. It really holds us captive. It's terrifying because we feel like it's an end. We look around at the things that we wanted to do, and we feel the shortness of the time, feel like we're not going to be able to do all the things, there are experiences we're going to miss out on. Maybe it's marriage, maybe it's children, maybe it's travel, success, a career that's actually fulfilling, love, and we get desperate. We get desperate because life is our only shot. We panic when we see ourselves aging and we know this is the beginning of the end. Or we obsess about the legacy. We want to be remembered. We want those who are after us to know who we were, what we are about, that we made a mark on this world.

This morning, as we pick up the study of Hebrews, I want to offer a word of encouragement to you this morning. This is such an encouraging passage. Jesus Christ has conquered the fear of death, set us free from captivity to the fear of death. How does that work? What does that mean?

My outline for today is really two points—like a diet sermon this morning, right? Only two points. And I'm stealing this from a fourth century church father, Athanasius.

Jesus was made like us so that we could be made like Him.

First, Jesus was made like us. How was Jesus made like us? This passage walks us through this progression. First, he's the king who came down. He became human. He took on flesh and blood. And we have flesh and blood in common with him. Now, of course, we celebrate the birth of Jesus every Christmas—the incarnation, Jesus becoming flesh, God becoming flesh—probably not big news to you this morning. But I want you to think how bizarre this was in the culture in which Jesus appeared, where He showed up. Jesus appeared on the scene at the height of the Roman Empire, an empire that was dominated by the Romans, but culturally was Jewish.

And if you remember back to your high school classes, you probably learned something about mythology. Whether you learned the Roman version or the Greek version, pretty much the same—different names, pretty much the same. Gods and goddesses who lived high up on Mount Olympus, who were pretty much concerned about their own lives, all consumed with self. Occasionally, they'd look down and kind of mess with some humans, but it was all about them.

How bizarre it was then, I'm sure, for these first Christians to hear of a God who didn't stay up high, but came down. Came down—a king who came down and became one of us.

You may have noticed in our reading, there's a quote from Psalm chapter eight. It's hard to see this on slides, but here it is:

What is man that you're mindful of him? You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and splendor. — Psalm 8

The writer of Hebrews is like, "Oh, you're talking about Jesus." But a little lower than the angels? If you've been with us, last week we talked about angels. Lower than angels? You know, last week we said Jesus is far greater than the angels. How is it that the one who is greater than angels is lower than the angels?

The answer is that though God is high and exalted, holy, God came down. Jesus subjected Himself, took on human flesh, became human in the fullest way possible—the fullest way—by becoming a baby, subjecting Himself to a lifelong experience that you all know: the fear of death. And he, in fact, died. This is how he was made like us.

Jesus as the Best Man

You know, I perform a lot of weddings. I've performed a lot of weddings over the years. And there's always a maid of honor, or matron of honor, and a best man. And I always sort of laugh at that term "best man." I mean, if he's the best man, why isn't the bride marrying him? Have you thought about that before? It's odd. Go ahead and mess up the next wedding you go to—you can just think about that.

But Jesus, he's the best man in every sense. He's the best man fully human. I mean, a fully realized human being, absolutely alive in every way, fully emotionally present, perfect, sinless. He's our best man.

But he's also not just a king who came down. He's also a priest who suffered and was tempted. He was made like us this other way, this second way. He had to be made like us in every way so he could be a merciful and faithful high priest.

Specifically, he suffered. He was tempted in every way that we are. Now I want to think about this. Why did he have to do that? Did Jesus have to learn something that He didn't know? God knew everything. There's not a sense in which he had to discover something, but there's something that's really gained for us in the suffering of Jesus, in the temptation of Jesus.

Psychologically, this helps us to know that when we pray, we pray to a God who has felt everything we ever feel. He knows what the lure and the pull of temptation feels like firsthand. He knows what it's like to be hungry, to be thirsty, to be hangry, to be tired, to weep, to be confused, to experience betrayal and rejection by your family. Maybe some of you know about that. He knows what it's like to be stabbed in the back by friends, close friends, ministry friends. Maybe some of you know about that. He knows what it's like to be single when everybody else around you is married. He knew disappointment in ministry and that kind of failure. He knew the grief of having a child reject him and walk out on him. He's the father in the prodigal son story. He knows what it's like to be a rejected marriage partner. He understands.

And sometimes just knowing that helps us. Knowing that he actually really does know. When you're struggling and you're carrying things and you're like, "I feel all alone. No one knows what it's like to be me." There is one. There is one who knows.

The other way that this temptation and suffering helps us and relates to us is this: He suffered and was tempted to sin in every way like us, and therefore He can help us now without condemning us. Have you ever thought about this? Whenever we go to God, there's always a question in our sufferings, even in our temptation. Is God condemning me? Why is this happening? Why is this happening to me? There's not a great answer for the why questions. I don't always know what God's up to in pain and suffering, but because of Christ we can know God is not mad at me. He could not be. He is not condemning me. He's condemned his own son for me. He doesn't punish twice for the same offense. He poured out all his wrath on Christ. There's nothing left for you but God's love, His acceptance, and because Jesus knows what it's like to be tempted like I am but without sin, my ultimate victory is guaranteed.

He was made like us. Finally, the other way that He was made like us is that our champion died.

Now, did you notice in the passage it refers to Jesus with a very bizarre term, the pioneer of our faith? Actually, that word is going to be repeated later on in the book in chapter 12. The pioneer of our faith. That's sometimes translated trailblazer or guide or captain. But my favorite translation for this, I think the one that's best, is champion. Champion.

And we like champions, and I want to have a true confession for you this morning. I got caught up in the Lance Armstrong craze. I really did. I had the yellow Lance Armstrong Livestrong bracelet. I had the postal biking jersey, the yellow one. I biked in that regularly. I was taken up with this story. I mean, here's this man who was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and he comes back and he's able to compete in the world's, maybe the hardest event physically there is in sports. Twenty-one days of cycling, several days, many days over 200 miles, up through the Alps, time trials. So you've got to be good at speed, you've got to be good at climbing. And Lance did this thing. He would be behind in the competition, and it was like his bike had a super gear. And he would just kind of drop down, and he would cruise. He'd cruise up the Alps past everybody. And he won the Tour de France. Seven times. Man, I was in. And I kept going like, yeah, this is too good to be true, but they kept testing him, and he kept coming out clean. Finally, it's revealed he did this really bizarre blood doping thing. I was devastated.

I think a lot of us, we love a champion. We're looking for champions. Don't we want people who are larger than life that are like, yeah, you. That person is awesome. We're all looking for that, and we're always disappointed. But champion is the right word for Jesus here, in the oldest sense of the term. Now, one who fights for or represents others as they fight. So in the Old Testament, this was a common practice. It's like a one-on-one duel. So there's one person who's the champion for one side, representing all of their people, one other person representing the other side for all of their people. Both of them have a hero. Both of them have a champion. And if your champion wins, your team wins. Your country wins, your nation wins. If your champion loses, your team, your nation, your country lose. Everything's on the line behind the champion.

And of course, the most famous story of this in scripture is that of David and Goliath. So Goliath was chosen by the Philistines, modern day Gaza, actually, if you're paying attention. They choose the biggest, toughest, most enormous, muscular person they could come up with. Of course they do. Israel chooses a shepherd, teenage shepherd boy. And in a bizarre series of circumstances, the shepherd boy, that champion, wins. He is the champion, and therefore so is Israel. And that's just a preview. Right? That's a preview of Jesus.

What we don't realize is not only do we like a champion, we want a champion, but you and I, we need a champion. We need a champion to fight the one battle that we cannot fight, the battle with sin, Satan, and death. No one can fight that battle and win. But listen, the writer of Hebrews says this:

Since the children have flesh and blood, Jesus also shared in those, so that through his death he might destroy the one holding the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. — Hebrews 2:14-15

Let me be really clear. The death of Jesus wasn't easy. Sometimes we discount Jesus because he's God. Oh, surely that was easier for him. Look at the Garden of Gethsemane. The night that Jesus is betrayed, he's anticipating going to the cross, he falls down on his knees, and sweat pours off of him like blood. Just the anticipation of the battle that he's walking into, our champion. And then he died. And he shares that with us, too. He became like us so that we might become like him.

Athanasius said this: Jesus was made like us so that we might be made like him. And there's so many ways I could apply that this morning. If you're a Christian, you're clothed in Christ's righteousness. That's one way. You're made like Him. You're filled with His Spirit. Another way. So many ways I could go through, but the one I want to apply again this morning is we become like him in relation to death.

Jesus died. He tasted death. Actually, the word there is a reference back in the Greek, going all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. It's the same phrase used of our first parents, who tasted the fruit that led to death. Jesus tasted death. It doesn't mean He just had a little sip of it. All of us will die. Every person here has a date. You don't know that date, but all of us has a date, the future of your own death. And yet He conquered death by death. Our champion, by his death, transformed death in such a radical way that death is completely different for us now. Death is not the end for us.

He was raised. You will be raised. You're a believer. He was resurrected. You will be resurrected. Jesus said to the thief on the cross:

Today you will be with me in paradise.

When believers die in the Lord, we go immediately into the presence of God. And yet, we know one day that's not the end of the story. One day, when Jesus returns and creates a new heavens and new earth, we will be given a new body and live in a glorious new heavens, new earth with Him and with one another.

Before the first coming of Jesus, death was like a cliff. It's like a road—like in the cartoons, the road goes right up to the cliff and just disappears. The train tracks disappear over the edge. Nothing. That's what they had to look forward to. Of course, the Jews had a word for Sheol, which meant the place of the dead, but it wasn't heaven. It wasn't the sense of resurrected life. It was very vague, but it was an end.

Even now, for any person apart from Jesus, death is like the road that goes to the cliff. It's an end. It's a drop off. But because of our champion, for the Christian, death is a door. It's a doorway into what is next.

There's a pastor named Donald Gray Barnhouse, who was pastor of Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia back in the 1960s. He lost his wife to cancer in her 30s, and he was driving to the funeral with his kids, trying to wrap his mind around how to communicate the grieving with hope that he had. He pulls up at a traffic light, and there's snow all over the ground. There's a giant truck at the other part of the intersection. Because of the time of day, the shadow is cast really far beside this truck. He says to his kids, "Hey, do you see that truck? Can you imagine being hit by that truck? How much that would hurt. Which would you rather be hit by, the truck or the shadow of the truck?" And the youngest one pipes up from the back seat: "The shadow of the truck."

And this is what he says: That's right. The shadow. Death is like a truck, but the shadow is all that ever touches Christians. The truck ran over the Lord Jesus. Only the shadow has gone over your mother.

Dear ones, the shadow of death is real, and I don't want to minimize for you as a pastor how dark that can be and how painful that can be, but the shadow isn't the truck. Death is not really going to kill you in any final sense if you're joined to Christ. Jesus took the truck for you so that all that passes over you is a shadow. He has opened forever the door by his own death to all who would call on him in faith and trust for salvation.

And guess what? It was his joy to do it.

Family Language

Did you notice all the family language of this passage? It's kind of bizarre. Jesus took on flesh so that he might become our brother, and then the metaphor changes from brothers and sisters and siblings to we're his children.

He's not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. Here I am with the children God gave me.

All of you have a family of origin. All of you have the parents in whose home you were born and raised. But do you know, if you're a believer, that you have another and far greater family of origin? Because of Jesus, your family of origin isn't really the original family of origin. The three in one Godhead is your real family of origin. Your parents raised you, but God designed you. God made you. He is so delighted in you as his creation. Do you know that? You are the apple of his eye. You are his delight. You are his treasured possession, his joy. He's crazy about you.

Susan and I knew a guy in our college class who was diagnosed with leukemia while in college, and part of that treatment regimen meant he had to get a bone marrow transplant. When they do look for a bone marrow transplant, it's really hard to find a match for somebody who can donate the bone marrow. The surgery around this is really hard and intricate and painful. The person they found who was a match was his own brother. His brother had the exact match. You know what? His brother didn't have to be cajoled or talked into it or paid or promised something wonderful in the future. He wanted to donate his bone marrow. He chose to do so. He was glad to go through the very painful and arduous operation to donate. Why? Because he loves his brother.

How much more, Jesus? Because he was made like you in every way, his is a perfect match for you. And also, it is his joy. For the joy set before him, he subjected himself to the very involved and difficult and painful death in order that you might live and live as his family. He was so delighted to do this for us, for you.

Can I apply the sermon this morning? I want to tell you first what this doesn't mean, and second, what this does mean. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you if you're a Christian and you're afraid to die. It's okay to still be afraid to die.

What this passage speaks of is Jesus freeing those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. He's describing a condition, a status—not a feeling, not an emotion. The condition of hopelessness, the condition of finality, that death presented before Jesus and apart from Jesus, the road going over the cliff. He's describing a state, a universal condition, not feelings. And so I don't want you to get beat up this morning or feel guilty if you have or shame if you are afraid to die. But that status, that condition has changed.

Second, it doesn't mean you have to act like death is your friend. This is one of the messages we get from both Christian and secular culture that's wrong. Death still robs us. Lots of people we love, of time with people we love, of experiences we want to have with those we love. There's a way in both secular and Christian circles we try to normalize this and make death into some kind of friend. Don't you buy it. Jesus stood at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, and before he called him back from the grave, he uttered this snarl, this animal-like noise, because death is an enemy. A deep growl. Yes, it's an enemy whose sting has been removed, but it's an enemy that until Jesus returns, still robs and still destroys and still steals from us. You don't have to make friends with death.

What This Really Means

Positively, what does this mean? It means that eternity is real. I want you to picture a thumbtack, a bulletin board, and a ball of string. Got it in your head? So take your string, tie it around the thumbtack, and you're going to stick it into the board like this. And then you're going to start walking with the string this way. And let's say that this isn't a 100-foot ball of string or a 300-foot ball of string. This is an eternal ball of string. It goes on forever this way. If you're on this side of the room, this is the future, your past, your future. This is what your life is like if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. That thumbtack is the life that you have on this planet compared to what eternity is. This is why Scripture describes our life here like a vapor and a breath and like grass that's here today and gone tomorrow. Remember, live for the string, not the tack. Eternity is real, friends.

Second, it means that death is on death notice. Our enemy's greatest weapon, the weapon within all other weapons, was death. Our champion defeated it. Paul says this at the end of 1 Corinthians 15:

Death, where's your sting? Where is your victory? Grave, where's your victory?

Can I paraphrase that for you this morning? Because I think we need to paraphrase that. Disease, where is your finality? Disappointment, where is your devastation? Failure, where is your finality? Rejection, where is your power? Loneliness, where is your bitterness? Christ has removed the finality from death. Death itself will die. It's on death notice.

Third, we can use this against our FOMO, against our fear of missing out. When we look at the ways that we are missing out on the joys and experiences that others around us experience in this life, we can truly say this: the deprivation, this suffering that I experience, it is not ultimate. It is not the last word, because the Bible says:

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has ever conceived the glorious things that God has prepared for those who love him and know him.

The partial things, even the good things, that you will miss out on in this life, it's going to be okay. In all the math of eternity, it will weigh out and measure out.

And finally, it means this: losses in this life are temporary. When we see those who have lost someone young, prematurely, we can be people who grieve with hope. I've done funerals for friends who've lost a newborn baby, and I've stood there with them as they're devastated over the loss. And there's grief, but there's still hope. I believe that in Christ, they will see that child again because God is a good God, and he is good to his covenant promises to believers. What's it like to walk into heaven and to see the child that you lost in infancy, fully alive and present to you in a way that you never could have known? Those whom we've lost are not utterly lost—temporarily, but not utterly so, especially for those in Christ.

Back to Peter Pan, and I'll close with this. We have another choice besides Peter or Hook, besides the denial of death and the abject fear and terror of death. J.M. Barrie put these words in the mouth of Peter Pan. They're super ironic. "To die must be a really great adventure." He didn't mean it. But for the believer, that is true. There is a sense not of stepping away, or stepping down, or stepping out, but stepping in, and stepping up, and stepping into a fullness that none of us have known.

No eye has seen. No ear has heard. No mind has ever conceived the glorious things He has prepared for those who love Him.

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank You this day for Your Word.

There's nothing like Your Word. We thank you for the way that it speaks hope into our dark places. Lord, we pray not only that you would deliver us from fear of death, but that you would focus our eyes on Jesus.

Lord, we honor and praise you that we have the best man. We have the champion who became like us in every way so that we might become like him.

Father, would you raise our bent heads? Lord, lift up our downcast eyes. Thank you for your goodness and your promises for those who are in you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word and song together.