And if you'll turn to Hebrews chapter 2.
And let me just say again,
we'd love you to come to the carol service tonight.
! It's the easiest invite to invite other people.
! So do pop around to neighbours
or send messages to different people this afternoon.
Drag them along.
And if you're a regular,
when you come in,
sit down straight away.
And if the stewards tell you to move,
do it.
Alright?
Okay.
I'm speaking from an iPad for the first time.
So this,
yeah, we'll see how this goes.
Alright?
I suppose verse 16 is my text.
Verse 16.
Hebrews chapter 2.
Where the writer of the Hebrews says,
For surely it is not angels that he helps,
but he helps the offspring of Abraham.
That's quite weak really.
It should be.
For surely it's not angels that he takes hold of,
but he takes hold of the offspring of Abraham.
When I was first thinking about becoming a minister,
my minister back in Cardiff,
I'm an animal, Andrew Bowden,
he used to take me on visits with him to visit old people.
And we used to go and visit a man called John Lawley Thomas.
He was a real character.
The house was a tip.
And he lived in this little cottage in the middle of nowhere.
And he had an open fire on.
And there was a kettle continuously on top.
And tea stewed in that kettle for days on end.
As I think about it,
you're reminded of that kind of verse at the end of Mark 16,
that you'll pick up snakes and you will drink deadly poison,
and it will not harm them.
It was tea that had been there.
Each day, just more tea bags were put in it.
And his wife would pour out this fowl liquid
that had been stewing for days.
And she'd pour it into a cup,
which you were not sure was clean.
And then she'd hand it to you and she'd say,
catch hold, Levy, catch hold.
And it's an amazing memory, really.
You're in this kind of strange little cottage.
Catch hold, Levy, catch hold.
She was telling you, hold on to it.
It's going to be boiling hot.
It had been stewing for days.
And this verse is really, that's what it's saying.
It's saying, catch hold of it.
It's not actually help, it's catching hold.
It's telling us that God doesn't catch hold of angels.
He catches hold of the descendants of Abraham.
And Abraham is the father of all who believe.
So if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
if you're a believer in God,
you're a descendant of Abraham.
And what this verse is telling us wonderfully is that
in Jesus, God has got hold of you.
The whole message, in many ways of Christmas,
is wrapped up in that word.
You see, God is not an arm's length God.
He's actually caught hold of us in Christ.
He's laid hold of our humanity to rescue us.
Think about that for a moment.
What would it be like for God to grab hold of you today?
What would that be like?
Most people prefer God, don't they, at arm's length?
So that famous poem,
when I was going up the stairs,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
And that sums up, doesn't it,
most people's,
what they feel when it comes to God.
Half the time we want God to be there,
but the other half we wish he'd just go away.
Like John Paul Sartre,
the French philosopher and atheist,
he said that God does not exist,
I cannot deny,
but that my whole being cries out for him,
I cannot forget.
He's saying,
oh, I wish he'd go away.
Most people, aren't they,
are ambivalent about God.
Still, most people would believe in God,
but they certainly want to keep him at arm's length.
And Christmas means that God wants to get up close
and personal with you.
How does that make you feel?
He wants not just to draw near,
God wants to grab hold of you,
lay hold of you.
Human beings,
the descendants of Abraham,
that he reaches out to help,
but it's stronger than help,
the message of Christmas is that God has laid hold of us.
There's the word help, isn't there,
in verse 16 and in verse 18.
They're two very different words.
In verse 18, the word for help is to lend a helping hand
as a merciful high priest who suffered
and has been tempted.
And because he's been tempted,
he's able to give us a helping hand.
He's able to help you in temptation.
But in verse 16, it's a very different word.
Let me give you an illustration.
If you're a cat lover,
you will know if you've got a cat at home,
you can't command a cat, can you?
You can command a dog.
You can tell a dog to sit,
to heal,
and the dog will do it.
But you don't command a cat,
but you don't command a cat, do you?
Cats have got a minor will of their own.
When you want to get your cat out of the house,
out of the flat,
what do you do?
You don't just say to the cat,
off you go,
get out.
You take hold of the cat,
don't you?
You've got to manhandle the cat.
You've got to gather him up in your arms
and grab hold of him
and throw him out the door.
That's the only way to get the cat out of the house.
And that's the word that's used in verse 16.
It's a very strong word.
And that's what Jesus has done for you.
He's laid hold of you.
Jesus is not actually giving you some help from a distance,
some kind of advice.
He's come to deliver you.
He's come to grab hold of you.
He's come to put you into a new realm altogether,
to move you from one place to another.
And look how he does that.
It's beautiful in the context.
He does that, if you look at verse 11,
as our older brother.
I think it's one of the themes
that we don't often explore.
That we don't often think about Jesus
as our older brother.
I've got two older brothers.
One's eight years older than me.
The other one's 12 years older than me.
I don't know if you've ever thought of Jesus
as an older brother.
There's a film, wasn't there?
A River Runs Through It.
Two brothers.
Both sons of the manse.
Both sons of a minister in Montana.
It's a sad film in lots of ways.
Two brothers growing up in the Montana countryside.
And the older one is hardworking,
studious fella.
He's got a good job.
He's a respected man in the community.
But the younger brother's a tearaway.
He's great fun,
but always getting himself into trouble.
Always getting himself into scraps.
Pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable.
And he ends up associating with people
who lead him deeper and deeper into trouble.
And finally, the younger brother
is killed in a pub brawl.
And his older brother couldn't get to him.
They'd grown too far apart.
It's a moving and quite tragic story.
And the tragedy is the older brother
saw it happening to his younger brother.
He could see what was happening
in his younger brother's life,
but there was nothing he could do about it.
He tried and he tried,
and the whole film is about this.
He could see what was going on,
but he couldn't reach him.
He couldn't get through to him.
He couldn't come to where the younger brother was
and rescue him.
But this verse is telling us
that Jesus has seen our plight from heaven,
and he's come down to earth
in order to grab hold of us,
in order to rescue us.
He is the elder brother
who protects us in the playground from the bully.
He's the one who comes to where we are
when our life has been made a misery by the bully,
and he comes right to where we are
in order to rescue us.
Not in a patronizing way.
Older brothers can be very, very patronizing,
can't they?
You can be maybe a little bit resentful
of your older brother.
Maybe he's always done the right thing.
It's a bit like the story of two brothers
that Jesus tells, isn't it?
The stay-at-home son who does the right thing,
and the one who ruins his life.
It's that sort of story,
and we're told here in verse 11,
can you see it, of Hebrews chapter 2,
that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers.
That our older brother has come into the playground
as if it were to rescue us from the bully.
He lays hold of us in our sin and misery.
So how does he do that?
How does he rescue us?
Our older brother has come because we are flesh and blood.
He has become flesh and blood.
In order to bleed and die,
that's why he became flesh and blood.
And so don't coo over the little baby
and say, well, isn't he lovely?
The reason that he became a little baby
was so that he could go to the cross and die for us.
Do you see how the passage runs
from Christmas through to Easter?
Look at verse 14.
Since therefore the children
share in flesh and blood,
he himself,
likewise partook in the same things,
he became like us,
that through death,
he might destroy the one who has the power of death.
That is the devil.
The big brother
has come to beat the bully
who has made life a misery.
And how is he going to do that?
Verse 17.
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers
in every respect
so that he might become a merciful
and faithful high priest.
That is how big brother took our human condition.
He came into a broken, fallen world.
He became like us,
but was without sin.
For this reason,
he had to become a merciful
and faithful high priest
in the service of God
to make propitiation
for the sins of the people.
Do you see?
It's Christmas,
therefore Easter.
He came in order to become
a priest,
a sacrifice
in the temple.
And by the eternal spirit,
we're told that he offered himself to God.
We're told in chapter 9,
in verse 14 of Hebrews,
that he is the priest
and the sacrifice.
He comes and he offers himself to God
as an atonement for sins
so that,
what?
We might come into the presence of God.
So that we might meet with God
in his temple.
One writer has said that
from the road from Bethlehem
leads to Golgotha.
The crib and the cross
are cut from the same wood.
Just think about that.
Here's a little poem.
God in a manger,
defenseless,
enfleshed,
Emmanuel crying
and fighting for breath.
God in a manger,
wriggling and raw,
laid out on the wood,
enthroned on the straw.
God at Golgotha,
pierced in his flesh,
Emmanuel crying
and fighting for breath.
God at Golgotha,
forsaken and lost,
stretched out on the wood,
enthroned on the cross.
He took flesh
in order to bleed and die for us.
Why does he have to do that?
Well, because of what we're told
in these verses,
that there is a bully
who has made life a misery,
hasn't there?
You might remember,
it's not a completely
unfamiliar story,
isn't it?
A 10-year-old girl
who is snatched
from the street
in the suburbs of Vienna.
For eight years,
she's kept beneath
this man's house
behind a steel door
in a tiny windowless cell
until mercifully
and wonderfully
she seizes the opportunity
to escape.
You might remember the story.
Just imagine that.
A 10-year-old girl
snatched off the street,
kidnapped,
locked in a windowless cell
behind a steel door.
The Bible says
that's the human condition.
That is why
the big brother
has got to come.
That's what's happened to us.
Look at verses 14 and 15.
Since therefore
the children share
in the flesh and blood,
he himself likewise
partake of the same things
that through death
he might destroy
the one who has
the power of death.
That is the devil.
and deliver
all those
who through fear of death
were subject
to lifelong slavery.
That is why
big brother Jesus
needed to come
and rescue us.
Because we've been enslaved,
we've been kidnapped,
the devil has a hold of us.
The devil has the power
of death.
And he holds us
in slavery to it.
That's why people
are so afraid of death.
They're so fearful of it.
It's the devil's trump card,
the fear of death.
Tolstoy wrote about it
in his confessions.
He says this,
he said,
something strange
began to happen to me
at the age of 50.
At the age of 50,
I had a wife
who loved me
and whom I loved.
I had a large estate
which without much effort
on my part increased.
My name was respected.
I enjoyed physical strength
and yet I could not live
because I was afraid to die.
The question
which brought me
to the verge of suicide
sought an answer
without which
one cannot live.
Is there any meaning
in my life
that my inevitable death
does not destroy
today or tomorrow?
Death will come
to those I love
and then to me.
Soon will not only
I not exist,
but eventually
no one will exist
who will remember
anything I've written
or done.
Why then go on
with the short effort?
What is it all for?
What does it all lead to?
What difference
does it make
whether I do this thing
or that thing
or nothing at all?
So Tolstice says,
I could give no rational meaning
to any single action
or even to my whole life,
but what was so surprising
was how we can fail
to see this.
For a time,
it's possible to live
intoxicated with life,
but as soon as
when it's sober,
it is impossible
not to see that life
in the face of death
is a fraud
and a stupid fraud.
How often I've been told
you cannot understand
the meaning of life,
so don't think about it,
just live.
I can no longer do that.
That's a stark reality,
isn't it?
That's universal.
What is the point
of it all?
If we live
for a moment
and then we die
and there's nothing else
or worse than that,
worse than that,
the Bible says,
it is appointed for man
to die
and then to face
the judgment.
And so Paul talks
about this,
the Bible talks about this,
the apostle
in 1 Corinthians 15
in those really famous words
that you hear
at the graveside
of a Christian.
And this is what Paul says,
he says,
death is swallowed up
in victory.
Oh death,
where is your sting?
Oh death,
where is your victory?
Oh death,
where is your sting?
The sting of death
is sin
and the power of sin
is the law
but thanks be to God
who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul is saying
there is hope.
There is hope.
I think I've told you
the story before,
there's a family
driving along in a car
and the window is down
and there's a bee
that flies into the car
and that is annoying,
isn't it?
And scary.
But there was a child
in this car
who was allergic
to bee stings.
And so it's not only
scary and annoying,
it's life threatening.
The dad swerves the car
to the side of the road,
the little child
in the back
is panicking
and what the dad does
is he manages
to grab hold
of the bee
and he presses it
against the windscreen
and he holds it there
in his hand.
And then eventually
the dad shouts out
in pain
and he releases his grip
and the bee flies out again.
And the little child
is panicking.
But the dad
is able to say,
isn't it,
look here,
look at my hand.
Look at my hand,
see the sting.
Its sting is in my hand,
it can't harm you.
I have taken the sting.
The bee can still buzz around
but it can't sting you anymore
and that's what
our big brother has done.
He's taken the sting
out of death
and that is the hold
that the devil has
and so you and I,
the truth is,
isn't it,
you and I are going to die
and you and I
are sinners
and so in death
we will encounter
God in judgment.
We will meet him
and the sting of death
is sin
and the strength
of that sting
is the power of the law
and we deserve
God's judgment
and we deserve
God's anger
against us forever
because we are sinners
and that is the devil's trump card.
And that's why you and I
are afraid of death
when we're willing
to think about it.
That is why death
haunts us
as a culture
every waking hour.
But Jesus comes to us
as our big brother
and he says,
look at my hands.
Look at my hands,
they've been nailed
to the cross.
See, there's the sting.
The sting is gone.
He has absorbed it.
Look at what it says
in Hebrews 2
in verse 9.
Can you see what it says
at the end of verse 9?
It says,
he has tasted death.
The Lord Jesus,
the baby in the manger,
experienced death
with the sting in it.
He was made sin
who knew no sin
that you and I
can be made right
with God.
And so that's why
the Christian would say,
oh death,
where is your sting?
Oh grave,
where is your victory?
Because thanks be to God
who gives us the victory
through Jesus Christ,
our Lord,
and our big brother.
There's a lovely story
of a man going
into an art gallery.
It's the famous painting
of Faust
playing chess
with the devil.
And the devil
is leering
across the table
at a despairing Faust
whom he's checkmated.
Apparently the story goes,
a famous chess player
used to come into that gallery
and he used to come in
time and time again
and he would sit
and he would stare
at that picture.
One day he found himself
staring at that painting
yet again
of the devil
leering across
the chess board
at Faust
with the devil
saying checkmate.
this chess player
looked at all the different
positions of the chess board
and one day
there's a great cry
he rings out
apparently in the gallery.
As he cries out,
no, there's another move.
It's not checkmate.
There's another move.
And so the message
of Christmas is this,
the devil thinks
he's got us.
The devil thinks
he's got a hold of us.
It is checkmate.
He holds us
in slavery
through fear of death
and Jesus comes,
our big brother,
and he says,
no, no,
it's not checkmate.
There's another move.
And he moves
from the cradle
to the cross
and he makes
atonement
by his eternal spirit.
He offers himself
to God.
That's the move.
His death
frees us.
It beats the bully.
It beats the hell
out of it.
It takes the sting
out of death.
His death
is for us.
It is vicarious.
It is victorious
because in his death
he beats the bully
who's made our life
a misery.
It robs him
of his hold
of us.
It takes away
the ground
from under his feet,
doesn't it?
He comes
and he accuses you
and he says,
you are a sinner.
And we say,
well,
yeah,
I know I'm a sinner.
He says,
you deserve
God's anger.
I know I do.
You deserve hell.
I know I do,
but the Lord Jesus
has taken that
for me.
He has taken
that anger,
that justice,
that hell.
And look at verse 13.
I love this.
Look at verse 13.
And again,
I will put my trust
in him.
And again,
behold,
I and the children
God has
given me.
what I'm trying
to say to you
is this Christmas,
if you will put
your trust
in the Lord Jesus,
if Jesus catches
hold of you,
the devil
loses his grip
on you.
Look at verse 13.
behold,
I and the children
God has
given me.
He's not going
to lose any of them.
Not after what
he's been through
to rescue us.
Here I am,
he says,
and the children
that you have
given me.
And so let me
ask you as I finish,
who has got
hold of you
this Christmas?
What is it
that is driving you?
You've got to
serve somebody,
haven't you?
Let me read to you
like I've done
before the Bob Dylan song.
You may be
an ambassador
to England or France.
You may like to gamble
or you might like
to dance.
You may be
the heavyweight champion
of the world.
You may be a socialite
with a long string
of pearls,
but you're going to
have to serve somebody.
Might be a rock
and roll addict
prancing on the stage.
Might have money
and drugs
at your commands.
Women in a cage.
You may be a businessman
or some high degree thief.
They may call you doctor
or they may call you chief,
but you're going to
have to serve somebody.
You may be a state trooper.
You might be a young Turk.
You may be the head
of some big TV network.
You may be rich or poor.
You may be blind or lame.
You may be living
in another country
under another name,
but you're going to
have to serve somebody.
You may be a construction worker
working on a home.
You may be living
in a mansion.
Or you might live
in a dome.
You might own guns
and you might even own tanks.
You might be somebody's landlords.
You might even own banks,
but you're going to
have to serve somebody.
You may be a preacher
with your spiritual pride.
You may be a city councilman
taking bribes on the side.
You may be working
in a barber shop.
You may know
how to cut hair.
You may be somebody's mistress.
You may be somebody's heir,
but you're going to
have to serve somebody.
Might like to wear cotton.
Might like to wear silk.
Might like to drink whiskey.
Might like to drink milk.
You might like to eat caviar.
You might like to eat bread.
You may be sleeping on the floor,
sleeping in a king-sized bed,
but you're going to have
to serve somebody.
Yes, indeed.
You're going to have
to serve somebody.
It may be the devil
or it may be the Lord,
but you're going to have
to serve somebody.
So who's it going to be?
Who holds the reins of your life?
What's driving you?
Listen to what the Apostle Paul says
in Philippians chapter 3.
One of the things I love
about the Apostle Paul
is he's always telling his story.
He's been a Christian
at this point for about 30 years
and he writes this.
He says,
not that I've already
obtained all this
or have already arrived
at my goal,
but I press on
to take hold of that
for which Christ Jesus
took hold of me.
It's the very same word
that's in Hebrews 2.
It means to seize
or to arrest
or to be taken
into protective custody.
And Paul says,
that's what Jesus did for me.
I was walking along
the Damascus Road
and I was going the wrong way
and Jesus took hold of me.
I was going the wrong direction
and along came
the great shepherd
who came for his sheep
and he took me
into his protective custody.
Has he done that for you?
Do you know this morning
that if he's done that for you,
you are safe?
That's where our safety is.
It is to lay hold on Jesus.
It is to be taken
into his custody.
Maybe you're here this morning
and you think
that would be great
because my life
is out of control
and you're carried away
by your lust
to places you don't want to go.
Maybe this morning
you're stuck in a rut
and you can't get out of it
and you long for someone
to come and take hold of you
and to transform you
into a different realm
and that's why Jesus came.
And he can do that for you
this Christmas.
He can do that for you
before you leave this room.
I press on,
Paul says,
to take hold
of that.
This isn't just
turning up to church
once on a Sunday.
This is saying,
I'm going to catch hold
of Jesus Christ
who has caught hold of me.
Christmas gives us
God in the flesh
who catches hold of us.
Let's come back
to the verses we close.
Verse 16.
It's not angels
he took hold of.
It's the descendants
of Abraham.
It's believers.
Abraham is the father
of the faithful
for all who will believe.
It is not just
humanity blankly.
It is those
who believe in him
are safe in his grip.
Men will not live
forevermore
because of Christmas Day
despite what
Boney M say.
You will only live
in
forevermore
if you're in the grip
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If Christ has caught
hold of you.
If you're in the grip
he has manhandled us
in order that we
might become
sons of God.
Tells us he's become
a high priest.
What does a high priest do?
A high priest brings you
into the presence
of God
and he gets the presence
of God into us
and Jesus wants you
to do that
and he wants to do that
for you this Christmas.
Let's pray.