Not Ashamed… to call us brothers!

Hebrews 2:1–13 (14–18)

†In Jesus Name†

As you begin to comprehend that Jesus is not ashamed to call you His brothers and sisters, may you never neglect this news, this message of the cross, and may you realize what it means that we have been brought into His glory!

That first date and that relative…

I think each one us has someone in their past, that was capable of embarrassing us at the drop of the hat.

It might have been the over-enthusiastic younger sibling who tried to pretend they were all grown up and equal to you and your friends.

Or that aunt who managed to show up at the wrong moment just in time to share with your first date the cute stories of you early child-hood.  She was trying to make you look cute, but the more she spoke, the more you tried to shrink between the seat cushions.  Maybe it was the obnoxious, boisterous uncle, who wanted to relive his youth with you.

Maybe it is your offspring, or your parents.  As I said, sometime in our life there probably was someone we are ashamed of, embarrassed by, not really happy when they show up
For some of us, it wasn’t that we were embarrassed and shamed when others showed up in our lives, maybe we were the sibling that was dragged along, and were treated like a ball and chain around our older brother’s ankle.  It could have been as we were sharing that important story, well it was important to us, that we finally noticed everyone rolling their eyes…

Being embarrassed by someone, or being the person everyone is ashamed to admit they are related too are simply opposite sides of the same coin. The relationship is invariably fractured, maybe even shattered, as we wonder will they ever change… will we ever change…

As I thought through this passage from the book of Hebrews, there is one phrase that keeps coming back to mind…

. ¹¹ For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers

He is not ashamed to call us brothers…

Can you hear Me now?

Knowing that truth, that Jesus is NOT afraid to call us His brothers and sisters, is something that I pray we never forget.  It is what the writer of Hebrews is telling us that we need to pay closer attention to – literally to grasp onto for dear life. If we don’t, we will drift away as the cares of the world drag us down stream toward the falls. We have to hear Jesus’ message, to what we hear in this place, and to what we read in the scriptures of the love of the Creator of all, the love of the God who cleanses us and sets us apart for a relationship,

who sets us apart for a relationship with Him!

This epistle, my favorite book of the New Testament makes a great deal of this relationship for which we have been saved.  The relationship we are delivered into, a relationship that is glorious, as it based in the love of God.

This isn’t just the message of a pastor, or even a prophet or apostle, or any other messenger of God, whether human or angelic.  But it is the message from which every other message of God takes its cue, it is the measure against all messages which are claimed to be from God must be measured.

But it starts with the Annointed/Chosen Christ

Often we hear of Christ being the Lord of all, and that we need to learn to submit to His lordship, to put Him in charge of our lives. There is a strong lesson there, and yes, we need to know Jesus reigns, that He is in charge, that the way He commissioned us to live life is the way we should, for we have learned to trust in Him.

There is another side to this idea of Lordship though, it isn’t just about our submitting to God, it is about His taking responsibility over us, that He would commit His life, and all eternity to being responsible for our lives.  The one who created the mountains, and the oceans, we’ve talked about it so many times, He has promised to make our lives a masterpiece, to forge them into something incredible and miraculous and His.

I think we’ve lost that in the church in the USA today.  I know when I talk to people who’ve have negative experiences with churches, it was because they felt an incredible pressure to conform – to shape up or ship out  – that it was about domination, and unless YOU made God the Lord of your life- and obeyed perfectly, you weren’t good enough.  That is, simply put, wrong.

Jesus being the Lord of your life isn’t about a perfect life submitting to the domination of another.  It is about the ill letting the nurse attend them, about the broken letting the One who can heal the brokenness get in and get to work…It’s about the leper hearing he’s healed, the prostitute hearing, “go and sin no more,” the adultress being offered living water. The one weary and tired being offered rest.  I love what I came across in my devotions this week,

If the outlook in your interior life, in your soul, is darkened, allow yourself to be led along by the hand, as a blind man would do. In time the Lord will reward this humble surrendering of your own judgment by giving you clarity of mind. 

What we surrender to the Lord is that which could have been embarrassing, that which is shameful, that which He suffered death to remove from us, and did.

Or as a favorite song of mine puts it:

You love every lost cause; you reach for the outcast
For the leper and the lame; they’re the reason that You came
Lord I was that lost cause and I was the outcast
But you died for sinners just like me, a grateful leper at Your feet

Except at the cross, where He died for the joy of bringing us into the love of God,

For listen again to Hebrews, when it talks about Jesus being Lord…

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. ⁹ But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

He was crowned with glory and honor because He was willing to experience death for you, for me, to bear the shame, and disgrace that we were, that we struggle with, as we struggle to pay attention, to grasp on for dear life, for eternal life, this very message that occurs in the next paragraph

¹⁰ For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. ¹¹ For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,

In committing to be our Lord, in committing to care for us, He commits to bringing us, among many sons and daughters, to glory!

He commits to being never ashamed to call His brothers, never embarrassed to deal with our frailty, our immaturity, our brokenness!  He went to the cross to deal with it all, and in our baptism – we are united to Him, we have life in Him and are cleansed and claimed as His. The scripture describes as having one source of sanctification, that of the Father who raised Christ from the dead, and with Him, you and I!

You are His beloved family, He is your beloved Lord…

That is the message that we have to hold onto my friends, that we have been so cleansed, so rescued, so made holy and set apart for a relationship with God that nothing can separate us from God’s love.  Nothing.

You are His family, He is our beloved Father, Jesus our brother, by His decision not ours.  This is our hope, it is that He clings to us with more determination that even found in our desperation.

Don’t neglect that, celebrate it daily, you have been adopted by the Father, for you have been cleansed by the Spirit, and your brother Jesus, is never ashamed to be there for you….

And there, sharing in the love of Trinity, we find something special, the peace of God which passes all understanding, and a peace in which we are guarded, our hearts and minds secured and kept safe by our brother Jesus.

AMEN?