Pastor Scott
Jonas
Hebrews 2
Jesus>Humanity
Hebrews
Chapter two. Last week’s sermon on
chapter one was entitled Jesus is greater than Angels. This week it’s Jesus is greater than
humanity. So Let’s take a honest look at
modern humanity.
I love experiments
that shine light on where we are as a human race. Thursday and Friday I attended the Global
Leadership Summit telecast. A woman
shared this experiment. Graduate
students were told that they had 5 minutes to go across campus and give an
impromptu presentation. Along the way,
they found somebody injured asking for help.
That person was an actor but the graduate student didn’t know that. All they knew is that they had to get somewhere
on campus in a hurry and in front of them was someone in physical need who is
pleading for their help. What percentage
of the graduate students stopped and helped?
Come up with a number in your head.
How many say that over 2/3 of people stopped and helped? How many people say that less than a third of
people stopped? How many say it was
somewhere in between? It was less than
10%.
It gets much
worse. The graduate students were not
picked at random they were at a very specific type of school. It’s called a seminary. They were all studying to be pastors. The impromptu presentation was a devotion on
the good Samaritan. While they were
contemplating Jesus’ parable about loving your neighbor they ran past a hurt
human being. 90% of them did that. I probably would have been one of them. You probably would have been one of them.
Hebrews
chapter 2 says that humanity failed to save the world. So God sent Jesus as the savior.
Modern people don’t believe
this. They act as if humanity is saving
the world. There is a word for that,
Humanism. This philosophy believes that
people are basically good at their core. If we just get our minds together we
will figure out all of the problems that haunt us. Poverty will be eradicated. Greed will be no more. Racism will be a thing of the past. The world is getting better because humanity
is getting better. God has nothing to do
with it.
There are
pretty good stats to track that world conditions are improving. In the year 1800 around 15% of the world was
literate, today that number flips to 85% who can read and write. The life expectancy in America in 1800 was
under 40 years old. Today it is twice
that and the same is true around the world.
Personal Income was around $1000 in 1800 averaged out across the
globe. Today it is four times that
taking inflation into account. In 1800,
over 90% of the world lived in extreme poverty.
Today it is less than 10%. The
world is vastly more educated, resourced, and healthy. So the story that we tell ourselves is that
humanity is exceling. We don’t need God.
But that ignores everything that
happened before 1800. Before Jesus came
the world was progressing and regressing.
Innovations would be made but kings and cultures would hoard them. Then a bigger army would come along and wipe
them out. The average human being was
destitute, illiterate and destined for a short brutish life.
That is why God sent messengers into
the world. As Hebrews says, He sent
Angels to give us a message of hope.
Hold on because help is coming.
The Angels were not the last messengers of hope. God sent prophets who brought humanity the
good news. God has not forgotten
us. He has a plan.
God created
humans a little lower than himself. We
received qualities from our maker. We
have the capacity for empathy. We can
see someone who has fallen off a bike and feel the need to go over and offer a
helping hand. God gave us the capacity
for love. We can see a fellow creature
and have compassion on her. God gave us
a capacity to care. We are able to take
responsibility for one another. When we
see someone who is lacking we can take ownership and say, “It is my
responsibility to restore you.” Angels
weren’t given empathy, love and responsibility. It was Adam and Eve and you and me.
But Adam and
eve fell into sin and you and I continue to repeat the pattern. Every king of every nation has repeated the
pattern. So God sent the ultimate
messenger, his son. If people listen to
Angels and Prophets then surely humanity will listen to the Son of God.
God put
everything in humanities’ hands in the garden.
Man and woman were supposed to secure health and fruitfulness for
everyone. But we threw it away. Creation was a never ending resource that we
squandered. So God sent Jesus to do what
humans were not able to do.
He became
the new adam. The Father put everything
under his feet. He left nothing out of
his control. He reclaimed creation. It may not look that way. He showed us how it is done.
In order
that this world may live he had to die.
He was a seed that was planted in the ground. When he emerged from the earth in the
resurrection it was like a little sprout of a vine emerging. The resurrection of the Son began a growth of
life that slowly spread over Asia, Africa, and Europe. This vine grew over North America, South
America, over every continent. It took 2000
years of growth for the life of Jesus to spread over all of creation. Wherever Christians brought the Gospel, life
flourished.
You would
think that Jesus would disown us for the mess we made but Hebrews says it is
the opposite. Hebrews 2 says that Jesus
is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.
That is an amazing story.
Humanists story is that people are cosmic accidents who figured out how
to not kill each other. Our story is
that the creator of the universe came down and suffered for his brothers and
sisters.
If you only
love humanity then you will never see Jesus.
But if you love Jesus, he gives you a world of brothers and
sisters. And if we love Jesus we will
try to tell them a better story than we are educated monkeys figuring things
out. We will our brothers and sisters
the truth.
That
Experiment in the beginning of the sermon is a good reminder for us. Whenever we think that that we got life all
figured out, we do something that reveals our true nature. All it takes is a little busyness to take
away the things that make us a little lower than the Angels. It is so easy for us to lose our
humanity. The good news is that our
humanity is never truly lost. Jesus
picks it up for us and hands it back.