Jesus is the Better King | Hebrews 2:5-13
Outside of Jesus, who is your favorite Christmas character? You have the shepherds, Mary and Joseph, the Inn keeper, the little drummer boy and the three wise men. The funny thing is that the little drummer boy was made up and the three wise men did not show up until Jesus was 2 years old. Also, they were not actually kings, but pagan astrologers; we do not know how many of them there were, and they were from Persia or Arabia. Even though they weren’t kings, they were in search of the KING of KINGS. I contend that everyone is in search for the true KING. Throughout the centuries even to modern pop culture, we our obsessed with royalty. When we think of kings; we think of British royalty or fairy tales (Lord of the Rings) or hamburgers (Burger King). But kings in history, were those who ruled their people, but also cared for them, gave them identity, significance, purpose and meaning. Each of us has a deep and abiding sense that we belong to someone or something greater. We were created for something beyond ourselves. We attach ourselves to sports teams, political parties, pop culture icons and a never-ending desire to be greater than we are. We are all in search of a King. The writer of Hebrews is telling us who the King we are in search of is: Jesus.
Hebrews was written to help believers not to give up on Christianity. These believers had faced severe persecution and suffering, with many of their friends departing the faith and returning to their old way of life in Judaism. They questioned, “If God loves me so much, why is my life so hard? Did I make a mistake?” They were tempted to abandon Christianity altogether. This is one of the more difficult books in the NT to understand, but the message that is repeated throughout the book is to keep our eyes on Jesus because HE IS ALWAYS BETTER. Hebrews 2 teaches us that we do not need to fear because our sovereign King entered our broken world to fix what we have broken.