Nine months from today is Christmas Day. The church celebrates today, March 25th, as the Festival of the Annunciation in commemoration of the fact that the Angel Gabriel brought the Word of God to Mary, announcing to her that she would conceive and bear in her flesh the very Son of God. This evening's text from the Book of Hebrews coincides with the Annunciation as it speaks of the Son of God becoming our brother, taking on our flesh and blood.

In God's design we are bound not to humanity in general but to a specific family. We are bound to parents, to brothers and sisters, to children by blood. When God created Eve, He fashioned her from Adam's own flesh and so Adam exclaimed, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." And out of the flesh and blood of Adam and Eve, God established the human family. God took on that flesh and blood in the womb of Mary and was born a man. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, says the writer to the Hebrews. Jesus becomes our Brother that He might be the high priest of our salvation.

Our text puts it like this, "Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted." In His flesh our High Priest has suffered the same things which we must suffer. We suffer because of sin. Sometimes we suffer as result of sins which we have committed. In other words, our sinful actions are hurtful not only to other people but to ourselves as well. Other times we suffer because of the sinful deeds of other people, that is, we are made victims. Jesus did not suffer for His own sin; He was without sin. But He did surely suffer with our sins. He carried in His body the wounds of our abuse. He willingly made Himself a victim of the world's sin for us and our salvation. Isaiah says that He "was oppressed and afflicted" and that He was "wounded for our transgressions." Jesus is well-acquainted with suffering. He bears it all: Rejection by men, betrayal by one of His own disciples and desertion by the rest, the pure physical pain of His passion, and most of all - forsakenness by God Himself. Never was there suffering like the suffering of Jesus Christ.

A bit later on the Epistle to the Hebrews we read that "we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (4:15). The temptations that are common to us, the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil were faced by Jesus. We see this most clearly in Jesus' temptation in the wilderness for forty days and nights. Satan tempted Jesus to give in to the desires of His own flesh, to serve Himself by turning stones into bread. The Tempter baited Jesus to gain worldly prestige by using putting His divinity on display by jumping down from the pinnacle of the temple. The Father of lies offered Jesus the kingdoms of this world if He would only bow down and worship him. Those temptations did not stop after the Lord's time in the wilderness was over. Satan would be back. He would be back in the person of Peter as Peter rebukes Jesus for speaking of the cross, suffering, and death. Satan would be there in the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus struggled in prayer to do the will of the Father, to drink the cup of suffering that was set before Him. And Satan would be there on Good Friday in the jeering voices of the mockers who cried out, "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross and then we will believe in you."

Jesus is no stranger to the temptations which you face. He has already confronted those temptations and He has won the victory over them. Therefore, He is able to help you in the times of your temptation.

As Jesus is a partaker of our flesh and blood, He shares the fate that is common to all flesh. He becomes obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Our text says that Jesus shared in our flesh and blood, that through "death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil and release those were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The slave master has his whip that he uses to instill fear and exercise power over the slaves. The devil's whip is death. All human beings are held in slavery by the fear of death. Jesus comes to this earth, to this slave camp, in the form of a slave, yet He will not render obedience to the slave master. He yields obedience only to His Father even when His flesh is cut with the cords of the slave master's whip. As the final lash of that whip falls across His back, He prays, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." He dies and yet through that death which appeared to be defeat, He destroyed him who had the power of death and so released us from captivity to death.

Our Brother is our High Priest. The blood which He shed for our atonement gives us cleansing and forgiveness of sins. By His dying on the cross, He has won for us the victory over death and the devil. Remember the words of the hymn:

  "As by one man all mankind fell
  And born in sin, was doomed to hell,
  So by one Man, who took our place,
  We all received the gift of grace."

That one Man is our Brother, our flesh and blood. In His flesh and blood, we have redemption. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.