We're continuing in Hebrews and today will be in Chapter 4,
verses 14 through 5 verse 10. Therefore since we have a great
high priest who has passed through the heavens Jesus, the
son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with
our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we
are yet without sin. Therefore let us approach the
throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive Mercy.
See and find Grace to help us in time of need.
For every high priest taken from among men is appointed in
matters pertaining to God for the people to offer both gifts
and sacrifices for sins. He isn't able to do, he is able
to deal gently with those who are ignorant and who go astray
since he also is closed with weakness because of this, he
must make an offering for his own sins as well as for the
people. No one takes this Honor on
himself instead a person is called by God.
Just as Aaron was in the same way Christ did not exalt himself
to become high priest, but God who said to him, you are my son
today. I have become your father, also
says, in another place you are a priest forever.
According to the order of Melchizedek, during his Earthly
life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud, cries and
tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.
And he was heard because of his reverence, Although he was the
son, he learned obedience from what he suffered after he was
perfected. He became the source of Eternal
salvation for all who obey him. And he was declared by God, the
high priest. According to the order of
Melchizedek, this is the word of God.
So recently, I feel like my life has been a bit of a blur.
I don't know if you've ever been there, I feel like all my days
are running together. Yes, it's the busyness of life
but probably more than that. This is just been a emotionally
taxing season. There's a lot of different
circumstances going on in and around my life to the point
often that I don't even know what I'm feeling or why I'm
feeling it. You know, if it's one or two
things in your life, you can easily point to that thing.
For me, it's been a lot. Of different things.
And so, it's just been interesting and I know that I'm
not alone in that, even here in our church family.
I know that there have been some heavy situations that have taken
place, and when you're in one of those Seasons or experiencing
some of those overwhelming emotions, there's not much
better than being in the presence of someone who just
gets it. Like, maybe they've walked
through the same thing, the exact same circumstance, so you
don't have to try to explain How you feel?
They just understand. Maybe they're just an empathetic
person, right? Who you feel?
They know you and you've known them.
And so you feel like you can trust them with your full range
of emotions. You don't have to just put the
smile on and continue forward the other night on Wednesday.
I think it was on my way into Madison for an evening meeting.
Something I was doing over there and I was driving that way.
And I was pretty emotionally overwhelmed and honestly, I just
needed someone to talk to and the spirit reminded me that I
Friend and a mentor who knows me extremely well and that he was
going to be dropping his kids off at this event.
I was going to and so I just text him I was like hey would
you wait up on me? And he's like we already left
but I can turn around. I was like, would you please do
that? And I texted him and just said,
hey, hang out here and so I met him in the parking lot and I
walked up to him and he's like, hey what's going on?
And I think he was a little I probably surprised him a little
bit because I'd been bawling. My eyes are red and I just told
him, I said Jamie, I just need a hug and I gave him a hug and
just cried for a minute. And he just sat there with me
for a second. I briefly shared some high level
details of what I was going through, but I didn't have to.
I told him, I said, I need to talk to someone.
I didn't have to give a backstory, I didn't have to try
to help you catch you up with, what's going on in my life.
I could just dump it on you and it would be.
Okay. I just needed someone to
sympathize with where I was and that is what he did for me in
that moment. And my hope is that you have
some people like that in your life.
If not that God would provide them, but more importantly than
any other human, there is one who can empathize and sympathize
with us in regard to any situation that we are facing
either day or night from suffering, Temptations to death
to loneliness to pain, fear grief, our passage today that
you just heard red serves as a witness. to Jesus, who is the
great and sympathetic high priest, who sees you, where you
are at and who sympathizes with you and who stands as the source
of your salvation, from all the Brokenness that this world
offers So good morning again, church.
As I said earlier, in my name is Joel.
I have the privilege of serving as the pastor for preaching and
oversight here alongside Kevin, our pastor for shepherding.
And as always, I say this every week I'm so grateful to look out
and see your faces this morning. But but especially on this
Bittersweet day. As you heard read a moment ago,
we're continuing in our sermon series through the book of
Hebrews today, we're looking at 4:14 and going through 5:10 if
you want to follow along will So have versus on the screen even
though I'm probably not referencing many because I'm
preaching a shorter sermon than normal, so I'll be alluding to
them, but not reading each of them.
So those of you that have been with us for some time.
Now, I'm going to quiz you. The theme of Hebrews is what All
right, we'll go with that. Jesus is better, right?
And we say better than what and we say, everything Jesus is
greater and more Supreme period and the preacher of Hebrews is
exploring this concept. And today he begins diving
deeper into one of the main Concepts.
He wants to explore and that is that Jesus is the true and
better high priest who mediates and atones for the sins of his
people. People.
Now he's kind of alluded to it earlier and he's actually going
to unpack it into greater detail later.
So for sake of time we're not going to go into deep detail
today either but we are going to start laying some groundwork
because to understand not only the whole Bible, but the book of
Hebrews, we need to understand the old Covenant sacrificial
system that the Israelites function under.
And one of the main roles within that system was the role of high
priest. So let me give you Little bit of
background on priest that the original audience would have
already had in their minds. So the formal Office of the
priesthood was established in Exodus.
When God gives the Covenant law to Moses who we've already seen
talked about, he gives them the law to Moses at Mount Sinai for
the nation of Israel. Now, by this point, in the story
Humanity had already proven themselves to be fallen and
corrupt and so God provides a way for him to still Will dwell
among his people? And this was done through the
old Covenant system and the Tabernacle system and the main
thing at the center of, that was the office of the priesthood.
And so what happened is God chooses.
Aaron, who is Moses? His brother Moses.
Is this prophet? He chooses Aaron to be this
priests and serve as the first high priest of his people.
And he says that through his offspring, the levite, the
levitical people that the priesthood would continue.
And so these high, We're set up to offer up regularly gifts and
sacrifices before God, on behalf of both themselves and the
people so that they could have the presence of God among them,
God is Holy and set apart and the sins of the people had to be
atoned for. And this wasn't just because God
was angry, and if they came into his presence they would be
destroyed. It was that his glorious so
magnificent that when we come with our sin we are Going to be
destroyed. But through this sacrificial
system, God would be able to dwell among his people.
So you had this high priest and the other priests around him.
But not only that, a lot of people miss this that the entire
nation of Israel was called a kingdom of priests.
So we kind of have concentric circles.
You have a high priest representing God before the
nation of Israel and the nation of Israel is role was supposed
to be to represent. God before the world, he says,
I'm going to make you a kingdom of priests a light to the
nation's. It wasn't just I'm blessing
Israel for Israel. Saying, I choose you to be a
light to the world and bring all people underneath the good Rule
and reign of God, but the problem is as humans.
Do they fell. So the entire priesthood go read
like Ezekiel and other prophets. It becomes absolutely corrupt.
I mean, the prophets are having to call it out.
Not only that the entire nation of Israel follows suit and they
end up back in Exile, we've talked about that recently.
And so throughout the threat of the scriptures, we are asking
where is the faithful high priest?
Who's going to lead us properly? There is this anticipation of
one who would Faithfully fulfill the vocation of mediator to
mediate between God and the people who could atone once and
for all for the sins of the people so that they could
finally and forever be in the full blazing glory of God, not
just in a temple or around it or with the cloud if I.
But actually the Blazing face of God and not be burn top.
This concept of the high priest and the sacrificial system would
have been extremely familiar for the first hearers of this
preacher sermon which we believe Hebrews is.
So the preacher isn't going to incredible background, he just
mentions a few keywords as I've heard him called hyperlinks that
take us back to the hill old Hebrew scriptures and bring in
Christ and shows us how ultimately the old system will
see the Covenant later. But today essentially the high
East is fulfilled in Christ himself we could spend weeks on
just this text we're not going to.
But basically the preacher is unlike flooding us with a just
ton of theologically Rich truths And they're all filled with hope
great hope about the reality of Jesus, as our great high priest.
If you remember last week, we ended kind of one of the warning
passages and it ended with the truth that before God, all of
our hearts, the intentions, everything, our thoughts, it's
all exposed and naked before God, and if we're honest, as a
little bit of a scary thought, Because if we're honest were all
in need of a high priest, but the good news is, that's what
Jesus becomes for us and it's explicitly.
Clear? The answer when our sin is
exposed, when the thoughts and intentions of our hearts are
exposed. We want to run from God.
And literally what he says is, therefore, if it's true that
everything is exposed and you must give an account in chapter
4 verse 14. He says, therefore since we have
a great high priest, who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness.
The answer is to run to Jesus, not away.
We are told in our text, that Jesus is the son of God.
Meaning he is the Eternal son with all the rights and
privileges. He did not have to become flesh
and become our true high priest. But he did, we're told that this
son was appointed to be the high priest.
Just like Aaron. He didn't choose this, but even
better because he says that Jesus doesn't come from the
Earthly line of Aaron, where priests would live and die and
the new one would rise up and live and died.
It was this cycle where there was never Full Eternal living,
but he's from the Eternal line of Melchizedek.
It's forever don't get Mackenzie that.
Do that them trip you up its this mysterious figure.
It's meant to be a little mysterious.
Okay, we're going to see him more in Hebrews.
I promise we're going to come back to it, so set it to the
side. But for right now, the point is
the eternity of Melchizedek it's forever.
This is not a high priest where he dies and never rises again.
He lives forever. This priest serves us once and
for all and intercedes for us constantly.
We're told that Jesus in his life as the high priest was
tempted in every way as you are all the ways and temptations, we
Face Temptations to sin. Temptations to walk away.
Temptations to not trust, God's plan.
Jesus was faced with all of that.
He gets it because he took on flesh and human weakness.
He gets what it what it is like to face the limits of humanness
he knows our frame, he knows we are dust.
We saw that a few weeks ago, but the difference between him, he
does become flesh. Just like the Earthly high
priest. But the difference between him
and the Earthly High priests were told in verse 3 of chapter
5, the Earthly priest had to atone for not only the sins of
the people, but his own self. Sins.
But not Jesus, he remains perfectly faithful yet without
sin. He is the perfect and complete
Priestly, ambassador of God and he represents God to the world
perfectly. You want to know what God looks
like, look to the face of Jesus. You can't say that about any
other human. And it even is true in the face
of suffering. Staying steadfast all the way to
the cross and 5:8. We're told that he learns
obedience, which doesn't mean that he ever disobeyed.
What this means is that in his humanness he experienced what it
was like to learn how to trust his father completely and it
wasn't a mechanical thing. Jesus being God in flesh.
Wasn't this mechanical thing? Like he was just a robot.
You know what it tells us in verse 7, it says Is that during
his Earthly life? Jesus offered prayers and
appeals with loud, cries and tears.
Do we think of Jesus that way? Loud, cries and Tears.
Like, I've been there that was, that was me this week, like
walking around in the back side of Bank Street.
Hoping, no one could hear me, like Jesus.
I don't even know what I'm feeling right now, but I need
your help. I don't know if I'm sad or
happy. You're at peace.
I don't even know. If you think Jesus was a stoic
emotionless person, we've missed the Jesus of the Bible.
Jesus prayed all throughout his life, we see it, John 17, and
all throughout where he was still away to just be alone with
his father. But we probably see this most
clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane.
When he prayed, not my will, But thine be done.
Unlike Adam who in a garden rejected, God's will.
Jesus, even though in his Humanity, in this Garden of
Gethsemane, he begs for another way.
Is there any other way? This is hard.
I don't like this. Nevertheless, not my will.
I'm be done. I Surrender.
He remains faithful and because of this he was the perfect
sacrifice Earthly. High priest would offer up
animals constantly on behalf of their own sin and the sin of the
people. But Jesus offered up himself,
And not for his own sin, but solely for yours.
And because he is the son who becomes the perfect high priest
as he's called to do. We're told that he passes
through the heavens, which means that he enters the very presence
of God, not the Earthly high priest would enter the most,
holy Place once a year and he had to go through all these
rules and rituals and cleanse himself and he would come into
this place once a year. But Jesus passes into the very
presence of God, not in a tabernacle made by hands, but
the very throne room where God dwells That's why, when Jesus
dies and he says it is finished on the cross.
We see the veil of the temple ripped into.
You could never look into the most holy place.
It was forbidden, you would die. but when Jesus says it's
finished, the veil is ripped open and anyone who wants can
come in and look, And not only that but the presence of God
escapes to flood the entire Cosmos.
It is no longer contained. Inside a small room, only
accessible once a year through rituals and laws.
It is now released to All Nations, all tribes all tongs
accessible through the blood of Christ.
And by the power of the spirit, he does not stay dead.
We're told that our text said he cried and prayed with with loud
appeals to be freed from death. And his cries were answered on
Easter morning. It looked like the father
ignored him for three days, but he didn't, he defeats in and the
grave and he rises again to become the ascended and exalted
glorified. Son.
And we're told in Romans that right now, for those who are his
right now, no matter where you're at today, Jesus is
interceding for you at the right hand of the father.
The spirit is praying for you with groanings that can't even
be uttered. When you don't even know what to
say. He gets it and he is praying the
perfect prayer you need. And through this Perfection,
we're told he's through his suffering, we're told he's
perfected. This word in the Greek is the
same root word is, when he said it is finished on the cross, it
just means the work is completed and he now becomes the source of
salvation, for all who obey the gospel, what does it mean?
What does the commander to obey? Believe in the fall in the sun?
Simple? Faith.
In the work of Christ, it's trust in that his life, death
burial and Resurrection receive the Perfect Obedience of Christ
on your behalf and when that happens when we quit trying to
do it in our own strength, in our own works and we surrender
to him, we are welcomed into the kingdom of God, with shouts of
rejoicing. This flood of truth, about Jesus
is our great high priest and and our preacher from Hebrews tells
us, if all these things are true, I got a couple things.
I want exhort you to do. Don't just run to these things,
but let me give you a couple things.
First of all, in verse 14 of chapter 4, he tells you hold
fast to your confession, don't run away from the hope of the
Gospel. Don't run to trying to figure it
out in your own strength. Hang on.
It's all we have, we are not the faithful ones, Jesus is so hang
on to him. And secondly, in verse 16 he
tells us to approach the throne of grace with boldness.
So we may receive mercy and find Grace to help us in time of
need. Now, in our context, this might
not land how it should. But you have to understand under
the terms of the old Covenant, which these original, here's
would have been super familiar with no one could ever
approached the most holy place, which represented the dwelling
of God let alone with boldness. Yes.
I mean there were rules because I God's like hey I don't want
you to die. So let me give you these, these
rules and regulations. Only the high priest could even
enter the most. Holy place.
That was once a year. But now in Christ, you no matter
who you are, no matter your ethnic background, no matter,
your income level, no matter your education level, no matter
your socioeconomic status wherever you were born.
Whether it was the wrong side of the tracks or not.
It doesn't matter. You are exhorted and called, and
may I say commanded to approach the throne of the Living God
with boldness? That's crazy.
Like, are you sure you really don't know who I am?
You really don't know what I've done.
This is radical. And it's an invitation to you.
No matter who you are, what you've done for the first time,
or the millionth Rhonda Jesus and his open arms and this is
offered to you. Because Christ is your high
priest who intercedes for you and sympathizes with you.
And I love this because the same prayers that he prayed while he
was living in his flesh. He is now praying for you along
with the spirit when you're crying and full of Anguish.
And you can't even put words to the Ian's you're feeling Jesus
gets it. I can't say I understand what
you're going through. There's a lot of situations
where I can't say hey I've been there.
But I know one who has, I know one who sees you.
And here's you and sympathizes with you.
There is no one who gets you. Like Jesus.
No one Earthly brothers and sisters in the family of God,
which we are, they can sit with you and weep with you and they
should. I hope we have tangible
representations of that, but no one ever cares for you, like,
Jesus. And here's the beauty, not only
does he sympathize with you because people can sympathize
with you and I think maybe a better word is empathy empathy
for our context or we're at because it's not just, oh, bless
his heart. I feel.
Sorry for him like his sympathy is actual compassion.
That moves him to action. He can actually save you.
He will rescue you when you call out to him, your prayers will be
answered. Now, maybe not in the time of
manner, you'd pick there might be suffering in your own garden.
Of grief and surrender where you're wrestling with the father
and saying, I don't like this. It is there any other way?
Like I don't like this path forward.
I don't like what you're taking me through.
Can we go around it? Can we wrestle and we grown and
we cry. And then we say, I trust you, I
don't understand it. I don't get it but not my will.
But yours be done and here's what I can promise you.
On the authority of scripture, there is resurrection hope for
the one who trusts in the work of Jesus.
Again, it might not be in the here and now but he will redeem
every bit of grief and pain and as you trust him you become
changed. You are transformed into a new
people when this is what Jesus is create and we surrender, you
know what were called and first Peter our Royal Nation.
God's people a kingdom of priests you will become Little
Priest to the world. You become to the world.
That Jesus was to you to the father and you're just bringing
people into the great high priest.
We're told were a kingdom of priests.
East and you know what it says, why does this so that you may
proclaim the excellencies, The Marvelous Glory of him, who
brought you out of Darkness into light We sympathize with others
like Christ sympathizes with us. That's why we go to the
nation's, we want to see more Glory.
We go because Jesus came to us. We sinned because the father
sent those closest to him, his own son to rescue us.
And we can't do this in our own strength.
It is all through Christ alone, all of this is made possible,
because Jesus is the true and better high priest, who sees us
who sympathizes with us and who saves us.