Our Great High Priest - 16

Well, our text for this morning, the last three verses of Hebrews chapter four, brings us once again to the truth about Jesus as our high priest.

A theme that was first introduced in chapter two and then also mentioned in chapter three. And one that is going to be unfolded and explained in much greater detail in the verses and chapters to come from where we are today. And so today we are revisiting a doctrine that we have touched upon before. We're going to see it in a greater clarity and I trust in greater application to our lives than perhaps we have known before. Now, it strikes me that most Christians don't give a lot of attention to the doctrine of Jesus as our high priest.

We don't normally think of him that way. And that probably is because this is not a doctrine that is emphasized in most of the other books of the New Testament, but it is greatly emphasized in the book of Hebrews. And so if you neglect the book of Hebrews, you will neglect this truth. If you study the book of Hebrews, you will become fascinated with this very important truth about yet another aspect of the work of Jesus Christ in redemption, in that he has become the high priest of those who trust in him. And in our text for today in verses 14 through 16, we see two exhortations that are attached to the information that is given to us about Christ as our high priest. The first exhortation of verse 14 and the second one in verse 16. The first one is, let us hold fast our confession. Do you see it at the end of verse 14? Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Because we have a high priest, because he is Jesus, the son of God, because he has passed through the heavens. Therefore, this exhortation, let us hold on to, let us grip tightly, let us never let go our confession. And then the second exhortation is in the first part of verse 16, which says, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace.

Building upon the information of verse 15, for 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. And then this exhortation, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Two great exhortations.

And in order to understand them properly, we need to examine carefully the text into which, in which these exhortations are found. And so my sermon this morning is structured around those two exhortations. Point number one, let us hold fast.

Point number two, let us draw near. Number one, let us hold fast. The first exhortation in our text in verses 14 through 16. And we see there are reasons given for this exhortation, let us hold fast. And the reasons actually are what have come before the text as we see in a verse 14, as we might well conclude by the opening words, seeing them. We have a great high priest. And that's a connecting phrase based upon what we have seen, based upon what has gone before, based upon what we have already studied in this book of Hebrews.

Seeing then we have a great high priest. And so the reasons for this exhortation are looking back to two things in particular. And they are number one, the danger of falling away. And number two, the reality of a coming judgment. The danger of falling away. Verse 11 of chapter four, let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, that heavenly rest, lest anyone fall or fall away.

According to the same example of disobedience. Fall away as the Old Testament Jews in the wilderness fell away from their confession of faith. From their holding on to the promises of God and therefore did not enter their rest.

Either the physical and symbolic rest of the land of Canaan, that was denied them. In order to demonstrate an even greater penalty that they did not enter the heavenly rest. And it was all because they did not continue to hold on to their confession. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession and not let it go like these who went before us did. There is a danger of falling away. And then there is also a danger of future judgment.

We saw that last Sunday. Verse 12 for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword. Piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Seeing then that we have a great high priest, let us hold fast our confession.

And so the reasons for this exhortation are the danger of falling away. A danger to the Old Testament Israelites, a danger to those to whom this book of the Bible is written, a danger to the professing people of God in our day. And that danger is a great danger because of the reality of the coming judgment. We must all stand before God and give an account. And what is our account going to be in that day?

How will we do when we stand before God in that day? That those are the reasons for this exhortation. But now moving from this somber warning, which is very much needed. We move now into a season of encouragement.

That's what the rest of our text is all about. There are provisions for this exhortation. This exhortation to hold fast to our confession because of the possibility of falling away, because of the reality of the coming judgment. But there are provisions for this exhortation to hold fast to our confession. And they are wonderful provisions, seeing then that we have a great high priest.

Imagine that. New Covenant believers have a high priest. Now this would be particularly important to the people to whom this epistle to the Hebrews is written. Because who were they? They were Jews. They were Hebrews. They were Hebrews who had professed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet clearly some, if not many of them, were giving indications that they were thinking about turning back to the Old Testament system, back to the Old Covenant.

There are probably a number of reasons for that. One of them being the persecution which they were facing. Those who professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ from the Jewish community, in which the majority rejected Jesus as the Messiah, were not looked upon favorably, were they?

In fact, they were persecuted rather severely. And that is a great trial. And some were no doubt saying, well, if the Old Covenant was good enough for our forefathers, if the Old Covenant was good enough for Abraham, if it was good enough for Moses, if it was good enough for David, if it was good enough for the prophets, then why do I need to leave that behind and embrace something else? I'm going back to that Old Covenant. And the writer of Hebrews is saying you can't.

Too late. You were born too late for that. If you have been born before Jesus came, then holding on to the Old Covenant, believing those provisions is not only all that was needed, it's all that was possible because that's all that was given. But now that Jesus has come and ushered in a new covenant and brought to fruition all of these types and shadows and symbols and indicators that were pointing to something greater than the Old Covenant, now that the New Covenant has come, you can't turn back safely. You can't turn back and enter heaven.

Don't go back. Another reason why some of these Hebrews may have been tempted to turn back is because not only were their unbelieving Jewish friends persecuting them, but probably were taunting them with various matters. And one of them may have been, you don't have a high priest. We do. Who's representing you before God?

How can you hope to be right with God? We have a high priest. We have a temple. We have sacrifices. We have a priesthood. We have all of these things that were given by God to Moses and to our forefathers. And we have these things and we are leaning upon these things. We are trusting these things to gain access and favorability with God.

Who do you have? And the rite of Hebrews says, here's who you have. You have Jesus. And among other things that he is, Jesus is our great high priest. We have a high priest.

Don't let your neighbors taunt you in this way. In fact, there's a threefold description of our high priest in verse 14. He is a better high priest for he is a great high priest. He is a better sacrifice because he has passed through the heavens.

Aaron and his successors never did that. And he is a better mediator because he is Jesus, the son of God. Seeing then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God. Let us hold fast to our confession.

Don't let it go. We have a better high priest, a great high priest, a superior high priest. Better than what?

Better than who? Better than Aaron, the high priest, the first high priest. Better than that whole succession of high priest who followed Aaron.

Yes, they were God's appointment for that time at that place, that covenant, which has now been replaced with the new covenant. And everything about the new covenant is better than the old covenant. And Jesus is our great high priest. He's better than Aaron and all of the high priests who were related to him. And that returns us to another theme that we saw earlier in the book of Hebrews, namely the superiority of Jesus Christ to the angels.

Remember, that's how the book opened. He's better than the angels. Angels were highly esteemed by Jewish people. Why, the angels, among other things, had delivered the word of God to their forefathers. But Jesus is better than the angels. He's better than Moses.

Remember that from earlier in the book? Moses, that great forerunner, that great forefather of the Jewish religion, that great inaugurator of the law of God given on Mount Sinai, that great mediator that went to God on behalf of the people and who brought back the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments upon them. Moses, that great deliverer who took them out of the land of Egypt with great power, demonstrating the miracles of God in their midst and led them into the wilderness and through the wilderness, that great one Moses. But Jesus is better than Moses.

Remember that section? Jesus is better than Joshua. Joshua led them across the Jordan into the Promised Land, but many of them failed to cross the Jordan because of their unbelief. And then in the Promised Land, Joshua was a great leader, Joshua was a great captain, Joshua was a great military strategist, Joshua was a great instrument in the hand of God to bring deliverance to God's people. But we have somebody who's better than that, better than Joshua. We have Jesus and now we see that we have a better high priest than Aaron. We have Jesus. Seeing then we have a great high priest. He's better than any high priest who has gone before. So we have a better high priest.

Secondly, we have a better sacrifice. Where's that told us in verse 14? Well, seeing then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Now this presupposes that we have some understanding of the Old Testament system and particularly what took place upon the Day of Atonement, today known as Yom Kippur, the highest holy day in the Jewish calendar. And on that day, Aaron and then his successors, the high priest, would take, they first would make a sacrifice to cover their own sins and then they would take the blood of the sacrificial animal, they would pass through the first veil into the holy place of the temple, the tabernacle and then the temple, and then they would pass through that second veil, a veil that no one else ever passed except the high priest and even the high priest only passed through that veil one day a year, that and that alone. But that high priest would pass through the first veil into the holy place, pass through the second veil into the Holy of Holies and then would sprinkle the blood of the atonement upon the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies and then would retreat and leave that place and not come back again for another year. But all of that was necessary for the sins of all of the people whom that high priest represented to be covered over by God in His mercy for another year. But our high priest has done something better than that. He didn't pass through an earthly veil, either number one or number two.

He passed through the heavens into the very presence of Almighty God. He did not present the blood of a sacrificial animal, which really is not capable of taking away sins. It's only a symbol.

It's only a token. It's only a place marker until the Lamb of God would come and Jesus has come, that very Lamb of God. And He passed into the very presence of God Almighty and as it were presented His own blood to God Almighty. Now I say as it were because I don't think we're supposed to understand that literally if some have taken it to mean that somehow the blood of Jesus Christ was sucked up from the dirt and from the sand and placed in a receptacle and Jesus took that into heaven, into the presence of God. But now it's a fulfillment of what Aaron did and in a similar fashion to Aaron presenting the blood upon the mercy seat, Jesus Christ passed through the heavenly veil into the presence of Almighty God and there presented Himself and His sacrifice as the final full atonement for the sins of all the people that He represented.

Well that's a better sacrifice than Aaron had. So he is a better high priest who offers a better sacrifice and we thirdly have a better mediator because of who he is. Who is he? He's Jesus the Son of God. Seeing then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. He is a superior representative who has offered a superior sacrifice. He is Jesus the Son of God, not Aaron, not sons of Aaron, descendants of Aaron, not Levites, not those who are men and only men, but He is Jesus the God-man, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the eternal King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the one who represents us. He's a better mediator and that's why the Bible tells us that we as new covenant believers have one and only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. That's the only one who avails. A superior representative than Aaron, a superior sacrifice than the one that Aaron offered, a sacrifice that is fully sufficient, it doesn't need to be repeated.

Aaron's sacrifice was good for one year and then it expired. I'm always a little bit irritated when I get ready to travel overseas and I dig in my drawer and I pull out my international driver's license and see that it's expired because it's only good for one year. Got to get another one. Now my North Carolina driver's license lasts several years, my passport lasts several years, but that international driver's license which I've carried with me on many trips and nobody's asked to see it, nobody's ever looked at it, nobody's ever called for it, but if they ever did and I didn't have it, that might not be a good thing. And so there we go and looky there, it expires two days before I depart for this next trip. Oh no, got to do it again.

And so I make my trip to Greensboro to the AAA office and I have my new mugshot and I plunk down my $27 or whatever and get my new international driver's license because the thing's only good for one year. Well in a sense that's the way the Old Testament sacrifices were that the priest Aaron, the high priest, offered on the Day of Atonement, that high and holy day, but it only lasted one year and the next year on the Day of Atonement, here he comes again. And the next year on the Day of Atonement, here he comes again. And the next year on the Day of Atonement, here he comes again through the veil, into the holy place, through the next veil, into the holy of holies, sprinkling the blood upon the mercy seat, asking forgiveness from God for the sins of all the people that he represents, leaving that place, going out to absent himself from it. He's not remaining in the presence of God, but he goes away from that holy presence of God and from that Shekinah glory of God, but it only lasts for a year and next year he comes back and does it again and again and again and again. I wonder how many times that had happened by the time the book of Hebrews was written to the Jewish professing believers in Jesus Christ in that day.

Hundreds of times. But we have a bitter mediator because he traveled through the heavens into the presence of God and he sat down. He didn't leave.

He sat down because his work is finished. The high priest never sat down. None of the priests sat down in the tabernacle. All of their work was all done standing and moving. There was no bench for the priest to sit on in the tabernacle.

If they got tired and needed to sit down, they had to get out of the temple and find a place someplace else to sit down because symbolically it was saying a very important fact, namely that the priest's work is never finished. It's never done. It's never complete. It wasn't intended to be. It was all symbolic.

It was all pointing to something better. But Jesus Christ passed through the heavenly veil into the presence of God Almighty, presented his sacrifice one time. It is complete. It is finished. As he said upon the cross, it is finished.

Done. Forever. And then sat down upon the throne in the presence of God because now he's finished with his work. No more work to do. He can sit down upon his throne.

A better mediator. And so how do we employ the benefits of this first exhortation? Seeing then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. First of all, we need to acknowledge the application of this exhortation to ourselves. It is common for people who are saved, have assurance of salvation, have walked with the Lord for a long time to come to a passage like this in the word of God and say, well, somebody over there needs to listen to this.

Somebody over there needs to do this. Well, please notice that the writer of Hebrews didn't say, you need to hold fast your confession. He said, let us, including himself, a mature Christian, no doubt, let us hold fast our confession. We need to acknowledge the application of this exhortation to ourselves. And then we need to evaluate our confession.

And what is that? Well, we would probably call that our profession, our claim to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says, let's hold fast our confession. And the confession can either be understood, that's an interesting word, it can either be understood as that which we have confessed or professed, and also indicate what it was that we believe, what it was that we profess to have believed. We talk about a confession of faith, meaning a written body of truth that says, this is what we believe, this is what we confess, this is what we profess to believe. But here is our confession, you can write it down and lay it on a table. But we ought to be able to do that with our faith.

What is your confession? The question is not exactly, do you believe? The question is, do you believe the truth? Do you believe the gospel? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?

Do you believe in Christ as he is presented in Scripture, not as he is often misunderstood in the minds of people who don't pay much attention to what the Bible says about him? There's a lot of secondhand Christianity. There's a lot of, I believe what I've heard others say type of Christianity. There's a lot of, I believe what my father or mother believed type of Christianity. And may I remind you, God has no grandchildren.

Nobody's saved because of the faith of their parents. The question is not, what did they believe? The question is, what do you believe? And do you know what that is? Can you define it?

Can you describe it? Can you tell us what your confession is? Because it surely is impossible to properly hold fast to your confession if you don't even know what it is you have said that you have confessed. Beyond that, are you clinging to, are you holding on to the truth of God's word, your confession? In other words, is your profession of faith not only true because it's based upon the truth of Scripture, not a misrepresentation of it, but is it genuine? Have you been truly born again?

Is it the result of a work of God's Spirit in your heart? Is that the confession that you are holding on to? Or maybe I should put it this way, is the truth of the gospel the confession you are holding on to?

And is your holding on to it a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart that you have been given the grace of God to believe the gospel and to cling to that, and that alone for your soul's salvation? Let us hold fast our confession. Let's guard against letting it slip.

Let's hold it fast with a tight grip. Let's not think we can just coast, okay? I've done that, you know, been there, done that, now I can go on to other things in regard to your believing in Jesus Christ. That's not what the Scripture represents. The Scripture represents that you believe in Christ and you continue to believe in Christ and you continue to believe in Christ and you go back to your faith in Christ and you continue to stir up your faith and renew your faith and tighten your grip upon Christ.

You cannot coast. And you see, this is our responsibility. This responsibility is given to every one of us. It was given to the writer of Hebrews.

It was given to the people he's writing to. It's given to us today. Let us hold fast our confession. Let us tighten our grip upon the gospel. Let's tighten our grip upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And that brings us therefore to the second exhortation which helps us to do this.

The first one is let us hold fast. The second exhortation is let us draw near. Now verse 15, for 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. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Let us draw near.

And why should we draw near? Well, because Jesus fully understands our weakness, verse 15, and because Jesus freely meets our needs, verse 16. He fully understands our weakness.

You say, well, he can't understand me. He's Almighty God. He passed through the heavens.

He's sitting upon the throne of God. He is eternal. He is transcendent. He is so far above me and beyond me in every way that there is no point of contact between us.

How can he possibly understand me? He is Almighty God, holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Yes, that's true, but that's not all he is. He is not only the Son of God, but he is the Son of Man.

And that phrase Son of Man, which in the Bible is in fact a messianic title, tells us that to become the Messiah, he had to envelope himself in human nature. The eternal, almighty God without beginning, without end, with all power, thrice holy, separate from sinners, nevertheless came to earth and roped himself in human flesh and lived among us and experienced what we experience, including the temptations that we experience. And yet he defeated them all.

He did not fall into any temptation. He did not sin in any way, but he felt the pull. He felt the strength. He felt the power.

He felt the impulse of every category of temptation, just like ourselves. We're very tempted in our frequent pity parties that we are very tempted to have from time to time to say, well, nobody's ever experienced what I've experienced. Nobody's ever had anything like this bad happen to them, like it's happened to me. Nobody else really knows what I'm going through. Young people like to say that to their parents. They don't understand me.

You don't know what I'm going through. Well, number one, they probably do. They've experienced a whole lot more than you have. They've experienced probably in some ways everything that you've experienced plus a whole lot more.

They've lived a whole lot longer. But even if you have experienced some things that your parents haven't, I can tell you something. There is a Savior sitting upon the throne of God in heaven in a glorified human body who lived upon the earth and, according to our text, experienced every category of temptation that you have ever experienced.

That's mind-boggling. Think of the temptations that you find most difficult, that you struggle with. And you probably say, Jesus could never have been tempted with that. Well, He was. At least something in that same category that means the temptation He had was really not essentially any different from your own. And yet He did not sin. He did not fall.

He did not succumb. In fact, His experience of temptation was far greater than ours because the one who resists to the end actually feels the pull, the weight, the strength of temptation far greater than the person who caves early on with that temptation. Here comes the temptation, and after just a short time, bang, I fall. I have experienced the temptation, but it wasn't as strong as the temptation on somebody who experienced it and resists it, experiences it and resists it, experiences it and resists it and resists it and resists it and resists it until the temptation is worn out because it cannot conquer. Who felt the full weight of that temptation the most, the one who buckled and caved at the beginning or the one who took it all the way to the end until finally the temptation withdrew as Satan withdrew from Jesus in the wilderness?

Yeah. Jesus fully understands our weakness. Though He is the Son of God, He is also the Son of Man. His transcendency does not in any way diminish His humanity. He was fully God. He is fully God, but also fully man.

Mystery of mysteries, but nevertheless true. And so He has experienced your temptations and mine. It's very strong. It's a double negative. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.

That's the Greek way of making the affirmative stronger, a double negative. It could have just said we have a high priest who understands our weaknesses, but to make it stronger, we do not have a high priest who cannot understand our weaknesses, a stronger positive. He was appointed to become our high priest. We read about that in Hebrews chapter 2. And He took our humanity in order to fulfill that assignment.

He had to. Let me read that section. Turn back one page or however your Bible is laid out to Hebrews 2 and let's read several verses. Verse 9 and following. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one. For which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare your name to my brethren. In the midst of the assembly, I will sing praise to you. And again, I will put my trust in him.

And again, here am I and the children whom God has given me. Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed he does not give aid to angels, but he does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in order to give aid to the seed of Abraham, therefore in all things he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. I think we understand the truth that for Jesus to bear the penalty for our sins, he had to become a man and die the death that we deserve to die.

As God in his deity, he cannot die. Taking upon him humanity, he had a life that he could lay down as a substitute for those who trust in him. But we also learn in this Hebrew passage that he took on our nature so that he would in a very real sense be our brother. He was made like unto his brethren. And as we also see in that passage in chapter 2 and more fully now in the passage in chapter 4, he took upon him the nature of man in order to become a perfect high priest.

To be a high priest who is able to truly represent the people that he's presenting a sacrifice for, he has to be one of the people. And so though he is the Son of God, transcendent and distant from man, he is also the Son of Man who is human, who is close, who has our nature, who is like us in every respect except for sin, who has experienced all the temptations that we have experienced and yet has successfully rejected them all. But he knows what they are like. He understands their power. He understands our weakness. He understands our falling for those temptations.

He was appointed to become our high priest. He took our humanity to fulfill that assignment. He experienced every type of human temptation.

He experienced those temptations to the limit and did not yield. Therefore, he understands all our temptations, all our needs, all our weaknesses. In fact, he not only is able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities because he became a man, but the text is actually stronger than that. He cannot fail to be touched.

Not only he can be touched, but he cannot fail to be touched. It is not simply possible that now he can understand, but it is impossible that he should not understand. He does understand completely and fully. And so, therefore, let us draw near. Let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace because Jesus fully understands our weakness. And secondly, because Jesus freely meets our needs. He knows us. He knows our weaknesses. He knows our sin. He knows our temptations.

He understands the strength of them. He understands that we have fallen to them even though he did not and could not if he was going to be our substitute, the perfect Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. But knowing all of that, he loves us and he gladly comes to our aid. He meets our need. He meets our needs because he's sovereign. He sits upon God's throne. He is king, but he is gracious. He is sitting upon a throne of grace. It's a throne of judgment for unbelievers, but it's a throne of grace for believers.

That's reason enough to hold on to our confession, isn't it? Don't let that go. It's a throne of judgment for unbelievers.

Don't let that go. It's a throne of grace for believers. He's turned the judgment seat of Almighty God into a mercy seat for the people of God. It is a throne of grace by his work upon the cross. He is benevolent. He freely dispenses both mercy and grace from this throne that he invites us to come to.

He encourages us to come to. He holds out the golden scepter and says, come. Remember Esther, who couldn't come into the presence of the king even though he was her husband? Unless the golden scepter was extended, if anyone came into the presence of the king without that golden scepter extended, it was by the end of their life. Mordecai said to Esther, you've got to go and talk to him. He said it might cost me my life if he doesn't extend the golden scepter.

I'm a goner. But he did. He loved her and he saw her coming and he held out the golden scepter and invited her to come. And she came and touched the golden scepter and presented her petition and saved not only herself but all of her people. Well, Jesus doesn't, when it comes to his people, he doesn't say, hmm, shall I hold out the golden scepter or shall I not? Shall I extend it to this one or shall I not?

Shall I extend it to this one and not to that one? Nope, nope, nope, nope. We find one sitting upon the throne of Almighty God who has turned that into a mercy seat for all of those who believe in him and who is sitting there, as it were, holding out that golden scepter and saying, come, come. Why do you hesitate? Come, come, come.

The scepter is extended. I want you to come. Come, come to this throne of mercy and of grace. And there he bestows mercy and grace, mercy for past failures.

Have you failed? Of course. Go to the throne of mercy. The mercy has already been granted.

It's already been provided for, but you need to come and receive that which has been provided for those who trust in Christ. Mercy for past failures, grace for present trials. Are you beset by temptations and trials that you are struggling with? Then go to the throne of grace. Grace is God's enabling power at our point of need and he will dispense all the grace you need. Are you having trouble holding on to your confession of faith? Go to the throne of grace.

He will dispense all the grace you need to continue holding on to that confession of faith. Mercy is to be taken, grace is to be sought. That we may obtain mercy, it's already there, just go get it. And find grace. Grace we are by God's design required to seek earnestly for in prayer, but that too is always promised. Mercy to be taken, it's already been bestowed. Grace to be sought, it always will be found by those who seek it. Mercy extended to us in our misery. Grace extended to us at every single point of our need.

Supplied as we need, according to the need. What a great high priest. God has provided the perfect salvation by giving us a perfect savior who is indeed a perfect high priest.

He is effective, his work is final, and therefore let everyone trust in him. If there's anyone here who is outside of Christ, why will you linger outside of Christ? You hear the truth, you hear the invitation, you hear the call to come, why are you waiting?

Why are you lingering? Come, come, come to Christ. And God has not only provided the perfect salvation, but he's provided for the spiritual success of all of his people. Left to ourselves, we would fall. Left to ourselves, we must fall.

Going in our own strength, we will fall. But we have the perfect mediator. We have the sympathetic sovereign. We have a throne of mercy. We have a throne of grace. So why should we fail to hold fast to our confession?

Why should we fail to resist sinful and destructive temptations, whatever they may be? Let us avail ourselves of God's provision. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace. Let us pray. Father, we can scarcely understand the wonders of this great provision, but we bow in wonder at who you are and what you have done. We bow in wonder that we should be included in this great provision. We bow, O Lord, to confess our failures, and particularly our failure to obtain ourselves of this great throne of mercy and grace that has always been available to us who trust in you. Lord, help us, strengthen us, and give us the grace we need. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.