A Superior Ministry

I have your Bibles with you today.

Turn with me, if you would, to the eighth chapter of Hebrews, and we're going to be looking at verses one through seven. My priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus, it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since they are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, I lift up our sick to you this morning. I pray for Bill Fulton, who will have a kidney stone removed this week. I pray for Wayne Allen, who will soon have a cancerous kidney removed. I pray for healing for Yvonne McClellan and Jeremy Carriker and Jim Belk, Renda Torrance and Kim Moody, and thank you for the successful surgery on Kim Agnew. Lord be with these and minister healing to them. Also, thank you, Lord, for the large offering that you raised up from this church to help the Gate Crisis Pregnancy Ministry. I pray for Dean and Teresa Naylor as Teresa's mom passed away last night.

I praise you that she is now with you. Heavenly Father, today we look at the superior ministry of Jesus. The Old Testament ministries were real and governed by your word, but they were temporary. The ministry of Jesus is different.

It is permanent, and it is final. In the Old Testament, we had signs, pictures, and symbols. In the New Testament, we have the reality in Christ. May we be wowed, convicted, submissive, and obedient, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Put yourself in the shoes of the writer of the book of Hebrews. For seven chapters, he has been teaching and struggling with these Jewish people to get them to understand that Christianity is vastly superior to Judaism. He has given them one argument after another after another. And he knows that everything that he says is absolutely right, because every statement that he has made, every word, every letter, every jot, and every tittle, all of that has been under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But now he's ready to give them the knockout punch.

He wants them to just be bereft of every bit of unbelief that's in them whatsoever. Now, some of you are probably old enough here to remember Perry Mason. Perry Mason was a program on television. He was an actor.

He's a lawyer on the TV show. And in almost all the shows, it followed a very similar pattern. He would start off by laying out all the evidences and all the facts and giving them all that.

And by the time you got to the end, you knew it's pretty solid anyway. But then he'd tie everything together and just, boom, layer the boom on everybody. And the jury would sit back and they'd shake their heads in a nodding yes.

And they'd say, Perry is right. That rascal is guilty as he can be. And that's kind of the feeling that you get in the eighth chapter of the book of Hebrews.

It's kind of the feeling. He has been sharing with you over and over throughout the entire book. And now he's lowering the boom on us. In chapter eight and verse one, the question is being asked, where is Jesus now? And I want to read verse one to you again.

Now, the point in what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty and high. Where is Jesus? He is in heaven, seated at the right hand of God the Father.

What's that look like? Well, if you want to know what it looks like, go to Revelation chapter four and chapter five. In Revelation chapter four and chapter five, we are told of the angels that are there. There are thousands upon ten thousands that are there, millions of angels. And they are all before the throne of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they are worshiping him with everything they've got within them. And they are singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and who is to come. That's not all the people that are there. They are also the twelve elders.

Who are they? I think twelve of them represent the twelve patriarchs of the Old Testament. Twelve of them represent the twelve disciples in the New Testament. What they really represent in totality is all the believers from the Old Covenant and all the believers who have already died in the New Covenant. And they too are singing, worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wisdom and wealth and glory and honor.

Man would have seen that must have been. Kent Hughes describes this very beautifully. And I want to read you what he had to say here. This is what happened in heaven. As Jesus died as our lamb and then entered into his heavenly priesthood, Kent Hughes said, as we continue to consider the surpassing glory of Christ's heavenly priesthood, let us imagine what it must have been like when the Lamb of God ascended to take his seat at the right hand of the Father as our eternal high priest.

It is a matter of record that on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed, and now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Imagine then the celestial fireworks as Jesus' homecoming and his installation as our eternal Melchizedek. Can you see him being transfigured from lamb to priest? His hair becomes white like snow, his eyes like embers, and his face like the sun as he majestically dons a priestly robe that falls to his glowing feet and girds himself with the golden sash of a high priest. So the writer of Hebrews leaves his readers with this precious picture of who Jesus Christ really is.

And here's what he's saying. He's saying, do you really see Jesus in heaven? Do you see all the angels, millions of them, bowed before his presence, worshiping him with everything that's in them? Do you see the Old Testament believers and the New Testament believers who have already died, do you see them worshiping him with all of their heart? There's Abraham, there's Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and Daniel and Isaiah and Ezekiel.

There's all of these. These are men that God used to glorify himself. And what are these men doing? They are on their faces before Jesus, worshiping him with everything that is in them.

But guess what? They're just men. But that one they're worshiping, although he was man, he's also God. In John chapter 1, John tells us about that. He says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life and a life was the light of men. So John tells us, as he first starts out his gospel, he tells us that Jesus is our creator. So he starts off with creation. But it's very interesting, the same guy that wrote the gospel of John moved on a little bit later to write the book of Revelation. And in the book of Revelation, he tells us how Jesus is going to bring history to an end. How he's going to set up his kingdom and how this is going to be done in a glorious, glorious fashion.

Let me read you what John said from Revelation 19. Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True. And in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood and the name by which he is called is the word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If I had been writing the book of Hebrews, and it's just up to me, I think I would have done what John did. I think I would have started with creation telling us who Jesus is, that he is our creator. I think I would have moved on to Jesus coming back to put an end of history and set up his kingdom.

I would have gone past and then future. The writer of Hebrews did not do that. Instead he pointed us right to the present. And he said let me tell you what's going on right now in heaven as you are standing there wherever you are. In the present right now Jesus Christ is our priest and he is interceding for us. I got three points that I want to share with you this morning concerning Jesus' superior ministry. Number one is his seat. Look with me at verse one.

Now the point in what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. What I want you to see is the finality and the completeness of Jesus' priesthood. Where is Jesus now? He's in heaven.

Where is he in heaven? He is seated at the right hand of God the Father. The very most important thing I think we need to see here is that Jesus is seated. Funny thing about the earthly Levitical priest, they're never seated.

They don't even have a chair. Now why are they never seated? Because they're all running around in the temple slaying animals and slinging blood. They offer one lamb and as they slice the throat of that lamb before the blood of that lamb can even hit the altar, they have to do it again.

Why? Because we can't quit sinning and they have to offer it again. It's a continual thing day after day after day. It's never ending for the Levitical priest. What did Jesus say? When Jesus died and he was ready to breathe his last breath on the cross, he cried out and he said, it is finished. And as soon as Jesus uttered those words and breathed his last breath, God did something in the temple in Jerusalem. And what God did was he took the six-inch thick veil that separates the holy place from the holy of holies and he ripped it from the top to the bottom. He ripped it from the top to the bottom to show everybody this is not something that man did, this is something that God did. And I have to believe that when all the priests saw that ripping take place, if they fell down on their faces, they were scared to death to look into the holy of holies because they thought if I do, I'll surely be slaughtered by the Lord. He won't let me do this. And it was almost like God was saying, hey guys, you want to look in it?

You go right ahead and look in it. So it doesn't matter anymore. But it doesn't matter anymore. God was finished with the earthly holy of holies because Jesus' sacrificial death made it absolutely unnecessary. Jesus said it is finished. The holy of holies had changed locations. No longer would the presence of God dwell in the little room in the back of the temple. The presence of God after the death of Jesus would dwell in the hearts of God's children. Amen?

Amen. While the priests were running around the temple, slinging blood and going through the motions, Jesus is in the true holy of holies in heaven. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. His saving work is finished and now he is interceding for us because he is the true and final high priest. The day is coming when Jesus will leave his throne in glory again to meet his bride at his second coming. Our sin nature at that point in time is going to be eradicated. We're going to be transformed and it's going to be transformed into a new glorified body. Our sin nature is eradicated.

Jesus will be our king. He'll still be our priest. Now, our sin nature will be eradicated so he's not going to have to be interceding in the same way that he does with us now. It may be that he intercedes by giving us guidance and direction.

We're not sure. Listen to what is said in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. From heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we who are alive and remain, we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together to meet the Lord in the clouds and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Until that day comes, Jesus will be on the throne and he will be interceding for us, calling our names out to the Lord every day. You know, I might forget to pray for you.

Jesus will never forget to pray for you. There's only one instance that we know of in the scripture during this particular time in which we are living now, our present, in which Jesus stood up from the throne. And that was the time when the deacon Stephen was being put to death for Jesus' sake and they stoned him to death. And Jesus stood up from the throne. It was almost like he was giving him a standing ovation.

But that was an anomaly and it's not something that happened often and don't know if it ever happened again. But from the day of Jesus' ascension into heaven until the day that Jesus returns to this earth to put an end to history, to set up his kingdom, he will be interceding for God the Father. Now, I hope you've noticed as we've been going through the book of Hebrews, how many times he's repeated this for us that Jesus Christ is our high priest and he's interceding for us at the right hand of God the Father. Why has he done it so often? Because remember who he's talking to. He's talking to Jews. He's talking to Jews who have either already come to Christ or they are considering coming to Christ and they're under conviction. He knows that they're being persecuted. He knows that they're being ostracized.

He knows that the religious leaders are telling him, we're not going to sacrifice any animals on your behalf. Get away from us. Leave us alone.

We don't deal with you anymore. And what the writer of Hebrews is saying is this. Don't worry about the religious leaders and the priests here on earth.

They're absolutely irrelevant now. Every sacrifice that is made after Jesus died on that cross is a sham and a phony. And any animal that was sacrificed after Jesus died is a slap in the face of Jesus.

But Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross was the final and ultimate sacrifice. And you don't need the ministry of any human priest now. You have the ministry of the Son of God himself as our priest. The priests are telling you to do this, and this is what he's saying to these Jews that are under such persecution. He said, they're telling you to take the picture and to reject the reality, to take the symbol and to reject the substance, to take the type and to reject any type. He said, don't do that. He said, the writer of Hebrews tells these Jewish Christians that the religious leaders are wrong, and they are so wrong that they are headed to an eternal hell. I want you to listen to what John MacArthur said here.

He sums it up beautifully. As far as our salvation is concerned, he has taken his seat. He has accomplished all that can be accomplished, all that needs to be done. Yet people are still trying to add to the simple, pure grace of God and salvation by faith, though it is absurd to think that the work of Christ needs anything added to it. The saving effort of the Lord cannot have anything added to it because it's already absolutely perfect.

This truth should have been the most joyous news possible to Jews. Imagine a final sacrifice, a finished work, so that the high priest could sit down and at God's right hand. The right hand of a monarch symbolized honor, exaltation, and power. To stand at his right hand was honor, but to sit there, supreme honor. Christ sat down at the right hand of the throne of thrones, God's heavenly, eternal throne. Jesus Christ has been given that place of honor. He has been ushered into the heavenly holy of holies. He has been seated with God on his throne. Even more amazing is that as believers, we will one day be invited to sit with him on that throne. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. My point two is his sanctuary.

Look with me at verses two through five. A minister in the holy places, in the true tent, that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus it is necessary for the priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things, for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. The sanctuary in which Jesus is a minister is infinitely superior to the sanctuary of the Levitical priest.

That makes sense. A superior priest ought to be in a superior sanctuary, and they are. When the book of Hebrews was written, the tabernacle had not been around for over a thousand years. What was the tabernacle?

It was a tent made out of animal skins. It had the holy place in it and the holy of holies. But as soon as Solomon built his temple, that tabernacle was never used again.

It was like it was just pushed out of the way, not needed anymore. When Jesus came and walked on this earth, it was another temple. They called it Herod's temple.

It was absolutely beautiful. It was made out of white marble and cedar and gold. But did you know that not five years after the writer of Hebrews finished this book, that temple was totally demolished. Jesus prophesied that it would be, and it was totally demolished, totally gone, not one stone left upon another. Now, we are told that the Lord pitched the true tabernacle in heaven. The word true here is not used to mean opposite from false because the tabernacle in Moses' day and the temple in Jesus' day, they were not phony or false. They were just symbols, just symbols.

That's what it means. The earthly tabernacle and temple were symbols or pictures or types. They pointed to the tabernacle in heaven.

They pointed to the reality. Now, I want you to think for just a minute, and I want you to try to be truthful. When you think about heaven, is it a little bit sketchy?

Do you think about it? It's kind of ethereal. It's just almost fantasy-like. Maybe you think about heaven and you're thinking about a cloud.

You're sitting up on that cloud and kind of relaxing, and the little fat cherubims are just circling you, and you're just sitting up there having a good time. And then we think of earth, and we say, earth's not like that. Earth's just so real. Man, I can stomp down on the ground and it's solid.

I can pick up a rock and it's hard. I can reach over, I can feel myself, and there's flesh and blood, and I know that it's real. Oh, but in heaven, you know, there'll be spirits and kind of like ghosts, and so it's just kind of not very real.

If that's what you think, you are dead wrong, dead wrong. Let me give you a couple of verses that teach us about the body that the Lord is going to give us that we will possess at his second coming. Philippians 3, verse 20 through 21.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. On the day that Jesus returns to this earth, the dead in Christ, and those who remain and are alive that are believers are going to be transformed. We are going to be given a glorified body that is just like the body that Jesus had when he came out of that tomb.

What was that body like? Well, let me share with you from Luke, chapter 24, verses 36 through 40. Jesus has risen from the dead. He came back. He's talking to the disciples.

Listen to what he said. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace to you. But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Do you see my hands and my feet?

That it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. The disciples were absolutely shocked. They thought that maybe they'd just seen a spirit here or a ghost or something. And Jesus speaks to him. He says this, why are you troubled?

Why do doubts arise in your mind? Why are my hands and my feet? What was so unusual about his hands and his feet? And his hands and his feet were nail prints. I want you to know that the only man-made thing that we'll ever see in heaven is those nail prints. And you know, Jesus didn't have to do it this way. When he got his new glorified body, he could have just wiped those nail prints away.

He didn't do that. He left the nail prints in his hands and feet. And folks, every time we see Jesus in heaven, we're going to see those nail prints and we're going to remember what it cost him on the cross.

And we're going to worship him in ways that we never could have imagined. Jesus said to the disciples, touch me and see that I am flesh and bone. We describe ourself, we don't describe ourself as flesh and bone, do we? We call ourself flesh and blood.

Why is that? The reason we say that is because the life is in the blood. If you were to cut yourself badly enough and the blood were to flow out of you, you would pretty soon die because the life is in the blood. Leviticus 17, 11 tells us that, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. But Jesus' glorified body, he never mentions blood.

Why not? The reason he doesn't mention it is because there's no blood in there. Where was that blood? It was shed for us at Calvary's cross. Folks, the spirit of God is the life in Jesus. His glorified body is described as flesh and bone and the spirit is the life of his glorified body.

But I want you to remember this. Your new body that you're going to receive at the second coming of Christ is going to be a body that is fashioned after the body of Jesus. There will be no blood. The life will be the spirit, the Holy Spirit of God. Now think for just a minute about what Jesus did in his glorified body.

And this is the kind of body you're going to get. So you think about this. When Jesus rose from the dead, how did he get out of the tomb? Oh, the angel moved the stone away.

That's not right. The angel did move the stone away, but it wasn't to let Jesus out. It was to show everybody Jesus wasn't in there because Jesus just walked right through that stone wall. Later, when Jesus came back to meet with his disciples, they were in the upper room. They had the doors locked because they were so scared. What did Jesus do? Knock on the door to get them to unlock it?

No. He walked right through the wall to get through them. Not the door, but the wall. When Jesus was talking with the two disciples on Emmaus Road in his new glorified body, they ate the meal together. And the Scripture says that in the breaking of the bread, they recognized who he was. And immediately, just like that, Jesus just disappeared. Folks, Jesus ate fish in his glorified body with the disciples. Jesus could be here one second and then thousands of miles away the next second.

He could do that. And we're going to get a body that is like that. What's it going to be like? It's going to be a body that can never sin. Hallelujah!

Man, I'm so happy about that. I'm going to have a body where sin is never even a temptation again. It's a body that can never get old. A body that can never get sick. A body that can never die. A body that is absolutely perfect.

That's the kind of body we're going to have and how absolutely glorious that's going to be. Folks, if you think about heaven as sitting on a fluffy cloud, as being very ethereal, kind of hazy, kind of not real, kind of fantasy, then you need to think again. It's going to be more real in heaven than you've ever seen anything before. And you're going to be more real than you ever have been before. I don't know if you've read Randy Alcorn's book entitled Heaven, but he taught me something in that book that I never even thought about before. One of my favorite things about the book was this. He said, in heaven, we'll never stop learning.

Wow! So every day in heaven, the Lord's going to just pull back the veil a little bit, let us see a little more of his glory and a little more of his glory. And then after we've been there a million years, what we're going to realize is this.

Man, we hadn't seen anything. He hadn't even scratched the surface yet in showing us who he is and how glorious he is. There's a lot of things about heaven that I'm really excited about. I'm excited about seeing my dad and my grandmom again. I'm excited about seeing you in heaven.

But I'll tell you what excites me more than anything else. I'm going to see Jesus. I'm going to see Jesus face to face. I'm going to be able to worship him in a way that I've never worshiped him before, and I'm going to understand more about Jesus. And it's going to be a day by day process. Every single moment, I'm going to be learning more of Christ, and I'm going to be more and more in love with him.

That's how important that is. So, what do you want? Do you want a picture of Jesus and a picture of heaven, or do you want Jesus in heaven? That's what he's saying to the Jews, because that's what they were doing. The unbelieving Jews, the ones who were rejecting Christ, were saying, I'll just take the picture.

I'll just take the type. They were a symbol, and they were rejecting the reality which is Christ himself. Put yourself in the shoes of a Jew who's hearing the writer of Hebrews preaching that message.

You would have to say to yourself, in the light of this truth, how in the world can I turn my back on Jesus? My last point is the superior covenant, verse 6. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. The Scripture says here that Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant. Now, that covenant has a name. It's called the everlasting covenant. We hear about that in Ezekiel chapter 36, and Ezekiel said this. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from our flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. This covenant is not about external rules and regulations. This covenant is about God doing a cleansing down inside of us, giving us a new heart, a new spirit, and new godly desires.

Jesus' death and resurrection brought us into this new covenant, and he has promised that now he is our mediator. In Job chapter 9, Job's going through hell on earth. His body is wracked with pain, disease, just ravaged. His children have all been killed. His wife is saying to him, Job, why don't you just go ahead and curse God and die?

And his friends are belittling him and accusing him of sin. And in Job chapter 9, Job prays. Now, what does he pray for? He prays for a mediator. He prays for a go-between. He says, I need someone who is both God and man. He said, I need one who is man that he can understand me, that he knows what it feels like to experience what I've been going through, this depression, this heartache, this pain. I need one who can empathize with me and sympathize with me and one who will really care about what I'm going through.

Then he says, but I need more than that. I need one who is God, who can have the power to do something about my situation and who can change my hurts and my weaknesses and do something about my sin so that I will never be the same again. Job's praying for a mediator. He doesn't realize it at that time, but what he's praying for is Jesus Christ.

He doesn't know his name, but that's exactly who he's calling out for. What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that Jesus is the answer to Job's prayer. He is the mediator of a better covenant. He is my mediator, and he is your mediator.

Let's pray. Lord, I praise you for the inspiration that you gave to the writer of Hebrews. Jesus is so powerfully magnified in this book that I read it and I realize that I should stay on my knees and worship. Lord, help me to be better motivated to be a faithful witness to you. Help me to be a display window for your glory. For it's in Jesus' precious name I pray. Amen.