The Great High Priest - Hebrews 4:14-5:15 - Jesus Is Better

All right, across all of our locations, if you have a copy of scripture, you could take it out and turn with me to Hebrews chapter four.

That's where we're going to be spending our time together here this weekend. But as you guys are finding Hebrews chapter four, let me tell you, we have something to celebrate this weekend that is one of those things that's like, man, this is why we do what we do. Your team in South Asia, people coming out of your community groups that have been developed in this church have been sharing the gospel in a remote region, village, top of a mountain.

And never has had a gospel witness, has never had the gospel proclaimed in this village. And over the last few weeks, they've not only had one man come to Christ, but they've had others that are interested. Can we just praise God for that right now?

Yes. And this is what this is what it's about for us. OK, it is about making so many disciples in the triad that it spills over into a disciple making movement among those who are unreached. And this is this is I mean, make disciples and multiply churches. This is the epitome of what we are after and what we're trying to do. And I loved what your campus pastor has already talked about today.

I just want to piggyback on that. Guys, Easter coming up is not disconnected from God's work among the nations. It is. This is the strategy that we see people come in even on big days like a Christmas or an Easter. Man, we partner together, we do everything we can do with shareables and invite our cards and help you be a missionary in your community, in your neighborhood, at your workplace, with your family and friends and get them to come in and we get an opportunity to share the gospel. And maybe some people are going to get saved that one day we'll be that person that's sharing the gospel in a remote place somewhere else. That's the vision.

That's what it's all about. March 26th is a day that I want you to mark down. Okay, March 26 marks 14 days before Easter Sunday, and we as a church are going to be engaging in, you know, on our face prayer, begging God to move in a big way, along with fasting and there's going to be a prayer prompt and there's going to be an email every day and we're going to do this as a church. If you call Mercy Hill home, man, we should be involved in this prayer chain that's going to happen for 14 days leading up to Easter weekend and we're going to pray that God does some crazy stuff. Can I just go old school for a minute?

Okay, I'm gonna go old school for one minute. I want to read you guys something and I thought I want to read it in the heart language that I have, which is the old version. Okay, as I want to read it to you in the way that I learned this passage. Luke chapter 14, verse 23. Go out quickly into the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou has commanded and yet there is room. And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled.

In our culture, we have an opportunity around Christmas and Easter to see a natural swelling. Guys, how are we going to steward that? There may come a day where that doesn't happen in our culture anymore as we move post-Christian, but that ain't today, okay?

The highest attendance for our church all year until Christmas will happen this Easter. How will we steward that? Will we kind of ride that cultural momentum and invite people to come in?

I pray that you will. Will you do three things with me? I want you to pray big, I want you to invite big, and I want you to serve big, okay? Man, if you call Mercy Hill home, do not let one of these 20 services, that's the first time I heard that, okay? So we got 20 services that are happening, all right? I hope I'm not preaching all of them live, okay? So 20 services that are happening across the whole weekend. Man, don't let one of those 20 services go by if you call Mercy Hill home without engaging and serving in a big way. Let's pray in a big way and let us invite in a big way, all right?

If you want to do that, you can go to this website. Go to our Easter website right there, mercielchurch.com slash Easter. It's a landing page for everything, the prayer prompts, the serving, all that stuff. And so we're going to continue to talk about that, but man, let's just get after it, all right? All right, Hebrews chapter 4, we have a ton to cover this weekend.

And so we're going to dive straight into it, all right? This is the book of Hebrews. Let me give you two groups of three words that give you the book of Hebrews, ready? Jesus is better, never give up. Jesus is better, never give up.

That looks like it could be a decent TikTok video, okay, if somebody wants to do that. But Jesus is better, never give up. Now, what are we saying here?

What have I said during this series? Jesus is worth holding onto all the way until the very end. Today, the writer of Hebrews gives us another turn of the diamond.

Don't give up, man, don't let him go. Don't let it slip through your fingers, why? Because Jesus is our great, great high priest, okay? That's what we're going to talk about today.

Jesus is our great high priest, and there's so much here for us to dive into, to learn, to be encouraged by, and I pray that we're going to trust Christ in a greater way and be more encouraged to go deeper with him at the end of this message. I don't know if you guys do Super Bowl party, okay? I don't know if y'all do national championship football party. We've got a little tradition at our house. Anna does a great job with the kids, and she lets them all pick whatever food they want. We all, and all of us, me too, we all get to pick, you know, one little side dish, and it's kind of this big thing for the Super Bowl, and so it's all, you know, there's corn dogs and pizza and chicken nuggets, and then because Anna's there, there's like a bowl of broccoli too, okay? So, you know, but we have, you know, we have a great time with that. But I was telling my kids, and maybe some of you guys, because Christians love this kind of thing, there's going to be a Christian commercial in the Super Bowl, okay? And I was telling them, we're going to watch it. We're going to find, and maybe you guys saw it, and it's these commercials that you've seen on television. I'm not saying they're good, bad, whatever.

I don't know all of what's behind them or anything like that. But the message of the commercial is he gets us, you've seen this, it's black and white images. He too understands what it means to be a refugee. He understands what it means to be asked to love those who hate him and spit on him, and you see the different images, right? What does it mean that he gets us?

What is the point of that? I don't know what the commercial's point of it is, but I will tell you what the book of Hebrews' point of it is, that he gets us means he has become one of us. He has walked in our shoes, why?

So that in becoming a man, he could represent us to God. He could be the great high priest. A little bit different of a sermon today.

Here's what I want to do. I want to engage in four things about our great high priest, and then in conclusion, I want to call you to trust him, and that'll be our time together, all right? Hebrews chapter four, and let's dive in.

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, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness. He gets us, right?

He is not unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. Now I'm going to tell you the end before I even get going here in the beginning, okay? The end is don't let go and let us draw near. That's what it tells us.

Hold fast your confession and approach the throne of grace boldly. That's where we're going to get. But before we get there, let's talk about why. This is such good news.

Why would we want to do that? Because we have a great high priest. He is the goat of being the high priest, okay? When I say who is the greatest of all time, I don't know what comes to your mind. I don't know if Tom Brady comes to your mind.

He just had a recent victory at UFC. I don't know if Johnny Bones Jones comes to your mind. I don't know if Michael Jordan comes to your mind. I'm not going to bring up LeBron.

Okay, we're in North Carolina, so I'm not even going to go there, okay? But I don't know what comes to your mind. Jesus is the goat of being the high priest. Why is that? Well, let's unpack that, all right?

Number one is for this reason. Our great high priest passed through the heavens and into weakness. This is what I gather from verse 14 and verse 15. Verse 14 tells us that Jesus passed through the heavens. Verse 15 tells us that he can sympathize with our weakness. I take that to mean that he passed through the heavens in order to sympathize with our weakness, to sympathize with our temptations, to understand what it means to walk in our shoes. You could say it like this, the Son of God took on flesh, passed through the heavens, comes to us.

He took on flesh and walked in our weakness. Luke 5, 2, you know, later in chapter 5, verse 2, we're going to see this in just a minute. The other high priests are being compared.

Jesus and them are being kind of compared and contrasted a little bit. And what we're going to see of other high priests is something that I think also is true of Jesus, that it says in weakness, it says he sympathized in our weakness here. But in chapter 5, verse 2, it says that the priests are beset with weakness.

What does that mean? It means clad in weakness. Weakness means limitation. Weakness means a lacking in capacity to do something we understand from the book of Philippians, that Jesus Christ has emptied himself in this way, that he has taken on weakness. The Son of God would take on weak human flesh in order to walk in your shoes that he might sympathize with everything that goes on in our life. You know, I've told you the story of a missionary named Berusco before, he shares the whole gospel with this tribe in Brazil, the Motolone Indians, and they're tracking with everything he's saying until he gets to the part where he says the Son of God took on flesh and became a man.

And they gasped and they sat there for a long time in silence. Because this is shot, we hear it all the time, that the Son of God would come and take on our weakness. You know, I grew up, my dad played a lot of music, he played a lot of blues music, he used to play this song, and it said, little baby Jesus changed his diaper and put him in the bed, he created this whole world, but he couldn't even raise his wobbly head. Weakness, the Son of God has come to us in weakness and taken on the frailty of our being.

This is amazing that he'll be willing to do this for us, right? I think about weakness because I felt pretty weak this week, and our staff, about once a month, we do something called an all-staff meeting, okay? And I mean, it's meant to be fun, you know, great worship, engaging, teaching, you know, we try to bring different people in and we try to really make it an incredible environment for our staff. Great volunteers come and set up a cool, you know, awesome culture for us, and we just feel really loved and served. And we always do a game, we always try to do something fun. Well, this week, the game was, some of the guys brought up the game, we were over at the student center, so we just had an all-out staff dodgeball game, okay?

Now, you know, there's like 60-something people or something on our staff. I mean, this is a massive, this is a massive chaotic sort of dodgeball game. We only had two rules in the dodgeball game. The first rule was you have to stretch before the dodgeball game, okay, because a lot of us are getting to that age, okay? The second rule was if you hit one of the pregnant ladies on our staff, it counts as double points, okay? So this is your staff, all right?

So this is what they, that didn't really happen, but I mean, well, they did really, they did make that rule, but I don't think anybody got hit. So anyway, but I think about the game, okay, we played dodgeball for 15 minutes, and I think half the staff wasn't able to come to work the next day. You understand what I mean? I mean, we're running around, and all of a sudden, our weakness, I mean, you know, we don't think about it until somebody brings it up, but think about the frailty of humanity. I mean, even compared to the animal kingdom, compared to the other elements in creation that we see, like a tree, I mean, just think about our frailty and how much of a brief moment we even have and a vapor our life is. You think about Jesus being willing to come. The point is that Jesus was willing, in his heart, love, to become weak like we are. It shows his heart for us. Now, I'm gonna make the point later that the whole point of him becoming weak is because that's what it means to become human, and he was going to become human, that he might bring humans back into a relationship with God. But that's, I think that's the ultimate kind of point here. But just as we're talking about this idea of weakness, can you think about how approachable this makes Jesus Christ, our great high priest, that he would be willing to walk in and knows the struggle that we have, knows what it's like to wake up sick, even though you got a lot to do that day.

He knows what it's like to be emotionally tired, knows what it's like to be physically tired and can't sleep. I mean, God knows, Jesus knows these things. How approachable does that make our Savior? The second thing that we see, I think, from this, and I want to look at verse 15 again, is this. Our great high priest was tempted as we are, but without sin.

That's what it says in verse 15. But one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Our great high priest was tempted like us, but without sin. It's not just that Jesus knows what it means to be weak. He knows what it means to be tempted, to be tempted to sin in anger, to be tempted to sin in greed or sexual sin or the pride of life. What is the greatest picture of this? The greatest picture of this is Matthew chapter 4. The way I envision Matthew chapter 4 is you think about Jesus Christ who has spent 40 days.

Think about it. Man, his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth. Man, he hasn't eaten in 40 days and the sun is blistering and he's sunburned and he's peeling and there's nothing but desolation that is around him and he's in weakness and he can't even sweat because all the water is gone out of his body and he's frail and all of a sudden what does he hear? Someone's coming up behind him, but it sounds a little like a slink or a slither and the tempter has come. I imagine what the tempter was thinking was, look how the tables have turned now. Weak, pathetic, hungry. Who is this bag of bones sitting in front of me? And the tempter shouts out to Jesus, if you are the Son of God, then why don't you take these stones and turn them into loaves?

Stop this groveling, weak, state, pathetic, pitiful state that you are in and strengthen yourself. I don't know how you envision this story. I don't think that Jesus shouted back. In my head, he probably had a little more of a whisper. I don't even know that he raised his head. But he squeaks out from the bottom of his lungs, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God and bang, Jesus is standing at the top of the temple. And the tempter has come and he's looking at Christ, this weak, pathetic person that's in front of him and he's feeling very full of himself and Jesus is probably disoriented and maybe even nauseous and he's standing at the top of the temple and what does the tempter say? Why don't you just throw yourself down?

I mean, don't you have angels that can come and catch you and break your fall and wouldn't God do that for you? You could see the undertones that are around this but this time with a little more juice, Jesus, a little more of a head raise, a little more bass in his voice. He says back to the tempter, you don't test the Lord your God and bang, now they're standing at the top of a mountain. And I wonder what's going through the tempter's mind because I bet you he laughed it off in that sly little laugh but I wonder if he thought he's not taking the bait.

I wonder if a shiver started to run down his spine. And what does he say to Jesus? I'll show you all the kingdoms of the world and the Han Dynasty flashes before Jesus is eyes and the Mayan Dynasty, the pre-classic Mayans flashes before his eyes and the peace in the Roman Empire that is brought through the Pax Ramona flashes before his eyes. I'll give you all of this, just abandon your mission.

Give me the people, you take all the world for yourself. And this time when the tempter looks around with that sly smile, he doesn't see Jesus groveling, he doesn't see Jesus with his head down, he doesn't see that at all. What he sees is a man standing staring a hole right through him with steel in his backbone. And Jesus, upon being tempted to worship something that isn't God, says back to him, you will worship the Lord your God.

That is what we are called to do. And what does he say? It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, be gone. And Satan is gone.

Now let me tell you something about this story. You don't, you only get the full weight of temptation if you have resisted it all the way. Jesus was tempted as we are. I don't know that any of us have been tempted in the way that Jesus was.

Because you don't feel the full weight unless you go all the way. And He went all the way. How good does that make the Gospel, y'all? I mean, think about it with me.

How great must His love for us be that He would never give in, not even one time, in order to be the perfect sacrifice and the great high priest for us? Now here's what we got to do, all right? You got to stay with me here, okay? We got to plow 10 verses because I've thought about 1,000 different ways about how to break this up.

You can't really break it up. All this stuff kind of hangs together right here in the next 10, okay? And this is the last 10 we're going to read. But it all goes like this.

And so I'm going to have to be referencing this from this one and kind of getting it all together. So just hang with me here and let's plow through these 10 verses, okay? For every high priest chosen from among man is appointed to act on behalf of man in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant. Now this is just talking about general high priests, okay? It's not talking really about Christ yet.

We've already talked about Christ. Now it's just getting into the concept of a general high priest. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is beset or clad with weakness. Because of this, he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins, just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also, now we're talking about Jesus, Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest and this is really the point we need to get into here, but was appointed by him who said to him in Psalm 2, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And then he also says in another place, Psalm 110, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Interesting character, we're gonna talk about that. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. You think he knows what it's like to be us?

Loud cries and tears. To him who was able to save him from death, of course, Jesus wasn't saved from dying, but he was saved from death, does that make sense? In his resurrection, we're gonna celebrate that here in a month. And he was heard because of his reverence, although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, now I've mentioned this before, guys, that doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't perfect, it means that he was being made into the perfect sacrifice. As he resisted temptation, as he never sinned, as he came into full maturity, so he was learning obedience. Listen, learning obedience doesn't mean that you switch from disobedience to obedience. You can learn obedience by going deeper into obedience.

And I think that's what's going on here. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. I'm gonna say something that you guys already know, although we don't wanna say this out loud. I had a pastor say this this week, and he was bold in saying it, and I was like, man, it's exactly right. The book of Hebrews is the second hardest book to understand in the New Testament, behind Revelation.

Okay? He said it that boldly, and I was like, brother, that's right. Do you know why? Because it assumes that you and I have been brought up in massive amounts of tradition and knowledge around the Old Testament. Levitical priesthood, covenants, you know, law, all this kind of stuff, that's what it's about. And actually, when we're getting into the great high priest, you know the book of Hebrews is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus is given that designated title. I mean, we talk about him being a great high priest, this is where we get it from, okay? So what we gotta do here is we just gotta build a little bit on this concept of what it means for a high priest, and we gotta kind of pull some of this stuff from the Old Testament.

All right. Number three of four, things I wanna show you about our great high priest. Our great high priest was chosen, and he was appointed by God. He was chosen and appointed by God. Now, we already see that in this passage, and we saw it earlier, that Jesus is appointed and chosen by God. But what chapter five is trying to do, okay, this is very simple, what chapter five is trying to do is to draw the parallels between our great high priest and just your Joe Schmoe high priest. That's what he's trying to get us to see, that Jesus is a great high priest, a truer and better one, but he, like them, was chosen. He, like them, had weakness. He, like them, offered sacrifices.

That's all that it's trying to get us to see. In verse five, this is what it says, Jesus was appointed as a high priest after the order, he ends up saying, of Melchizedek. Now, he says that in a couple different places, says it in the last verse and verse 10 as well. Now, what is he trying to do here?

This is important, okay? A little hard, you gotta follow the logic here, but this is what he's trying to do. The writer of Hebrews, and listen, every eighth grader who's taken any kind of logic or writing class tells you to do this, anticipate the objection before somebody can raise it, right?

That's what's going on here. What he says is, Jesus is a great high priest, what's the objection if you know your Old Testament? Well, he wasn't from Levi. He wasn't, I mean, he wasn't a Levi, much less from the Ariana priesthood. Like he doesn't have the right lineage, he doesn't have the bloodline to be a high priest, so the writer of Hebrews says, Psalm chapter 2, he is chosen, Psalm chapter 1, 10, after the order of Melchizedek, what he's saying is, this is a different kind of priest. This is a priest that doesn't become a priest because he was born to the right family. This is a priest that becomes a priest because God says he's a priest, actually, and a king, and a prophet, okay?

But we're not gonna get into all that. Now, what does it mean about Melchizedek? Well, Melchizedek is a simple story from Genesis 14. Melchizedek is a mysterious character in the Bible because he only shows up in like three verses in Genesis 14, doesn't show up again until Psalm 110, doesn't show up again until the writer of Hebrews picks him up.

What's he trying to say? Here's the story of Melchizedek. Abraham goes to war with three kings, you can go read about it in Genesis 14, they're coming back from the war, and boom, he meets the king of Salem, Jerusalem. He's the king of Salem who has also been appointed to be a priest. No background, no future. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. He was just slap chosen.

That's it. He's a priest and he's a king. All right, so Melchizedek is there and Abraham, he sets out, I mean, it's so good, he sets out bread and wine, you see the communion stuff there. He tithes, you know, Abraham tithes to Melchizedek and shows how he's over him. Basically right after that, he gets, you know, Abraham gets into this thing with the king of Sodom. What does the king of Sodom say? It's a perfect picture of the temptation of Jesus Christ. The king of Sodom says, you take the people, you know, he says, give me the people and you take the riches.

I mean, it's this whole beautiful layered thing that we don't have time to get all the way into. But the point of it is that Melchizedek doesn't have a lineage. He's not from Levi.

He's not gonna be from Aaron. He's just a priest because God said. That's the point, that Jesus is appointed to be a priest, no beginning, no end, just chosen by God for a specific purpose, to be a truer and better priest, to be the final priest. What does a priest do?

This is how we're gonna start getting into this fourth and final thing. They mediate a relationship between God and man. That's what a priest does. They mediate the relationship between God and man and bring people to God.

And Jesus is gonna be the final one. Fourth and final thing about our high priest, our great high priest offers the best sacrifice. Now again, I read all 10 of those verses, gotta try to hang some of this together. We actually are gonna have to, you know, jump a little bit ahead too in Hebrews to understand this. But what does a priest do? Okay, again, Old Testament here. The priest represents the people to God and they do so through a sacrificial system.

The greatest example of this is Leviticus chapter 16 and the Day of Atonement. Man, we got two goats. One of them is gonna go out in the wilderness with the sin of the people.

One of them is gonna be sacrificed. But before we do any of that, the priest better sacrifice a bull for himself because he's sinful like everybody else is sinful. And the blood of bulls and goats is offered to assuage or take away the wrath of God over the sin of the people. But this is what we learn from the book of Hebrews. Every offering of a bull or a goat, did it actually atone for sin?

No. All it did was buy time. It delayed the wrath of God from falling upon the people of God until we come to the greatest high priest who himself also can offer the greatest sacrifice because of who he is. Chapter 5 verse 3 tells us, man, these priests would sacrifice for themselves and then they would sacrifice for others. Man, no need for that with Jesus Christ. He doesn't sacrifice for somebody. He doesn't have to sacrifice for himself and everybody else. In fact, he is the perfect sacrifice.

This is what makes him the greatest, the truer, the better, the goat of high priest because he is the great high priest, but he's the one who sacrifices himself for the people. Now we've got to go a little bit further in the book to understand this. We're gonna pick up the back book of Hebrews, I think in the summer of 24, okay? So we got a couple more sermons and then we're gonna, you know, we'll kick it for a little while and then we'll pick it back up, but I just got to grab from that chapter 7 here and make sure we understand what's going on. For it was indeed fitting that we should have a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

Now who is he talking about there, right? This is Christ. This is Jesus. He has no need like those other priests to offer sacrifices daily first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people.

This is the point, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. This is what it's all driving at, y'all. This is what it's all driving toward church. Why does it matter? The commercial says he gets us. Why does that matter? Well, it brings me great comfort to know that Jesus Christ understands what it means to be hungry and tired.

It does. It makes him approachable. But the greatest meaning of that, he gets us, you know what it means? He understands weakness because he became a man and he became a man in order to be our great high priest who would sacrifice himself and represent the people back to God, to bring this family back together once again. You could say it like this.

I've said it like this before. The son of God became a man so that mankind could become the sons and the daughters of God. And that's what he did on the cross. He offered himself up. He made final sacrifice for the sin of the world.

You and I deserve death and hell, but on the cross, Jesus took what we deserve and he gives us what he deserves. He brings us back into an eternal relationship with God once again. How could you be a better great high priest than that?

You can't. He is the great high priest. Now, what does it mean for us? Well, as we, as really, as we move to a conclusion here, I would just say this. I, you know, again, this series, like, I feel like every week I'm going like, man, I don't have like a whole to do thing because it's very, the book of Hebrews is very belief oriented.

All right. It's, it's very much about who we trust and how our heart is moved and so I want to call you as I have in this series, man, trust Christ. Trust our great high priest. Trust him.

What is trusting him look like all the way back to the beginning in chapter four? What did I say? Let us hold fast our confession. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.

Man, do you feel, okay, so let's take, let's take those in turn and we'll be done. All right. Don't, don't let go. Hold fast. All right, and then draw near, throne of grace.

Okay. Don't let go. You're at one of our campuses today, you're, you know, listening to this on a podcast later. I don't know how this is going to hit you, how it's going to, you're right here in my presence right now. Man, is there somebody here today that feels forgotten? Is there somebody here today that feels like there is no way that God sees me, sees what I'm walking through, sees my pain? The Bible's calling you to do.

It's calling you to hold fast knowing that we have a great high priest who came and experienced the weaknesses of this life in order to bring us into a relationship with God. Don't let go. Don't let that slip out of your hands. One of our City Project students, one of our first City Project students actually, a really sharp kid named Isaac, told this story of one time they were out whitewater rafting for a wedding trip or something like that and he fell overboard. And here's what they tell you when you whitewater raft. If you fall overboard, don't flail and swim and struggle. You really want to try to keep your body loose and sort of float because you're going down and it's rapids and whenever it gets calm, they'll grab you and pick you up. Well, you know, he's flailing and struggling and as we all, you know, probably all would. And everybody in the boat is yelling, relax, just relax, to which he yells back, you're not in the water, right? Man, Jesus knows what it's like to be in the water. He knows what that is. I don't know why it is that maybe you feel forgotten or that God doesn't see you or that surely He doesn't understand.

I want to be careful here. Listen, Jesus never sinned, but He does understand the struggles of this life and we serve a great high priest. Don't let Him go. Knows where we are, knows where you are. The second thing I said though is this, man, let us draw near to the throne of grace because of the sacrifice of what Christ has done. You and I don't have to fear God today. We can draw near.

For some, it's for the first time. You're on a rat race, hamster wheel of good works, trying to do something really good so that God will see you and you're trying to outwork bad things you've done in your life. You need to get over that.

You're never going to be able to get there. You need to come to the throne of grace. Mercy is also what it said. Man, in the cross we see mercy of God, the grace of God extended to you. This is the only way according to the Scriptures.

This is it. Man, would you come to Him and receive His free gift of cleansing and washing your sin as far as the east is from the west? I pray that you would today, but believer, you know, we need to approach the throne of grace boldly too. You may be a Christian today, but the reality is you feel shame around some things that are in your life and it's doing the same thing that it does in kids. You know, when you get home in the afternoon, if the kids don't come running out in the driveway, you're like, man, they had a bad day. You know what I mean? It's like if they feel good about the decisions they made, if they feel good about the way they use their words, if they feel good about the color they landed on at school, you know, like if they didn't have to clip down or whatever, man, they come running out. They meet you, arms open, you know, but man, when they don't feel good about that, when they don't feel good about the decisions they made, the words, the way they use their words, they don't feel good about the color they landed on, man, they're not as interested in coming and running out there. They feel a little fearful. They feel a little, now listen, don't take this too far. There is a godly conviction over sin.

I understand that, okay? But what I'm trying to get you to see today is, man, if you feel shame or fear that God is going to reject you, that's a lie from hell. And what we've got to do is realize, if the blood of Christ has covered me, you can come boldly to the throne of grace. And I don't care what your last night looked like, what your last week looked like, what your last year looked like, it may have been filled in the throes of addiction.

You may have made bad decision after bad decision after bad decision. You can come boldly to the throne of grace through the blood of Christ. You may be one today that just feels like, man, I'm complacent, I ain't picked up that Bible in months, I'm not doing a quiet time, I feel like I've just been coasting, tomorrow can be a new day because you repent of that today. You can approach Him and He understands and He wants you to come to Him. You may say, man, I haven't been generous, I don't just mean tithing, but I haven't given to anything, I haven't been generous with my time, in a long time come boldly to the throne of grace.

You may be one who has avoided all of the calls from your community group because you kind of slinked away, they keep calling you, you don't want to answer. You can come boldly today. I don't know what God's calling you to, but I know this, man, we're going to have altars that are wide open and we can pray for what God is doing in our life, we can pray for others whom we love, what God is doing in their life, but let us come boldly to the throne of grace. I love that commercial, He gets us, but you realize, man, He got us so that we could get Him. Man, He understood us, He came in weakness so that we could come be united with Him and have a relationship with God once again.

You have Him. Let us repent and start fresh and anew today, all right? Let's pray. Father, we come before you and, Lord, it's our desire, God, to see a church that is fervent on its face, heart moved this weekend. Lord, I pray at all of our locations, God, you would put your finger on those areas of our heart and show us, search us, that we might know what it is that you are speaking in and the areas that you are uncovering. God, let us approach the throne of grace boldly, understanding that there is grace there. We are deep sinners, but your grace is deeper still. We believe that today. God, I pray that it would move us in line with our identity and our practical lives. In Christ's name we pray, amen.