051 - The Mega-High Priest

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, do you know any high priests? You mean those people who hold all the high spiritual secrets and don't let you into them and they got to represent you? No, not that kind. Oh, what kind are we talking about? We're talking about Jesus. Yes, yeah. Today in Hebrews we'll find out that Jesus is our high priest.

Today on More Than Ink. Good morning and welcome. I'm Dorothy.

And I'm Jim. And we're sitting here at our dining room table ready to dig back into the Word of God where we're in the end of Hebrews 4 and beginning chapter 5. And oh my gosh, this is a favorite portion of scripture. Yeah, it's a big deal. So welcome. We're glad you're with us and if you don't have your Bible open yet, we hope you will in a second because you're going to need it.

You'll need it. Yeah, we got into the first part of Hebrews 4 and there's an unfortunate kind of chapter break coming up here. But last time what he finished with is the goal in a sense. I mean God's plan for mankind to benefit from God's promise of life. Capital P Promise. God has a promise to mankind and he uses the capital R word, rest. Rest. To enter into his rest. And into an active, dependent relationship on what God gives. To rest the same way God rests. Exactly, exactly.

Oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah. We didn't even talk about that. And it says entering God to rest. It doesn't mean the rest that God designed for us, but the rest that God himself experiences.

The rest which God inhabits and welcomes us into. We get to join him in that. So that's what he talked about last time. That's the goal. That's what God's plan for mankind is. That's the good news.

And how do you get in? And not just for the Israelites back when they were coming in the Promised Land, but for all mankind even to this very second. Okay, and you get into the rest by believing God. By believing his promise. Believing that what he says is true.

It's that simple. But there are some problems and that's what he really highlighted. The problem is our own hearts. Incredibly, we will not believe his promise. We will not believe such extraordinarily good news. And the Israelites didn't either. I mean they saw the ritzy part, but they didn't walk into the Promised Land because they didn't believe God could really do it.

They refused to be persuaded. Show me a miracle. Right. Open the sea again. And to this very day, this promise lingers over all mankind as well. God makes to mankind to offer to give them abundant life. Our own hearts the problem. And in that problem, he starts now as we get it halfway through Chapter 4 to talk about the solution to that problem. Our own hearts.

The solution to that problem isn't us trying harder. The solution to that problem is Jesus himself. And so we start a longer discussion about who Jesus is and how, as our priest, he makes it possible for us to enter this wonderful promise of rest and life from God.

So we pick it up in Hebrews 4, Chapter 4, Verse 14. You want to take us there and let's see what he says as he brings Jesus into the picture. Well, and he had already opened this idea of Jesus as High Priest back in the beginning of Chapter 3. So he's kind of circling back to that now. He says consider Jesus the Apostle and the High Priest. The Apostle and the High Priest. Exactly.

Back in 3.1. So if you're just joining us, this is actually not the first time he's introduced this idea of High Priest. But after he's done all this intermediate stuff, he's coming back to it now to lean into it more. So Verse 14. Since then, we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens. In other words, he's not stuck on this side of the heavens. That's right. And went back to there. That's right.

It's not an obstacle for him. We have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. How many times now has he told us to hold fast? Yeah.

This is the third or fourth time. Yeah. For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then, with confidence drawn near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Should we stop?

I think we better. Hey, so in the Old Testament context with the Jews, why did priests even exist? Why were they needed? That's a question that maybe many of you never thought about before.

Well, the writer's gonna tell us in a minute. The priests offered sacrifices and prayers and gifts. They stood between as a bridge between God and man. Right. Men would bring their sacrifices and the priests would do the ceremony. Yeah.

Or would receive the prayers and then turn around and pray them to God. It was the priest who took the blood in and anointed the mercy seat in the Holy Holy. Right. The priest is the one who functions between God and man.

Right. And makes the promises of God something that man can participate in. And man will not participate in them if he is sinful. So, when you go back to the Old Testament and you look at what goes on in the temple, everything in the temple had to do with our problem of sin.

At all. It was about sin. And our disbelief.

And there's God brought him into the promised land and yet their hearts still stray from him and still don't believe him. And so the priests are there only because of mankind's fallenness and not being able to fully participate in God's promise of life. And because of the necessity of constantly dealing with our sin. Yep.

Yep. And it gets in the way of our benefiting from God's promises. So that's why priests exist and he's going to amplify that more.

If you're a Jew and you're reading this you understand that like, yeah, well everybody knows that. But in the culture we live in there's some misunderstandings about what temples are for. So I just wanted to highlight that for you and tell you that's what a priest is for. He's there to be an agent on God's behalf to solve the problem of our sin.

To do something about our sin. So the priests are there but there is an archpriest. There's a beginning priest. There's a first priest and that's what he says in verse 14 here.

There is a, literally in Greek, a mega high priest who is in charge of everything and he's not just a man. He's passed through the heavens. He seems to have an origination and a destiny and a facility to be both in heaven and on earth.

Okay. He's the actual son of God. And he's the son of God.

So he came from God. Yeah. And representing God to us. Right. And because he's fully man he represents us before God. Right.

Completely. And you know I'll emphasize again when we say son of something you always say son of means that they are the same kind as. So son of God means someone, gee, sounds like who's sort of a God. And in a real sense he is. In the realist sense he is. So let's hold fast to that confession, that stated belief of who he is.

And he emphasizes an interesting thing. As he pointed out last time the impediment to us entering God's promise of life and rest is our own disobedient hearts. And so you wonder whether or not God really does understand the depth of the problem that we have with our own hearts being disobedient and unbelieving and stuff like that. Can he really sympathize with the problems that we have as man if he's divine. You know and if you go back to the ancient idea of the gods in Greek and Roman and stuff like that. The gods couldn't really understand because they never were men.

But here he's saying no wait, wait, wait, wait. God himself came and became man and so he can actually understand what you go through. He can actually represent you accurately and empathetically because he's been there. Indeed that's the whole point of him becoming one of us. And Philippians 2 kind of unpacks that a little bit when it says he didn't just appear to be a man, he really was a man in very physical reality. And this qualifies him in our hearts and our belief to say yes he can knowledgeably and accurately fully represent my weaknesses because he understands.

Because he's been weak. And so because of that confidence we have because he understands us and he's fully man that's where he jumps into 16 and says so there you go. So there's your confidence. So we can then be confident and draw near to the throne of grace. Which you know if you draw near to the throne of grace which is where judgment and righteousness standards are you're toast. Yeah you don't just walk up to a throne.

No. Because that's where the king sits. We don't do that, we just don't do that. But we can hear because we can have confidence because we have someone who has acted like a high priest to mediate between us and the righteous king and so we can go with confidence to him to his throne and guess what you can receive mercy and grace in your time of need.

Wow that's an extraordinary access. Let's talk about mercy and grace for a minute because we kind of lump those two words together but they're slightly different. Mercy has to do with the relief of the suffering of sin. And grace has to do with receiving something we cannot earn and do not deserve and there's no way we can merit it. God is concerned with relieving the suffering that we are under because of sin and we don't deserve it. We can't merit his help but he's there as our king ready to bestow those things.

So in a sense mercy deals with what we deserve and grace deals with what we don't deserve. So yeah you can actually go to the king of righteousness who judges. And we can come with confidence. And we can come with confidence. And draw near. Now Hebrews is going to use this term draw near several times over the course of the book. God invites us to come near because of what his son has done as our high priest. Yeah it's a great picture. I wrote a song on verse 16.

I remember. But you know you just take this as a personal invitation. So come with confidence. Draw near to God because he's inviting you because of the person of Jesus to come near and receive from him mercy and your suffering and grace. It's such a great recourse in the midst of problems in this real life right now to know that you know you think about can I come to God? Will he really respect my requests? Am I worthy enough to come into presence?

I mean here I am this little pipsqueak creation sinful person will he listen to me? Well you know because of Jesus yes we have access to the throne of grace. It's an extraordinary thing. In fact before we get to the big promise of rest at the end of all things this in a way is a little picture of rest right now.

Right now in the midst of all this. God brings us rest. And Jesus accomplishes this. So this is his starting discussion in many chapters talking about the high priest and what an extraordinary result it is he says up front.

And how can this work? He'll explain it in a second but can you believe this because of what Jesus does as our high priest we have access to God in a personal intimate drawn near kind of way. That's astonishing. That is a astonishing thing. It's truly something. We have access to God. The door is open. The way is open to go straight to God in our time of need which when are we ever not in need.

Yeah I know. So this is a very practical right here right now gritty you know rubber meets the road kind of definition of what it means to enter God's rest to be in God's presence. And this is this is the big benefit and now he's going to explain how Jesus makes that happen. This is the connection he makes again this is the benefit for the right now.

But how does that work? How does a high priest, Jesus is our high priest, make that happen? So as we jump into chapter 5 he's going to rev up the discussion on the high priest and just the nuts and bolts of how this works. So he says for every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin.

That's his job. He can deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he's 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 right here he recaps for what a Jew would know about how the priest and especially the high priest works. What the beneficiary is the sinners to whom the promise is made but they're still sinners you know on behalf of men in relation to God he doesn't say in relation to God's promise of the promise line but in relation to God. And because the high priest during the ancient times he was a man just like us, well he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward because he himself has got the same problems.

He's been there, he's been in our shoes, he understands that, you go yeah okay that's a good thing too, he understands my problems. Well that's the way God designed the system to work but that's not always the way it did work. No it didn't and by the time Jesus came it was pretty broken in fact. Very broken because we know that the high priest and the priesthood that served with him in the day of Jesus was so prideful they regarded themselves as more righteous and better than and able to make God's decisions for him.

Yeah exactly I mean so far above and separated from the people rather than saying I can sympathize with your problems. They weren't like that and in fact they were very ambitious too and so that's why he brings up this last part about the fact, look you know they try to appoint themselves but God's the one who appoints the high priest for you. You know he's the one, it's not an honor for himself, God calls him just like God did for Aaron. Aaron was kind of a somewhat unwilling participant being a priest but God called him and that's what he did and Aaron complied and said I'll be a priest not for my benefit but for the benefit of the people. And we know Aaron was not a perfect priest.

So far from it, far from it. So that right there when we finish on verse four that's his recap that every Jew should know about how the priest works. So you know remember he tickled us before in the end of chapter four about Jesus being our high priest. Okay we just reviewed what high priests in the nation of Israel are.

Are there parallels? Yes there are and so he goes on about the parallel between the high priest well known to a Jewish ear and Jesus. So in verse five also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest but was a appointed by the one who said to him, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And that's from Psalm 2 which we read a couple weeks ago. Very famous Messianic psalm.

As he says also in another place, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Oh we've got to stop there for just a second because he's just opened a huge door here to this very mysterious Old Testament figure. It'll take him chapters to answer what he just opened right here. He just dropped a bombshell right here.

So here's your assignment. When you run across a name like that and you're like whoa where did he come from? Get your concordance and look up Melchizedek and you will be astonished at how little information we have. You can read everything the scripture contains about Melchizedek in about five minutes.

Exactly. I always liken it to the fact that it's in Genesis 14 but he does a cameo appearance like you're watching a two hour movie and some guy walks on and walks off the scene in five minutes and that's it. That's Melchizedek. But his role in Genesis 14, what he does and who he is, very fascinating.

It takes some time to kind of noodle over. And there's some layers of Jewish tradition that goes with Melchizedek that kind of add to that. I mean we'll talk about that as we go on because man you get to chapter 7 which is still a ways off here for us of Hebrews and he is the discussion item, he is the discussion item. But at this point you might go back and read the second part of Genesis 14 where Abraham encounters Melchizedek. Read what happened there and then just observe what Melchizedek did and what Abraham did. So when we get to this opening thing where he quotes Psalm 2, big Messiah Psalm and Psalm 110, big Messiah Psalm, by the way Psalm 110 is the second place in the entire Old Testament where Melchizedek is mentioned. The only other place is in the narrative in Genesis 14, those are the two places in the Old Testament where Melchizedek is mentioned. And here the writer of Hebrews is going to use his name consistently for almost two to three chapters. Say what?

So yeah it's a fascinating thing. But the point he is making here in what we just read verses 5-6 here in chapter 5 is the fact that Jesus is not an afterthought from God's perspective. He says you're my son which means you're like me, you're of me, you're of my kind, you're my son. Today I've begotten you.

That doesn't mean birthed although the word is used for birthing. It means in a general sense God caused to exist, you know he brought forth. So this is a deliberate idea on God's part. This is not an afterthought who Jesus is. And also the second line that comes from Psalm 110, fascinating again the deliberateness of God's plan for mankind using Christ is that he's a priest forever. Not just during the age of Israel, a priest forever. And because Melchizedek appears historically, and I didn't realize this for many years, long before the law was given and the Aaronic priesthood instituted four or five hundred years before. Yeah he's a cameo appearance with Abraham and Abraham is way before Moses and the law. So some fascinating issues with that. So there's a priesthood that pre-exists the Jewish Aaronic priesthood.

How about that? And that's a necessary distinction. But he's just talking about the fact here that this Jesus is indeed a priest and again we mentioned this once before, for a Jewish listener they'd say, no I don't think so, I know Jesus, he comes from the tribe of Judah, I know the rules according to Moses, only those that come from Levites or Aaron's tribe can be pre-exists, that doesn't work. So there's problems coming up right here and he's going to say, ah. He's going to deal with those in a couple chapters. He's a Melchizedek priest.

What does that mean? So anyway, he'll explain that more. But here all you need to absorb in verses five and six is the fact that Jesus' role in terms of being a mediator, a high priest, so that the promises of God can come to mankind is not a late idea. This is a forever idea that was there from the creation of the universe. He's a priest forever. Before Moses, before Abraham. Appointed by God. And appointed by God. This is God's plan and he comes from God and he's like God, he is God in fact. So all these ideas, he's very distinct in that way and this is deliberate on God's part. You're not just making this up. This is a big deal. Verse seven?

Yeah come back to the text because we're almost out of time. So after he's saying he's a priest forever, he is deity, he is the son of God. But verse seven, in the days of his flesh, during that time when he was in a human body, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered 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. Here it is again. So he's kind of giving us a thumbnail view of our high priest when he was in the flesh.

Telling us that he himself suffered under the fear and the prospect of physical death and it anguished him. When did that take place? In the garden. In the garden.

In Gethsemane. Exactly. When it says he learned obedience, it doesn't mean that he was fundamentally disobedient. It means that he brought into his experience as a human.

First hand experience. First hand experience what it is to yield his will to his Father. In the midst of his own suffering. In the midst of his suffering. To persist anyway.

To persist anyway. So if you go back and read those Gethsemane accounts in Luke 22 and in Matthew 26 where we know this, Jesus was praying, Father, if there's any other way, let this come pass for me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours. Where we see the learning of obedience. Yeah, and he even implies the suffering part that he could have asked God to stop his suffering. Which that's sort of implied in the prayer in Gethsemane as well. But instead what he did is he persisted with God's will for our benefit.

So it was about us, not about him through the entire process. So this first hand experience, I was just listening the other day to a guy in a state legislature there arguing about whether communism is real and one legislator sat down and another guy came up who's a Vietnamese refugee and he says, let me tell you my first hand experience with the terrors of communism. So in a sense you could say they both understood communism but the second guy had first hand experience with it. And for that it lent a certain kind of credibility. In a way that's what he's saying here. Jesus has walked in our shoes. It lends a credibility for us because we know that he obeyed even in the midst of that suffering. He knows what he's talking about, he's been here. And the prospect of death.

Yeah, yeah, so that's the big deal here. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation. I want to just put aside that. The perfect thing doesn't mean he was sinful and then he became sinless. The perfect just means that that's the designated end.

That was the completed process. So in actually walking in our shoes it completed the process of him being a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses and someone who we can look at and say, you know, completed in our mind, he knows what he's talking about. Because he walked so far as a human even to the point of death. Even death on a cross, says Philippians 2. So the worst most public, most humiliating death known at that time. So his experience of being human was utterly complete. It was perfect in that sense. And I want to highlight one word really quick in that verse 9.

He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey. And that obey is not the word doing what someone says. It really just means to respond upon hearing something. And it's used really commonly if someone knocks on your door at night, do you hear it? Do you hear it? And then do you respond? Do you respond appropriately? So this is a hear plus respond kind of idea. Are you hearing?

Are you responding? So he's the eternal salvation to all who hear and respond. See that's actually a very Jewish idea.

It is. So you're hearing the Shema, now listen, listen up and hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strength. So this idea of hearing and letting it penetrate your heart and responding, that's this idea. That was the problem with Israel going in the promised land. They heard but they didn't respond. So those are two separate steps.

They responded, they just didn't respond obediently. So Jesus, verse 10, is designated by God, a high priest, designated God's plan. This is God's plan. It's deliberate, it's eternal, it was put in place before anything was even ever made. This is the way it was always going to be. This is not an addition after the Old Testament.

This is the way it always was supposed to be. A high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Now if you go back and just look quickly at Genesis 14, I want you to notice the one thing about Melchizedek is that he is accessible and he comes out to meet Abraham and brings Abraham bread and wine. So that encounter is predicated on not what Abraham is bringing but what the priest Melchizedek is bringing to him. And so just kind of let that percolate in your mind as we're talking about a priesthood on the order of Melchizedek.

And also Abraham responds to him too in giving a tenth of his stuff. So go back and look. It's fascinating but you need to have all this stuff under your belt before we proceed on from here. We'll come back to it in the next couple weeks.

This will not go away. This whole Melchizedek idea is a fascinating thumbnail sketch of who Jesus is from a cameo appearance from a nobody in the Old Testament and it's just a fascinating thing. Well you know again we're out of time but today he has just opened up a gigantic multi-chapter discussion about how Jesus as our high priest makes it possible for us to participate in the promises of God for abundant life. And now he's going to explain that to us as the chapters unfold. So make sure you go through Genesis 14 and we'll pick up from there next time. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. We're delighted you're with us. We hope you are as thrilled as we are with this topic. This amazing word of God. This is great stuff. So we hope for you to join us next week on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments just go to our website morethanink.org. It's not bad. I just couldn't think of anything to say. Oh okay I got it. Go ahead.