Let me invite you to open your copy of the Scriptures to Hebrews chapter 7. You’ll find that, I think, on page 1004. We want to pull from a couple of passages this morning, Hebrews chapter 7 being one; Hebrews chapter 4 being another. So we’ll be visiting several parts of those passages. I’d encourage you to keep your Bible open or a pew Bible, if that’s the one you are using, so that we can visit the various parts. I won’t be able to read, in light of the time, I won’t be able to read the whole passage; I’ll read a portion of both sections and we’ll visit a great deal of it in the course of our sermon. Now let’s go to the Lord in prayer before we read.
Father, open Your Word to us. This is Your Word and we have life if we hear from You. Yours are the words of life. We don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And so Father, speak. Help us clear our hearts and our minds of every distraction so we can hear You and take Your Word to heart. Holy Spirit, teach us. We make our prayer, Father, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As Wiley Lowry mentioned last week, we’ve begun a three-week Sunday morning sermon series on the mediatorial offices of Christ. Or put another way, “How does Christ do His work as a mediator, as the Mediator, the go-between, between a holy and righteous God and sinful men and women?” We are the “sinful men and women” part. How does Christ do His work? The Scripture shows us three roles or offices that Jesus fulfills in doing His work as that go-between – Prophet, Priest and King. Last week, Wiley showed us what the Bible has to say about Christ as the Prophet sent from God. His purpose is to reveal God. Think of Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 calling Jesus “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of His nature.” The prophet reveals God. Today, we’ll look at the priesthood of Christ and next week, former senior minister, Ligon Duncan, will explore what the Scriptures have to say about Christ as King.
As you can see in your bulletin, I’m not David Felker and not on my best day could I be David Felker. He was supposed to be preaching this passage today. He became ill late last week and the opportunity came to me. So rather than pull something, some dusty old rag out of my sermon barrel, I decided to stay with our theme and our passage. I’ll tell you why – we need a priest today. We need a priest today of all days and we need to understand what Jesus does for us in that role. So let’s think together about three headings this morning that we want to unpack these passages under. Why do we need a priest? What is the priesthood of Christ? What does He do? What is our response?
Let’s read God’s Word from Hebrews chapter 7, verses 23 through 25:
“The former priests,” that is, the priests of the old covenant, “were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he,” that is, Jesus, “holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
And moving to Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14, 15 and 16:
“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 weaknesses, 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 time of need.”
The grass withers and the flower fades but the Word of our God stands forever.
Why do We need a Priest?
Why do we need a priest? Well, we go to chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, part of this larger passage I didn’t read – listen to what the writer of Hebrews says. Why do we need a priest? “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 sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” We are a needy people and our neediness flows out of our ignorance, our waywardness, and our basic weakness. Let’s think about those three things for a moment.
Our ignorance. Our knowledge of God has been shattered by sin and our capacity to know Him has been radically diminished as well. Even in the garden before Adam sinned, in a perfect environment, the only way that he and Eve knew God was by God’s revealing Himself to them. They could never reason their way to God any more than we, living in a sinful, broken state can either. But God was with them in a unique way because of the knowledge, holiness and righteousness, that environment that characterized the pre-fall world, that characterized Adam’s and Eve’s attitudes towards one another, towards God and towards their relation to Him. That was broken; that was shattered when Adam sinned. And sin created that separation that we know too well, that separation between God and man. We became ignorant of God in the sense of relating to Him as we were made to. We need a mediator. We need a go-between to show us the way, the make the way plain and clear for us.
But we’re not just ignorant in that sense, we are wayward. The Greek word here means “to wander, to stray, to be out of the way.” Maybe you’re like me – I hear that last phrase, being “out of the way,” sounds like a good thing. Until I was 5 years old, I thought, “Get out the of the way!” was my name! That’s all I ever heard from the folks in charge. But the writer of Hebrews isn’t really talking about that. He’s talking about wandering. He’s talking about wandering. There is a way; there is a way. God has made it plain to us in His Word and we stray out of it. Sometimes out of pride, sometimes out of distraction, sometimes out of laziness, sometimes out of wrong desires – we stray. We make a moral choice, a moral choice to do wrong when the right choice is plain to us. We just want to do the wrong thing rather than the right thing for whatever reason. Waywardness is our heart’s natural inclination. It’s who we are by nature.
And finally there’s weakness. The Greek word actually means “strengthless.” Strengthless. We are impotent in dealing with ourselves, in dealing with one another. We are impotent. We are ineffective because we cannot change our heart and we cannot change anybody else’s heart either. And it’s the heart that’s the problem. Its inclinations rule us. You all remember Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can know it?” We need a new heart.
What is the Priesthood of Christ?
And that brings us to the priesthood of Christ. What does He do? What does He do? Hebrews 7:25, I read just a moment ago – let me read verse 25 again. “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” What does Jesus do as our priest? He saves to the uttermost. He saves completely those who draw near to God through Him. Not just a new status but a new heart. God, in looking at the coming of the new covenant, and Ezekiel chapter 36 says, “I will give them a new heart. I will give them My Spirit within them so that they will do My ways and they will walk in My ways and do My law.” God gives a new heart through the work of His priest who saves completely, not just a change in status but a change in nature, a new nature. Jesus said to Thomas, who was asking, “Lord, how can we know the way? We don’t know where You are going?” He says to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to Father except through Me.” Thomas is looking for directions. “Jesus, give us a map.” Jesus answers his question in terms of a relationship – “except through Me.” “Connect to Me, Thomas. Connect to Me. In connection with Me, you find the Father.” How do I connect with You, Jesus? I trust You. We trust in Him as our go-between. We trust in His work as our Mediator. We rely upon His sacrifice. We rely upon His obedient life.
Verse 27 of Hebrews chapter 7, “Since He did this” – that is, He offered sacrifice once for all – “when He offered up Himself.” All of the old covenant priesthood was pointing toward a Priest who would come with a perfect offering, an effective, effectual offering. It wasn’t their offering. It wasn’t the blood of beasts. It wasn’t the blood of rams or bulls or goats. It was the blood of the Lamb of God. It was the blood of the Lamb of God that was sufficient to remove, to pay for the sin of the world. That’s the offering He makes. The God-Man offering Himself to pay for the sin of all His people at all times and at all the places where they may be found.
What’s our response? We turn. We turn from our sin. We repent of our sin. We repent of our efforts to make ourselves pleasing and acceptable in God’s sight. We trust that His offering of Himself, our Priest, the Lord Jesus, His offering of Himself was enough to pay for our sin to make us right with God. He offered Himself as a perfect offering. Listen to these words from chapter 5 verses 7 through 9. “In the days of his flesh, 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” – His fear for God. “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.” Is the writer of Hebrews telling us that Jesus was imperfect in some way? That the second person of the Trinity was lacking somehow? That He was not obedient? That He had to learn obedience?
Let’s remember what Luke says about Jesus at the end of chapter 2 – that Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” What’s Luke talking about? Luke is talking about Jesus growing up, Jesus growing up, progressing from a child to an adolescent to an adult. That was a physical process that had to happen. There were psychological processes that had to go along with that, emotional processes, mental processes that had to go along with all of that because Jesus was human as well as God. In His humanity, Jesus had to become obedient to death, even death on a cross. In His humanity, Jesus had to endure the suffering that the Gospels portray His enduring. In His obedient choice to accept and to fulfill all the Father’s redemptive plan, it’s in that choice that Jesus is complete in His redeeming work. His work as our Mediator is perfect work because He identifies with us, His people, in our suffering. He shares our sufferings. We suffer under various temptations, don’t we? He did too. We suffer under the hard providences of God. He did too. We suffer under doing the will of God when it costs us everything. He did too. We suffering when God’s answer to our pleading prayers is “No.” He did too. Jesus shares these sufferings and many more.
That brings us back to the second part of His priestly work that’s recorded in verse 25. That He “always lives to make intercession for them.” Jesus prays for us and He knows how to pray for us because He shares our sufferings. He is praying for us right now. He is speaking our names in His Father’s ear with all our needs – our fears, our worries for our families, our fears about our business and the family finances, our hopelessness about our marriage, our deep questions we are afraid to say to anybody. We ache for the Chinchen family in Paul’s unexpected passing. We ache for ourselves in losing a dear friend and brother we weren’t anywhere near ready to let go of. Jesus prays for us. He knows that pain. He knows how to pray for us. While we sleep, when we’re getting ready for the day, in our great joys, in the deepest of our trials and woes and griefs, Jesus is making intercession for us by name. He is praying for us. We trust in His offering up of Himself for us to make us right with God, if we recognize our sin and turn from it, He is praying for us as our Mediator, as our go-between.
What is Our Response?
Well what do we do with all of this? So what? What’s our response? Let’s remember why the letter to the Hebrews was written in the first place. It’s a letter written in the first century A.D. We really don’t know who wrote it. We’re really not even sure what the locality, the intended locality was. It was written around the time the other New Testament letters appeared and it was to be circulated particularly among the Jewish believers – maybe around Rome, maybe around Jerusalem, maybe yes to both. Jewish believers in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah sent from God paid a terrible price for their new faith among their families, among their friends, in the workplace, in their neighborhoods, and it was very hard on the priests, members of the priesthood who came to faith in Jesus as Messiah. This letter was written to bolster a weakening and a wavering faith of believers whose suffering was a surprise to them.
Maybe for other reasons you are in the same boat with them. Maybe your suffering is a surprise to you. “This is too hard!” may be the cry of your heart. “My prayers just bounce off the ceiling. God’s not paying any attention to me!” And then there’s that constant echo that’s never far from the surface, always – a tape that always plays in our hearts and minds; if you pay attention to it, you’ve heard it – “God is not good. God is not good. God is not good. God is not good.” It’s there. It’s the echo of Eden. It’s the hiss of the serpent’s whisper, “God is not good.” And we hear it, we hear it again and again and again. How do we respond?
We go back to chapter 4 verse 14. “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 weaknesses, 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 time of need.” It says we “hold fast our confession.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds like pretty language to me. But the word really means “to seize.” I get seizing. I get seizing something. You play capture the flag – you get seizing. You grab that flag and nobody is going to get it out of your hand. We seize something we are desperate about. We are desperate about something. If you seize something you’ve got it and nobody is going to take it from you. You’ve got it. You’re not letting go. That’s how we respond to the priestly work of Jesus – we seize our confession.
And what’s our confession? Our confession is best summed up in three words – Jesus is enough! Jesus is enough! He is all I need! Jesus is enough! We seize our confession in our dark moments of trial and doubt and fear and loss, in our bright times of joy and laughter and blessing. We seize our confession – “Jesus is enough! This is wonderful. But Jesus is enough!” We hold it as tightly as we can. It’s the pearl of great price. It’s the treasure we found in the field and we went home and we sold everything we had so that we could buy that field and possess that treasure. It’s worth it all. It’s worth it all. We hold fast, we draw near, we draw near with confidence because Jesus and His Father welcome us there. We are called there. We are anticipated there. We are invited there. Why? Because we are weak and we are wayward and we are ignorant. We can’t find our way without our go-between, without our Mediator. He prays for us but we also pray to Him. We also flee to Him. We flee to that throne of grace. “Grace” the operative word. Not a throne for those who deserve to be there. You hear that? It’s a throne for the broken, the throne for the needy, the throne those that don’t have it all together, the throne for the lost, the throne for the wayward, the throne for the brokenhearted and the worried and the anxious. It’s the throne for folks that are saying, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” That’s the throne. Not the throne for the reigning but the throne for those that need the reign of the Savior. And He dispenses grace.
It’s where we find mercy. It’s where we receive mercy. What is mercy? Mercy is the pity of God moved to action. That’s what mercy is. Mercy is the pity of God moved to action. And we find grace, that unmerited favor, favor we don’t deserve, favor that ought not to be ours, favor that ought to go to somebody else but it comes to us, unmerited favor – merited by Christ, unmerited by us. It’s where we receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. That’s what it means for Jesus to be our Priest and that’s how we respond to Him. We seize that confession, “Jesus is enough,” we draw near to that throne where grace flows, where grace flows to the needy, and He sustains us. Why? Because He prays for us. Why? Because He paid for our sins, reconciled us to God. God sees us coming to that throne not as strangers – “Who’s that? Who let him in the door?” – but as sons and daughters – “So glad to see you! So glad to see you!” Sons and daughters of the Most High God because we have a Priest who offered Himself.
Amen. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, thank You for our true and our better Priest. Thank You that He would act for us. Thank You that He would call us to Himself, point out the way, and reestablish His image in us so we can be no longer ignorant, so we can be no longer wayward, so we can be no longer weak, but more and more putting sin to death, more and more living unto righteousness, more and more looking like Christ. Would that be our story. Would that be our song. Hear us, Father, as we make our prayer in Jesus’ name and for His sake, amen.