Four. And Hebrews chapter 5. You'll see why I made that reference. We are in chapter 5 this evening and just verses 1 through 3, we continue our study in the priesthood of Christ.
Introduced to us last week in chapter 4 verse 14 and running as a major theme through the book, really through chapter 10 verse 18, the high priesthood of Christ. The writer has been showing us that just as Christ is better than the angels, better than Moses, better than Joshua. He is better than Aaron and all the priests and high priests that have come from Aaron's line. And of course the purpose of the writer in speaking to us so thoroughly about the priesthood of Christ is in part to encourage those who were tempted to return to being merely Jewish, who had embraced Christ as Messiah, but had had family and friends saying, Jesus isn't the Messiah, come back to us.
It was to encourage them not to do so, to strengthen them, that they were on the right path following the Lord Jesus. And of course then also to comfort them and us to encourage us with a greater assurance that we can have, that we have everything we need before God if we have Jesus. And then of course also to warn his first years and us that we have nothing before God if we don't have Jesus. And so this evening we turn to Hebrews chapter 5 verses 1 to 3 where we're introduced to the purpose of a true priest.
Let me invite you to give your attention to God's holy and inspired word. 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. Because of this, he is obligated to offer sacrifices for his own sins just as he does for those of the people.
Amen. This is God's word. Let's look at them together in prayer. Our Father and Heaven grant we who are ignorant and wayward in our own way to be enlightened in the eyes of our hearts in the knowledge of Christ.
And so then to know the hope that we have in him. So bless us by this word in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Well this is an important passage about the priesthood and the writer is focusing us on Aaron so that by contrast we can see that Jesus is even better.
Now it may be helpful to be reminded that he's already pointed us to the greatness of the high priesthood of Christ in chapter 4 verses 14 to 16. So he's already held out the better and now he's pointing you to Aaron. And so just as a way a reminder if you have your eyes, your Bible open, look there verses 14 to 16. Let me remind you some of what we saw in it that Jesus is our unique mediator verse 14 since we have a great high priest who's passed through the heavens.
Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our confession. He says Jesus is a mediator. That is he's that's what a priest is and he's the chief priest. He's our great chief priest and he's ours and we said he's not only a unique mediator but that he was accepted and acceptable before God on our behalf.
That's the implication that he passed through the heavens. That is he didn't simply go into an earthly tabernacle or an earthly temple nor pass through the veil into the earthly holy of holies. But our high priest has entered the true temple and the true holy of holies, the true most holy place even heaven itself now to appear on our behalf in the presence of God and he wasn't turned away. He wasn't kicked out.
He's acceptable and fully accepted. And then we saw that thirdly he's divine. Jesus the Son of God he calls him that is he's superior to Aaron because he's not merely human. But he is truly human God in the flesh and we saw that he's our sympathetic high priest.
Verse 15, for we do not have high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weakness. But one human every respect was tempted as we are yet without sin. He is not able to not sympathize with us. It's impossible for him to do otherwise than sympathize.
And that's because he was tempted like us in every respect and he knows what it is to be truly human to be weak and tired and hungry and thirsty and tested over and over and over again in his obedience to God and tempted over and over and over again to distrust God and disobey God. And yet we notice as the author says at the end of verse 15, he did this yet without sin. He never fell short of the glory of God. He never gave in to temptation and that is remarkable.
It means his experience of temptation was much greater than ours. We wonder how can he sympathize with us? Well, when we have been tempted and we have often given in which means that we have not felt the full force of temptation. We gave in before we did.
But Jesus never gave in the face of temptation which means he felt the full force of it and continued to resist it and to walk humbly and faithfully with God. So don't ever imagine that Jesus doesn't understand what you're going through amidst all your problems and troubles and temptations. He knows what it's like to be truly human and it is impossible for him not to sympathize. And so the writer told us to do two things in light of that, the end of verse 14, let us hold fast our confession.
You keep on believing in Jesus, don't walk away. And verse 16, more than that, let us then with confidence drawn near to the throne of Christ that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We're provided to come boldly and frankly to the throne room of God because we have a great high priest who has given us access there in his name and to seek help in our time of need. And I was reading this week about the Christian evangelist FB Meyer.
He labored for the gospel in the inner cities of England and America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He was kind of like a DL Moody type evangelist and while crossing the Atlantic Ocean on an ocean liner, he was asked to address the first class passenger. So that the captains request, he spoke on answered prayer. And the agnostic who was present at the service was asked by his friends, well what did you think of Dr.
Meyer's sermon? And he answered, I didn't believe a word of it. Well that afternoon Meyer was asked to then to speak to the steerage passengers and many of the listeners of the morning address went along including the agnostic who claimed that he just wanted to quote, hear what the babbler had to say. And before starting for the service, this agnostic put two oranges in his pocket.
And on his way he passed an elderly woman sitting in her deck chair fast asleep. Her hands were open and in the spirit of fun he put the two oranges in her hands and moved on. And after the meeting he came back across this old lady happily eating one of those pieces of fruit and he said to her, you seem to be enjoying that orange with his smile on his face. And she said, yes sir, my father is very good to me.
Your father, surely he said your father can't still be alive. Well praise God she replied he was very much alive. What do you mean? Ask this man.
Well, she's fine. I'll tell you sir. I've been seasick for days and I was asking God somehow to send me an orange. I suppose I fell asleep while I was praying when I woke I found he had not only sent me one orange but two.
And of course the man was speechless and as the story has told later he was converted to Christ. God's throne is a throne of grace and no request from his children is too small for him is my point. He delights to help you when you're desperate, when you're needy and he invites you to boldly and frankly come seeking help from him and he delights to show himself strong on behalf of his people. Another example from when Dr.
Helen Rose Beer was a missionary in Sair, not called Congo. She says a mother and a mission station died after giving birth to a premature baby and we tried to improvise an incubator to keep the child alive but the only hot water bottle we had was beyond repair. So we asked the children to pray for the baby and for her sister. When one of the girls responded, dear God please send a hot water bottle today.
Tomorrow will be too late because by then the baby will be dead. And dear Lord sent a doll for the sister so she won't feel so lonely. That afternoon a large package arrived from England. The children watched eagerly as it was opened and much to their surprise.
Under some clothing was a hot water bottle. Immediately the girl who prayed earlier earnestly started to dig deeper, exclaiming if God sent that I'm sure he also sent a doll. And she was right, says Helen. The Heavenly Father knew in advance of that child's sincere request and five months earlier he had led a ladies group to include both of those specific articles.
Arriving at just the right moment nothing is too hard for the Lord to take care of. Nothing is too small for the Lord to care about. Do you have a need? Are you desperate?
Do you need mercy? Do you need grace? Do you need help? The writer says come boldly and frankly to the throne.
He delights to give that we might receive because of the great high priesthood of Jesus. So with the priesthood of Jesus in mind then he explores the theme. He turns to well the first high priest of Israel Aaron and wants to then show that Jesus is greater than Aaron. And so that's where we arrive at in verse one and two and three and he speaks here of the purpose of high priests and the weakness of high priests.
Notice in the first place the purpose of high priests. Verse one, for every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God. Notice that first every high priest comes from mankind. They're taken from among men to act on behalf of mankind.
God did not appoint angels to be our priests. They're not our mediators. They don't represent us to God. They don't give us access to God.
They are different kind of creatures than we are. But as Hebrews one told us, they are sent by Jesus to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. They serve Jesus for our sake, but they're not priests. So we don't have to look to angels that offer sacrifices to God for us.
They're going to make us right with God or to give us access to God. Just as we don't need and shouldn't look to other kinds of created things to be the mediator for us that only Jesus can be. We don't have access to God and He doesn't favor us with His presence because of some other kinds of mediator. So for instance, when we come to worship together, it's not music that, well, you'll hear this sometimes, quote, ushers us into the presence of God.
No, it's Jesus who ushers us into the presence of God. It's not candles that does it. It's not natural light or LEDs. It's not red carpets or brown carpets.
It's not incense. It's not whatever mood we create up here or whatever mood you came in when you came into here. None of that gets us any closer to God or God any closer to us. None of it makes us favorable with Him nor acceptable to Him.
What we need is not created stuff or other created things, even angelic beings. But what we do need, God says, is we need a priest, a priest who's human like us to act on our behalf in relation to God. It erred that and Jesus does that. Jesus does it better.
And so what is a high priest appointed then to do is he acts on our behalf, we'll notice end of verse one, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Gifts and sacrifices were appointed by God in the Old Testament and were to be offered before God in the temple or tabernacle for the purpose of praise or thanksgiving or the dedication of the one offering it or for atonement and so on. It was to be an expression of the person offering it, perhaps of one who was thankful for God's provision and they were returning a portion of it to Him or the person who was grateful to God for redemption and they wanted to celebrate that God said He was at peace with them and they were at peace with God through His grace, they would bring a peace offering in celebration. And in many cases, of course, as you know, they brought sacrifices for sin or for guilt or for atonement and it was offered as a substitute in the place of the offeror on account of their failures, their guilt, their need for atonement.
And the point of the writer here is that you didn't just show up at the tabernacle or temple and offer these sacrifices yourself, but you actually brought them to the priest to be checked and examined by the priest, either accepted or rejected and if they were acceptable, well, for instance, if the priest would be interested to know you weren't trying to offer some sickly animal instead of a healthy one or a main animal instead of a whole one or some roadkill you picked up on the way into Jerusalem, right? But if it was acceptable, then the priest took it from you and offered it before God on your behalf. What the writer here is saying then is that Jesus is our perfect high priest who, well, this is where he's going, offers the perfect sacrifice on our behalf. And so to your friends, if there's anything you ought to bring to God in order to perfectly express your praise, perfectly express your thankfulness or your self-dedication, Jesus offered well, actually himself for you as that perfect gift.
And if there's anything you ought to bring to God in order to make atonement, if you could do such a thing, to take away your guilt or provide for forgiveness, Jesus offered himself on your behalf as the perfect sacrifice. He acts on your behalf. And one of the great blessings of this then is the freedom with which we may come frankly and boldly to the throne of grace. Peter put it this way in verse Peter chapter 2, verses 4 and 5, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Peter is not saying you're a high priest but every believer is part of the priesthood that God has made of his people, we offer spiritual sacrifices to God. We might bring a sacrifice of praise or of thanksgiving and offering in support of the propagation of the gospel. We might offer some service in his kingdom, some prayer on behalf of others. But even these Peter says are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
That is, they come to God and are welcomed by him because Jesus, your great high priest, acts on your behalf in relation to God. So if you're worried about the lack of zeal in your praise or eloquence in your prayer or the failures of some other act of worship or service that you just know is less than perfect but not to be perfect. And you imagine therefore it's totally unacceptable to God, this would be unacceptable to me. If somebody brought this to me, I'm good news for you.
Well, let's start with the truth. It is less than perfect. It is less than it ought to be. And our best on behalf of the Lord as still sinful creatures is less than it ought to be.
But Jesus, your great high priest, represents you. And it is acceptable to God in and through him. That's what he does for us. Now then the writer turns from the purpose of priests to the weakness of priests, specifically the weakness of Old Testament priests, of course, verses two and three.
And their weakness has both a positive and negative implication. First the positive, verse two, he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is beset with weakness. Now of course you can imagine the situation where an Old Testament high priest beset with weakness was beset in such a way that he was just so unself aware that he thought highly of himself and poorly of the people he was serving and he was high handed in his dealings with them. But you can imagine where if you had a genuine believer serving in this capacity with some sense of his own desperately wicked heart and sinful condition, well then you have a high priest who was humble before God.
And in that posture, well then would be gentle and patient with you. He knew he needed God's gentleness and patience with himself and he had received that and shaped his pattern of relating to his people. He wouldn't treat you with severity but himself with charity. Just as we had breakfast with a young man going into, aiming to go into pastoral ministry and we were discussing his ministry among his peers.
He asked me, how do you confront someone about a barrier of life where you think they need to change. And one of the things I mentioned was my own experience with my college campus pastor confronting me. He would, I've told some of you before, he would sit you down over coffee or a meal and then when he wanted to, as it were good after you, he would begin by saying, you know that I love you, right? And then he would wait for you to affirm, yes, I know that you love me.
And then he would tell you a thing or two. But one of the ways he told me a thing or two that still stuck in my mind, I mean he wanted to, he wanted me to know he was motivated by love and care for me and my blessing. But I remember one time he said to me after saying, you know that I love you and I said, yes, I know that you love me. He said, I've noticed that you're a lot like me.
He said, I struggle with procrastination and you'll think, thing, thing, right? Of course, yes, exactly. So do I, right? But then it was an opportunity to talk that issue through.
It wasn't proud. It wasn't arrogant. It wasn't condescending. He didn't shout at me or fly off a handle at me.
It was a kind of commiseration because he knew his own heart and his own need for the grace of God and God's patience with him. What a frankly sweet way for him to tell me about what he saw in me. It didn't come as a punch in the face. He wasn't saying, you know, I've got my life together.
Why don't you shape up and be more like me? His attitude wasn't, I'm doing it all right. What's wrong with you? And so because of his own weakness and he was beset with it, he was enabled to restrain himself before dealing with me.
He took the log out of his own die before he offered to help me with the login mind. He wasn't a priest, of course, but it was a priestly activity. It is when you talk to someone about their sin and help them apply the atonement of Christ to it. Well, that's the kind of disposition you would want in a, well, let's just say, a fallen human serving as your high priest, right?
Humble, self-restrain, in light of knowing himself and his own weakness. At least that's what you would want if you yourself were ignorant or wayward, which is who he helped, who he would help, as the writer says. If you'd messed up and watered away from the truth, I would descend, maybe because you didn't know any better, you were ignorant, even if you should have done better, or because you were inexcusably morally blind, or because, well, you willfully sinned, or because you got sidetracked and gave into some temptation and then you got stuck in the muck. It's interesting here he says he's able to help the anger and wayward because one of the one kind of person the high priest couldn't help was the one who in the Old Testament language sinned with a high hand.
That is, who deliberately and rebelliously distrusted the Lord and dishonored the Lord and didn't care that they did so. A rebellious apostate, you might say. There was no atonement in the Old Testament sacrifices for that sort of sin, unless and until the sin had repented. Confessed.
Right, of course you could be forgiven, but you couldn't just go on flaunting your rebellion and expect to show up at the temple and be reassured that you were forgiven while you didn't actually care if you needed this forgiveness or not. The priest didn't represent that sort of person before God in the Old Testament sacrifices. First as well, the writer of Hebrews in chapter 10 will say to these folks, if you deliberately keep on sinning, that is what he means is if you deliberately keep on rejecting Jesus as the Messiah and you don't humble yourself and embrace him as your Savior, then there is no sacrifice that remains for you. If you turn away from the one sacrifice that makes you right with God, there is no other place to go.
And so here the high priest acts on behalf of the ignorant and the wayward. Sinners, the chief of sinners to be sure, but not on behalf of those who spurned the very thing that he offers to them on God's behalf. So it's not necessary for sins that are both known and unknown in the Old Testament for the ignorant and the wayward. And the high priest could be gentle because he's beset with that same weakness.
Now obviously then, we should pause here and say a point he just made when he said Jesus did all of this without sin and a point he'll later make about the perfection of Jesus. That the writer is not saying that Jesus is likewise himself beset with sinfulness such as ignorance or waywardness. He isn't beset with the weakness of fallenness, but he is beset so to speak with the weakness of humanness. He certainly needs the strength of temptation to either ignorance or waywardness.
And then he bore our sins in his body on the tree and our sins were accounted to him and he knew the guilt of them in his own person and he suffered the wrath of God due to them for us in his own person. He took up our weakness. He was numbered with the transgressors. He bore the sin of many.
The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all and he's humble and gentle and meek and lowly. And he knows how to deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward. He doesn't need to be fallen in order to be humble and gentle or meek or lowly because God himself is humble, gentle and meek and lowly. He doesn't need to be fallen.
Jesus doesn't order to be sympathetic because he was tempted like us in every way as we've been saying. Now notice for the Old Testament high priest, the negative side of their own weakness and sinfulness. Verse 3, because of this, he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. Before the priest could make an offering for you, he'd already had to have made an offering for himself.
This was the Levitical Law. If you want to turn there and just listen in Leviticus chapter 9, Moses says to Aaron and Leviticus chapter 9 under the rules and instructions for priests. Verse 7, he says, draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make a tome that for yourself and for the people. And read the offering of the people and make a tome that for them is the Lord is commanded.
In verse 8, it says, so Aaron drew near to the altar and killed the calf of the sin offering which was for himself. Then in verse 15, then he presented the people's offering and took the go to the sin offering that was for the people and killed it and offered it as a sin offering like the first one. And so it went day after day and year after year first to sacrifice for the sins of the priest and then offerings for the sins of the people. But faithful Lord, Jesus didn't need a sacrifice for himself because he wasn't sinful.
And the writer will make this point in Hebrew 7 at verse 26 and following. It was indeed fitting that we should have a high priest, such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. He has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily first for his own sins and then for those of the people. Since he did this once for all when he offered up himself for the law of points, men and their weakness is high priest, but the word of the oath which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.
And that's a mouthful and we'll walk through all of that as the writer argues it. But it's a glorious thing and it is better because if Jesus has to offer for his own sins, he could not offer the one final sacrifice that finally deals with all of our sins. Now he'd just be another high priest who would need to be replaced by another high priest and so on and so on. And so I just to close ask you, are you worried that your sins, you who believe in Jesus, are you worried that your sins still cling to you as it were in the presence of God, that they haven't been sufficiently dealt with and God has determined to hold them against you even if even justly then you need to know that there is a great high priest who adequately dealt with all your sins because he never had to deal with any of his own having done and that is good news.
So look to Jesus then to be your mediator, to be your representative before God knowing that nothing will get between you and God in light of him. Cumbled, come frankly. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the superiority of Christ overall and thank you that you gave exactly what we need in Jesus.
He's sufficient. And so we pray that you would help our souls rest in him and even as we serve you knowing our own continuing failure and weakness, thank you that even our meager efforts on your behalf are made acceptable to God through Jesus. So then help us to serve you boldly and zealously with a heart that knows we're okay with you and you with us because of Jesus in his name I pray. Amen.
Amen. Let's stand together and sing Jesus my great high priest.