Think we are Hebrews chapter seven and we're in the last verses. So it's our last look at a long passage that's about the priesthood of Jesus. And we need to remember this point that we, we need a priest in order to have access to God. And in Jesus, we have the priest that we need.
And the writer here is once again going to tell us why Jesus fits the bill. So let me invite you to give your attention to the reading of God's holy word from Hebrews chapter seven, beginning at verse 26. For it was indeed fitting that we should have 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 appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever. Amen. That's brand together. Father, we ask for the ministry, the Holy Spirit that you would enlighten the eyes of our hearts and the knowledge of Christ, that you would help us to know the hope that we have in him, what is our inheritance we have in him, what is is excusingly great power towards us who believe we ask that you would help us to come to you through him.
So encourage us. We ask and glorify Jesus in his name. I pray. Amen.
So the priest, the perfect priest that we need is also the perfect sacrifice that we need. And in verse 26, he speaks of his priesthood as flawless, not fallen. In verse 27, he speaks of his sacrifice as final, not frequent. And verse 28, and so his mediation is forever and not finite.
So let's think about these three things. First, his priesthood is flawless and not fallen. Verse 26, for it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. He says it's fitting that is that it exactly meets the need that we have.
Notice the five things he says. He's in the first place, holy. I'm like all those Old Testament Levitical priests. Jesus himself doesn't need to be made holy.
Holy is what he is. And so he's acceptable to the holy God. He's always welcome in the throne room of God because he's holy. He's also innocent.
He did nothing wrong and he injured no one. I mean, if you were a Jew before Jesus, there might be days, weeks, months, even years, you might be managerial, Testament priest because, well, maybe he was a jerk or maybe he grazed his sheep on your grass or maybe worse, he gossiped about your sins. Jesus isn't like those guys. He never harmed anyone.
And he's unstained. The priests of the Old were richly pure, but Jesus is really pure. They may have been outwardly purified by the ritual. They bathe.
They put on clean garments. They looked the part. But inwardly, like any fallen human, they were defiled from the heart and stained by sin. But Jesus has never had to play dress up.
I mean, he never in fact, faked it on the outside to cover up corruption on the inside. Every priest in every pastor was and is tempted to do so. But Jesus has never done so. Now, I'm not your priest.
I'm a pastor. There's a real difference in that work, but there's but there's not a difference in the humanity like those priests of old. It's so easy for me to want you to think I'm better than I am. I mean, I've been in ministry since 1988 in some way, shape or form or dain since 99 and like those old testament priests of old, it's I know the temptation to put on a show.
There have certainly been times in three decades where I have faked zeal or faked interest in the conversation I'm having with you when really I'm thinking about dinner or some sporting event or my map. I'm sorry, but that's that's who you've got. It's true. I certainly, you know, there's the temptation to walk, to be thought worthy in ourselves of the work in every way.
But Jesus was genuinely good from the inside out. There was never any guile with him. He was always holy towards God, innocent towards us, unstained in himself. He's the flawless priest and the flawless sacrifice.
So Peter will say we were redeemed, not with perishable things like silver gold, but with a precious blood of Christ, like a lamb without blemish or swap so that he never needed to offer a sacrifice for himself when he offered himself for the sins of others. He was also noticed this fourthly separate from sinners. Now, as enemies, you remember accused Jesus of hanging around with drugs and prosthetes and said of him that he was a glutton and a drunker. And of course, Jesus wasn't a glutton and he wasn't a drunker, but he did hang around with people.
I mean, he ate with them. He traveled with them. He worked with them. He worshipped God with them.
He didn't live in the desert or live in a monastery, removed from the sinners and aloof from the wicked. No, he wasn't one of them, but he was sympathetic towards them and a friend of sinners. He touched the lepers. He let his feet be washed with the tears of a prostitute.
He wasn't far from people, but he was far from being sinful, which is what the writer is saying, separate from sinners. And fifthly, he's exalted above the heavens, higher than any angel. After his crucifixion came his ascension, he returned to God. He's where we need him to be.
And coming to God through him isn't like coming to God through anyone else, whether we would speak of Moses or Muhammad or a medicine man or mother Teresa or any priest or any pope coming to God through him means you're coming to God through God's mediator, just exactly who and what you need him to be. So the writer acts for 12 says of him, there is salvation in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be safe, but we can be safe and reconciled and had access to the throne through him. We have everything.
He needs every expectation of God. We have everything we need in him. He's flawless. Secondly, notice verse 27.
His sacrifice was final and not frequent. That is verse 27. He has no need like those those Old Testament high priest to offer sacrifices daily. First verse, and for those of the people, since he did this once and for all when he offered up himself.
I mean, one of the hallmarks of the Old Testament priests is that they made offerings for themselves before making offerings for others. This was part of the job. And why did they have to do that? Well, because the Old Testament priest were a bunch of rotten sinners, but Jesus is holy.
He's innocent. He's unstaying. I think how disconcerting it might have been. You know, you're just a garden variety sinner, let's say.
And you've arrived at the temple and you brought your animal for the sacrifice of your sins and the priest says to you, no, I'm sorry, you're going to have to wait. I've got to offer my own sacrifice for myself before I can offer your sacrifice on your behalf. I mean, you say, well, I mean, well, that's just great. Well, what if you're offering doesn't work?
What if the offer you offer for yourself doesn't work? I mean, what if God rejects it? What if you do something wrong? Like like Aaron's sons, they're having a buy to and they offer fire in the altar that God had not committed to offer and fire came out and consumed them?
Or what if you're like, you know, I sons, Hophie and Phineas, who sold the best parts of the sacrifice and slept with the women who helped in the temple? I mean, what if what if the scuttlebutt around the temple is the priest on duty, the day you've come a long journey to offer your sacrifice? What if the scuttlebutt is he's an adulterer? And you can imagine that for some it would be easy to become a cynic about the entire sacrificial system.
The very priesthood meant to assure you of God's favor by its continual need for sacrifices for its own leaders might make you wonder, was sin ever going to really be dealt with once and for all? And the constant repetition, the frequency, it was it was it was, well, it inculcated a kind of uncertainty, a lack of confidence. But because Jesus was holy and innocent and undefiled, he didn't have to offer sacrifices for himself instead could offer himself as a sacrifice and a further contrast, the Old Testament priest offered what? They offered animals.
Jesus, the writer says offered himself. That is, he was the voluntary willing sacrifice who laid down his life for his sheep. Now, some have said, well, all right, now this gets us into cosmic child abuse. Some have looked at the offering of Jesus in sacrifice on our behalf with the father accepting it, the father approving of it, the father even pouring out the wrath we deserve upon his son.
Some said, I mean, that gospel is cosmic child abuse, and they charge God with that. I mean, doesn't that make God some terrible kind of father, bloodying up some innocent human child with cruel torture for some greater good? That's the argument that some people make. Well, three reasons is not that first.
This is a mature man, Jesus, making a willful decision to take responsibility for the person God and the wrath of God due to us, and due to others, to be our surety, to pay our debt. And he's a volunteer in it as a mature man. I mean, he laid down his life for his friends, the Bible says he threw himself in harm's way, so to speak, to protect others because he wanted to. He wasn't a powerless child, nor was Jesus merely human, of course.
I mean, he's he's got the son, which is to say he's got himself. He's equal with the father. I mean, this is the son of God offering himself as a sacrifice to God to take away the sins of God's people. And thirdly, when he was crucified, we can say this, that he wasn't innocent before God in this sense.
He was accounted to be vile, filthy, wicked, because our sins were accounted to him. And we know that he wanted to be there, but we also know that he dreaded being there upon that cross receiving what our sins deserve, and yet he chose it. And so there's, well, that scenario just isn't true to that. This is cosmic childhood use.
This is love when a man lays down his life for his friends. And there's nothing that else needed, right? It's a one final, sufficient sacrifice once for all that never needs to be repeated. And it was finished.
What's his cry? It's done. It's done. And so his sacrifice was flawless.
His sacrifice was final and his sacrifice. Notice our his mediation here. His priesthood was flawless. His sacrifice was final and his mediation is forever, not finite.
I mean, his mediation goes on and on. The writer is saying it never ends. Yes, he died once and for all, but he always lives in or see forth. So verse 28, for the law points men and their weaknesses high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law points a son who has been made perfect forever.
So the law gave to Israel priests who were inadequate, who were weak and who made offerings that were inadequate and ineffective. And salvation was ultimately, as the writer will go on later to say, not found in the blood of bulls and goats offered by sinful men. And ones that had to be offered again the next day and the next with one priest replacing another priest as they were tired and not continually offering these sacrifices. Something new was needed.
And so a thousand years after the law appointed men in their weakness, God through the Psalmist in Psalm 110 appointed by oath, Christ to be a priest forever after Melchizedek, or after the line of Melchizedek, the order of Melchizedek to establish something better. And how long is he perfect for forever? Right. There's nobody else coming.
There's no need for anybody else. He didn't go from imperfect to perfect. He didn't go from sinful to pure, but from his beginning, the God man through his trials, through his temptations, through his lived obedience, through his suffering, death, resurrection, ascension. He became the source of eternal salvation to all who trust in him.
So his priest on his flawless, his sacrifices, finally his mediation is forever. Now let's apply some of this a little bit. Don't look in the wrong place then for a means by which to draw near to God. Don't look in the wrong place outwardly and don't look in the wrong place inwardly.
What do I mean? Well, we're tempted sometimes to look outwardly, but in the wrong direction. We should look outwardly to Christ, but we're, but well, years ago, maybe I've shared this with you already, but Ricardo Montabon, you remember him as Mr. Rorke of Fantasy Island, or Con of Star Trek, or the grandfather of Spy Kids fame, right?
The actor years ago on an infomercial, he was talking the Jerusalem stone. It's a necklace with a little rock supposedly chipped out of the temple mount to quote, as they said, harness the spiritual energy of Jerusalem, and quote. And they all kinds of testimonials of people who had, you know, warned the necklace or that warned the rock in their, in their ears and such. And this one teenage girl spoke blowingly of how much closer she felt to God, she said, because of it.
She said, I feel like Jesus is always with me because of a piece of rock. That's like thinking you have any closer connection to God because you have the bones of some dead Christian in your possession, because you've got the bones of a relic. We don't have proximity to God. God doesn't draw near to us through stuff like that.
That's looking in the wrong place. It is through Christ. That other stuff is a form of idolatry. God hasn't promised a special access to himself for those things.
In fact, the second commandment for Vincent. But people also look outwardly in other ways. People try to make geography their mediator. One of my preaching professors in seminary had traveled to Israel to see the historical biblical sites, which, you know, to get a better sense of the Bible.
And I'm sure it was an amazing, incredible trip. But he says he was shocked when he saw people waters skiing on the sea of Galilee. And he thought to himself, I mean, his first thing was, do they not know how special it was like, says our Lord Jesus walked on the water in the sea of Galilee and they're using it for recreation. And he said that he thought, don't these heathen realize Jesus walked on the water.
Then he remembered, he doesn't hold the water. It's water, water. You swim in it, you fish from it, you ski on it. The lake doesn't mediate God's presence.
And you and I aren't any closer to God if we're in Israel or at the shores of the Dead Sea or in Timbuktu. We can worship on a mountain top. We can worship in a cave. We can worship in a, in a remodeled sanctuary with fresh carpeting and paint just as well and no different than when we worship in this same place with old basket carpet that needed to be replaced.
Don't look at those things as your mediation. Don't look at the creation this way. People speak of, well, I don't need to be in church. I just go out and I walk in the woods and I see the sun and all of this.
Well, yes, the heavens declare the glory of God. We should delight in the creator. Marvel at his power, his wisdom and his beauty, his excellence. It's the point of doom, of course.
But creation doesn't open the door to paradise nor open God's ear to prayer. So don't look outwardly in the wrong direction for access to God. Look outwardly at Christ. But it's also tempting to look inward, which is also the wrong direction.
I mean, we're tempted to look inside ourselves to our own faith. If I would just believe more purely, really scrunch up my nose and fists and believe that God will listen to me. Sometimes we say, well, if you think that you're going to wait your whole life and never be heard because you're putting your faith in yourself or your faith in your own faith, but true faith has access to God, looking away from itself, satisfied in Christ. Where we're tempted to look inside ourselves to our love.
I mean, if I just loved God more, sometimes we think, then God would bless me. But because I don't love him enough, he won't. But then again, is to put our trust in ourselves and our response as if it's our love to Christ instead of Christ's love for us, which saves and sanctifies and opens heaven. But first John four says, and this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for us.
Or we're tempted to look at our repentance. We've been talking about this in Sunday school. Sometimes we think, if I'm just sorry enough and grieve enough for my sin, God will be reconciled to me. But the hymn writer had it correct when he said, could my zeal no respite, no, could my tears forever flow?
Tears of repentance. All for sin could not atone. Thou must save and thou alone. I mean, our weak repentance, and let's admit it, there's nothing perfect about it.
Our weak and imperfect repentance needs to be repented of. But God in Christ accepts us through faith and repentance, of course, in Christ. And if you think any of your religious feelings, open heaven or command God's love or reconcile you to him or him to you, well, then you must really have a high opinion of yourself. In a very low view of the demands of God's perfect law and a very low estimation of what God provided for you in his son.
I mean, are you free from sin? Have you perfectly kept the 10 commandments of God? And God says, if you want to be right with me in yourself, here's what you need to do. Love the Lord, your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, all of your strength, all the time, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Always do that. The scripture says, and you will live. But none of us have done that. We can't have life that way.
We can't have asked this to God that way. I mean, who have ever done such a thing, but Jesus did. He did love God and love his neighbor as he ought to, as we ought to. So we don't need to look inwardly to our own faith or to our own love or to our own repentance nor outwardly in the wrong direction, but look unto Christ.
His access guarantees our access to God. So let me close with three or four scenarios, perhaps you're a person who's desperate for help. And you realize you have nowhere else to turn. How do you approach God?
Say when this is a real scenario, thankfully in our past and Lord willing never to be repeated. So your child isn't where this is supposed to be. And you can't reach them. You can't find them.
What do you do? You wait a little while, but boy, any parent of a little one at a department store knows that within five minutes they could be anywhere in the racks hiding and five minutes seems like an eternity when you've called for them and they don't show. What do you do if they got out of the car and walked away from the car in the middle of the night and they're just a little kid and it's they've gone a long way. And you call the police and they're out helping to look for your child.
I mean, what do you do when you start praying to God? Do you start bargaining? I mean, Lord, if you'll help us here and immersing in my kid and bring them home, then I'll shape up. I'll do better.
I'll do you bargain with God offering him yourself in exchange for an answer to prayer. Or do you say, Lord, you know, you know, I'm a wicked man. I don't deserve anything blessing from your head. Mercy, please forgive, please rescue, please restore.
You can come boldly to Jesus is what I'm saying in moments of great desperation, not because you've shaped up and lived a good life in the last day or a week or month or year, but you can come boldly in Christ. He's a flawless priest. Maybe you have some relationship in family. That's strange.
What do you do? Do you focus on trying to fix them? Do you try to help them shape up, drop a word here, drop a word there? Do you try to fix the relationship yourself, maybe adjust yourself simply to make it work?
Or do you go to the Lord and can you and just admit, Lord, I'm a failure. This relationship has become a disaster. I don't know what to do, have mercy and look to Jesus for help in time of need. Or when you're suffering in some other way.
Do you imagine it this way as some trial comes into your life that God is paying you back for the wrongs that you have done, that God is seeking to satisfy divine justice against you because of the debt of your sin? Is that the way that you as a believer in Jesus think of your relationship to God, the Father? Well, the Bible would say, you don't think of it that way. You have a great high priest who's reconciled you to God and suffering in this life is not God getting more justice out of you as if he didn't get it all that was required out of Jesus.
Now the writer will say late in this book that we should endure hardship as discipline because God disciplines those he loves. But that's a very different relationship. That's a very different kind of thing when the Father brings even difficulty into your life because he wants to grow you and mature you in Christ. He wants to prune you and make you more like Christ because he loves you.
That's an entirely different way of thinking about your relationship with the Father than I deserve to be punished. And so I guess I am being punished. No, Christ was punished in your place. He offered himself as the perfect sacrifice once and for all.
Or maybe your chief concern is simply just you, not some other relationship, not some suffering, you're experiencing. Maybe you're just tired of being you, tired of your lusts, tired of yourself, hatred, tired of your trying to control everything, tired of being twisted up with self preoccupation. That maybe you figured out that you can't fix yourself. Well, do you know that because of Christ, you have the freedom just simply to sigh before the Lord to not have any idea what to pray to not try to fix yourself before the Father just simply to groan before him, to sigh before him, to grieve and weep before him and find comfort that there's a priest who always lives to intercy for you.
He knows what you need better than you. And he's everything you're not. He's everything you need. He's flawless.
He's final. He's forever. We need no other, but we do need him. That's right.
We thank you, our Lord Jesus, our prophet, priest and king. And we most especially thank you that you gave yourself to reconcile us to God, to take away our sins, to give us free access to the throne of grace. We thank you, Jesus, that when we don't know how to pray for ourselves, you always live to intercede for us and know exactly how we need to be shepherded. We ask that you would show yourself strong on our behalf and teach our hearts to know that we are weak and inadequate.
But you are everything we need. And Jesus, they make right. Amen. Amen.
Let's stand together and say.