Our Great High Priest: Trials and Temptations

Let's read together please in Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2 and let's read at verse 17. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people for in that he himself has suffered being tempted he is able to succor or help them that are tempted. Now chapters 3 and 4 introduce the background context of the wilderness journey and we are taught that there is a rest that is waiting for us as well.

Chapter 4 and verse 1 let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest any of you should seem to come short of it. Again verse 9 there remains therefore a rest to the people of God. Now you might be just about ready for a rest now too this afternoon but the rest I'm thinking of is really the eternal rest.

The rest of the kingdom of God in the ages to come. But I want to speak to you primarily from verse 12 down to the end of the chapter in Hebrews chapter 4. For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our profession or our confession for we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly under the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Now I have a strange habit of whenever I come back to an area I think about what I spoke last time and I have a tendency to pick up where I left off last time.

Last year at the conference I spoke about the high priestly ministry of Christ from a little bit of chapter 2 and from chapter 5 and I'm actually just picking up from where I left off but I don't expect you to remember that. There's a lot of introductory background that would be valuable to to understand but just to emphasize from what we started with in chapter 2 and verse 17 it behoved him it was suited to him it was necessary for him to be it says in all things it behoved him to be made like his brethren. The relationship in which the Lord takes care of us today as our high priest is in the relationship of being our brother and as difficult as it is for us to enter into that wonderful reality this is the truth.

This is the reality of our relationship to Christ. The Son of God has ascended into the hands. He is enthroned at God's right hand.

We are now sons of God and we share a family relationship and his interest in us and his care toward us is ministered in this wonderful family love and loyalty. That's taught in verse 11 and 12 of the chapter. He is not ashamed to call us brethren and so I want to think with you about the reality of his ability to sympathize, his ability to succor us, to come to our help and I want to think with you primarily about the issue of trials and temptations.

You've already heard today about the reality of the experience of trial and it's easier for us to understand that he can connect with us when it comes to trials of faith, trials of life. It's a little more difficult, more challenging for us to understand how he can possibly sympathize with us when we're undergoing temptation to sin and the distinction that is so sharply in our own conscience between him and us seems to present a barrier to his capacity to be able to sympathetically care for us in times of temptation and failure. But I want to try to touch on that because I think it is extremely important for us.

He is a merciful and faithful high priest. He will never be unfaithful to God in his character and yet he has the capacity to be merciful and faithful to us at the same time as being faithful to God at a cost to himself. Now in chapter 4, if we think of the wilderness context and the reality that God is today sustaining us in a world that is not hospitable to spirituality, this world as it exists today is alienated from God.

So spiritually it's a wilderness, nothing to sustain us. So the first emphasis that is given in chapter 4 verse 12 is the capacity of the Word of God to care for us. Now the word quick is very unfortunate in this passage because it just seems to emphasize the idea of the sword slashing every way, cutting us to shreds.

The word quick means living and this is the character of the Word of God. It is sustaining to us spiritually and so it is essential for us to enjoy the Word of God, to meditate in the Word of God, to nourish ourselves from the Word of God, just as you are hearing today of the provision of manna for the wilderness journey. But it's not only living, life-sustaining, it is also effectual.

It is capable, it creates effect. And then it goes on to speak about this being sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder. And it has taken me a long time to appreciate that this is for my benefit.

If someone was waving a sword in front of your face, you might not think that's for your benefit. But we need the discerning, opening, exposing effect of the Word of God upon our beings. And that's what is emphasized in these verses that follow.

You know, sin is very deceitful and we so often mistake sin for ourselves and ourselves for sin. Since we have been saved, God has made a clear distinction between you as his child and the sin that still resides within you. That's the teaching of Romans chapter 6, 7, and 8, especially in chapter 7. And in that gloomy chapter of despair, of overcoming sin operating within me, he comes to this recognition.

It is no longer I, but sin that dwells within me. It is no longer I that do it. Now this is not an understanding or an insight to relieve us of responsibility for behavior, but to discern that there is a presence of evil within us, that God has separated between you and it.

And in the ministry of the Spirit of God in our lives, but I'm thinking primarily of Christ here, in the ministry of the Son of God as our High Priest, he also deals with us on the basis of our sonship. That we are distinct from the sin that clings to us so commonly. And so we need then to have discernment.

You see, our bodies, just using a medical analogy, our bodies won't fight disease, it won't fight the virus, as long as it just accepts it as being part of me. But once our body identifies this as a foreign intruder, then it raises the autoimmune defense and seeks to destroy it. And that is really what the Word of God does for us, to bring to light what is evil that is going on within us.

And so this requires a cooperation on our part, that we will be willing to be searched, that we will accept the searching influence of God's Word upon us. He separates between spirit and soul, and most of us really can't do that. The little bit that I understand about the distinction of spirit and soul is that spirit is primarily that which is principles, character, the deepest part of our being that relates to God directly.

Soul seems to be connected more with our emotions, our feelings. Soul is the intermediate part of ourselves that connects both with spirit and with body. And it seems that either it is under the influence of the spirit or it is under the influence of the body.

And that is where the battleground so often goes. How many times do you not end up doing something because you just don't feel like it? Well, that is coming from the wrong side of our being. And so if we are governed by our feelings, if we are governed by our emotions, we will be an unstable Christian, and we will often be out of touch with God.

But the Word of God has this piercing, dividing character and discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Do you understand your own thoughts? We don't even know where those thoughts come from. They are often triggered, sometimes by external stimuli, sometimes by an association with something in our memories.

And off our thinking goes. There's a difference between having a thought come into your mind and it become a deliberating and an intention to fulfill. And so the Word of God discerns between the thoughts that come through our minds and the intentions that come within us to fulfill them.

And so there is an inner openness to God that is very important. But it also says that there's no creature that is not manifest in his sight. And if we could grasp this, it would have such a sanctifying effect upon us.

Every moment of my experience, moment by moment, day by day, no matter where I am, no matter whom I'm with, I am an open book to my God. He is seeing, he is discerning, he is recognizing every motivation. And so he cuts through all the cover-ups, all the excuses, and this is the God that we are to be in relationship with.

And so looking at it from this point of view, it can be a pretty challenging thing to think of living a Christian life. And so there is brought in beside this total exposure before our living God with a wonderful provision that he has made for our infirmity, our falteringness with a great high priest who has been here, who has gone through life's experience, who has now ascended into the very presence of God. And what we see here is that this one is perfectly suited to the need that we presently have as being sons of God on our way to glory and yet so befuddled at times as to who we really are and what's going on within us.

And so it says here, for we have not in high priest unable to sympathize with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. Now I hope I can convey what I have to say simply enough and clearly enough in the last few minutes because I think this is extremely important truth for us to grasp. What's the difference between temptation and trial? It's interesting that the Bible uses the same word to cover both aspects.

That should actually give us a clue that there is a very important what I call a backdoor connection between trials and temptation to sin. And that connection is this, whether it is a trial, a hardship experienced, or whether it is a temptation to sin, exactly the same issues are being raised in our relationship to God. What do we mean? Well, someone has well said in every test there's a temptation.

And every trial or every temptation there is a test. Let me give you two scenarios that we would instantly recognize as being worlds apart. One we could sympathize with, one we would get very very upset about.

And yet both challenge the same three things about God. Let me just give those three things about God so that you see where I'm coming from. Every trial raises the question about God's goodness.

Think of the Lord Jesus in the wilderness, allowed to hunger for 40 days. Is God good? Is God providing for his son? He's allowing him to experience privation, lack. Every trial that threatens or robs us of something is raising the question, is God really good? And every trial raises the question, is God just? Is God fair? Is God just if I am going through this suffering and other people who are totally careless about God are not experiencing that kind of hardship.

Is God just? And then, is God even in control? Is God sovereign? Is he truly superintending my life's experiences? These three things about God, I believe that you could put every other description of God and his character under these three headings. So this is really encompassing the character of God, the faithfulness of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God, the love of God. All that there is about God can come under these headings of his goodness, his justice, and his sovereignty.

And every trial brings us into that question of what we think of God. But do you know that every temptation to sin also challenges these three realities about God? Because every sin is a denial of his goodness. Every sin that I commit is really saying God is not good enough to supply what I need.

So I have to go out of righteousness. I have to go out of God's will and get it for myself. Every sin also challenges the justice of God.

Because if I sin knowingly, I am flying in the face of the God who justly punishes wickedness. The true fear of God should prevent us from sinning. And every temptation to sin also challenges the sovereignty of God, the right of God to control my life, to allow me to go through experiences that may not be pleasant.

And so let me just give you two simple scenarios. There's a husband whose wife is dying of cancer. And he's watching her sink.

He's watching her suffer. And he's praying to the God who could change this. And God is not responding to change the circumstance.

His faith in the goodness of God is being challenged. His confidence in the justice of God, the fairness of God is being challenged. His confidence in the sovereignty of God, the God who actually is in control of what's going on.

And so every trial brings to bear, it brings tension upon our appreciation of God, our willingness to live for Him, to continue trusting Him and loving Him. But there's another scenario. And unfortunately, it's becoming so common today that in the world that creates no shock at all, where you have a husband who's being tempted to forsake his wife.

And as he is contemplating forsaking the wife that he has for someone else, as I've already gone over with you, that again is challenging the goodness of God in his heart. He has lost sight of the goodness of God in what God has brought into his life to bless him. He's denying that goodness.

And he certainly is denying the justice of God. Because God specifically declares for those who violate marital faithfulness, God himself is the avenger of all such. It touches to the very core of God's character of covenant faithfulness.

It's one of the most daring and absolutely foolish things to do, to be unfaithful to your marriage. Because you make God your adversary. The very justice of God and the sovereignty of God.

God's right to control what you have, where you're at, what your experiences of life are going to be. And so testing and temptation have this important backdoor connection. So the reason I'm emphasizing this is so that we can understand even though the Lord Jesus never yielded to temptation to sin, he never experienced sinning, and yet all that he went through brought him under test in exactly the same ways as temptation to sin brings to you.

And so he is fitted to come near to us, to know what the issues are that this temptation to sin brings into our hearts. And his goal is to bring us back to a true faith relationship with God. Now I'm going to have to go beyond this.

If you look at the temptation in the wilderness, how would you describe it? Well I would describe it as a real temptation, but an external temptation from the outside. For the Lord Jesus as he experienced it, it was an internal test. I want to come a little closer because most of us still struggle with the sense that when I do fail under temptation to sin, I feel shame, I feel guilt, and there is this tendency of the power of sin to keep me from God's presence and to cause me to live at a distance from him.

And this passage is saying, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace. You say, well surely he can't sympathize when we are sinning. Well let me be very clear, he does not and will never have sympathy for sin.

He can have no desire of sympathy for what is wicked. But if you can accept the reality that he looks at you as belonging to the Father, as being born of God, and that sin which has taken over in your heart and life is a foreign destructive invader, and he wants to deliver you from it. He wants to protect you.

He wants to recover you. And what has appealed to me, and again it's been in later years that I've come to appreciate this, I've come to appreciate that the Lord Jesus understands my sin better than I do myself. Because upon the cross in the experience of this separation from God, he experienced the consequence of my sin.

While he never experienced sinning, he experienced the consequence that sin causes, of distance, of shame, of guilt. And there's one thing in particular that helped me to come to understand this, and it was through some experience of counseling which my wife and I were involved with, with some dear believers who had experienced sexual abuse. What's the difference between sexual abuse and almost any other kind of trauma? Well, if you were walking down the street and somebody robbed you and beat you up, and you had to go to the hospital and recover, you would be definitely traumatized.

You would be afraid to walk down the street at night. You would want somebody with you, and so on. It would create traumatic effects.

But you would never feel the shame or the guilt of the crime that person did to you. But in sexual abuse, the additional horror of that experience is that the victim, because of the nature of the sin, identifies with the perpetrator and feels shame, feels guilt, because they were forced unwillingly to participate in somebody else's sin. And it is so traumatic to many people that they can't even deal with it until years later.

It's one of the most difficult things for people to overcome. It can be very difficult for those around them, because they have learned to cope with it by distancing themselves from their own feelings. And people who have gone through that sometimes don't even have an emotional part of them, hardly.

They're almost numbed emotionally. So what I'm getting at is simply this. In the experience of Calvary, the Lord Jesus identified himself with us totally.

And my sin became his to bear. And in those solemn words that God, in the ministry of reconciliation to the world, he made him, the one who knew no sin, to be made sin for us. And so I have come to appreciate that the Lord Jesus knows every sin that I have committed.

And so that he is calling me from the throne of grace to not let anything keep me from his presence. Let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy. That's for your failings that are in the past.

And then also to find grace to help in time of need. And that is when we are experiencing temptation. Because you don't have to keep repeating the same sins over and over and over again.

There is someone who is capable of delivering you if you will respond to his ministry. And so this is a very, very important reality for us. We're on our way to glory.

We are going to be presented before the presence of the Father, faultless in absolute sinless perfection, made like the Son. Today he is seeking to sustain us. He is seeking to develop in us the very likeness to himself.

And one of the great things he wants to do is to deliver us for every aspect of evil. So may God grant to us to appreciate him and his ministry for us.