Heb No.11 The Great High Priest (2) 5v1-10

Isn't that a marvellous last verse? He, I change, he changes not. The Christ can never die. His love, not mine, the resting place.

His truth, not mine, the tie. I never cease to be amazed at the remarkable nature and unique achievements of our Lord Jesus Christ. I guess I've read this book, not only the epistle to the Hebrews, but the accounts of the life of our Lord Jesus time and time and time again.

And one never reads without seeing something fresh. It's like starting to swim in the ocean and you've gone a hundred yards and you think you've gone a long way as you look back to the shore. And then you look out to the horizon and there's lots, lots more.

And you go half a mile and you look further to the horizon and there's a great deal more. And if you can make it, and I used to be able to, you could do a mile or even three miles. And then if you're still swimming, there's still a lot, lot more for you to see.

And that's just the way that it strikes me. It is with Bible study. You spend a lifetime sifting this book and you've hardly started as you grow a little more in understanding of all the wonderful aspects of the nature of our blessed Lord and Redeemer, the one who never changes, the one who remains absolutely the same, our friend and for our consideration this evening, our High Priest.

Yes, we're coming back to that topic of Jesus Christ as the High Priest. We touched on it last time, we gathered together, and we will be returning to it. We're bound to, because we're working our way through Hebrews, and the writer of the Epistle dictates the content of the syllabus.

And he seems to think it's very, very important to appreciate that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is also the High Priest. We will find that several chapters are given up to this subject. It becomes perhaps the greatest contribution that this letter makes to our understanding of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus, because it's not set out clearly at all in any other letter.

It's superbly and supremely the message of Hebrews to the Christian church that Jesus Christ is the High Priest. And of course, bearing in mind the people to whom this letter was addressed, it seems an obvious point to make. It's written to the Hebrews, the people who were familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures, the people who looked upon Abraham as being their forefather, the people who boasted of the ministry of the meekest man with the exception of Jesus Christ who ever lived, Moses, the people who had Aaron as part of their ancestry.

Well, says the writer to the Hebrews, there have been some great High Priests. As earlier he would have conceded, there have been some great prophets and there have been some great kings, but there's never been and there never will be a High Priest like the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember, and I've brought it out, I've had to time and time again as we've been pushing our way through these early chapters of this glorious book, you will remember how so often the supremacy, the superiority of Jesus Christ is underlined.

The greatest prophet, the greatest of the patriarchs. He's greater than any of the angels. He's greater than Joshua, that Old Testament character who bore in the Hebrew language the same name as Jesus, because Joshua means Jesus.

But you can put all these people together, all these types of individuals together, and as great as they were at the natural level, they are dwarfed, they are diminished when you compare Jesus Christ. He is the greatest, and referring to the High Priesthood and the High Priestly ministry of Jesus at the opening of the third chapter, our writer says, wherefore holy brethren, he's talking to you, to me, wherefore holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our faith, of our profession, Christ Jesus. And that's just what we're engaged in doing, and we will, for the next few chapters, we're looking at Jesus Christ, the great, the greatest High Priest that ever there was, that ever there will be.

Now you'll recall from our discussion of this last week that because Jesus Christ is a great High Priest, we of all people are tremendously fortunate. Look at the 14th and 15th verses of chapter 4. This is just whetting your appetite with a few words of introduction. As we recap upon last time, we gather together and we set the scene for our present study.

We're of all people most fortunate because we've got a High Priest like Jesus. Why? Well, the writer says in the 15th verse, because he has an ability to understand our needs. We have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

And because he remembers us, because he knows us, because he's aware of our disposition and our frailty, because he has experienced life at its most intense pressure, we can come to him boldly, believing that he will minister to us from his own experience of life on this earth. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. You remember I was rather critical, I hope not unjustly so, of the headmaster of my grammar school when I was a lad back in the north of England.

He had an office which, in the loose ways that boys sometimes alas use scriptural expressions, we would refer to as the Holy of Holies. And he was a man really set apart, so set apart that when you went to see him, if you ever got the summons, you shook in your shoes. You knew that you'd be there and you'd get a roasting, and indeed you might get some heat applied to a tender area of your anatomy as he reached out for the cane and indicated that he was the one who meted out discipline in our school.

I can't say that there was ever a time in my five years at the grammar school when I went boldly into the headmaster's study, and I never recall an occasion when I found mercy nor even grace to help in time of need. But as far as our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned, looking at this scripture literally and applying it to his ministry as a mediator between us and God, we can approach him. We can approach him with confidence.

We can come before him realizing that we've a man in the glory, because he has human as well as divine natures, and he sympathizes and understands us, and he pleads to the Holy Father on our behalf. Well, that's wonderful. Here we have in the last two verses or so of chapter four, reference to the greatness of our Lord Jesus, and you might think that that would content the writer of the Hebrew Epistle.

He said, consider Jesus, and he's given us a picture. Isn't that enough? No, it's not, because you see, you can never speak too much about the amazing way in which Jesus fills the role of the high priest of men and women, and you can never study the life and the character of Jesus in this area sufficiently. You can't exhaust the teaching.

That's why our writer is going to spend several chapters just underlining the point that he's already made, and he'll keep coming back to it, and coming back to it, and coming back to it, and he'll be saying, in effect, look, I told you, I said you were in for something wonderful. I told you to consider him. I told you to keep your eyes fixed on him, because that's what the word means, consider Jesus.

Not just a passing glance, but something that has really so absorbed you that you can't do anything else but keep looking at him. So, in the fifth chapter, he's going to tell us a little bit more. He's going to tell us about the high priestly role, and it's good at this point for me to stop and to quote from the great man of God, John Calvin, because he tells us, as we're moving through Hebrews, to remember this.

It is not enough for the Christian to believe that Christ was instituted as high priest on behalf of men, unless the Christian believes that he was one of those men for whom Christ was appointed high priest. If you fully appreciate what it means to have a high priest, the high priest in the glory who's got concern for you, this is what Calvin's saying. You should be a much better person and a much more confident believer as a result.

Well then, we have a great high priest. The fifteenth verse of the previous chapter, you remember I said, was really dealing with the assertion that the pagans were making about Christian people. They got their priests, that you could see them in Rome, you could see them in the whole of the Empire, priests to pagan gods and goddesses, and the criticism was launched at the Christians, you haven't got what we've got.

You're so bankrupt you haven't even got one high priest, and the writer says, you're wrong. Not only have we only got one high priest, we don't need any more, because we've got the best that there is. And when you move into this chapter, he's going to tell us a little bit about the qualifications that at the human level would be required of an ordinary high priest back in the days of the Old Testament.

He'll do that from the first verse through to the fourth verse. That's a rough distinction of the teaching. Verses one to four, you discover a job description, if you like, of what the high priest had to be in the days of the Old Testament.

And then from the fifth verse right up to the tenth verse, we'll draw a line just there after the tenth verse, there is some glorious indication as to how Jesus so fulfilled the requirements of this job description, that it would be impudence to think of anyone else taking over from Him, because there never was, and there never can be, such a great high priest as the Saviour. And He did His job so well that there's nothing else for any other claimed high to do. All right, that's reasonably simple for you to get the whole thing into perspective.

Let's have a look then at this job description of the high priest in the Old Testament era, and there are three or four things that you can work out quite simply from those verses. Every high priest, I'm going on to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God. What's that statement saying? Well, the high priest, when he was chosen, had to come from the ranks of men.

Why is the writer making this point? Well, if you've been with us during the course of our studies up to this particular time, you will recall how a lot of attention was given by the writer of the epistle to angels, and the way that angels and celestial beings were important in Jewish understanding. Well, though they are great, and our writer will admit to this as we have seen, they don't have the properties that are necessary for them to be a priest of men. A priest who is to act on behalf of human beings like you and me must be one of us, and that's then the basic requirement.

A high priest must be a human being. The man, the person who is going to stand between humanity and deity must be a man himself, for reasons we'll go into in a moment or two. Now the second thing about the high priest is that he can't make himself to be such a person.

In other words, you can't seize the office. Every high priest chosen from men is appointed to act on behalf of man in relation to God. Look at verse 4. One does not take the honour upon himself, but he is called by God, just as Aaron was.

In other words, you can't grab that office and say, hands off, I want it, I've taken it, it's mine. We sometimes, in our modern lifestyle, talk about waiting to fill dead men's boots, don't we, as far as promotion is concerned, and we have the impression of some just waiting, ready, eager to grasp the job that's above them, and I suppose that's a reasonable thing to some extent. But you see, that secular concern for promotion and the seizing of a position is not like the high priesthood at all.

A valid high priest has to be appointed by God. He doesn't take the office for himself. Possibly the writer here had in mind the fiasco that went on at certain times in Jewish history when the high priest died, because by the time of the writer to the Hebrews, that position became an economically well-paid job, and it had a tremendous amount of influence, and there were lots of people who wanted to be high priest.

But the writer is saying this is absurd. The high priest himself, in the biblical sense, is a man who has been ordained by God for the job. You know, in Roman Catholic history, they've had some very embarrassing experiences when the papacy became vacant.

Ideally, if you went along with Catholic theology, which I don't to some large degree, ideally the Pope is appointed by the College of Cardinals, and he would be naturally somewhat reluctant to take the office, because if it was a valid office, then it becomes perhaps the most important one in the whole world. And the absurdity occurred on some occasions that too many people wanted to be Pope, and now and again you had two or three Popes at the same time, and it really was a most embarrassing time in the history of the Catholic Church. Men grasping for power.

Now the high priest in the Old Testament days in the biblical setting was a man, and a man appointed, a man ordained by God. What's more, he's a man whose sole function is to act on behalf of the people as he comes into the presence of the living God. Look again at the first verse, every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God.

What's the nature of his ministry? Well, it's to bring sacrificial offerings to the Lord, and later on as we stay the course through the Hebrew Epistle, we will talk more about the offerings that were brought. But the writer obviously has at this point in mind, particularly the day of atonement when the high priest would go into the holy place in the temple or in the tabernacle, and he would bring some blood from the animal that had been slain, and he would make atonement for the sins of the people. He would come before the Lord, and he would offer a sacrifice.

That was his job, part of his job description. But he wouldn't do this in an academic fashion. He wouldn't look down upon the people as though he was so superior to them, as though he himself had got no faults and no blemishes.

Rather, the writer tells us in the third verse, or rather in the second verse, that he will deal gently with his people because he himself is beset with weaknesses. This priest will be a pastor. He will deal with people realizing that he himself is liable to commit sin.

Indeed, says the writer in the third verse, because of this, because of his sinful tendencies, he is bound to offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. So what have we said about the high priest in summary? Well, he's a man, not an angel, not any of the celestial hosts. That won't do.

A man who is going to, a person, a being who is going to act as priest must fully be identified with the community on whose behalf he will minister. It must be a man. And then he's got to be a spiritual man, not someone who's grasped for power, someone who wants to wear the garments of the high priest and parade through Jerusalem, everyone saying, look, here is the most outstanding citizen of this holy city.

No, he's not a man who's seeking honor for himself. He's not a man who's pushed himself into office. He's one who's been amazed, as Aaron was, to be selected by God for this particular position, and he'll offer sacrifices for the people.

He'll intercede with God on behalf of the people, and when the people come to him, he'll be sympathetic. He'll have compassion on the ignorant and on those who go astray, and when the sacrifice is offered, he'll come away realizing that part of that offering applied to himself because he is a sinner. So you see this job description as contained in these first four verses, and when the Hebrews had that sort of high priest in the centuries that had gone by when our writer was pushing his pen, they were blessed and very privileged, but when they had such people as Annas, Caiaphas in the office, then they were most unfortunate.

They got bad leaders. Well, where does the Lord Jesus come in? He comes in in this respect, that the high priestly office of the Old Testament in one sense was always pointing towards him. The high priest, let's go over it again, is a man who will stand as a mediator between man and God.

He will be an arbitrator. In legal terms, he'll be a barrister. He will plead the brief of ordinary people.

Now nobody, however good they may have been, could fulfill all the offices of the high priest absolutely, and in one sense every occupant of the high priestly office in the Old Testament era was pointing to that occasion when the greatest high priest would appear, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is now what our writer sets out to do, to show that the Lord Jesus Christ has all these qualifications, all these qualities. He fulfills it all in his own personality, and so we're asked now, having seen the job description, to take that job description and apply it to Jesus. In a magazine I get each week at the end of the glossy pages, there are a number of jobs always advertised with salaries of about, starting at a mere 15,000 pounds, going on to about 30 or 35,000, and I sometimes think to myself, wow, I wonder what sort of person they want for this money, and I go down and realize that I don't have that qualification, and I haven't got this qualification, and I haven't got the other qualification, and even if I was tempted to leave the tab, I wouldn't get that job, because I don't fit in with the job description.

I don't have that sort of professional ability in the area of management and finance. But take those four or five aspects of high priesthood, lift them out of those four verses, and place them alongside Jesus, and you find in Him the sublimest candidate. You find in Him one who fits the description to the letter, and that's just what the writer is saying.

As you come to the fifth verse, so also Christ. Here is a fulfillment of all that is required of the high priest in the nature of Jesus. Actually, the connection there is with Aaron and the writer was bringing out the point that Aaron didn't volunteer for the office.

He was called by God. So was the Lord Jesus. But the point is not only so was Jesus called into office by the Heavenly Father, but so the Lord Jesus fulfilled all the prior qualifications.

He was a man. He was ordained. He offered sacrifice.

He was a sympathizer. And the only way in which the Lord Jesus doesn't fit in to those first three or four verses is in respect of this one thing. There was no need for him to have any sacrifice offered in respect of his own sin or misdemeanor, because he never did anything wrong.

The Lord Jesus Christ was absolutely pure. And so it can be said of Jesus, as of none other, not only was he the priest, the high priest, but he becomes the sacrificial offering. Now this is truly remarkable.

The writer to the Hebrew says, consider the apostle and the great high priest of our faith, even Jesus the Son of God. What did John say when he first encountered Jesus in his public ministry? Did he say consider the great high priest? No he didn't. He said consider the Lamb of God.

Had John got it wrong? Should John have said consider the high priest and not the Lamb? No you see, both the writer of the Hebrews and the Baptist are correct in saying that Jesus is high priest and sacrificial victim. He is the one who will not only act as priest for all mankind, but his shall be the body that is placed on the altar and makes final atonement for the sins of the believing world. And there Jesus stands out uniquely you see.

Aaron couldn't have done that. Let's imagine somehow Aaron having gone into the holiest place and maybe instead of carrying the blood of some bullock into that sacred shrine, he took out a dagger and he plunged it into his heart and the blood there was spilt in the holy place. It would have been a vain attempt of offering his own life as an absolute sacrifice for the covering of the sins of his people.

Why? Because Aaron was a sinner and all who accepted the high priestly mantle were sinners. And in this thing the Lord Jesus stands out uniquely. Not only does he fulfill all the aspects of the job description in the first four verses, but he himself being absolutely pure lies upon the altar at Calvary and he joins together the office of priest and sacrificial victim.

And that means, as I shall have the pleasure I trust of showing you when we come to later chapters in this epistle, that there is need now of no further high priest, because Jesus Christ has offered once and for all in his own body a sacrifice that fully atones. Later on in Hebrews you'll get the picture of the Old Testament high priest going into the holy of holies once a year, coming out, and the next year doing the same thing, and the next year doing the same thing, and the next year doing the same thing. But you will discover the glorious reference in this epistle to Jesus, who once at the end of time, says the writer, offered in his own body a sacrifice to the Lord God.

He'll never go to the cross again, he'll never spill his blood again, and there will be no need of any further high priest to take a sacrificial animal and present it before the Lord God, because in the offering of Jesus Christ you have got a final atonement for the sins of the world. And what the blood of bulls and of goats in the Old Testament era could not achieve, Jesus, our high priest, has achieved by offering himself on the cross. So then, all this throbs through the writer of the Hebrews as he spells out how Jesus fulfills the job description in these opening four verses.

Let's go through them very quickly. The fifth verse tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ did not grasp priesthood himself. Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, thou art my son, and so forth.

Jesus never grasped or seized at anything for his own advantage. He countered equality with God, not a thing to be clung on to as a boxer might prize some high honor in his particular sport. Jesus did not snatch at being high priest.

He did not come into this world wanting to have the adulation of all men and women. Indeed, in assuming the role of high priest, as Dr. Hughes in the commentary I often quote from says, in assuming that role there was nothing in it for him. Nothing but ignominy, nothing but shame, for as priest as I indicated, he shall also become victim.

As priest he shall become despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But it was to this end that he was ordained a high priest by the Lord God Almighty, who said of Jesus in a prophetic psalm, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee, Psalm 2. And then in another psalm, Psalm 110, thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. Do you notice how closely our author associates sonship and priesthood? It is not just that Jesus comes into this world as Son of God, He comes as Priest of God.

As Son of God, He offers His own body on the cross. As Priest of God, He applies the sacrifice to your credit and to mine. Jesus was ordained, called to do what He did by His Father Himself, and often in John's gospel He says, I come not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent me.

The ordination of Christ as Messiah, as Priest, was with the initiative of the Father. And this high priest, he's full of compassion, full of compassion. In the days of His flesh, verse 7, 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 for His godly fear.

My, that is a verse that's got oceans of meaning in it. I have here the opening up of that verse which I'd like to share with you, but time has gone too quickly this evening. Maybe I'll come back to it perhaps Sunday morning, I'm not sure.

But here is reference to our Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the great trauma through which He passed. And because He's known pressure and temptation in its absolute sense, He is able to succor and to feel for people like ourselves. Jesus Christ endured our hell in the Garden of Gethsemane and at Calvary that we might enter into His heaven.

Jesus, the compassionate high priest, the pastor-priest. And finally, Jesus, the one who was obedient in all things. Look at the eighth verse, 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.

Jesus indicates through His life the basic obedience that was already in His personality. It comes to its own perfection. It's illustrated by the way that He goes to the cross of Calvary.

He learns obedience. You see, obedience is something even for Jesus that had to be learned. It doesn't mean to say that He was disobedient at any time.

Rather, what was latent in Jesus has to become obvious, and it becomes obvious through the whole of His life, and at Calvary His obedience becomes absolute. And because of His obedience, verse 9, He's made perfect. He becomes the fitting sacrifice for sin.

He becomes the author, the source, the captain is a word we came across in the second chapter, of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, and He is designated. We're back to His ordination again. He's designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

What that means, the order of Melchizedek will be ours to study on a later occasion. But the fact of the matter is this. As you go through those verses, you see that Jesus fulfills the total job description.

He's a man. He's ordained. He offers sacrifice, and He sympathizes and participates in the needs of men and women.

Jesus Christ, the great high priest. But remember those words of Calvin, it's not enough for the Christian to believe that Christ was instituted as high priest on behalf of men, unless he believes that He was one of those men for whom Christ was appointed high priest. I trust you believe that, and that God has blessed His study to your heart.

Amen.