Hebrews 4:14-5:10 - Jesus Is Our Great High Priest

Well, welcome back to Tabernacle Talk, and hope that you're having a good day so far. We are in Hebrews, Chapter 4.

I'm excited today. There's been a couple of different episodes, you know, where there were less verses.

So I try and break up the passages both here in Tabernacle Talk, as well as in sermons at Tabernacle, to where we're dealing with the entire thought that the writer is putting forward at one time.

So today, he's talking about Jesus as our high priest, and he goes over that from Chapter 4 and verse number 14, to Chapter 5 and verse number 10.

So that's what we're going to be going over today, and I'm excited to have all of these verses to go over, because they are just a treasure trove of riches.

And we've been walking through Hebrews, we've seen how to these persecuted Jewish people that many of them had become Christians, truly. Some of them were just meeting with the Christians.

Some of those types of people had already left and abandoned Jesus, abandoned faith in Christ.

And the author here is encouraging those that are still there right now, many of whom were considering, okay, do I leave, do I abandon Jesus, do I stick with him?

And he lets them know, hey, Jesus is better than anything that you could be returning to. Jesus is better than the angels, he's better than Moses, he is our brother, he is our great high priest, he is our better Sabbath rest.

And that's where we find ourselves today in Hebrews chapter four.

To all of these things, talking about the greatness of Jesus, how if we listen to the angels, if we listen to Moses, if we listen to David, then certainly we need to listen to God's final expression of his truth and of his nature, of his character,

which is Christ Jesus himself, God the Son. And that's where we find ourselves in verse number 14.

Therefore, because of all that, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession, because we've got that supreme one in our corner who is making the ultimate sacrifice for

us, who has made that ultimate sacrifice for us, who is standing before God, interceding on our behalf because we have Jesus in that way. Let's not give up on our faith. Let's hold fast to our confession.

Verse 15, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. He says, Jesus knows what it's like to go through temptation.

You can look even at Matthew's account and at Luke's account, where they go through the temptation of Jesus. Mark also mentions it very briefly in passing, as I highlighted when we went through the Gospel of Mark.

So they say, if Jesus has been tempted, then he can actually like give us good advice. He can actually help us out when we go through trials and temptations and hurtings.

Buddy says, Jesus wasn't just like going through temptations and failing some of them. He went through everything without sin. That is, it is possible to go through life and not have to fall to every temptation that comes your way.

And as he's encouraging them to hold fast to their confession, he says, and when you are tempted to abandon Jesus, you can know that Jesus went through temptation without failing, so you don't have to fail and Jesus will help you.

That's what he says in verse 16. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.

What a wonderful truth that we can approach this throne and God's throne, though angels circle it crying out day after day after day, moment by moment, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

The whole earth is full of His glory even though that's what the angels sing, even though they have to cover their face before the great and omnipotent God, the God that told Moses, you can't see my face because if you see me in all of my glory, it

is going to kill you. That God is the one that we can approach His throne and we find grace there. We find mercy there.

We sinners fallen, those who have sinned in thought and word and deed, those of us who have lied, who we have cheated, who we have stolen, who we have hated in our hearts, every possible sin that one could think of when we come to the throne of God

in belief and faith and repentance, we find there not condemnation which we would justly deserve, but we find mercy and grace before this incredible throne. I'm going to attach two songs.

I'm going to write it down here that way I make sure that I remember which two we're doing. I'm going to connect Before The Throne Of God Above, which is one of my favorite songs ever. An amazing song.

The other one is going to be the song Come Boldly To The Throne Of Grace. And both of those. Excellent treatises of this thought.

Also, another song that I really love that's a much older hymn. Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears.

The bleeding sacrifice on my behalf appears. Before the throne, my shorty stands. Before the throne, my shorty stands.

My name is written on his hands. Five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary. They pour effectual prayers.

They strongly plead for me. Forgive him. Oh, forgive, they cry.

Forgive him. Oh, forgive, they cry. Nor let that ransomed sinner die.

My God is reconciled. His pardoning voice I hear. Oh, man, I can't remember the very last portion of that.

With confidence, I now draw nigh, and Abba father, Abba cry is how that very last line goes. There's one other line of that poetry in there. You got you got to look this song up.

I I can't just say every song lyric for you. You got to put in some work, too. So love that truth.

We can find mercy and grace and boldness as we approach Jesus. I promise this is the last song that I'll reference in connection with this verse. I love Elevation Worship.

Just put out a song within the last year or two called God Is Not Against Me. And I'm so thankful for that truth that we learned about many times in Psalms. And then one that's reiterated here for us that God is not against us.

He is for us. And so we can come with boldness. We're the we're the kid that is coming to our Heavenly Father that, you know, if you whoever you are, you just show up to my house at 3 a.m.

and you ask for a glass of orange juice, I'm going to be like, go away. What is wrong with you? Unless you're my father-in-law and you are welcome any time at 3 a.m.

Dad, I love you. But for any of the rest of you, I love you, too. But you're not getting orange juice from from my place at 3 a.m.

But you better bet if my daughter or my son comes down, I will tell them to go back to bed afterwards. But if they need a drink at 3 a.m., I'm getting them a drink. And that's the boldness that you can have before your Heavenly Father.

That you are not some stranger waltzing into His presence. You are, when He sees you, He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He sees His child, blood-bought, forgiven, spirit-endwelt.

And so we can come before Him and we can say, Father, I am struggling with sin. God, I'm struggling with knowing, like, how in the world am I going to get through this persecution and be able to stay with you?

And when we struggle like that, we can know that our Heavenly Father is right there, ready to help us in time of need. Then the writer goes on now in Chapter 5.

I'm going to read Chapter 5, Verses 1 through 10, just so that way I know we're good on time and we've covered every verse that we need to.

He says, For every high priest taken from among men is appointed in matters pertaining to God for the people to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin. So these are these two parts that we read about in the Book of Leviticus.

These are what the high priest does. He brings gifts from people that they thank God for and he brings the sacrifices to pay for the sins of the people.

Verse number 2, he is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray since he is also clothed with weakness.

Since the high priest is a human and he's, you know, fought through temptations and struggles and doubts and whatever, he can deal gently with these people. That he says, I know you're going through this. I've gone through this too.

And so there's not like a super strong like condemnation or whatever. For those that are ignorant and going astray, he's able to deal gently with them. We would be like, why are you so stupid?

We might bring the hammer down for those people that they're going astray. We would say, ah, good riddance to you. But that's not how our great high priest deals with us.

He deals with us gently. He gives us the knowledge when we are foolish, when we're stupid, when we're ignorant. He gives us what we need to know.

And when we are going astray, he brings us back into the fold of God as our good shepherd. Verse number three, because of this, he, a regular high priest, must make an offering for his own sins as well as for the people.

No one takes this honor for himself. Instead, a person is called by God just as Aaron was. You couldn't just make yourself the high priest.

You had to be born into that particular family. Verse number five, in the same way, Christ did not exalt himself to become a high priest, but God who said to him, You are my son. Today, I have become your father.

Again, quoting from Psalm 2, he says, also says in another place, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. And that's found in Psalm 110 and verse number four.

During his earthly life, Jesus offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. That is, Jesus said, into your hands, I commit my spirit.

And God answered that request that God raised him from the dead. Scripture would also tell us the spirit raised him from the dead. And scripture would also tell us that Jesus raised himself from the dead.

The whole Trinity was involved in the resurrection of Christ. Verse number eight, although he was the son, he learned obedience from what he suffered. That is, that he like experientially learned obedience.

That Jesus, in all of eternity past, like he never had to obey God. There was never any like instruction that was given from the father to the son that he needed to obey.

It was in his humanness that then he became in a place where he had to be subject to the rules and edicts of God. That there were no outside rules or anything put on Jesus in eternity past in heaven.

You know, what even would that look like or entail? But when he was human, he was supposed to worship. He was supposed to pray.

He was supposed to show, you know, kindness to people. He was supposed to rebuke sin. He was supposed to, you know, pay taxes and everything that was good.

He experientially learned obedience through his life and through his suffering, that as he endured that persecution from his disciples, from Judas, from his family, from his countrymen, from the Romans and everyone in between, he learned to obey God

even through it. You can think of his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he said, God, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will will be done.

And he followed through on the will of God through beatings, through being hit, through having the crown of thorns, through being spat on, through having to walk the road to Calvary, through being crucified and bleeding out and suffocating and dying

for us. All of those things he did in obedience to God. In his suffering, what a wonderful Savior. Verse number nine, after he was perfected, he was already perfect.

But if you will, he was perfection made more perfect. He was already holy. He was already complete and total in the Godhead.

There was nothing more that could possibly be added to him. But in his humanity, he was perfected. He was glorified.

He was given a glorified body that was not like, not a hundred percent like the bodies that you and I have today. He had a body that could go through walls. He had a body that could be, could ascend up into heaven.

He had a body that could still eat, you know, fish and different things like that, as we would see his post-resurrection appearances to the disciples, that he could walk with people for miles, as we see in the Gospel of Luke on the road to Emmaus, as

he walked and talked with those individuals, and then he, you know, teleported out of their sight. So Jesus, in his humanity, was perfected. Not that he was made any more moral.

He was already perfect as far as morality was concerned, but he was given this glorified body, that same body that is promised to us in our resurrection as 1 Corinthians 15 would tell us.

So he says, after he was perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

That because he suffered and died in our place, he was that perfect sacrifice on our behalf, that because of his life that was taken from him, that was shed, that he laid down for us, then he is able to apply that blood, that forgiveness, that life

goes on our filthy sin-laden account that just as in the tabernacle where the blood had to be shed and it was sprinkled around the room so that where sin was everywhere, now the life and forgiveness and blood, now that covered over everything. In the

same way now, Jesus covers over our sin with his own shed blood and he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. What is the obedience of Christ?

It is naming him as our Lord, turning from sin, repenting and turning to him entirely in faith, believing in the work that he accomplished on Calvary and following him.

Verse number 10, he was declared by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Okay, our next episode, we will be looking at the one like in-between statement that the author makes, because right now, unless you've been around church a whole long time, you're probably like, who the heck is Melchizedek?

And what does it mean that Jesus is a great high priest after the order or according to the order of Melchizedek? We're going to get to that in two episodes.

Today, I just want to look at what it says about him being a high priest and then we'll learn about Melchizedek in two episodes. So what can we learn from this? So Jesus, he knows what it is like to be human.

He experienced all of it. He went through it. He knows temptation.

He knows suffering. He never sinned. He never did wrong.

And so we do not have to sin or to do wrong in what we experience. Now, undoubtedly, because we do not have that glorified body yet, we will likely sin, but we don't have to.

And that's what Romans 6 and 7 tell us, is that we have a choice to yield our bodies either to Christ or to sin. And we get to choose which we will be.

Though Romans 7 would tell us, as Paul experienced in his life, sometimes I want to do what's right, and I don't do it, and I don't want to do what's wrong, and sometimes I do that. And so he's like begging, hey, God, would you make me new?

And Romans 8 talks about that, of that new creation and that new life that we will experience when, after we pass, that we will never struggle again with sin, and that as we are given our new physical bodies in the resurrection, when that rapture

occurs, as in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 and some other places, when that occurs, then we will go through life just as our great high priest is going through life. But what a wonder it is that Jesus, though he could have condemned us,

though he could have said, like hey, see how I'm living life and I didn't mess up, so all of you deserve everything that you could possibly get. Instead of saying that, he said, I will deal gently with those that are ignorant and those that are going

astray. I kind of feel like I should mention this again. I've mentioned this before in like a Sunday school class and possibly one or two other times as well. When we are Christians, we have two things that we need to consistently be doing.

Number one, we need to grow in grace. That is that like practical outworking of the gospel in our life. That is Jesus is holy.

He's righteous, he's loving, he's kind, he's forgiving, he's just, he is patient with us. All of the fruit of the spirit, all of those things, those need to begin being cultivated in our minds and words and in our lives.

Those ought to be what we practice. But we are to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ Jesus, our Lord. And that's not just like knowledge about Jesus specifically, though certainly that would be included.

It is a knowledge of what God has done, what he has also said to us in his word. We can't be like, yes, I love God, I am all about him, but I don't really have an interest in the Bible. Like, sure, Jesus loves me, and man, that's all I need to know.

Wonderful if that was all that God had told us. And while certainly the most important thing that we ever ought to know is that Jesus loves us. We need to know the rest of God's word.

We need to hear what his plans are for our life, what our mission and our purpose is. We need to know how world events are going to go, what our interactions should be with other people, with the lost, with the saved, with government officials.

Like, we have a responsibility to know everything that God has said. And certainly, that's a lifetime endeavor. That's not a, you know, just flip a switch and you're there.

You know, I've spent the past probably 22 years learning the word of God every single week and learning, learning scripture, memorizing scripture, learning systematic theology or how the Bible, like, all fits together.

I've done that for 22 years or so. And I am still in desperate need of knowing it better, of knowing it more fully. There are huge sections of scripture that I've never had the opportunity to be able to, like, dive deeply into.

I'm looking forward to, in 2025, most likely here on the podcast, going through, like, Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel.

These sections of scripture that are so rich and dense with meaning, with prophecy about, like, our world's history, about Jesus, about our interactions with God.

But I want to follow in those things because Jesus wants to gently deal with those who are ignorant of what God has said, and those who are wandering astray. So when we wander astray, we're not growing in the grace of Jesus.

And when we are ignorant, we're not growing in the knowledge of Jesus. And we want to be faithful to follow in both of those ways.

And when we fail in that, when we fail in growing in grace, and when we fail growing in the knowledge of Jesus, we have a great high priest who has made the once and for all sacrifice.

And we can go back to that throne of grace time and time and time again with boldness. And we can find mercy that God doesn't give us the punishment that we do deserve.

And we can find grace, that strength to not fall, that grace, that power that we have not earned and do not deserve in and of ourselves. Hope that this portion of scripture would be an encouragement to you.

And I'll link a couple of those songs in the show notes. And I look forward to being with you tomorrow as we end chapter, chapter number five.