Hebrews 4:14-16New International Version (NIV)
Jesus the Great High Priest
14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,[a] Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Because Jesus is our High Priest.
Ever feel how good it is to have someone important on your side.
A number of us who played rugby at the 125th Waikaia Anniversary probably were delighted that we had an All Black on our side.
In life – what we are living right now -we have someone far greater than a famous sportsman politician or anyone else on our side. We have Jesus the son of God on our side and as we discover in the book of Hebrews he is praying for us right now.
The word “since” pops up in Hebrews and this morning lets take that word seriously and consider some of the implications of having Jesus as our High Priest.
Hebrews is the only book in the bible that calls Jesus High Priest
Although Paul talks about Jesus interceding for us [Romans 8:34], he does not use the term “high priest.”
It’s a pity that the word Priest is tarnished in modern usage by people who should not be called priests. The idea of a Christian Priest outside of Jesus is nonsense. We are all priests shouts Hebrews – In the time of Israel the descendants of Aaron were given the position of priests and they intervened to God on the peoples behalf. But, in the time of Jesus, at his death the curtain in the temple the curtain that blocked the common person from the Holy of Holies was torn in two. In Judaism Sacrifices, priests and rituals are now almost completely dispensed.
The temple has been destroyed and as we read in Revelation chapter 21 verse 3
And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God.
I was particularly touched by these words from Hebrews chapter 5 about Jesus and in a way it shows how his High Priesthood is marked with obedience and humility from beginning to end.
Hebrews 5 verse 4
No one takes this honour upon himself, he must be called by God just as Aaron was. So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of being a High Priest. But God said to him.
“You are my son; today I have become your Father.”
As a result of Jesus humility and obedience
Peter can say
1 Peter 2:9New International Version (NIV)
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
The unthinkable had happened – the need for a high priest had gone now as the scriptures say God’s habitation was with his people.
All attempts to perpetuate the priesthood since those days have ended in failure.
Frank McCourt in Angelas ashes gives a picture of the life in Ireland in his day:-
People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty, the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father, the pious defeated Mother moaning by the fire, pompous priests, bullying schoolmasters, the English and the terrible things they did for us for eight hundred years.
Sandwiched in this description is the pompous priests.
Any attempt at Priesthood since Jesus is always doomed to failure and ends in pomposity, arrogance or moral failure, generally speaking.
Any title = Priest, reverend, most holy, Father or anything else seems silly when you consider Peters words
you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. WE you and I are all priests – so to set apart someone as a particular mediator between us and God is a mistake and ends up in pomposity.
Basically elevation and pretence are disliked and unhealthy in any society
Come with me to a third grade classroom. There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk, and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet, and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It’s never happened before and he knows that when the boys find out, he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they’ll never speak to him again for as long as he lives.
The boy believes his heart is going to stop, so he puts his head down and prays this prayer: "Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I’m dead meat." He looks up from his prayer, and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says that he has been discovered. As the teacher is coming to snatch him up, a classmate named Susie is carrying a gold fish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl in the boy’s lap. The boy pretends to be angry but all the while is saying, "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!"
Now all of a sudden the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the children are on their hands and knees around his desk, cleaning up the mess. The sympathy is wonderful! The ridicule that should have been his was transferred to someone else, Susie. As the day progresses the sympathy grows better and Susie’s ridicule grows worse.
At the end of the day they are waiting for the bus. Susie has been shunned by the other children. The boy walks over to Susie and says, "Susie, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?" Sue whispers back, "I wet my pants once too."
The story illustrates a simple point: Since Jesus had become human, had fully entered in and participated with us and lived our life with us, He understands, He sympathizes. He knows what it feels like to stub your toe, to be hungry and thirsty and dirty and cold. He knows what it feels like to be joyful and to be angry, to be sad, to be betrayed by a friend, to be frustrated in your purpose. He knows, He sympathizes, He understands.
He gains pur redemption by dying in our [lace that is what a real priest looks like
(sermon central.)
This morning we read. -- since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,[a] Jesus the Son of God.
Since – on the basis of.
Since I have a million dollars in the bank I can afford a house in Gore – right – On the television We have all kinds of winners with dreams of an overseas trip or refurbishing their house or finding that deposit for a new home. Like winners of sweepstakes they say it has changed my life.
Since - indicates possibilities.
But there is something far greater than wealth here. As Jesus says Matthew chapter 6
19Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, wheremoth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in andsteal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
Since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven Jesus the Son of God.
But our High Priest is far from that he is the Son of God which means he has incredible power – his location – heaven is of vital importance – he has made the perfect sacrifice so that we now have access and relationship with God.
So since Jesus is a great high Priest – then certain implications follow. , since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,[a] Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
Danish noblewoman Baroness Karen Blixen. She lived in Kenya as an owner of a large coffee plantation.
There was a tribe known as Kikuyu that Blixen had grown to love. And some of the Kikuyu lived on a part of her plantation.
As a result of financial obstacles that followed World War I, Blixen lost the plantation including the part where the Kikuyu lived. This meant that the Kikuyu would be a tribe without a home.
Blixen lacked the money to buy back the land she had lost. So she tried to take her cause before the government agencies, but they demonstrated the same lack of concern for the Kikuyu as the new landowner.
Blixen did not give up though. At a reception for the new governor of Kenya, she disregarded protocol by bypassing others in the crowd and going straight to the governor himself. Shamelessly, she fell to her knees, grabbing the governor’s hand and pleaded for the Kikuyu. Many around her were embarrassed by her actions and tried to get her up, but she just kept persisting that the governor look into the matter. Persistently, she pleaded that he give her his word. It was then that the governor’s wife stood, and said, “You have mine.”
And because Blixen was persistent, she succeeded.
She sounds like the persistant woman and the Judge in the bible – She gets her desire through persistence.
“let us hold firmly” - persistence is necessary
William Carey was a great example of this.
By the time Carey died, he had spent 41 years in India without a furlough. His mission could count only some 700 converts in a nation of millions, but he had laid an impressive foundation of Bible translations, education, and social reform.
His greatest legacy was in the worldwide missionary movement of the nineteenth century that he inspired. Missionaries like Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone, among thousands of others, were impressed not only by Carey's example, but by his words "Expect great things; attempt great things." The history of nineteenth-century Protestant missions is in many ways an extended commentary on the phrase.
"I can plod," said William Carey, the father of modern missions. "That is my only genius. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything."
Carey was forced to move his family repeatedly as he sought employment that could sustain them. Illness racked the family, and loneliness and regret set it: "I am in a strange land," he wrote, "no Christian friend, a large family, and nothing to supply their wants." But he also retained hope: "Well, I have God, and his word is sure."
He learned Bengali with the help of a pundit, and in a few weeks began translating the Bible into Bengali and preaching to small gatherings.
When Carey himself contracted malaria, and then his 5-year-old Peter died of dysentery, it became too much for his wife, Dorothy, whose mental health deteriorated rapidly. She suffered delusions, accusing Carey of adultery and threatening him with a knife. She eventually had to be confined to a room and physically restrained.
"This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me," Carey wrote, though characteristically added, "But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding; and God is here."
Because Jesus is our great high Priest it is worth enduring because he has everything that is worthwhile.
No matter what happens we need to persist in keeping on –
Secondly because he is our priest Jesus understands fully what you are struggling with
Even when you feel alone persist because if you are obeying God a great outcome is coming – consider Jesus on the cross suffering, lonely, defeated and beaten yet ushering in thousands of years of salvation for billions because he endured his loneliness.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, Jesus understands our weakness. When Peter betrays Jesus in the garden he must have felt that it was catastrophic – Jesus had already prophesied that he would do just what he done – When the rooster crows three times he must have felt it was the end – Peter goes out of that situation and weeps bitterly at his own stupidity his incredible weakness.
Jesus understood it before it happened and he understood it after it happened. All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them
Later we find Jesus and Peter on a beach having a most unusual conversation
John chapter 21 Jesus Reinstates Peter
15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.
Does that mean Peter was never weak again? – Of course not Galatians 2:
Paul Rebukes Peter at Antioch
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong.
Jesus understands our weakness – Why was Peter such a great apostle – arguably the greatest – not because he was perfect but because he understood the need to have a high priest who is able to empathize with our weaknesses,
Peter gets up and persists in his faith and writes two incredible books in the bible
1 Peter 2 Peter. In his first letter Peter feeds Christ's sheep by instructing them how to deal with persecution from outside the church; in this second letter he teaches them how to deal with false teachers and evildoers who have come into the church.
At the very end of his letter Peter says 14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.
Handbrake moment here folks here is Peter writing kindly about
Paul who said he had aopposed him in public. Why? Because he persists with Jesus and has a high priest who is able to understand his weakness. He goes on about Paul…………
16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
What does this tell us we should persist in our faith even when we make mistakes and skin our knees – Christ can empathise with our weakness.
Because Jesus is our high priest you are forgiven completely.Finally Grace – The reason the high Priest made sacrifices on the day of atonement was because humanity is essentially sinful –“For on that day shall the priest make atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord.” Leviticus 16:30. (NKJV)
Hebrews chapter 8 verse 12 Verse (Click for Chapter)
New International Version
For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
Jesus is the great High Priest all previous models fade into the past.
Jesus sets us free from slavery to sin and our broken past.
Zanzibar is an old city in East Africa, for nearly 300 years it was the home of something else. It was the home of one of East Africa’s largest slave markets.
But, something happened in Zanzibar. About 150 years ago a David Livingstone walked out of the interior of Africa with a message of liberation and a determination to announce that message to those who were bound by slavery. Today, in Zanzibar, a Christian Church rises on the very site of the former slave market, and the platform holding up the high altar of the church is the very same platform that for 300 years displayed slaves as they were being auctioned off to Arab slave traders.
Jesus will meet you at the very point of bondage in your life. He will meet you at your very point of shame, the very place where Darkness is holding you captive. As a Priest he doesn’t offer any sacrifice for your slavery he offers himself. You and I are slaves to sin but Jesus takes our place. He wears our chains he suffers our death he sets us free.
Only Jesus can do this – Jesus once said – No one comes to the Father but by me -
Charles Spurgeon says:
“BEFORE Adam transgressed he lived in communion with God, but after he had broken the covenant and grieved God’s Spirit, he could have no more familiar fellowship with God.
Communion was only fully restored when Jesus died for our sins, rose to heaven and sat at the right hand of God.
Jesus is our Priest – it is profoundly simple but not to be taken lightly
We should not underestimate this amazing work.
People complicate it but it’s power is in it’s simplicity.
Was it not Jesus who said unless you become as little children you will not inherit the Kingdom of God and -
Paul wrote in Second Corinthians 11:3, "I am greatly concerned about you lest Satan should woo you from the simplicity that is in Christ."
When we understand that Christ is the High priest we respond by persistence – by knowing he understands our situation and walking in Grace.
