In the summer of my 19th year I was excited to take a summer job in Yellowstone National Park working as a dishwasher in Canyon Village. I say I was excited, because I had longed dreamed of the great trout fishing amid all the natural beauty that Yellowstone is famed for.
But what I didn’t count on is that I was going to be the object of someone else’s fishing in Yellowstone National Park. What I didn’t know was that the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints was making a concerted effort to reaching the summer employees of Yellowstone National Park with their false gospel.
So, as I often shared the Good News of Jesus Christ while washing pots with my fellow employees, as you might guess, I encountered a Mormon. And in the course of my discussions with her, she decided to set up an appointment with a couple guys who seemed to be nearly resident Mormon missionaries. The result was that I spent a couple hours being the lone subject of a multi-media presentation aimed at converting me to Mormonism.
To make a long story short, the presentation explained how through the gradual and long apostasy of the Christian Church, many plain and precious parts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ had been left out. And all of these plain and precious truths had been restored through multiple revelations given by the angel Moroni to the American Prophet Joseph Smith early in the 19th Century. And most notable among these was the restored Aaronic priesthood—the authority which was exclusively given to the Mormon Church to baptize people in Jesus Christ, because the authority of baptizing with the authority of the Aaronic priesthood had been lost, and had specifically been restored to the church by Moroni through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The implication, of course, was this, that I wasn’t headed to heaven unless I allowed myself to be water baptized by a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, because only they had God’s authority to do so, because only they had received the Aaronic Priesthood. And a verse they quoted that assured me this was necessary was from the passage which we consider this morning, Hebrews 5:4. “And no one takes the honor (of being a high priest) to himself, but receives it when he is called by God, even as Aaron was.”
Well, I had been a Christian for about two years at that point, and I was vulnerable. They had, after all, quoted the Bible. And they had added a lot to what the Bible was. And I had no idea what the Aaronic priesthood was all about, or whether it was necessary, because I had never been taught about that. And I remember feeling very confused, even lost, and I was away from home, without any of the leaders of my church to talk to, about this very confusing new teaching.
Well, by the grace of God somehow, I survived that dose of false teaching to continue following the true Jesus. But the dilemma I faced then was similar to the dilemma that the Jewish Christians in the first century were facing. I had been presented with the idea that Jesus’ ministry, His sacrifice, wasn’t enough, that somehow, I needed someone authorized because they were a priest after the order of Aaron to minister to me before I could be assured of salvation. These Jewish believers were wondering whether any high priest could do—whether they could return to multiple priests who ministered in the temple after the order of Aaron and still expect their sins to be forgiven. And the answer for both of us, when the Scriptures have been studied, and when we thoroughly understand the Book of Hebrews is this: Accept no substitutes, Jesus as the Great High Priest is the only one who had made peace with God for all of us once for all. Jesus is the only High Priest we will ever need.
And believe it or not, that is the testimony of Hebrews 5, when properly understood, despite Mormon Scripture twisting. But it was an issue that even these first century Jewish Christians didn’t fully understand apparently, until the writer of Hebrews made this clear in Hebrews 5-10.
The issue of the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ enters the discussion at the end of Hebrews 4 when the author encourages his readers to seek help from Jesus, their great High Priest, in their time of need, especially as they considered falling away from Jesus and returning to Judaism.
And the author now begins to embark on a long teaching along these lines: that Jesus Christ is the only High Priest, the only mediator between God and man, that these Jewish Christians will ever need. And he begins to explain this in the first seven verses of Hebrews 5 by making the case that Jesus was uniquely and supremely qualified to make peace with God.
Now, before we go further, I’m sure I need to define our terms. What is a priest, according to the Bible? A priest is someone who mediates between man and God, and whose goal is ultimately to make peace between man and God and thus allows men access to God, and gains favor with God on their behalf. The problem between man and God is that God is holy, and man is sinful. A great divide separates man from God because these seem to be two irreconcilable positions. A holy God would destroy a sinful man because of His righteousness. Whoever would mediate between a Holy God and sinful man has got to be a miracle-worker, because that’s what it would take to resolve this seeming unresolvable and irreconcilable difficulty. That miracle worker was Jesus Christ, the God-man, who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. He took the wrath of God upon Himself as the God-man so we would not have to, and in this way, He made peace between God and man. He was uniquely qualified to do so, because He was both God and man, and could represent both in the process. And so as I Timothy 2:5-6 says, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony [a]given at [b]the proper time.”
With this truth in mind, the author of Hebrews now sets out to demonstrate that Jesus was completely and uniquely qualified to act as the great High Priest who alone reconciles man to God. And He begins by mentioning the Old Testament qualifications for the priesthood—priests who merely foreshadowed the coming of the Ultimate High Priest Jesus. And in verses 1-4 he mentions four qualifications for such a high priest, and then in verses 5-8 demonstrates how Jesus fulfilled these qualifications.
Now the qualifications given for the high priest in verses 1-4 are these:
1. He’s taken from among men, to represent men, and to be humane to men.
2. He’s appointed by God; no man takes the honor to Himself. Those that did in the Old
Testament experienced God’s immediate judgment, as Korah, Saul and Uzziah did.
3. He must off sacrifices for sinners, and in the case of mere human high priests, for himself as well as for others.
4. He needed to deal gently, or with moderation, with sinners, with both the ignorant and misguided, and he is able to do so largely because he is beset with sins Himself.
Now, in verses 5-8, he demonstrates that Jesus Christ was qualified in all of these respects, and then some.
Verse 5 tells us that Jesus was indeed appointed by God and did not take the honor to Himself without God’s authorization. And it gives Scriptural authority for this from Psalm 2:7. It tell us that even as Jesus was appointed the Son of God by the Old Testament, a well-known fact, a not-so-well known fact is that the Old Testament also designated Him as a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Then he quotes Psalm 110, which Jesus Himself expressly claimed was a Messianic Psalm and that it spoke of Himself. But in this case, he quotes verse 4, which tells us that the Messiah was designated Himself as a High Priest—that He was then called by God, only in this case, not according to order or kind of High Priest that Aaron was. He was instead a High Priest after a different kind or order from Aaron’s Priesthood. He was a priest after the kind or order of Melchizedek: 110:4: “So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but he who said to Him, You Are My Son, today I have begotten You just as he also says in another passage, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
So in other words, just as surely as we accept that Jesus was the Son of God, with that very same authority which the Word of God in the Old Testament has stated, Jesus was declared also to be a priest, a High Priest forever. Now this was not as familiar a concept to these Jews, or to us today, but it is a very important concept for these Jews to understand. Because once they understood what it meant for Jesus to be declared a priest after the order of Melchizedek, then they would understand that returning to Judaism, and the merely mortal priests who repeatedly offered the sacrifices of bulls and goats day after day, would be a totally futile exercise. They would understand only the eternal sacrifice Jesus offered as a Priest after the order of Melchizedek would matter in the end as a payment for their sins, to procure salvation for them.
With regard to Jesus’ ability to deal gently with our sins, through His experience of testing and temptation, especially with regard to his prayers and cries in the Garden of Gethsemane, He both learned and experienced the challenge of overcoming sin by suffering, through prayers and supplications offered there. In verse 7 we read, “In the days of His flesh, he offered both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and he was heard because of His piety. So this demonstrates that he was qualified to be a priest because he was a man—“in the days of His flesh” as verse seven puts it. And that He could minister gently to sinful men in that He could identify with our struggles, and deal compassionately and humanely with us as a high priest, because he also experienced many of these same struggles as we have, as was demonstrated graphically in the Garden of Gethsemane.
And then we have the difficult to understand statement in verse eight. “And although He was a Son, he learned obedience from the things He suffered.” So our question is this, if He was perfect, how did He learn obedience? I think the lesson is found in the common proverb, there is no teacher like experience. He learned obedience by experiencing obedience. He learned that the cost of obedience for a human being is often suffering. This knowledge of obedience for Jesus was now no mere theoretical knowledge, now it was experiential knowledge, especially in terms of the suffering that it cost Him so that He could now more fully identify with those of us who experience the same in our efforts to please God.
And so now, having become perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
And so the point to these struggling Jewish believers was this: You’ve already got a great High Priest in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a man among men, merciful and compassionate, appointed by God who has offered sacrifices, sacrifices of prayers, but ultimately as we shall see in the rest of the Book of Hebrews, the sacrifice of Himself and His own blood, which pre-eminently qualifies Jesus as the Only High Priest you will ever need.
And more than that, having learned obedience through the things He suffered, He is compassionate and merciful. And more even than that, as the Only Son of God whose blood alone is sufficient to take away our sins, He has become the one and only source of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him—thus eliminating the need for the involvement of any other priest, especially for the priests who are according to the order of Aaron, whose role in foreshadowing Christ’s ultimate priesthood has passed away, and whose sacrifices could never take away sins as His one sacrifice ultimately did.
So, essentially, accept no substitutes. Don’t go back to the priests of the order of Aaron who now, in consequence of Christ’s sacrifice, offered the meaningless sacrifices of bulls and goats on an earthly altar—sacrifices that were really intended only to foreshadow the only effective sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross to pay for your sins. Jesus, as your Ultimate Great and High Priest is totally sufficient.
And with regard to the errors in today’s cults and false religions, especially Mormonism and Roman Catholicism, no human or mortal priests need to be applied. We no longer need any other mediators who offer sacrifices for sins. Christ’s sacrifice, Christ’s priesthood is all that is needed. Don’t be deceived. Accept no substitutes. For there is no other name, and no other priest, under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved.
Now the question may be asked, why didn’t these Jewish Christians understand this? Well, the answer is because they had not gone forward into spiritual maturity. They had resisted spiritual growth so that they did not understands these deeper truths of Scripture.
And why are we so often vulnerable to the deceptions of pseudo-Christian cults. Why is Roman Catholicism such a prominent alternative to Biblical Christianity? It’s because the Bible isn’t diligently studied and isn’t fully understood so often by those of us who claim the Bible as the foundation for our faith.
So beware of resisting spiritual growth—that’s when people fall away. That’s when people like you and me can be prone to accepting false teachings, and the need for some priest other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the author here has begun to embark on a discussion of the fact that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. But it’s as though when he does, he recognizes that there’s a problem. The problem is with his hearers, or readers. They may not have the spiritual maturity, or perhaps even the spiritual interest, to delve into this meaty teaching of Scripture. So before he embarks on the teaching, he digresses. He digresses into another exhortation and warning about the fact that these believers have fallen into a state of spiritual dullness, where there is no appetite or discipline involved in seeking to understand the deeper truths of the Word of God.
And I think the exhortation is an important one for you and me to consider. What I have realized when I study the New Testament diligently, is that there are in it answers to all of the present-day heresies and false teachings that even Christians, especially Christians, so easily fall into. The problem is not that the Bible doesn’t address these errors, the problem is that we, in our laziness, do not take the time to know what the Bible teaches about them. If we knew what the Bible really teaches, the deeper things, the meatier things of God, we would not be prone to falling away, or accepting other substitutes for the salvation that Jesus alone has offered.
So in verse 11, we’re exhorted to be disciplined. Not to be distracted from the Word of God by our appetite for entertainment or other things. We need to be diligent in our study and application of the Word of God to endure in the faith.
Verse 11: “Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For although by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.”
“For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the Word of righteousnesness for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”
So, he’s saying the reason these Jewish believers are even considering falling away from Christ is that they’ve been lazy about their own spiritual growth. As a result, they are still babes in Christ. They have never grown up into spiritual maturity. They may only be capable of digesting milk, pablum, not solid food, not meatier things, because they have not gone on in spiritual maturity. And their spiritual immaturity is now a threat to their even going on with Christ at all. Why? It’s because their spiritual immaturity has resulted in their lack of discernment. They can’t deal with the lies and deceptions of the enemy which would cause them, tempt them, to fall away from Christ altogether. And that’s the point of verse 14. The very reason these Jewish believers are contemplating abandoning Christ is because of their lack of discernment, their inability to distinguish between good and evil, that which is true and that which is false, due to their lack of spiritual maturity: “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”
In the 50 years now since my experience with the Mormons in Yellowstone Park, boy, do I see more clearly now. I now discern and can judge for myself how they repeatedly took scriptures out of context, twisted their meaning and then made those scriptures a pretext for what they wanted to believe, and what they wanted you to believe—at the expense of both their and my salvation! In fact, the very passage that they repeatedly quoted, Hebrews 5:4, actually, in context, teaches that there is only one high priest whose ministry is now necessary, and even efficient in dealing with our sins. And that High Priest is Jesus Christ. The Aaronic priesthood is now no longer relevant in any way. All I need or anyone need is the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ who provides peace with God through the sacrifice of his own blood as payment for our sins. Now, having studies Scripture diligently for 50 years, my senses are trained so I know the difference, I am biblically discerning, and not nearly so vulnerable to the deceptions of the those who wolves who come in sheep’s clothing.
But the concern is that in our culture, with so many distractions and ways to be entertained otherwise, that many of us here may not go on in maturity. We may not study the Bible for ourselves. We might remain babes, content with our milk and pablum, rather than going on into spiritual maturity, so that we may never be able to discern for ourselves when spiritual counterfeits have presented themselves to us.
And that’s why this letter is written. Don’t accept the lies of the enemy. Accept no substitutes for Jesus Christ. Determine for yourself to diligently study the Scriptures to know Jesus is the only High Priest and Savior you need.
Let’s pray.
