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Transcript October 26 & 27, 2013

Hebrews: A high priest who understands Matt Hessel | Hebrews 4:14-5:10

How is everyone doing? Good? I just want to say, “Welcome to winter.” If you weren’t here last week, it was snowing. I met with a couple last night and they were here for the first time. They are in the process of moving here from Southern California and they started talking to me about the weather with this depressed look on their faces. I didn’t have the heart to tell them, “Just wait until February. It gets worse.” Go ahead and open your Bibles to Hebrews 4. We are going to overlap a little bit with where Aaron was last week, and then we are going to try to make our way through more of chapter 5 today. So if you are Christian, then today the passage is one of the most encouraging passages in the Bible for you. If you are not a Christian, I am glad you are here. You are more than welcome here. The passage today will be one of the most encouraging passages for you too, but it is going to call you to something. Now we have already established that the book of Hebrews is a sermon written to a group of Hebrews; to Jews. We can assume this original audience had believers in it, people who were following Jesus, because the author is constantly saying things to encourage them. He is saying things like, “Hold fast our confession.” We can also assume there were some non-‐believers in the group as well, because he continues to use the Old Testament to prove that Jesus is our High Priest, that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Savior they are waiting for. That is where we are at today. But here is where we have to start. Let me ask you a question. Has everyone here at some point in their life been confronted by someone who says, “I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want first?” Yeah, right? I hate that question. I always want the bad news first because I always assume the sting of the bad news is going to get overpowered by the sweetness of the good news, but it never happens. Sir, the bad news is your flight has been cancelled and you are going to be here overnight in the Amsterdam airport, but the good news is, we are going to give you a free meal at the snack bar! True story. I am not bitter. The bad news is always worse than the good news. I mean that question itself automatically implies the bad news is worse. Why else would you frame up news like that for someone? But, sometimes we have to hear how bad the bad news is before we can understand how good the good news is. Sometimes, in those rare situations, the bad news makes the good news much, much sweeter. The bad news is you have cancer. The good news is we caught it early and there is a 95% survival rate. So somebody tells you that catching a particular form of cancer early gives someone a high survival rate, you are going to think that is great. But you are probably not going to give it a second thought. But when you find out that you have that particular form of cancer, catching it early with a high survival rate becomes glorious news all of the sudden, doesn’t it? You are crying. You are thanking and hugging your doctor. You are calling your friends and family and saying, “Hey I have bad news, but here is good news. This is the good news!” That is where we are at today. We have to hear some bad news before we can hear some good news. In Hebrews 4:13, we will allude to this bad news. We have to understand this. This is going to setup where we are at today. Hebrews 4:13 “And no creature is hidden from His sight.” Creature means all of us, for

Hebrews: A high priest who understands October 26 & 27, 2013

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all of us are created by God. “But all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom,” here it comes, “we must give account.” What is that all about? What is he talking about there? “Naked and exposed” before God, what does that mean? We aren’t physically naked, right? No we are not. Here is what it means. It means there is nothing we can hide from God. There is no thought, no word, no deed, no motivation, and no heart. We can hide nothing from Him. We are completely exposed to Him and vulnerable to Him. It means you and I cannot hide the fact from Him that we are broken, fallen creatures with a cancer that the Bible calls sin. The bad news is this cancer has a 100% mortality rate. Nobody wants to talk about sin. I get it. I get it. You might have glossed over as soon as you heard that. You might have heard me say, “sin” and decided I am checking out. I am going to take a literal nap, I am going to check twitter, or I am going to do something else, because you have heard this enough. That is all pastors want to do. They just want to talk about sin. Or maybe you don’t think I have any right to talk to you about sin. If that’s it, you are right. I have no business talking to any of you about sin based on my own merits. If there were a camera that followed me around this past week and recorded my thoughts, my deeds, and my actions, and then we showed it on that screen, there would be no doubt in this room that I am a broken, fallen sinner just like everyone else. You don’t even need a video you can just ask my wife. She’ll tell you, “That guy is busted.” No, I don’t want to talk about sin. I am not here to beat you over the head and try to convince you of some sort of “behavioral modification” based on your own strength to be a better person, because it won’t last. How do I know? Because we have all tried it already. We talk about sin because if we understand the bitterness of sin, then we can taste the sweetness of the Gospel. It is the bad news that makes the good news great. Verse 13 says, “We must all give an account.” That means everyone, Christians and non-‐Christians, and on that day, for everyone as individuals, the account will be one or two things. It will either be a day that sees the fulfillment of all of God’s promises that we see throughout scripture that will be enjoyed through eternity with the eternal gift of rest and salvation. Or it will be a day that sees the fulfillment of God’s promise of eternal wrath for all who are sealed with sin. That is eternally separated from God in a literal place called Hell, where the Bible says there will be physical, emotional, and spiritual torment. Now please believe me. I want to be honest with you. Believe me, this is the part I do not want to talk about. Nobody in their right mind on a weekend gets up in front of a few thousand people and starts talking about hell. I don’t take any joy in this at all, only the small hope that I might be able to reveal just a little bit of the goodness of Jesus by showing you this. I am telling you about this because I care about you, so please believe me in that. We need to know that God’s wrath is real. We need to know that it is something that we do not want to encounter, but we need to understand what God’s wrath really is. It is very easy to think of God’s wrath and then to think of some old, father-‐like figure who is bent out of shape, who raises up in some cloud of furious anger, who takes great joy in the punishment and the torture of humans. It is also easy to think about God’s wrath and the mistake of many Christians and non-‐Christians alike, to isolate passages of scripture pertaining to who God is. So 1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.” How can you have a God of love, who is also a God of wrath. Those two things don’t mix. I choose the God of love. I get it. God is love and I praise God for that, but you cannot elevate one attribute of God, like His love, over any other attribute of God, like His wrath. If you elevate one attribute over any



other, what you are doing is you are dishonoring God for who He is in His entirety and, ultimately, you are guilty of idolatry because you are worshipping your own version of God, and not who God really is. Are you tracking with me? You cannot have a God of love who is also not a God of wrath. You cannot have it. We need to understand what God’s wrath really is. It is actually a tool of His grace. Let me give you an example. My three year old son, Sawyer, loves his big wheel. He loves to ride his big wheel. So as His father is it loving for me to let him ride his big wheel in the street, which he enjoys, and he thinks he finds fulfillment in it? I want to be a loving father, so loving dad just lets his kids do what they want, because that is what “loving” is. Or, is it more loving for me to allow Sawyer to feel my wrath whenever he rides his big wheel in the street? Now I don’t enjoy him feeling my wrath. Not at all. I don’t even like saying that. But my wrath is a measure and an extension of my love for my son, it is me trying to protect him and keep him safe and keep him out of harms’ way. Because, as his father, I know that if he plays in the street, eventually he will die. My wrath is a warning to him, trying to protect him, trying to point him towards life, and keep him away from death. That is exactly how we should see God’s wrath in scripture. Whenever we see God’s wrath in scripture, it should be a warning to us, a gracious act of love and grace. Because God knows if we keep playing in the street, we will die. Sin is the street. God’s love is perfected by God’s wrath. God’s wrath legitimizes His love. It makes it real, gives it substance. Listen to Romans 2:4-‐5, “Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” Here is what this verse is saying. Someone who has a hard heart, someone who has un-‐repented sin, all they are doing is storing up wrath for themselves on the day that we are going to have to give an account, on the Day of Judgment. Here is the thing about un-‐repentance. Un-‐repentance is just a self-‐deceived heart that is craving someone or something more than Jesus and His Word. It is saying, “Okay, here is my sin and here is Jesus. I am going to take my sin because it is much better than you, Jesus.” That is all un-‐repentance is. And then we are going to store up wrath for ourselves. These verses like this should be a warning to us, because the Day of Judgment hasn’t come yet. This is an act of grace. It is an act of love, because when that day comes there are not going to be any more warnings. There are going to be one of two things; judgment and wrath, or glory and reward. There is no middle road. That is what is all packed into Hebrews 4:13 and we must give an account. We have to see that because verse 14 is going to build off this. It is going to shift gears right here. Now we are getting ready to go to the good part. Are you ready for the good part? No more bad news, I promise. I promise. Don’t crawl into a hole. Verse 14, listen to this. “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.” Alright, so right here Jesus is our high priest. This is a foundational Biblical concept that is being rolled out. Really it is going to be the central theme from here, all the way through chapter 10. So if we don’t catch this right now, the next six chapters, they aren’t going to make much sense. The author again right here is using the Old Testament to encourage believers, and really he is going to unpack the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why we have said from the



very beginning of the series how important it is for us to study the Old Testament because it will open up the New Testament, especially books like Hebrews. To this original audience, the high priest, was the representative of the people to God. This was a big deal. This was an incredibly important role. If you have a Catholic background, this is different than a priest in the Catholic Church. The high priest to the Old Testament Jews, to Hebrews, his job was to intercede to God on behalf of the people. He was to offer sacrifices to God to pay for the sin of the people to reconcile them, to make them right again with God. The Bible calls this atonement. This happens once a year and the high priest would go in, offer sacrifices to God, to right them with God, to pay for sin on what the Bible calls the Day of Atonement. The problem was it had to be repeated. There wasn’t a sacrifice that would pay for the debt that is attached to sin. So the high priest had to repeat this every single year. There wasn’t a sacrifice that could pay for it once and for all. The point of the high priestly ministry in the Old Testament and the point of atonement was to show us a dependence on God, a repentance towards God, a worshipful spirit to God, and was really a foreshadowing of what was to come from God. Hebrews 4:14 reveals the foreshadowing of Jesus as our high priest. This is good news. We have a high priest, Jesus, the Son of God, God Himself, who sacrificed Himself on our behalf, paid for our sin past, present, and future, justifying us before God, making us innocent and righteous with His blood, His righteousness, satisfying the wrath of God so that we may live and enjoy the eternal promises, inheritance, joy, and rest that comes through all who are in Jesus. That is good news. And notice how it says, “We have a high priest.” That means we have Jesus as our possession right now. His saving work of atonement is done. It doesn’t have to be repeated. In Hebrews 1 and then again in chapter 8, we see Jesus seated at the right hand of God. That is very significant for a high priest. Do you know why? It is because a high priest never sat down. There weren’t even chairs in the temple for the priests to sit in, because the work of the high priests was never done. So seeing Jesus seated at the right hand of God means that His saving work on our behalf is done, it is completed, and in Jesus’ very own words on the cross, “It is finished.” That is really, really good news. Let me give you some verses to reiterate it. Ephesians 1:13-‐14 “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth,” you are hearing the word of truth right now, “the Gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him,” that is your part, “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.” Here is another, Romans 5:9-‐11 “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Here is one more. Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We have Jesus, the Son of God, as our high priest, who gave Himself up for us, who sacrificed Himself on our behalf, and now He sits at the right hand of God, making intercession to God for us. If Jesus as our high priest does not create in us a heart of dependence, repentance, and worship, that is a sign of a hard heart.



So let me ask you. Answer this just to yourself. Who is your high priest? Have you created a functional high priest? Yourself, someone or something else, or none at all? Because Jesus is the only true high priest who can represent you to God. He is the only one who can pay for your sin. There is no other option. The first piece of good news that Jesus is our high priest is that Jesus takes the wrath we deserve and He gives us grace that we don’t deserve. The second piece of good news in verse 14 is rest, rest. Many of us still fall into this trap of religion, the works based righteousness. We have this illusion that somehow we can earn right standing with our Creator by being a good person, or doing good things, or at least being better than the guy next door because that dude, whew. As long as I am better than him… If that is the path we want to take, arming in on our goodness, being a good person, then here is the question I want to ask. Who defines what good is? Do you define what it is? Do I define what good is? Does somebody else? Because your definition for good could be completely different than mine. And Jesus said, here is a paraphrase, nobody is good. Nobody, except God. If God is the only one who is good, then His definition of goodness is something that you and I can’t live up to anyway, which is the whole reason we need a high priest in the first place. So why do we continue to want to go back down this path of trying to do it on our own? That is exhausting. So let me just give you permission right now. Stop trying to save yourself, just stop. Justification, meaning being declared innocent and righteous before God, comes by grace, through faith in our high priest, Jesus Christ, to save us. It doesn’t come through your works. I don’t care how good they are. Trying to save yourself is like having the wrong game plan when going sky diving. Nobody jumps out of the plane and then starts flapping their arms on the way down, hoping they will land safely. I don’t care how hard, how fast, how intently, however you flap your arms on the way down it is still going to end very, very badly for you. You can’t save yourself. The only way you can save yourself is by attaching yourself to a parachute and then having the faith that it will do what it promises to do. That is it. Then when you jump out of the plane and you open the chute, nobody starts flapping their arms either. No, that would be ridiculous. You open the chute, you rejoice in the fact that it is saving you, and then you enjoy the view on the way down. And then when people ask you about skydiving, you are like, “It was incredible! You don’t have to save yourself! You just trust in the parachute.” If you understand Jesus is our high priest and the rest that we get in him; let me just say this in love but as directly as I can to you. The Gospel will become good news to you only when you come to the realization that you don’t measure up. There is really, really good news in the fact that you can’t save yourself, that Jesus already has. There is rest in that. So using the skydiving illustration, every single one of us, we are already out of the plane. All of us are heading towards the ground. The question is what is your faith in? Because everyone has faith. Is your faith in yourself? Is your faith in someone or something else? Is your faith “there is no God”, because it takes just as much faith if not more to believe there is no God? Everyone has faith, everyone has chips in front of them. The cards are already laid out. What are you betting on? What is your faith in? Or is it in Jesus as our high priest to save us? The last part of verse 14 says, “Hold fast our confession.” If you are a Christian, this is the command to persevere. It means there should be great motivation and comfort that comes from the fact that Jesus is our high priest and that will birth perseverance. If we can only get Christ straight and who He is, and what He has done, then we will be able to persevere in the faith against all the difficulties that will face



us in the world. If we only get Jesus straight, then everything else will come into focus and can fall into place. Many of us know somebody who has walked away from the faith. For some of you that is a really painful subject. Maybe a son or a daughter, spouse, or a close friend. Maybe if you are not a Christian, you know somebody that has walked away from their faith and that is confusing. There are a variety of reasons for someone to walk away from their faith, and I don’t want to get into theological debate here, but based on what I see in this verse, one of the main reasons for someone walking away from their faith is that they never understood Hebrews 4:14. They never grasped the ongoing high priestly ministry of Jesus and they got tired of flapping their arms. That should be a warning to us who claim to be Christians. So for you personally, has there really been death to self? Has there been true repentance? Is your confession that Jesus is my Savior, He is also my Lord and my salvation rests in His hands alone? That I deserve Hell, but instead I am getting Heaven? Simply because of the grace and unconditional love that Jesus has for you and that you know that you can rest in that? Because if our confession rests in anything else; a false Gospel, justification by works, then whenever we get rocked by what happens in this life, whenever we are confronted and challenged by something we don’t understand, we’ll walk. We’ll walk. That is why Jesus stressed that the foundation we build upon be on rock and not sand. Jesus, as our high priest, has to be the confession our foundation is built on. If it is, everything else can fall into place. There is great comfort and motivation in that. So let me ask you, have you ever been in a tough spot? Where someone comes up to you and says, “Hey, I know how you feel,” and it becomes obvious that they have no clue how you feel. Is that frustrating or am I the only one who thinks that is frustrating? You know they are just trying to be nice but you want to politely say to them, “Hey, it is just better if you just stop talking.” Moms, you can all relate to each other when we are talking about the pain of childbirth. You understand. You see a woman who is eight or nine months pregnant; by the way never assume someone is pregnant. Bad things come from assumptions. You see her and you know exactly how she feels. You know the anxiety, anticipation, nervousness, the excitement. When talking about the pain that comes with childbirth, you all know how each other feel. You can relate to each other. Me, on the other hand, if at any point during the birth of our two children I would have leaned down to my wife and said, “Kelly, I know how you feel, “ I probably would have been hit in the face with a bedpan. She is going to be like, “Hey, are you kidding? You don’t know how I feel? You are the jerk who did this to me.” My wife wouldn’t say that, she is too sweet, but I am not going to test her. It is a huge encouragement to have someone who can relate to us, who knows how we feel, to know that you are not alone. That is what we are going to see in verse 15. That is the good news in verse 15. Here it is. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” That is a big deal and here is why. Here is what we don’t have. We don’t have a God who sits on a throne, completely removed from our pain, our suffering, our weakness, our struggle, our temptation. What we do have is a God who does sit on a throne, but He left that throne for a time to put on our weakness, to suffer more pain than we can imagine, and to be tempted in every single way that we are. So He can honestly look at us wherever we are at, whatever is going on, whatever pain we are going through, however we are being tempted, He can look at us and say, “I know how you feel. You are not alone.” That is good news.



You might be thinking, though, how can Jesus understand how we are tempted if most of the things we are tempted with today weren’t even around in Jesus’ day? Jesus was never tempted to covet a 6,000 square foot house with a decked out man cave. Jesus was never tempted to look at the things I look at on my ipad. Jesus was never tempted to stick a needle in His arm. Jesus was never tempted to scream at the guy on 465 in the left lane going 45 miles per hour. If that is you, stop it! I am just kidding, but seriously, move over. How can He relate to me? How does He understand? Here is how I answer that question – there is nothing new under the sun. The methods of temptation may be different, but the model is the same. Every temptation, both today and in Jesus’ day, is linked to one of three roots. Pride, pleasure, or possessions. It is a promise to fulfill one or more of those roots. So looking at pornography is a sin. The temptation comes when you are trying to satisfy a desire for pleasure that is outside of God’s design. Do you think there was a temptation for pleasure outside of God’s design in Jesus’ day? There was. Substance abuse, drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, is sin. The temptation comes again from trying to satisfy a desire for pleasure outside of God’s design or the desire for escape and numbness. That is pride. It is pride to say, “I can run from the pain” or “I can self-‐medicate myself.” I don’t need you God and your help and healing. Money and possessions, they are not sinful. What we are tempted to do is that we are tempted to covet what we don’t have. We are tempted to attach our worth to our wealth. There are so many things around us we are constantly being marketed with and it is very easy to turn items into idols, I get it. Jesus didn’t have the fancy toys and goods that we have today to catch His eye, I get that, but here is the thing. Jesus was homeless. Don’t you think He was probably tempted by possessions? I think so. Look at Matthew 4 when Jesus was tempted in the desert. Every single temptation that Satan threw at Him was pride, pleasure, or possessions, if not all of them. We have to understand this about temptation. Temptation is not sin. Temptation is the precursor to sin. Sin always promises pleasure, but delivers pain and that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Satan tempted Eve with something that he said would give her great pleasure, great fulfillment, by deviating away from God’s way. He said, “No, no, no, you can do it your own way.” That is pride and it couldn’t deliver. Ultimately the greatest pleasure and fulfillment was right in front of Adam and Eve the whole time; that is delighting in the Lord. So what does that say about Jesus and the love He has for us? Whether you are a Christian or not, we have Jesus, our high priest, who understands where we struggle, who understands how we are tempted. He knows that, unlike Him, we do sin. We do fall short, yet He chose to sacrifice Himself for us while we were still sinners. He didn’t wait for us to clean up our own act. No, He died first despite it. What kind of love does that take? Not only do we have a high priest who understands, we also have a high priest who is compassionate. That should be a great encouragement. That is the fire that is going to fuel verse 16. Look at verse 16. If you are a Christian, this verse is a command, a promise, and an encouragement all in one verse. This is one of my favorite verses in the New Testament. “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Alright, if you take notes in your Bible, and you should, underline two words. Underline confidence and then underline throne of grace. Now if you were here last year when we went through Revelation, do you remember in Revelation 4:1 what came from the throne? Yes, lightning, lightning came from the throne. In the Old Testament God’s presence would reside with men in the temple and His throne was the mercy seat. Do



you know what was sprinkled on the mercy seat? Blood. It was the blood from the sacrifice the high priest would offer for the people on the Day of Atonement. So you have a throne covered in blood and you have a throne that shoots out lightning. That sounds terrifying, like something out of a nightmare. So why then does verse 16 call it the throne of grace? It is because Jesus, our high priest, has sprinkled His own blood on the throne, changing it from dread to delight. It means that every one of us who claim to be Christians, who are following the Lord, it means we can approach the throne with confidence whenever we are in trouble, whenever we struggle, whenever we fail, whenever we are tempted, and know we are going to receive grace and mercy. That is a great, great promise. Now here is the application that comes from verse 16. How you respond to the throne of grace will be an indication of whether you understand the Gospel or not. So in your sin, in your shame, in your weakness, in your failure, do you run to God or do you run away from Him. When I was 18 I was in Southern California with a group of people and on our day at the beach the ocean was really, really rough. We got there and there were warning signs on the beach, you know a warning of rip tides and strong currents, that sort of stuff. Did that stop me? No, not at all. I went barreling into the water and I realized pretty quickly that the signs weren’t kidding around. Before long I realized I was stuck in a riptide and I was getting pulled out away from the shore. At first I started to just fight it and that proved pretty pointless. Then I remembered hearing somewhere that if you ever get caught in a riptide you want to swim parallel with the shore and you might get out of it. So I tried that for a few minutes, didn’t really help, I have no idea if that is true or not. At this point I was absolutely exhausted from fighting the current. So I just started treading water just to rest, not really knowing what to do. Then I looked up at the beach and now I noticed I was a couple of hundred yards offshore, not good. I see two lifeguards grab those giant surfboards and they run into the water and they start paddling out towards me. I want to be honest. I just want to confess something to you. When the lifeguard got to me, I was pretty disappointed. I was disappointed because the lifeguard was a guy. I mean if you are an 18 year old guy and you have to get pulled out of the ocean by a lifeguard, you want the female lifeguard. My first thought was the scene from Sandlot. I am thinking Woody Peppercorn, this is awesome. Don’t judge me I am just trying to be honest. So the lifeguard gets to me and he tells me, “Okay, climb up on the surfboard and we will paddle in.” Now remember he came to me. How ridiculous would it have been for me to swim away from him? If you don’t understand the Gospel, if you don’t understand Jesus is our high priest, then every single time in your sin, in your shame, in your failure, in your weakness, you will run straight away from Jesus. That is like trying to swim away from a lifeguard who is trying to save you from drowning. In that moment he doesn’t care about your inability to swim. He is not concerned about the foolish thing you did to get there. He just wants to save you. Now maybe when you are back on the beach and you are safe, you are saved, he will talk to you about your inability to swim. He will talk to you about the foolish thing you did to get there. Why? Because he doesn’t want you to drift away again. He wants you to stay safe because he cares about you. If you understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ then whenever you sin, whenever you fall, whenever you fail, in any kind of weakness or shame, you will spring towards Jesus with confidence that you will receive grace and mercy, not blood and lightning. Are you tracking with me? It is good news. It is really good news.



Look at chapter 5 verse 1. In the next four verses the author is going to lay out the qualifications for a high priest. In 5 and 6 he is going to quote the Old Testament to prove again that Jesus is our high priest. What I want to do is I want to read through these next six verses then we are going to land the plane in 7, 8, and 9. Hebrews 5:1 “For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. And no one takes this horror for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.” So what that verse means right there. You and I, we don’t get to pick our high priest. God does and He already did. Verse 5, “So also Christ did not exalt Himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by Him who said to Him,” this is Psalm 2:7, “‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’; as He says also in another place,” this is Psalm 110:4, “‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.’” Verse 7, here is where I want to land the plane. “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications,” that is the gifts and sacrifices that verse 1 talks about, “with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death,” okay, so why did God let Jesus die? Jesus is crying out in tears right here saying, “Father, if there is any other way, let it be that way. If there is any other way, please take this cup from me, but let your will be done.” Jesus didn’t deserve to die. He was perfect. So God must be some cold, heartless guy, if He is going to allow Jesus to absorb wrath that He didn’t deserve, right? No, it is actually the exact opposite. This is the most loving act in the history of the world because God is allowing Jesus to die because He knows Jesus can bear the penalty in death that we can’t. It is an act of love so that we can live. Keep going. “And He was heard because of His reverence.” That means those prayers and supplications, those gifts and sacrifices Jesus was offering up, God accepted them and they were meant on our behalf. I wish we had time to go there today, but later today read John 17. The entire chapter is called the High Priestly Prayer. It is Jesus praying right before He is arrested and then crucified. He is offering up prayers and supplications before the sacrifice. Do you know who He is praying for? He is praying for us. He is praying for Christians. He is even praying for people who are not believers yet. So if you are not a Christian, John 17:20, which happened 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was praying for you specifically -‐ for you to hear His Word and believe. For you to enter into a saving, redeeming relationship with Him. So if you hear His voice, whether you are a Christian or not, if you feel any kind of tug today, that is not my voice. That is His voice. If you hear His voice today, please, please, please, don’t harden your heart. Verse 8, “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect,” here is the best part, “He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” Jesus’ death and suffering, that bought eternal salvation for all who would obey Him, for all who would turn to Him, for all who would repent and follow Him.” Now you might be thinking that sounds a lot like salvation by works. I thought we were saved by grace through faith. We are saved by grace through faith but true faith births obedience. Obedience to Christ is laid out throughout the New Testament. So let me just give you the starting point. Obedience to Christ starts with death to self. Listen to Luke 9:23, this is a pretty famous verse. It is Jesus talking here and He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake



will save it.” What does that mean? Does that mean I am supposed to haul around that big cross on my back every day walking to my desk? Yes, it does. Not literally. It means that every single day we die to ourselves, we die to our sins, we die to our pride, and we die to our selfish ambition and desire. Every single day we die to ourselves because Jesus already died for us. Now He is Lord, I no longer am. We do this so that we can take on Jesus’ life, His heart, His mission, His desire, and His Spirit. We die to ourselves every day so we can deny ourselves and not Him. That is where obedience to Christ starts. A very wise man, who I have a great deal of respect for, told me he reminds himself of this. He reminds himself of the humility that Jesus had. Every morning when he wakes up, he quotes to himself Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved and gave Himself to me.” Then every night before he goes to bed it is the same thing, Galatians 2:20. So where are you at? If you are a Christian, are you taking great comfort in the fact that we have a high priest who understands, who says you are not alone, I get it? Are you running with confidence to the throne, knowing that every single time you come you will receive grace and mercy whenever you need it and that promise will always be fulfilled? Or, are you running away in guilty shame? If you are not a Christian, then Hebrews 5:9 is an invitation for eternal salvation. It means putting your faith and trust in Christ for your salvation. It means acknowledging your own sin, your brokenness, and repenting, running from that and running to Jesus. It means picking up your cross and dying to yourself daily, following Him. That is where life starts because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So today, if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart. So what we are going to do after the service, there are going to be people down front and if you need to talk to somebody, if you need prayer, if you need to be encouraged, if you have a decision to make, if you have questions, there are going to be people down in front of the baptistry and down in front of the cross. Don’t leave here without coming and asking for help. This place isn’t a country club. Nobody has it perfect. It is a hospital. Don’t leave here today if you need prayer, encouragement, or guidance. Please come forward. What we are going to do right now is the ushers are going to come forward in a minute and we are going to go into a time of Communion. We are going to do things a little differently today. When the users come, I want you to hold onto the Communion. Don’t take it yet. After everyone has been served I am going to come back up and we are going to take it together as a family. Communion is a time when we just get to meditate on the sacrifice that our high priest made on the cross, that we get to run to the throne of grace, and that we get to meditate on His goodness. So if you are a Christian, let’s take this together as a family. If you are a Christian and you have things going on in your heart that need to be reconciled with the Lord, don’t take it. Let it pass. Nobody is going to think anything of it. Actually, that is a great act of humility that you can let it pass. If you are not a Christian, that is okay. Just let the tray pass also. Nobody is going to be watching you; nobody is going to be thinking anything of you. Just let it pass. Then we will take it as a family. Then don’t leave yet. We are going to go back and worship the Lord in a time that we can respond to His Word.

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