As we continue in our series in Hebrews, our text today is going to be an answer to the repeated warnings that we saw in the last two chapters.  By way of introduction, Lets recap the last two chapters worth of warnings we’ve received in Hebrews:

 

3:6  Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

 

3:12Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

 

3:19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

 

4:1Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. 2For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened

 

4:6 therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience,

 

11Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 

 

So we are seeing this warning against unbelief, disobedience, and sin that can keep us from the promise of salvation.  Today we land on the absolute solution to this problem, which is the high priesthood of Jesus Christ.

 

14Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Jesus is the means by which we hold fast our confession of faith.

 

Mpt: We need Jesus as our high priest to help us from unbelief and disobedience.  

Jesus as high priest is the answer to holding fast to our hope and obtaining the promise of rest.

 

“Jesus, our great high priest”

 

Hebrews 4:14-16

Why do We need Jesus in the role of high priest? 

(explain high priest) Hebrews 5:1 1For 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.(intercessor that appeases God’s judgement for sin by way of sacrifice)

-put simply, we desperately need Jesus in the role of high priest because we absolutely have need of his grace mercy and help because of our weakness when it comes to temptation and sin!

• Our weaknesses (15)

• Tempted (15)

• Receive mercy (16)

• need grace to help (16)

• Time of need (16)

• • This is our human condition when it comes to our relationship with sin
    • We are weak, face temptation, are in need of mercy, grace, and God’s help
    • Sit with that.
    • You are weak in the face of temptation, you need Jesus’ mercy, grace and help.
    • In the face of sin and temptation with the strength of our own will, our own backbone, our own constitution and resolution, we are weak men and and women.
    • The context of this text specifically speaks of our weakness in relationship to our belief and obedience, but it is also applicable to our holistic condition in the face of choosing between Jesus and sin.
    • This is why we need Jesus in the role of high priest, because we as humans outside of the grace and strength and help of our high priest our weak and sinful

• Jeremiah 17:9 

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;     who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart   and test the mind,[b] to give every man according to his ways,  according to the fruit of his deeds.”

• • • This is why we need Jesus as our High priest!

• Romans 7:18

18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

• • • This is why we need Jesus as our high priest!
    • Outside of the power and help of our high priest, we are weak.
  • In His role as high priest Jesus gave us a once and for all time cleansing and a continual cleansing

• Hebrews 10:11 

11And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

• • • We needed Jesus to make that single sacrifice to cleanse us and we need His grace to help us to continue to be sanctified, continue to believe, continue to be obedient
    • As long as we experience sin we need Jesus priesthood
    • Anyone need help to believe
    • Anyone need help to be obedient
    • Anyone need help to not fall into old sinful patterns
    • Anyone need help to choose the spirit instead of the flesh
    • Anyone need help to forgive
    • Anyone need help to control your thoughts
    • Anyone need help to trust God
    • This is why we all caps NEED the high priesthood of Jesus, it is a necessity, it is essential, it is as necessary as the air we breath, without it we would be dead in our sins and without hope
  • If you ever wondered what it would be like to face God without Jesus as high priest, take a stroll through the old testament
    • Instant plagues
    • Earth swallowing people up
    • God striking people dead 
    • #noah’s ark
    • Instead of that end coming to you, Jesus took God’s wrath for us as our high priest offering himself as a sacrifice
      • Read isaiah 53

• “Makes intercession for the transgressors” this is why we need Jesus as high priest because we are transgressors

What makes Jesus a great high priest?

14Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 

• • Jesus’s location makes Him a great high priest

• Passed through the heavens

• • • • Intercedes sitting next to the Father, who is the judge
      • The more important the communication, the closer proximity you want to have 
        • Ie email, text message, phone call, face to face
          • Marvin’s message didn’t follow this
        • Unlike the previous high priests that entered into the holy of holies here on earth, a mere representation of the holy temple of God, Jesus is sitting next to the Father
        • This makes Jesus a great high priest
  • Jesus’ exhaustive shared human experience makes Him a great high priest
    • 15For 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.
      • Jesus was in every respect tempted as we are

• Luke 4

• • • Tempted in His flesh
    • Tempted with pride and things
    • Tempted with flaunting and taking advantage of God’s grace and mercy
    • Do we really think the temptation ended for Jesus, that He had this one encounter with temptation and He passed the test and Satan gave up?  He says he will com back at an opportune time
    • John 21:25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
    • Use your holy imagination, He was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin
    • If we just use the framework from the wilderness we can come up with several temptations He probably endured:
      • Tempted in His flesh: women, intoxication, laziness
      • Tempted w/ pride and things: money, whatever trappings were available at the time, living like the God He was on the earth He created instead of the life of the son of man not having a place to lay His head
      • Tempted with taking advantage of God’s grace: skipping out on the gameplan of giving Himself up as an offering, skipping out on the whole torture peice, going ahead and striking one of those pharisees down with lightening after getting slapped
      • Jesus is a great high priest because He can relate to our weaknesses.
      • When we cry out to Him, He understands completely and experientially the essence of our wail
• Jesus is a great high priest because of His humility and obedience

 

Hebrews 5:1-8

1For 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.  2He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.  3Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people.  4And *no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. 5So also Christ *did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; 6as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” 7In the days of his flesh, Jesusa offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his *reverence.  Jesus is a great high priest because of His humility! Imagine, being God, creating the heavens and the earth, all things made for you and by you and you are humble… Lets praise Him for His humilty! Oh that we would be humble people like Jesus, our great high priest! 8Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Jesus is a great High priest because of His obedience! Without His obedience, there would be no priesthood, there would be no salvation, there would be no hope!  But we have in Jesus a high priest that has presented himself as a sacrifice able to atone and cover for the sins of all those who obey Him!!!! Hallelujah hand up emoji!!! What a God we serve!

 

Lets make an appointment to visit the throne of grace

 

14Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 

15For 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.

 16Let 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.

• Stated another way, in your time of need, confidently come to Jesus the high priest who will give you mercy and help
• In the context of this scripture, the main need is help to believe and help to be obedient
• 1, we must recognize where our help comes from
  • It doesn’t come from our friends
  • It doesn’t come from our willpower and personal constitution
  • It doesn’t come from tapes and ted talks and podcasts
  • It doesn’t come from reading books
  • Our help comes from our high priest who Hebrews 7:25 says, is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
    • Jesus lives to make intercession for you at your lowest point when you don’t believe or don’t think you can be obedient and have all but given up and given in to your sin
    • And Jesus lives to make intercession for you at your highest point, when you are full of faith and are carefully and humbly walking with Jesus in the power of the holy spirit
    • He lives to make intercession for you because He loves you and will keep you!
  • 2) We can come to Him in confidence
    • As surely as a loving parent lives to appropriately aid and be there for their children, their effort, pales in comparison to the confidence that we can have in our high priest that He will in fact provide mercy and grace to help in our time of need
  • 3) we repent
    • The scripture says we receive His mercy, meaning we need mercy so we ask for it by repenting
      • We repent for our weaknesses
      • We repent for how we handled temptation
      • We repent for our sins
  • 4) we get His help
    • This is a promise
    • Bring Him your issues and He will give you help
      • There is no issue He can not help you with
      • Genesis 18 Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90
        • She was barren and didn’t believe she could have a baby
        • The angel declared “Is there anything too hard for God”
        • Today the word of God declares, is there anything too hard for God?
          • Is there any sin issue
          • Is there any unbelief issue
          • Is there any heart issue that God can not provide grace and help 
• So family, let us approach our high priest
  • For saints, we bring everything to God in prayer, from the biggest, to the smallest because we need His help and we need His strength
  • For the unbeliever, we repent for our sins, we believe that Jesus gave Himself as our sacrifice to pay for our sins, and we begin to walk in obedience to God and His word

Preaching Notes from Hebrews 5:1-8