“Our Great High Priest” – Hebrews 4:14-5:10
Well if you have your Bibles please open up with me to Hebrews chapter 4. We’ll be reading and studying Hebrews 4:14 all the way through 5:10. As you’re turning there in your Bibles let me remind us thus far in Hebrews that we’ve heard quite a bit about Jesus’s superiority. In chapter one, for example, we heard of Jesus’s superiority to the angels. In chapter three we heard of Jesus’s superiority to Moses. I think if you’re looking for a good summary of the book as a whole something like, Jesus is better, would be a fitting summary to capture the essence of the book of Hebrews.
With that in mind, in today’s passage our author is going to begin unpacking for us what’s perhaps the most prominent aspect of Jesus superiority in the book of Hebrews. That is how Jesus is our superior high priest. Much ink is spilled on Jesus’s priesthood in the book of Hebrews. It’s a really important doctrine to understand, it’s something that lies at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In today’s passage we begin our prolonged focus, and hearing our author tell us about how Jesus is our better high priest.
So with that in mind hear now the word of the Lord, Hebrews 4:14 through 5:10. As always I’ll be reading out of the ESV.
14 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. 15 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. 16 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.
5 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. 2 He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. 3 Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. 4 And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
5 So 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”;
6 as he says also in another place,
“You are a priest forever,
after the order of Melchizedek.”
7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus 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. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 4:14-5:10, ESV
This is the word of the Lord well several years back when I worked in college ministry for a number of years, we would take about a month every summer to journey down to San Juan, Puerto Rico with a couple dozen college students to hold these month-long summer leadership or summer training projects. It was basically an intensive time of discipleship with the students who came with us from the college campuses where we ministered in Florida.
On these summer projects we would engage in everything from evangelism on a local college campus in San Juan to intensive Bible study training with the students who came with us to service projects in the community. As you might be able to imagine, being in San Juan, Puerto Rico for a month with a large group of college students and staff where few of us knew Spanish, I wasn’t among the people who knew Spanish “gracias” was as best as I could do, and none of us knew the lay of the land, presented a number of barriers.
There were first and foremost linguistic barriers and then there were also cultural barriers too. Fortunately there was another PCA church in San Juan who partnered with us, and each day they provided staff and volunteers from the church to walk with us as we navigated through the unfamiliar terrain of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Through some of the local friends who came with us from this PCA church, well we were granted access to places in the area that otherwise we really couldn’t have gone. There were certain places that we wouldn’t have even known about had it not been for our local friends. There were other places where the language barrier and the culture barrier would have been too challenging for us to overcome on our own, and yet because some of the people we knew, it was possible for us to have access into places that otherwise we couldn’t have gone.
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to travel abroad before, you probably know how helpful it is to have local friendly representatives of sorts to give you access to places in the community that otherwise would be difficult, if not impossible, for you to go on your own. Well in the Bible this same principle of what I’ll call, representative access, lies behind the function of a priest. In other words it was the function of a priest to bring men and women towards God through himself, that is representatively.
Well, a prophet on the one hand was the mouthpiece of God and a prophet moved God towards man as it were. A priest moved in the opposite direction. So for example when the priest drew near to God in the most holy place of the tabernacle and temple, that place where God’s glory dwelt on earth in the Old Testament, the old covenant, the people that the priest represented drew near to God through the priest by way of the priest.
So in the Old Testament, in the old covenant, a priest was really important because it was through a priest that you communed with God. Yet by and large I think it’s probably lost on many of us today, why the role of a priest would have been necessary in the first place. Understand that many of our neighbors and friends, including maybe some of us from time to time, tend to think far too little of God’s holiness and perfections and on the other hand, far too much of humanity’s innate worthiness.
Now for example there was a study that was conducted last year, this would have been by Ligonier’s State of Theology study, that found 65 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that, “everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” I’m actually surprised that number wasn’t higher than 65 percent.
Yet, the Bible teaches us everywhere that the gulf between sinful humanity and the Lord who is holy is so great that we are hopeless to cross that gulf on our own, without someone who’s equipped to stand in the gap. In God’s wisdom and grace, this is why a priest was instituted. So that sinful people, like the people of Israel, could somehow draw near to a holy God as a sinful people and not die. Yet, the priesthood of the Old Testament, as important as it was in its own day, was also temporary. It was also incomplete, and it always looked forward to something better. It always looked forward to something or rather someone more permanent and complete.
So our big idea this morning is this Christ Jesus is our better high priest.
Three ways we’re going to break down this passage.
1. The High Priest Explained
2. Christ’s High Priesthood Explained
3. Christ’s High Priesthood Applied
You can either consider this a three-point sermon or a two-point sermon with some application in the third point, that’s up to you how you break it down. With that said, let’s go with our first point.
The High Priest Explained
So we talked a little bit already in the introduction about what a priest was, what a priest did. Who was this high priest we read about? Notice that in our passage our author is concerned not so much with the priesthood in general or with just a priest, but more specifically with the high priest. So who was this high priest? What did this high priest do?
Well in our passage we’re given a little information about this high priest. So look with me if you would at 5:1-4 and I’m going to read this again for us.
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. 2 He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. 3 Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. 4 And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
Hebrews 5:1-4, ESV
So let’s unpack that, but I’m going to break this down again into three sub-points for this one.
1. We learn in this text, verses one through four, what the high priest was responsible for doing, and specifically we learned that the high priest was responsible for offering sacrifices. For example, the high priest was tasked every year in the old covenant with entering the most holy part of the tabernacle and temple, that structure that stood at the heartbeat of Israel’s religious life. When he entered the most holy place he was responsible for offering a sacrifice for the sins of the people of Israel.
Now to many of us bloody sacrifices seem like an awfully grotesque or archaic thing to do, but what these sacrifices powerfully underscored was that human sin and rebellion carries consequences. In fact the entire sacrificial system held before the people’s eyes a visual and an odorous reminder that they were sinful, and apart from a substitute to die in their place they would have to pay the penalty for sin on their own.
So it was the job of a high priest to offer these annual atonement sacrifices every year, year after year, to remind them of God’s requirements of their sin and also of their need for a substitute. So, that’s the first thing we learned, what the high priest did. Well the high priest also offered sacrifices special sacrifices, such as a sacrifice on the Day of Atonement.
2. We also learned how the high priest was supposed to do what he did and that is the high priest was supposed to act with a disposition of sympathy towards the people. He represented in all of his priestly work, as verse 2 tells us, he had to deal gently with the people of Israel.
Now I think we’d all agree that it’s a whole lot easier in our own lives to deal gently with people in their struggles if we’ve had similar struggles ourselves, so too with a high priest. In other words he was able to deal gently with the people of Israel, or at least he should have been able to deal gently with the people of Israel because he too recognized that he was a man beset with weakness. Now the ESV translates verse 2 there, “beset with weakness”, and you know that’s a fine translation of the Greek.
Yet, a more precise way of putting things in verse 2 would be to say that the high priest was actually clothed in weakness. What’s ironic about putting things that way is that the high priest was indeed clothed in some special ornate clothing of many colors, embedded with a number of gems whenever he was called to perform his duties. It’s as if our author is telling us here that underneath that extravagant garb worn by the high priest, was in reality a weak and sinful man. He was a man who was clothed in weakness and he had to know that about himself whenever he performed his duties.
Then moreover the high priest had to have the humility to recognize his own weaknesses, both his moral weaknesses that is his sin and his natural weaknesses too. He also had to offer sacrifices for his own moral weaknesses, just as he did for the people he represented. In fact on this annual Day of Atonement that I keep referencing, we learned that the high priest was responsible for offering sacrifices for himself and for his whole household before he offered sacrifices for the people of God.
So there was sympathy that attended his office and this sympathy was generated by this ever-present awareness of his own weaknesses. So that’s how the high priest was supposed to do the work that was assigned to him.
3. Then third we learn who appointed the high priest to do what he was called to do, and that is the high priest was appointed by God. He was divinely appointed to serve in that role. A random Israelite man couldn’t submit an application for the office of high priest and then enter into a job interview process for the job, that wasn’t the case. Neither were they supposed to campaign among the people for their votes for priest. Rather the one who assumed this role was one who was chosen and appointed by God.
Now unfortunately in the day that our author is writing, the author of Hebrews, in the first century A.D and in the centuries between the testaments, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, there was a lot of corruption that attended the office of high priest. There were in fact some high priests who bribed their way into their job. There were other high priests who were appointed by Roman governors to do that role. There was even one high priest who was appointed by popular ballot. Though there were plenty of corruptions in practice, the high priest was supposed to be one who was specially appointed by the Lord.
So from everything that our author tells us here, in verses one through four, about the high priest, from what he did, to how he did it, to who appointed him to do, what he did, we learned, was that the weighty task of approaching God as the representative for the people of God . This required an important combination of both humility and holiness. While that was particularly required of the high priest to have humility and holiness in the old covenant, and as we’ll see in a moment, humility and holiness perfectly sums up the work of our great high priest, Jesus Christ.
It’s also true that when you and I come into the presence of the living God, in the name of Jesus Christ today, that we too are called to have a disposition of humility and holiness before the Lord. On the one hand we need to have continually an honest and humble appraisal of our own weaknesses, both our natural weaknesses and also our moral weaknesses of our sins, before God and before each other.
First and foremost we need to be humble enough, when we come into the presence of the Lord, to repent of our sin when it is exposed by the word of the Lord. Then we need to be humble enough to seek the help of the people in the body of Christ when we need it. Friends, we need humility every day to deal gently with each other and we need humility to ask for help from the Lord when we need it.
So too we’re also called to pursue holiness before God and before each other too. We need attuned spiritual faculties to recognize the sin patterns in our own life. To know that that sin, though it’s completely atoned for in Jesus Christ, really does grieve the Holy Spirit and can damage the health of a body. Instead pursue holiness as individuals, and then in doing so aid each other and the body to do the same, by pursuing the spiritual good of each other too.
Friends, humility and holiness were critical to the role of Israel’s high priest when he went before God. Know that they’re critical for us to embody in our own lives when we come before God as well. Yet the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that above all else these qualities are qualities we see perfectly embodied in the ministry of our great high priest Jesus Christ.
Christ’s High Priesthood Explained
So second we come to Christ’s high priesthood explained. We’ve heard quite a bit so far about the high priest, but now we’re looking just before 5:1-4, at verses 4:14-16. Where we hear all about Christ’s greater high priesthood described.
So in a parallel fashion to how we worked through the high priest, we’re going to also see three things here about Christ as our greater high priest. So think another three sub points, if you’re keeping notes, and these are same parallel those are in parallel to the ones we saw about the high priest
1. First we’re going to look about what Christ and his high priestly ministry did, namely the sacrifices of Christ.
2. Second we’re going to look at how Christ does what he did, the sympathy of Christ.
3. Then third who appointed Christ to do what he does, namely the divine appointment of Christ.
In each of these three points that we’re going to see unpacked in our passage, we’ll look at very plainly how Jesus Christ far surpasses that of Israel’s high priests in the old covenant in every possible way.
So first let’s look at what Christ did in his high priestly ministry. Here we learn that Christ Jesus will offer a perfect sacrifice for sins in his high priestly ministry. Understand and this is actually a constant refrain that we encounter throughout the book of Hebrews. While the high priest of the old covenant were responsible with offering sacrifices, quite a bit of sacrifices, a lot of blood and gore, sacrifices every year, year after year, the author of Hebrews tells us repeatedly that those sacrifices of the Old Testament, old covenant, could never finally deal with the problem of sin.
In fact in Hebrews chapter 10:4 our author is going to tell us that it’s impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. It’s interesting, I think, the one thing that high priest gave himself to do in his life, couldn’t ultimately do anything about humanity’s biggest problem. Yet in contrast to the sacrifices of the high priest, well what do we read about Jesus? Look with me, specifically at 5:7-9 where we read,
7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus 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. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, Hebrews 5:7-9, ESV
Now typically I would imagine that when we think of Christ’s priestly sacrifice for sins I would bet that our minds are probably drawn to how Christ gave himself up for us on the cross. How Christ became the perfect Passover lamb who shed his own blood in our place, so that we might be forgiven our sins. All of that is certainly true. Christ offered something better than the blood of bulls and goats, that could never deal with the problem of sin, he offered his own blood. In doing so he atoned for all of the sins of all of God’s people. While that truth is indispensable to the gospel of Jesus Christ, notice that in these verses our author is particularly concerned with emphasizing how Jesus’s entire priestly life, not just his death including his death, but his entire priestly life was a sacrifice of praise to God.
First we hear that in the days of his flesh Jesus offered prayers and loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death. Now if you’re reading that your minds might be drawn to the Garden of Gethsemane, and I think that’s probably what this illusion refers to primarily When Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, offered loud cries and tears to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Yet even if this is the reference, the illusion that our author’s trying to draw, it’s also true that that one event in Gethsemane was prototypical of Jesus’s entire personal life. In other words, in Jesus’ state of humiliation he submitted himself at every point in glad obedience to the Father. He was obedient at every turn. At no point would he unlike the old covenant high priest ever have to offer a sacrifice for his own sins, because he was perfectly obedient to the law throughout the entirety of his life.
As the Apostle Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:22-23,
22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 1 Peter 2:22-23, ESV
Now our author does tell us here in Hebrews chapter 5 that Jesus learned obedience, see that in our passage. That doesn’t mean that Jesus ever moved from a state of disobedience to obedience. Now we might say that about our children, for example, when we discipline and correct them and they hopefully get the message and begin course correcting towards obedience, in that case we might say that our sons and daughters learned obedience, or more precisely are learning obedience as they move from disobedience to hopefully greater obedience.
That’s not how this expression here should be understood for Jesus. Now John Owen helpfully explains this phrase when he writes, “it is possible to say that the Lord Christ learned obedience. This is the important phrase when he experienced it in practice.” In other words, in every new situation and temptation that Jesus encountered on earth he experienced obedience in it in all of those temptations and trials. Jesus was never disobedient, he was always obedient in them and therefore by living a perfect life of obedience at every point, Jesus’s whole priestly life became a sacrifice of praise to the Father.
Then second, after offering a living priestly sacrifice of praise to the Father, we also learn here that Christ gave himself up in a priestly sacrificial death. Then completing his work of redemption, our author can tell us that Jesus then became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. So unlike any of the high priests who came before, Jesus’ entire priestly life was a perfect sacrifice of praise to the Father and his perfect priestly death was able to cleanse us in a way that the blood of bulls and goats never could. That’s our first thing we read in this passage about Jesus’s high priestly ministry. What he did and how he offered perfect sacrifices for sins.
2. Then second we also hear, like the high priest, how Jesus performs his ministry as high priest. Namely how Jesus embodies a disposition of sympathy towards those he represents in his high priestly ministry. Now if you’re looking at their at your text right now, there are two words I want us to key into for a second. First in verse 15 of chapter four we hear that Jesus is able to sympathize with our weakness, that’s the first word. Then second this is compared with the high priests who in verse two are only able to deal gently with those they represented.
Now this connection here is somewhat obscured in the English, but these two words are actually very closely related in the Greek. Yet the stronger of the two terms is, as we might expect, applied to Jesus. The term applied to the high priest, where it says that they are able to deal gently, it’s certainly not a derogatory term, but it really only carries the sense of being able to restrain their anger towards the sinners they represented.
Jesus on the other hand doesn’t just restrain his anger, in fact he actively sympathizes with his people. This word that we translate sympathy is actually much stronger than our English word sympathy, because in Greek this term also carries with it action. You see Jesus not only enters into our natural weaknesses by taking a body like ours upon himself. Of course that’s true, but he’s also able to do something about our weaknesses in a way that the high priest of the old covenant never could. He’s equipped to help us because, as our author tells us, Jesus in every respect has been tempted as we are and yet is without sin.
You see Jesus can actually do something about our sin problem, about our weaknesses, because he never came to the same moral human weaknesses like you and me do. He can identify with us because he took upon himself true humanity, but then he can also help us in our humanity because he never fell in the same way that all of us have in Adam.
Perhaps this begs another question for us. If Jesus underwent temptation but he never sinned, which is certainly true, is it fair to say that Jesus really understands our weaknesses as the author of Hebrews asserts?
I remember as a teenager thinking that there was no way that my parents could understand the pressures of being a teenager because they lived as teenagers in the 1970’s. They didn’t experience the same pressures as being of being a teenager in the early 2000’s like I did. So, surely they could have never identified with my struggles as a teenager. As an aside, teenagers out there your parents are smarter than you think, listen to them.
Perhaps some of those same thoughts cross our mind when we read about how Jesus Christ, the one who knew no sin, can nevertheless sympathize intimately with all of our weaknesses. How can our author claim that? Yet the fact that Jesus knew no sin doesn’t mean he can’t identify or sympathize with the temptations we face, because it’s only the one who resists temptations to their full who can really appreciate the struggle against sin and who can actually help us in ours.
In my studies this week by way of a commentator Philip Edgeumbe Hughes, I came across something that C.S. Lewis wrote along these lines in the book “Mere Christianity”. It’s what I call a money quote, it’s a really good quote so I’m going to read it. It’s a little bit lengthy but just bear with me, I think is really helpful along these lines.
Lewis in Mere Christianity wrote this he said, “A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”
Understand that Jesus knew temptation in a way that we just do not because he resisted every temptation in his human nature. Therefore he’s able far abler than any of the high priests of the old covenant, far able abler that even our most competent mentors in our lives, to meet us in our temptations. He is far abler to do something about them for our salvation, and to sympathize with us in them.
So that’s the second thing we hear, how Jesus performs his high priestly ministry.
3. Then third we hear, like with the high priest, who appointed Christ to be our great high priest. That is like the priest of the old covenant, Jesus Christ is also our divinely appointed great high priest. Yet as we might expect by this point Christ’s divine appointment also surpasses that of the high priest of the old covenant.
Notice in verses five through six we read here two Old Testament citations that are applied to Jesus in this vein. Typically again, I’ve made this point a few times in Hebrews, when you’re reading your text reading your Bibles the indented texts that the editors sometimes do that that kind of signals that this is an Old Testament quotation, and so too we have two Old Testament citations that are applied to Jesus along the vein of who appointed him to this task.
First one we come across in verse 5 is out of Psalm 2:7 and this is a Psalm that’s actually cited elsewhere in Hebrews too. We’ve heard quite a bit about it already and in this context Psalm 2:7 is used to show that the one who is appointed as priest. Jesus Christ the Son of God is also a kingly priest. He’s the one who is son, that is a royal priest. Something that could have never been said about the priest of the old covenant. Jesus is a priest, in other words, of divine unparalleled authority.
Then second quotation in verse six is out of Psalm 110:4 and this is designed to further explain what kind of priest Jesus was or is. In short we learn that Jesus is a forever priest. He is a priest forever, an eternal priest, in the order of Melchizedek.
Now there’s much to explain in this reference to Jesus’s Melchizedekian priesthood. In fact in verse 11, our author is going to say about this we have much to say. He’ll say plenty about this connection to Jesus and this dude Melchizedek later in Hebrews 7. So I’m going to leave you in suspense, because our author leaves us in suspense until chapter seven, and we’ll wait until we come around to Hebrews 7 to unpack that relationship between Jesus and Melchizedek a little bit further.
For now understand this, that the Lord Jesus Christ is a high priest unlike any of the priests of the old covenant. He’s a priest appointed by God, but unlike the priests of the old covenant who were also appointed by God, Jesus’s priesthood is a kingly priesthood, it has real authority attached to it. It’s a forever, an eternal priesthood, it’s a priesthood that never ends. Such that Jesus’s reign as priest is at the Father’s right hand even now. Such that he’s interceding for you and for me right now. Jesus is our high priest who’s praying for you and for me at the Father’s right hand right now. He’s a high priest who offers us help right now, when we lift up our voices in prayer and we ask for it.
So that’s third Jesus’s divine appointment is high praised.
Christ’s High Priesthood Applied
This leads to our third point we’re looking at third Christ’s high priesthood applied. So we have a priest who actually takes care of our sin problem. We have a priest who can sympathize with us in our sin problem. So how then should we respond to the sympathy and the supremacy of Christ’s priesthood?
1. Well, since our author gives us two commands in our passage I’m going to leave us with those same two commands as our application. The first comes by way of verse 14 of chapter four where our author tells us to, “hold fast our confession”. As the NIV translation puts it, “let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.”
Now in short this command instructs us in two ways and two things. First it instructs us to sure up what we believe in, what we believe about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then second it calls us to profess with our mouths what we believe. So first sure up what we believe in and second profess with our mouth what we believe.
So first know what the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims. Know that all of us, first and foremost, in our sinful nature are unworthy to approach God with confidence. Instead in our sin, in our hearts that are inclined to sin, hearts that constantly rebel against the Lord, we are a people who deserve to be cut off in death from ever having access to the Lord.
Yet although we best not water down that horrible reality of our sin, it’s also true as the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims, that Jesus has covered every single one of our sins. It really is true that in Christ Jesus we have a perfect priestly representative who covers all of our sin and then through him leads us into the presence of God. It really is true that in Christ Jesus we have someone who can sympathize with us in our weaknesses, who gives us grace in the present to live lives of spiritual flourishing before the face of God.
So to hold fast to our confession, as the author of Hebrews would have each of us do, is first and foremost suring up all of these truths we hear proclaimed in the word and appropriating them for ourselves about the gospel of Jesus Christ. That involves plunging ourselves headlong into the scriptures day after day to become fluent in the language of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Then second it doesn’t stop there because we have a faith that also needs to be proclaimed into the world. It’s so important that we understand what we believe. It’s vital that we appropriate the gospel in our lives and that’s indispensable. It’s also true that we’re called to confess with our mouths what we believe too. That’s something we do every week in the context of corporate worship when we lift our voices together and we confess what we believe about Jesus Christ.
It’s also incumbent upon disciples of Jesus Christ to profess our faith regularly in the context of a hostile and sinful world, even when that carries consequences. Now of course there are times we recoil from witnessing to the gospel, especially when we care a lot about what other people think of us. Many of us, myself included, have faced those temptations. John Owen rightly reminds us of this he says quote that, “if we do not witness to our Christian faith under persecution we will lose it. The oral open confession of the Lord Jesus Christ in and under persecution is the touchstone of all Christian profession.”
Now Owen’s point there isn’t to say that we’ll somehow lose our salvation if we fail to avail ourselves of this witnessing opportunity or that witnessing opportunity. It’s rather a more fundamental point. That is if we’re never willing to confess our faith publicly before our neighbors and friends, that might reveal what we really think about the gospel at a deeper heart level.
So again our first our first application is this, hold fast to our confession by suring up what we believe about the riches of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then in as many opportunities as we’re given in the world, proclaim with boldness, profess with boldness the gospel of Jesus Christ in the world, both in word and deed.
2. Second application is this and this also comes from those first few verses of our passage this is from verse 16 where we’re commanded to draw near to the Lord with confidence. Now remember we heard in the very opening part of our passage that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus Christ the Son of God. Unlike the priests of the old covenant who passed through a physical curtain into the most holy place, which was intended to signify God’s throne room on earth, Jesus Christ when he ascended on high he passed into heaven itself so that through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ, friends, we can in our prayers pass into heaven too. We don’t need the aid of any other priest or mediator besides Jesus Christ to approach the Lord.
The implication of all of this is that all who receive and rest upon Jesus Christ have an immediate access to the Lord right now, that nobody in the old covenant ever did. Understand that we can pray in the name of Jesus Christ and be confident that when we do our prayers are heard in heaven. Because we have a high priest in Jesus Christ, each of us can pray with the same confidence that our prayers will be heard just as much as anyone else who prays in the name of Jesus Christ.
Kids now I’m speaking to you. It doesn’t matter if you have the right words to say in your prayers, you too have the freedom to draw near to Jesus Christ in prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ and know that you too will be heard in heaven when you pray. For all of us, this great resource of prayer that belongs to us in Christ, may not mean that when we pray we’ll receive exactly what we’re looking for. That sometimes doesn’t happen. Prayer is indeed a resource that when we use it and when we take advantage of it, we will be heard in heaven. In turn we will receive the grace and the help that we need as we live our lives as sojourners and exiles in this world on earth.
So pray with me. Gracious heavenly Father, we thank you that we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens in Jesus Christ. Such that in the name of Jesus Christ we can pray and be confident that you hear us and that you listen to us. Father we thank you for the priesthood of Jesus Christ. We thank you for the hope that we have in that, for the resources that are available to us through that. We pray you would remind us of these things as we wrap up our worship service today, as we go about the Lord’s day in our individual lives and in our families. Especially as we live our lives this week would we draw near repeatedly to you in the name of Jesus Christ to find help and grace for our lives on earth. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.