Alright, we'll be in Hebrews
4. In the second hour, we're going to be in Psalm 13. But for this hour, we're going
to go from Hebrews 4.14 down to Hebrews 5.9. And I want to
give you an exposition of this passage. I think reviewing this
is going to help us when we come to Psalm 13 in the next hour. Let's begin reading in Hebrews
4.14, read down to verse 16. Seeing then that we have a great
high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of
God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high priest
which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly
unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find
grace to help in time of need." Now, we're told here Christ is
our Great High Priest. He's the Great High Priest of
His people because, first of all, of where He is. Verse 14
says He's passed into the heavens. That tells us that He accomplished
what He came to do for God and for His people. He came into
this earth to declare God righteous, to declare He's just, and to
declare that God's the justifier of all His people. And He did
that. He succeeded at it. If He didn't,
He wouldn't be where He is now. He's passed into the heavens.
He came into this world to put the sin of His people away by
the sacrifice of Himself to make them righteous so they can enter
into God's presence. He did it. We know He did it
because He's passed into the heavens. That's where He is now.
Hebrews 1.3 says, when He had by Himself purged our sin, Then,
when he had by himself purged our sin, he sat down on the right
hand of the majesty on high." Hebrews 8, verse 1 says, now,
of the things we have spoken, this is the song. We have such
a high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of the
majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true
tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man. Then secondly, He's
our Great High Priest because of who He is. He's our Great
High Priest because of where He is. He's passed into the heavens
and He's our Great High Priest because of who He is. Verse 14
says, He's Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus means He's a man. His name is Jesus for He shall
save His people from their sin. And He's the Son of God, meaning
He's God. Our great High Priest is the
God-man in one who brings together God and His elect children together
in one. That's what He does. Then thirdly,
he's our great high priest because since he is man, he knows and
he has experienced and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Look at verse 15. For we have
not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities. but was in all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin." He knew all of the sinless infirmities
that you and I have. Touched with all of them. Touched
with those feelings, the feeling of those infirmities. And yet
when he was tempted, he'd never sinned. Tempted in all points
as we are. That's who this great high priest
is. And the application is real simple. It's right here in verse
14. Seeing then that we have a great
high priest. that is passed into the heavens.
Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. Our profession is we profess
to believe and we profess He's all our hope. Hold fast to our
profession. And since our great high priest
has suffered what we suffer, and he knows the feeling of our
infirmities, verse 16 says, let us therefore come boldly unto
the throne of grace. that we may obtain mercy and
find grace to help in time of need. You see, believer, this
is why we need a high priest. He represented us to God, and
he's there, ever-living, making intercession for us, and he's
there to have compassion on us, so we can come to his throne
of grace, and he will hear us. He won't turn us away, he'll
hear us, and he will give us mercy and grace to help in time
of need. All right, then now Hebrews 5,
he begins to tell us why he was called and who he called him
and what the honor of this office is. Verse 1, he says, for every
high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things
pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices
for sins. In the Old Covenant, that's where
God showed us this example of a high priest. And in the Old
Covenant, every high priest that God called was taken from among
men, from among His brethren. It would be like, here's a group
of brethren, and God choosing from among the group of brethren
who would be His high priest. and he called him out and he
gave him the honor of being the high priest. That's why our great
high priest, who is God the Son, that's one of the reasons he
came down and became a man and walked this earth, so that he
might be taken by God from among men, from among his brethren.
Look back at Hebrews 2, look at verse 11. Yeah, Hebrews 2,
verse 11. For both he that sanctifieth
And they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he
is not ashamed to call them brethren." Not ashamed to call them brethren.
Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren. He's the prophet
in our midst declaring the name of God amongst his brethren.
He's the high priest and prophet and king teaching us. He says,
I'll declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the
church while I sing praise unto thee. Then look back at our text
again. Verse 1 says, The high priest
was ordained of God for Ben to offer gifts and things pertaining
to God that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin. When Aaron was the high priest,
Aaron and Aaron alone could come between the children of Israel
and God. In between them you had Aaron
and he could come to God on the day of atonement and he could
offer gifts and sacrifices for the sins of the people. They
couldn't do it. They couldn't come. God would
not have them coming into his midst. God will not have us coming
into his midst without a mediator, without a high priest to go between
us to represent us to God. Well, that's why God ordained
Christ to be our high priest. He came to be the high priest
of his spiritual Israel of his elect. He's the only one that
can represent his people to God. He's the only one who could go
to God and God would receive him. Do you know he's the only
man who ever prayed and God received him without a mediator? He's
the only one. That's our high priest. Christ
alone could offer to God the gifts and sacrifices for the
sins of his people. And the gifts and the sacrifices
for the sins of his people that he offered is himself, himself,
that he offered to his people. He's the mediator. He's the go-between
between God and his people. That's Christ Jesus, our high
priest. Wherefore, in all things it behooved him to be made like
unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for
the sins of the people." We can't do that. We can't make reconciliation
for our sins. Only he can do that. And he has
done that for his people. For everybody he represented,
he did that. Look back now at Hebrews 5.2.
who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are
out of the way, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought
as for the people, so also for himself to offer for sins. This
is why Aaron, that high priest, was taken from among his brethren.
He was taken from his brethren, and he was like his brethren.
He was surrounded and touched in himself with the same infirmities
they have. they had. He had all the same infirmities
they had, so He knew what they were going through when they
were going through it. Well, Christ came and took part of
flesh and blood that He might be compassionate with our infirmities,
that He might be able to have compassion on the ignorant and
on them that are out of the way. We get ignorant, don't we? And
we turn out of the way. He knows what... He's touched
with the feeling that makes us do that. He was tempted to do
that. He didn't do it. He never did it. But He was tempted
in all points like as we are to do it, so He knows what that's
like. He knows that feeling. So, He's
able to comfort us and to help us. Verse 15, Hebrews 4.15 says,
We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling
of our infirmities, but was in all points, as we are yet without
sin." The difference between our great high priest and every
other earthly high priest is, every other earthly high priest
sinned. Their infirmities were sinful,
and they sinned. The difference with our high
priest is he never sinned. He didn't have to offer up sacrifices
first for himself and then for the sins of the people. He knew
no sin. He did no sin. Look at verse 4, Hebrews 5, 4.
And no man takes this honor to himself, but he that is called
of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not
himself to be made a high priest. But he that said unto him, Thou
art my son, today have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another
place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Christ didn't give himself this honor. No man called him to this
honor. His parents didn't call him to
this honor. Nothing gave him this honor.
God called him to this honor. God made him a high priest. And
he's the priest after the order of Melchizedek. That means this. He's a priest preeminently better
and unlike, different from every other high priest. Christ is
both king and high priest. He's prophet, priest, and king.
There was never a high priest that held all three of those
offices. He's everything to us, brethren. That's what He is.
Christ is eternally our high priest. Eternity means no beginning,
no ending. No beginning of days, no ending
of days. He's eternally the Great High Priest of His people. All
other priesthood were temporary. That priest would die eventually. Christ has no ending. He's forever. He's eternally our Great High
Priest. And there is only one High Priest. He is the only one. He's the only one. There were
many High Priests. A bunch of high priests. He's
the only one. He's the final high priest. There's no more priests. Period.
He's the only one. He's the only one. They offered
a bunch of sacrifices year after year that could never take away
the sins of the people. But He came and He offered one
sacrifice. They were offering the blood
of bulls and goats. He came and offered His own blood, His own
life. He laid down His life and He
perfected forever His people by His one offering. Other high
priests were never allowed to sit down. They would go into
that holiest of holies and they could never sit down in that
place because all their sacrifice accomplished was a ceremonial,
typical atonement for sin. They had to come back the next
year and do it all over again. Their work was never finished.
But Christ said, it is finished on the cross. And when He finished
the work, He entered into the holy place and He sat down. because the work's done. He has
finished the work. There's no work for any of His
people to do to make themselves righteous. There's no work for
any of His people to do to make themselves holy. There's no work
for any of His people to do to make themselves accepted of God,
to bring themselves out of bondage somehow, and to make themselves
accepted of God. Christ has done all the work
of redemption. And He is calling His people
and bringing them out of bondage into the glorious liberty of
His light. And He will present His people to Himself without
spot, without blame, without blemish, spotless and undefiled
in Him. The work's His. The work's all
His. That's the glorious good news
of having a high priest. Now, is He your high priest?
If you don't have a high priest, you can't come to God. You've
got to have Him to enter into God's presence. We have to have
Him. Now, if we have a high priest,
we believe on Him, He's our high priest. Right now, we have someone
representing us to God the Father, in glory, in the presence of
God. One of these days, very soon,
this whole world is gonna turn into ashes. And we're going to
see the reality and what is and what is real. And there's going
to be God and His kingdom and Christ Jesus reigning triumphantly
with His people. Now, if we're going to enter
in to His glory and see Him as He is and dwell with Him forever,
we have to have Him to represent us and bring us to God. We can't
come there any other way. Alright, now go to Hebrews 5-7.
This is what I particularly want to look at. Verse 7 says, who
in the days of His flesh, this is talking about now when He
walked this earth as our high priest, what He did. What He
did. Who in the days of His flesh,
when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears unto Him, that is unto His Father, God and His
Father, that was able to save Him from death, He was heard
in that He feared. Though He were a son, Yet learned
he obedience by the things which he suffered. And being made perfect,
he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that
obey him, that obey Christ. Now Christ Jesus is the Son of
God, pre-eminently the Son of God, the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth, the only virgin-born Son, the
only Son who the Father exalted publicly when He called Him to
His office, speaking from heaven, exalting Him. He's the firstborn
from the dead. Yet even this one was not exempt
from suffering. He came down and took the place
of a servant. He took the form of a servant
to serve under his father. Verse 8 says, And though he were
a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.
Now this word obedience is important. You remember Adam, the scripture
says, by one man's disobedience many were made sinners. There's
only two men in the history of the world that God's ever made
a covenant with. The first one was Adam. God made
a covenant directly with Adam and said, in the day you eat
of this fruit, you shall die. And Adam disobeyed him and he
ate of that fruit and he died. The only other man that God has
ever made a covenant with directly is the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God. And He made a covenant with Him.
Now, the Scripture says, by that one man's disobedience many were
made sinners. Well, by one man's obedience
shall many be made righteous. Christ came to be that perfect
servant of God. He came to walk before God. as his people ought to walk before
God. He came to walk before God, obeying
God, believing God, casting all his care into God's hand, trusting
God, depending entirely upon God, doing the will of God in
everything he did as he walked this earth. He came to perfect
obedience as the one man representing all the elect from among mankind. He's that one man whose obedience
is the obedience of all the people he represented. That's what he
came to do. By one man's obedience, I mean
he made righteous. Now Adam was a full grown man. When God breathed into his nostrils
and gave him the breath of life, Adam came forth a full grown
man with wisdom and knowledge and understanding in a perfect
environment in a garden. To show how much more superior
the last Adam is to that first Adam. To show how much more superior
Christ is to him. He came forth born an infant. And he grew up from an infant. And he, not in a perfect world,
in a world cursed and full of sin, and he learned obedience
in the things which he suffered. He was taught of God, and he
depended upon his God and his Father entirely, and his God
and his Father taught him. And He grew. He walked about,
and verse 9 says, and being made perfect, having fully fulfilled
what the Father sent Him to do. Everything He was learning was
preparing Him for one main thing that He was sent to do. That
was the cross. That was to go to the cross and
totally lay down His life and do so faithfully, obedient, trusting
the Father to raise Him up from the dead. And he did that. He went through
learning of the Father the whole time, depending upon the Father.
Just like a believer. Just like a believer. Actually,
the one believer who's the perfect believer for his people. That's
right. We obey Him now, and it says
He became the author of eternal salvation. That's what He accomplished. He's the one who has written
the book of eternal salvation. And He is that eternal salvation.
He's that perfection of obedience. And He did it for all them that
obey Him. Obey Christ. Now, we obey Christ
by believing on Him. That's how we obey Him. By His
grace, we obey Him by believing on Him. We follow Him. We cast all our care into His
hands. Now, He obeyed the Father by
continually depending upon the Father. Look at verse 7. Who
in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and
supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able
to save Him from death, He was heard in that He feared. His
heart was holy. It was pure. It was solely set
on God. That's what His heart was. Christ
Jesus became obedient to the death of the cross. In doing
so, as He did so, He completely reverenced God. And He trusted
God, His Father's Word. which was when He had fully satisfied
justice, having been made sin for His people. When He fully
satisfied justice, God the Father promised He would raise Him up
from the dead. He promised to uphold Him as
He suffered through that cross. Not with His comforting presence,
but with His strengthening presence. And that He would raise Him through
death, from death, out of the grave. And he prayed to the Father
as he walked through this life because he believed God. He believed
his Father. He believed the Word of his Father,
that His Word promised to him. And because of this fear, this
piety, this holiness of his heart in trusting his Father, God heard
him. The Father heard him. The only
man who prayed to God and God heard him and did what he asked,
without a mediator. That's how perfect He was. That's
how holy He was. God can't behold us and have
communion with us because we're sinners. He did with His Son,
though. Now, when we're born of the Spirit
of God, we're given a new heart, a pure heart, a new spirit is
put within us. To where we have, we're made
holy in that new man, by Him, so we can actually believe on
Christ. We can't do what He did when I called to do what He did.
When I called to try to make ourselves righteous, He did that.
When I called to make ourselves holy, if we've been called, He's
made us holy already. He brought us into His holiness.
Our work is to believe on Christ. to trust Him, is to trust that
He's accomplished it by His cross work for us. Our work is to promote
the preaching of the gospel, of this good news. And we do
that only by His grace. We do it by Him providing everything
for us that we need to do it. And He does everything. He sustains
us, strengthens us, gives us the things we need. And as we
go forth by His grace promoting the gospel, He calls out His
sheep, He gives them life, He strengthens them, He brings them
into His fold. This is all through grace. So
we're to follow Him in the way He followed the Father, by casting
our care into His hand, by asking Him, trusting He's able to raise
us up from the dead. He learned obedience, verse 8
says, verse 8, by the things which He suffered. He prayed
unto Him that was able to raise Him from the dead. And He faced many deaths along
the way as He was experiencing this obedience. And all along
the way he would pray and he learned obedience by the things
which he suffered. He was tempted in all points
like as we are. So what are some of the things
we can expect to be tempted with as we just trust Christ and promote
the preaching of the gospel? Our Savior was tempted to turn
aside from his one purpose by the offers of worldly advantage. John 6.15. Let me give this to
you. I want to give you these. I started
a little late, so I'm going to go a little late. John 6.15. The Jews were looking at prophecy,
at the Old Testament Scriptures in the letter. They were carnal,
and all they had an understanding of was the letter. And the word
is not in letter. The word's spiritual. If we don't
have a spiritual discernment, we can't understand what it's
saying. So they were looking at it from an earthly political
viewpoint, and that's what they thought he was going to do. They
thought he was going to be an earthly political king and establish
an earthly political kingdom in the earth. Verse 15 says,
when Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take
him by force to make him king, he departed again into a mountain
himself alone. They would have gladly followed
him if that's what he was going to do on their terms. If he was
going to be an earthly king, make an earthly kingdom, they
would have followed him. So Christ departed from them
into a mountain by himself. And our text says, he offered
up prayers and supplications to God. Satan offered him all
the kingdoms of the world if he'd just bow down and worship
Him. And he rejected Him. He offered up prayers and supplications
to God. This is what we're going to have
to do. We're going to have to flee the offers of greatness
from this world. No matter who it is offering
them to us. We have to flee those. Depart to Christ and ask Him
for strength to continue trusting Him. He gives the unsearchable
riches. He gives the eternal inheritance. Look at John 11. John 11. Our Lord was tempted to turn
from His work of redemption by the persuasion of His closest
friends. John 11. He was talking about
going up to offer Himself up, and John 11, 8, or go back into
Judea again, and His disciples said unto Him, Master, this was
His disciples talking to Him. They said, Master, the Jews of
late sought to stone Thee. You going to go there again?
Peter, in one case, he was talking about going up to offer up himself
unto God. Peter said, no, you can't do
that. And he said, get behind me, Satan.
He said, you savor the things that are of men, not the things
that are of God. His family tried to persuade
him to go after bigger and greater things that they deemed that
would be greater things and a better way his ministry could work if
he would go up and reveal himself in Jerusalem at that time. But
instead of consulting with flesh and what flesh would have him
to do, you know what he did? He offered up prayers and supplications
to God. He looked to God and depended
upon God. If we're going to serve Christ
for the good of His people, then we're going to very often have
to ignore the advice of our dearest loved ones. It may be mother,
it may be father, it may be sister, it may be brother, it may be
husband, it may be wife. But if it's not savoring the
things that be of God, but of men. got to go. I was sitting
on Mary Bell and Donny Bell's porch one day, back about 13
years ago, and I was talking to them about wanting to get
out of the business I was in. I spent a lot of time in that
business, and I was wanting to get out of it. I was saying,
in my heart, I want to serve the Lord. I don't know how He
would have me to serve Him, but whatever capacity He would, that's
where my heart is. And I was speaking a little bit
about how, you know, disappointed my mom and my dad was going to
be that I was getting out of this business. And Mary Bell
looked at me and she said, Clay, your mama will love you and brag
on you if you dig in a ditch. Follow the Lord. And that's true. That's true. Mama will get over
it. She'll get over it. Follow the Lord. Follow the Lord.
Our Savior was tempted again in that bitter garden of Gethsemane.
And again, He cried out with strong crying and tears. You
see, all over and over, the pattern here is, as He was suffering
these things, experiencing these things, He kept going to the
Father, pleading with the Father, begging the Father for mercy,
for grace to keep Him. He could have not gone to the
cross. He wasn't forced to go to the cross. That would be a
temptation for us. We like not to suffer, especially
if it means we can get out of it some way without suffering.
We always want to take the path of least resistance, don't we? They're going to persecute you. He said, you're going to suffer.
He said, if you're going to believe God, you're going to have to
suffer. Your friends that you've always hung out with, they're
going to call you a God-hater. You can't be friends with your
drunkard friends and be the friend of God. It just won't work. I
tried it. It won't work. You can't do it. But Christ was constrained by
love for God and for His brethren. He was constrained by them. If
we truly are His, we're going to be constrained to Him, to
obey Him by His love and for love for His brethren. Christ
was mocked and He was ridiculed by a host of people. who all
turned against him. That would tempt us to turn the
other way. They mocked him. They said, if
you be the Christ, save yourself. They said, he saved others himself
he can't save. He said, if they hated me, they'll
hate you. They'll do the same thing to you. But he says in
our text, he offered up prayers and supplications to him that
was able to save him from death. We'll see in the second hour
on the cross, he was tempted in ways we can't even see. But
what he did was he kept on turning his face toward the Father, and
in faith, trusting Him, to trust Him to fulfill the word of His
promise to Him, even when the Father had turned His back on
Him. And verse 9 says, And being made perfect, having fulfilled
the Father's will, He became the author of eternal salvation
unto all them that believe Him and follow Him now, and cast
all you care on Him. Now here's my question. Has He
given you a heart to obey Him? Is Christ your eternal salvation?
Do you see the wisdom of God? He not only redeemed us by Christ's
one offering, but He also set Him forth as the example to follow
in how He followed the Father as He was redeeming us from our
sin. And He put Him on the throne as our great high priest and
the holiest of holies to give us mercy and grace to help in
all our time of need. to obey Him, just to come to
Him. He's not called us to make ourselves righteous. He's done
that. He's not called us to make ourselves holy. He's done that. But He's called us to believe
Him. He's called us to give ourselves to Him, trusting Him to provide
for us, to seek to be taught by Him in these things we're
suffering. And here's the lesson in everything
He teaches us. Back there, Hebrews 4.14. Seeing
then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high priest
which cannot be touched with the feeling of our affirmatives,
but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly
unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find
grace to help in time of need. That's why He took our flesh.
That's why He was ordained from among us. That we go to Him,
believe on Him, obey Him. That's why God gave Him the tongue
of the learned to speak a word in season to us who are weary.
That He might have compassion on us who are ignorant and out
of the way. He learned by the things He suffered. And if we're
His, we're going to learn by the things we suffer. That's
how we're gonna learn. And the one thing we need to
make sure we do is heed the instruction, heed the instruction. My son, my daughter had if they
had a full ride at an Ivy League college, or with 10 jobs staring
them in the face, when I could make maintenance. And they called
me up and said, Dad, I believe the Lord and I don't want to
do any of that. There's this person or that person
I've met that says they'll provide for me. He loves me and he loves
the Lord and there's a good church here and I just want to keep
house for him and love him and serve him and worship the Lord. I'd say call the college and
tell them to forget it. Call the jobs and tell them to
forget it. That's the goal. That's the goal. Right there. Moses considered the riches of
Christ to be far better than all the riches Egypt could give
him. All of them. And he's with God now. Where's
Egypt? You want to go to Egypt? You
want to go over there and build you a big ivory tower? How much
to it is it? Amen.