Today I want to begin a new series
and I'm very excited about this. I hope, by God's grace, He gives
you such a sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you, Hannah.
Such a sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. Through this study, this
series of sermons on the book of Hebrews, that you would be
emboldened to do what these people in Hebrews were enabled to do
in life. So today I want to give you an
overview of the book of Hebrews. And I've entitled this message,
God's Message for the Troubled and Tried. It's difficult to
condense the entire message of the book of Hebrews into a small
title like that, and I'm sure that I've left something out,
but this is one of those books of the Bible that I've benefited
from. every time I read it, and I pray that you would, I would
strongly encourage you, I would actually exhort you to pick up
the Bible this week and read through this book. You don't
have to read through the whole book at one setting, although
it's easily done, it's only 13 chapters. But I would encourage
you to read through it and just let every verse, every text,
every section it penetrate your thoughts as
the Lord guides you to consider, as it says in this book, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Consider Him. So I want to do
that with you today after we pray. I don't think I've ever given
an overview of an entire book of this size, so it will be challenging
to fit this in three hours. I mean, 45 minutes. But we will
be happy to do it. I would be happy to stay here
for the rest of the day on this book, literally. We could spend
all day on the first three verses. But we want to try to give an
overview today, and then I hope to move through it not too slowly,
but not too quickly either. So ideally, we could get through
it in, say, 15 weeks or so, which would be approximately one chapter
a week, but that will be difficult. It's hard for me. I confess when
I read a book like Hebrews, or even a chapter in it, there's
just so much there. I don't know how to organize
it. It's too full, and yet God has got it in such short space. But let's pray. Our Father, we
thank you for your infinite wisdom and your soul holy. There's none
to be compared to you. almighty, and your will is eternal,
always done, and perfect. Nothing that you say will fail.
You cannot lie, and yet you've stooped to give us this great
assurance by adding to your own word an oath staked on your own
nature and character as God. Such things overwhelm us with
the immensity of your condescension. and what you've done in the Lord
Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord, that we would
be enabled as earthbound people to see eternal things, to see
spiritual things, that your Spirit, who knows your heart, who alone
knows your heart, would reveal them to us concerning your Son.
What grace, what mercy we find in him. Thank you for him. And
now we pray you'd guide us as your dear children into truth
and cause each one here truly to know the Lord and see him
in Christ. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Open your book, Bible, to the book of Hebrews. There's so much
to be said here. And I want to try to go through
this and I'm going to refer to verses throughout, so just keep
your place in the first chapter where we're going to begin. If
you had read through this recently, it would be easier to skim through
it. It won't be that easy to skim
through it if you haven't become familiar with it, but I'm going
to give you an overview of it anyway. And then you go back
in your own time and read these things and see that these things
are actually what God has said. First of all, I'd like to help
you understand to whom this book was written. It was written to
the Hebrews. The Hebrews are another name
for the Jews, the people who were descended physically from
Abraham, who grew up under the law, who lived as a nation that
was identified with God and he blessed them and he brought them
into that great land of Canaan and gave it to them. They rebelled
against him and he continually provided profits and and priests
and kings for them and led that nation and preserved them all
the way up until the time of Christ. So here was a nation
that had been living with God's law for over 1400 years. That's
incredible. We have a hard time in our land
continuing the tradition of our fathers for more than one generation. It's difficult for me to instill
in my children what I learned as a child. And then it will
be more difficult for them to pass that on to their children
because it's lost from generation to generation. But God gave this
nation his laws, a covenant. And that covenant they lived
under for, like I said, over 1,400 years, from generation
to generation, so that it was so ingrained, so instilled in
them, they couldn't think of God. They couldn't live their
lives apart from that covenant. They were under it. It was part
of their political and religious system. The religious leaders
in their country were also the political leaders. And that's
the way that it was for so long that, like I said, these people
grew up this way. And then all of the promises
that God gave to them in that covenant were fulfilled in a
short amount of time by the Lord Jesus Christ. And these people,
some of them, not all of them in that nation, but some of the
people in that nation, under the power of God's own spirit
through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, heard,
understood, and believed in Jesus Christ. That's incredible. That's absolutely astounding
that they would hear of Christ, and they would take that 1,400
years under this old covenant, and they would see that that
only pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ was fulfilled in him,
and then they embraced Christ with glad hearts. Now that's
the people this book was written to. But they not only embraced
Christ with gladness of heart by God-given faith, but they
lived among the people of their nation who did not believe. And
they lived in the greater context of the Gentile nations, most
of whom did not believe either. But this was such a turning point
in history after the death and resurrection of Christ and his
ascension, that when he sent his spirit to preach the gospel
throughout the world, it went in every language. The people
spoke, the men who were preaching, spoke in every language. And
those who heard it, heard it in their own mother tongue. So
that there were thousands, literally thousands of people being converted
in short time. Extremely. The whole world, they
said, was being turned upside down. That's a phenomenal thing. And that was by God's purpose
of grace. It was by God's power. And it
came through the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. And
God attended that message with signs and wonders, and so the
people were hearing this. And these Hebrews who heard and
believed, now after some time after this initial outpouring
of God's Spirit, they were experiencing affliction and persecution. and
they were beginning to have an interest in the old things that
they grew up in, so that they were ready almost to depart from
the faith in Christ and to return again to those weak and beggarly
rudimentary things of the old covenant. And so the writer to
the Hebrew pens this epistle. It's written to Hebrew believers
who were weak in faith, who hadn't grown up in Christ as of yet,
at least most of them hadn't. They hadn't become teachers even
though they were steeped in the Old Testament. They couldn't
connect the Old Testament promises and prophecies and the Psalms
and the laws to Christ and the New Kingdom, the New Covenant.
They couldn't do that, and so they were like children living
still, at least in a large measure, under that Old Covenant, even
though they believed in Christ. Now, the writer to the Hebrews,
which I believe is the apostle Paul, even though many disagree
with that, But I don't need to get into why I think that right
now. But the point is that the writer to the Hebrews was given
so much skill from God. that he penned significant amounts
of truth in the shortest and most majestic language imaginable. He not only spoke the truth,
but he spoke it in such profound, compact, almost poetic language
and descriptive, too, of spiritual and heavenly things that even
in the translation from the Greek to the English that we have now
in front of us, you still feel that poetic, majestic language,
and you still get the important truths in such a small space
that you're just swimming with overflow of information and impact
by it. So it's as if, as I read the
New Testament, this book more than any other powerfully and
majestically connects all of the Old Testament in history,
in laws, in Psalms, and in prophets to Christ and the fulfillment
of that old covenant and the transition from the old into
the new. And so throughout this book we
see this. There's a place in the Gospels where Jesus gives
a parable of a man who owned a vineyard and let it out to
the husbandmen of the vineyard. And then it came a time where
the wine should have been given to the master, the benefits of
his vineyard. It was his vineyard and they
were servants there. But these men didn't return the benefit
of his vineyard to him. They didn't return the produce. And so he sent a servant to them,
and they abused his servant. He sent another servant, and
they abused him. And this kept happening. Some of them that
he would send, they would kill. And finally he said, I will send
my son. Surely they will reverence my
son. But when they saw the sun, it
says in the parable, that they saw and they said, this is the
sun. This is the air. Come on, let's kill him and let's
take possession of the vineyard. That's the setting of this time.
God, over hundreds, even thousands of years, sent his prophets to
his people, who were outwardly called his people. And they heard
the message. And there was a time at the climax
of history when God sent his son, when they should have returned
the benefits of that message that God gave, and to provide
back to him a stewardship of what he had given them. And yet they would not do it.
They took his son and they hung him on the cross and killed him.
Now, that's the way the book opens. It says here, God who
at sundry times. Sundry just means different times.
And in diverse manners. Various times, different ways. God, who at these sundry times
and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers
by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his
Son. So you see now, the book of Hebrews
here has to do with many things, but primarily it is what God
has spoken in his Son, by his Son, in these last days. This
is the final time. This is the final message and
it comes from the most authoritative, the greatest messenger. In fact,
he's called in the Old Testament, the messenger of the covenant.
God has finally sent the one who has the greatest authority. In fact, all authority as the
creator and an upholder of heaven and earth. He sent his son. And
his message, therefore, has the highest importance, the highest
authority, the final message from God. And we must hear it
because these are the last days. There won't be another message.
There won't be another messenger. All messengers that follow will
be sent by him and talk the same thing that he said. And this
is who God has sent into the world. So the book of Hebrews
is drawing the attention of these believers in Christ, who came
out of the nation of the Jews, who were tempted to give up this
long enduring patience. They had clung to the gospel,
they had suffered affliction for their faith, and they had
suffered persecution at the hand of their countrymen, and now
they were tempted to go back to those old things they were
familiar with, the external things, the things they could see and
touch, and the things that were outward and they could put their
trust in. It's like religion does today. How many times have
you gone to a church, a false church, and they're preoccupied
with visible things? They have to have candles. They
have to have men with fancy robes. They have to have places where
you kneel in a particular place in the church. They have to have
stained glass windows. They have all these accoutrements
that mean absolutely nothing. They're not even God-given decorations. They're props in order to support
those who have no faith, who do not know the truth, and who
have no realization that the true has already come, and God's
given it to us by his word. And so God is saying here, on
the most authoritative terms, by the most authoritative messenger,
his own son, now God has spoken a final time in his final days,
and his message is of utmost importance. God has spoken by
His Son. And not only has He been the
one who spoke the message, but He is Himself the message, so
that when we see Him, we see the Father. God speaks in no
other way than through His Son. Now, the first part of Hebrews,
this first chapter, God is trying to establish the the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is He? Who is this One by
whom God has spoken? And it's clear that it's His
own Son. But who is the Son of God? He
goes on, He says, He has in these last days spoken to us by His
Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He
made the worlds. He made the worlds. So He's the
uncreated creator. That's who He is, the Son of
God, created the worlds. And we know God did that by His
Word. He spoke and it was done. He spoke and it stood fast. How
much power does the Son of God have? How much authority that
even the unseen, uncreated worlds obey His Word? That's incredible. He spoke this world out of nothing
and the nothingness leaped in obedience to His Word into existence. This is the Son. And do you see
how it connects here with the importance of the message He's
about to unfold to us? The creator of heaven and earth,
who himself is uncreated because he created all things. He who
stood in eternity and spoke everything out of nothing. That one now
speaks to us. God has spoken by him. And that's
who has spoken. And he says, he has been appointed
heir of all things. The heir is the one who inherits
everything. Abraham had a son, Isaac, and
it says he gave him all that he had. God has one son, his
only begotten, and he's given him all that he has. But he says
he's the appointed heir, meaning he doesn't have it just because
he's the son of God, but because he was appointed to be the heir. And what is this appointment?
But it is the appointment of the mediator. So his son now,
even though it's not clear yet, it's going to unfold later, he
takes his son in eternity and he sets him up as the one mediator
between God and men. And he appoints him to be the
inheritor of everything as the mediator. Who is the mediator? The Son of God. How can He be
a mediator? That's going to unfold in a minute.
He has to also be man. Now, the style of the writer
to the Hebrews is this. He always introduces a phenomenal
truth in a short and dogmatic way. He just states it. And then
later, he refers back to it, and he builds on it, and he pulls
in scripture, and he adds argument to that scripture to show why
that scripture supports what he initially said. And he powerfully
proves the truth he's trying to communicate by doing this.
And so when he says here, he has spoken to us by his son,
whom he has appointed heir, the inheritor of all things, he's
going to unfold that and unpack that later throughout the whole
book. So this brings us to an important point about the overview
in the book of Hebrews, is that in this book there are certain
themes, great, significant, important concepts that God wants to bring
to our attention and drive home to us. And he sprinkles these
throughout the book. And some of them are so prominent
and they occupy so much of the book that we can't miss them,
and others aren't quite so prominent, but as we read through it and
consider it, we see them, and we have to step back and say,
wow, how did God, how is it that he just introduced that subject,
and suddenly it pulls in all this truth from the Old Testament,
and builds on it, and establishes what God meant by it, and the
implications of it in the New Testament, and to me as a believer,
are phenomenal. And so we see this, these themes
throughout the book of Hebrews, and I wanna talk about those
themes in order to understand, as an overview, what's in this
book. One of those themes, perhaps the biggest theme throughout
this book here, Hebrews, is the high priesthood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Not only is he the priest, but
he is the priest who has been enthroned. And that says so much,
and he's going to develop this throughout the book. But he starts
in the beginning by laying this foundation, even in the third
verse. Notice how he introduces this
with a statement of fact, an all-comprehensive statement of
Christ in his priestly office and his enthronement. Because
in this book, one of the themes that God upholds is Christ the
Son who is a son of man, and he's our high priest. And the
other one is the same one who is the son of God and the son
of man, is not only our high priest, but he's also enthroned
as the king of righteousness and the king of peace. And all
of this is in one person. He's the only one who sits on
that throne, but he doesn't sit there for himself. Because here's
the other theme in this book. But the high priest, he doesn't
live for himself. He didn't serve for himself. He doesn't pray for himself.
All that he does, he does as a representative of his people.
So the themes I want to draw your attention to are Christ
the Son as the high priest who sits on heaven's throne. as the
representative of his people. And not only that, that his work
is complete, it is done, it is complete, and it is perfect. And by his work he has obtained
an eternal salvation. So let's read it in verse 3.
He goes on, he says who, after he says he made the worlds, verse
three, who being the brightness of his glory, God's glory, the
glory of the Father, he told his disciples, if you've seen
me, you've seen the Father. The glory of God. Remember Moses
said, show me your glory. And what did God say? I will
be gracious to whom I will be gracious. I will have mercy on
whom I will have mercy. And here's my glory, forgiving
iniquity. and sin and transgression. Amazing
grace. God of grace and glory. And where
do we see this? Where do we see the glory of
God's truth and grace? in the sun, our high priest,
he says, who being the brightness of his glory and the express
image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his
power, this one whose word is so authoritative and his power
so great that everything throughout time, every electron path around
the nucleus of the atom, every electron hole, every Electromagnetic
wave. Everything in this world actively
is upheld by the will, the constant will and word of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Nothing happens except by the
authority of his word. He spoke it and it was done.
And so he says upholding all things by the word of his power
when he This one who created all things, who is the brightness
of God's glory, the express image of his person, when he had by
himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the
majesty on high. That one verse really summarizes
the whole book of Hebrews. He, by himself, no helper, By
himself. No angel, no man, no Moses, no
Abraham, no Joshua, no Aaron. None of those people, those patriarchs,
those great men. Not Elijah, not John the Baptist.
He stood alone. He hung alone on the cross. He,
the one mediator between God and man, accomplished our salvation
in his one work. He is the, the only High Priest. Don Fortner used to have this
saying, he said, if you have a high priest in heaven, you
do not need a priest on earth. But if you have a priest and
you need a priest on earth, then you do not have a priest in heaven. And that's a simple, condensed
way of saying Christ and Christ alone, you see. And this is the
other theme of this book, by himself. John the Baptist said,
I must decrease the greatest prophet that ever lived, and
he must increase. And John the Baptist's great
joy was that the bride, the people of God, heard his voice, and
they were brought to him. That's the message, by himself. He alone gets the glory. Because
he alone is worthy. He alone did the work. God appointed
him alone. God received him alone. But as
the representative high priest who accomplished our work and
is now enthroned, he did it for his people. And so he says, by
himself he purged our sins. He cleansed us from our sins.
He washed us. He removed them from us. He took
them away. He made us clean and he clothed
us. in His own righteousness, and
because He did it completely, perfectly, and did it once, in
time, for all eternity, what does He do as the High Priest?
He's done. His work is done. And He takes
His place on the throne of glory, exalted, having accomplished
it all. And so he says, and he sat down
on the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high. What words? Where do you find
a poet on earth that can pen words of this significance, with
this eloquence, with the truth that this conveys? Nowhere. There
is none, because this is the word of God. And he used this
man who wrote this book to do this. So this is the first established
truth. We have these themes. The priest
on his throne, representing his people, has done the work, and
he did it by himself. It's done, it's complete, and
it's perfect. and therefore his people's sins
are completely removed from them. This is not a maybe-so. This
is not a hypothetical. This is not something that's
going to happen when you do your part. One has done it all, and
it's Christ, and Him crucified, because He's the Son of God.
How could the Son of God need your help? He created all things. You weren't there to help Him,
and you couldn't have been there on the... to help him at the
cross. You see, all of these truths fold together and build
on the power of the message that comes from the one with the highest
authority. Amazing. Now, the next part in
Hebrews, you see here, starting at verse 4, is that he compares
angels to the one who is our high priest and our king on the
throne who purged our sins. And he shows that the angels
are no more than created spirits. They are the servants of Him
who is our Savior. They serve Him. Remember Jesus
said when He comes again with all of His holy angels with Him? They're His angels. They serve
Him at His pleasure. And they are commanded, it says
in verse 6, to worship Him. When He bringeth in the first
begotten into the world, He saith, Let all the angels of God worship
Him. Now the Jews held angels in the
highest regard. They did so because when the
angels appeared to them in the Old Testament, whatever the angels
said carried with it a significant consequence if the person who
heard the angels speak didn't obey it. And remember Zechariah,
he heard the angels say that his wife Elizabeth was going
to have a son. And he said, well, how will I know if these things
are true? And Gabriel told him, the angel, he said, because you
didn't believe my word, you're not going to be able to talk
until he's born. That was a serious word. You
better believe the word of the angel. So the Jews held angels
in high regard. And they knew that angels were
much more mighty than men, much wiser than men. So they thought
they're higher than men. And they are higher than sinful
men. But here's the revelation that God is going to unfold to
us in the book of Hebrews, which again, everything that the curtains
are drawn back and it blows our mind. God never intended that
the angels would occupy a place higher than man. In fact, they
and all of creation were designed by God to be subject to man. Because he says in the beginning,
look at verse 5 of chapter 2, For unto the angels hath he not
put in subjection the world to come, wherever we speak, but
one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou
art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels. Thou crownest
him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works
of thy hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection
under his feet. So here we see, wow, this is
a quotation from Psalm 8. In Psalm 8, he refers back to
the beginning when God said that he put all things under man. And yet, there's perplexity.
There's confusion. There's a conundrum because we
look at history, we look at our own experience, we see, no, that
doesn't seem to be the case. Not everything's put under man.
Angels are mightier than we. They're wiser than we are. They're
holy. We're sinful. What happened?
Did God's word fail? No. Did God change the meaning
of His word? No. God always intended something
else and He's going to explain it here. There was one man. God was speaking of. And it wasn't
Adam. And it wasn't the children of
Adam. It was His Son, who would take the nature of man as the
head of His people, His body, the church, and they in Him,
with Him, would be given rule over all things. So that
all of creation was made subject to Christ and His people in Him. And does this not blow our minds?
Doesn't this take us back? Amazing. Now notice this is speaking
concerning the world to come. The world to come. Here's another
one of those examples where the writer to the Hebrews introduces
a topic and later unfolds it. Remember in chapter 11 of Hebrews,
what happened when Abraham was called? God says he called, by
faith, Abraham when he was called to go out into a place which
he should after receive, obeyed. And he went out, not knowing
whether he went. And then it goes on, it says, he looked for
a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
And all these, like him, who believe God's word, they're also
looking for another country, a heavenly country. And God,
therefore, is not ashamed to be called their God. He's prepared
for them a city. All these things speak of a future
world inherited by the children of faith. those who were given
faith by God, called the heirs of promise. These people were
given, as it says here in chapter two, it's introducing the subject
to us, they were given in Christ over rule, or rule over all things. So everything is going to be
made subject to them. They're going to inherit all things with
Christ. Now, look back at chapter one,
verse two. Chapter 1 verse 2, he says, hath
in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he hath appointed
heir of all things. Do you see how it's building
now? The one who is the heir of all things is heir not only
as the son of God, because he would naturally be the heir of
all things. He's God's only son. He created
all things. They were created by him and for him. But as man,
that takes us a little by surprise. He would inherit all things as
man because as son of God and son of man, he's the one mediator.
And as the mediator, God had appointed him to inherit all
things. And not just him, but his church
with him. Look at Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians is before Hebrews.
It's right after the book of Galatians. In Ephesians chapter
1, it says this. He says in verse 18, verse 17,
he says, Paul prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Ephesians 1, 17, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ in his
prayers, he prays this, The Father of Glory may give unto you the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, in the
knowledge of Christ, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened
that you may know what is the hope of His calling. You see,
a hope is something that you don't have yet. If you had the
hope, you wouldn't hope for it. A hope is also a confident expectation
of something in the future. The hope of His calling is once
you've been called by Christ, you have this hope. And this
hope regulates your life. It motivates you to live not
for the present, not to obtain physical things in this world,
but to look for an inheritance that's heavenly, eternal, unseen
now, but certain because it's in Christ. The hope of His calling
and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints
And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us who believe,
according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought
in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
His own right hand in the heavenly places." Listen now, this is
Christ's place, far above all principality and power and might
and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world
but also in that which is to come. You hear it? That which is to come. Christ
reigns now, in this present day, in this present room, over these
present people, here in this room. He rules the world universally. to accomplish His will, but He
also, in all of the universe of God's creation, every principality
and power has been made subject to Him. They all must give account
to Him as judge. They all take their orders from
Him, and they all accomplish His will at all times. Nothing
escapes his purpose. Nothing goes unfulfilled. His
word accomplishes all. He has all authority. Notice
now, notice now, he's not alone in this. And he hath put all
things under his feet. Isn't that what we just read?
And gave him to be the head over all things for what purpose?
to the church, his people, his body, those that are joined to
him and are called one with him, members of his bones and of his
body, one with him in spirit by his spirit, born of the spirit,
partakers of the divine nature, who live upon him by faith and
he dwells in them, because that's the grace of God, that he would
have this intimate union. He has put all things under his
feet and gave him to be the head over all things, not only as
the ruler but as representative to the church, which is his body,
notice, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. As a cup
is in full until you add the last drop, Christ as our mediator
is incomplete without his people. just a head without a body, and
there's no separation. What God has joined together,
let not man put asunder, because Christ and his people can never
be separated. And so, we see this developing
in the book of Hebrews. The Son of Man is the one God
intended. It was Jesus, the Son of Man.
And how did He receive this glory? Notice this is a very important
principle in Scripture, because this is introduced here, but
it applies throughout time, and it especially applies to the
Hebrews and to us. And I'll say it like the Proverbs
say it, before honor is what? Humility. Before honor, humility. Before glory, suffering. Before redemption of our body,
tribulation and problems. You see? Before we obtain the
promise, what do we have? We have sufferings. Faith will
be tried. We will be required by faith
to hold fast to the truth and to lay hold on eternal life. That our hope is within the veil,
in the holiest of all, where Christ our King and Priest now
sits on the throne having accomplished our salvation. But by hope we
lay hold on this. We don't look for things present
in order to satisfy the longings of our heart. in order to lay
our desires in that direction of those things we see and hear.
Not only in the material things of this world, which we love
to have because they satisfy our physical lusts of our own
flesh, but especially in religion. Because the Hebrews were tempted
to look at those outward things. The land of Canaan, this has
got to be it. This nation, this has to be it. The priests we
see, and the sacrifices we smell and can eat with our mouth, that's
got to be it. The ordinances, the days, the
feasts, the drinks, and the new moons, and the Sabbaths, and
all these things. The circumcision, that's what
we're interested in. It's concrete. We can hold on
to it. We can touch it. And we can say, look, by doing
these things, I'm part of it. But the new covenant comes along
and sweeps it all away. It says, no, that's abolished.
It's done away. It's fading away. It's gone.
Why? Because Christ, the substance,
has come. He has fulfilled it. It's not
in outward things. Not in circumcision, he tells
the Galatians. Not in the rudiments of this
world. Not in the Sabbath days and new moons and the ordinances,
he tells the Colossians. And in the book of Romans, he
goes on and says, it's not these things. You've died with Christ.
You've risen with Christ. You're seated with Christ. Your
sins have been put away in Christ. It's all about what is to come
and what has been established and how that which is to come
is the inheritance and reward given to Christ with his people
because of what he did. And so this future part, the
world to come, a hope. Not the present, but a hope.
Abraham looked for a city which has foundations. These all looked
for a heavenly kingdom. Moses said that he wouldn't,
by faith Moses, when he was in Egypt as Pharaoh's daughter's
son, he wouldn't enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Why? because
he saw him who is invisible. Faith enabled him to see Christ,
and so he lived that way. We have to stand on the truth.
These physical things have to be swept aside. We have to deny
that they have any importance. And we have to stand on the fact
that we're saved by grace alone, without our works, without anything
connected to that old covenant. It's all done in the new by Christ. And so this is powerfully brought
in the book of Hebrews. And that's the other thing. Not
only is Christ the priest on the throne having accomplished
our salvation, having obtained an eternal redemption for us,
but there is with this high priest a new covenant. The old covenant
set up that priesthood. In that old covenant priesthood,
a law was given and it was administered. The people were obligated to
obey the priest in all things that they said to do. All the
sacrifices and the ceremonies and the worship of God was regulated
by what the priest told them. But in the New Covenant, that
law never established Christ as a priest. I'm sorry, in the
Old Covenant, the law never established Christ as a priest. The Old Covenant
never laid down the Gospel as the way that we should live in
faith, the way we should live. The Old Covenant held us to a
conditional promise. If you do this, you shall live,
and if you don't in any way, the curse is upon you. It was
all dependent on our own personal obedience, and it was dependent
on these outward ceremonies, these physical animal sacrifices
that never accomplished anything. But the true has come, and in
this new covenant, God established it before the old. He established
the priesthood before the old, and he swore by that covenant
oath that he would do it. And so this is the other theme,
the new covenant in Christ's blood. Our high priest has made
the covenant, has put it into force because he shed his own
blood. Amazing themes. And then the
other theme I want you to see in this book is this theme of
perfection. Look at Hebrews chapter 7. In
Hebrews chapter 7 it says this in verse 11. If therefore, Hebrews
7 verse 11, if therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood,
if the Levitical priesthood, all those men who descended from
Levi, the son of Jacob, like Aaron who was the high priest,
if that priesthood made anything perfect, for under it they received
the law, what further need was there that another priest should
rise? Why would God speak of another
priest arising not of that Levitical order, if that original Levitical
priesthood made anything perfect? And yet you see, you see priests
running around today in churches, some churches, you see them,
they identify themselves. I remember we were over picking
up trees one day over at the Catholic Church in Yuba City,
and this guy walked by and he had these funny clothes on. Oh,
that was interesting. He had different kind of clothes
on. He identified himself as a priest. I thought, that's bizarre. This man is wearing something
to show that he's a priest. And then people go into these
booths and they tell him, oh, father, I've sinned. First of
all, he's not a father. But they confess to a man. And
they unburden their conscience to a man. How in the world? I have to refrain myself for
using harsher language. How in the world? is confessing
to a man who wears a funny garb and claims to have some authority
from God to forgive sins, how in the world is that going to
make me acceptable to God and clear me in the day of judgment?
It cannot. And yet people are so naturally
inclined to abide by that. And God is saying, not only to
the Hebrews, but all of us today who hear the Gospel, you have
to leave that. You have to go beyond that. First
of all, the false religions today have no basis for what they do.
At least the Israelites had God's old covenant. But the false religions
of our day, they'll take the old covenant of Israel and they'll
try to make it their own little system of religion. And they
create these hierarchies of men who have these authorities, let's
say in the Catholic Church. It goes all the way from the
Pope on down to the guy who's in the confessional booth. And
these people have increasingly higher degrees of importance
and names and salaries and stuff like that. It's just a bunch
of man-made false religion. We have to depart from that.
We have to take a stand against it. We have to say, this is not
the truth. And it will cause persecution
in our own lives when we stand up against those who are maybe
in our own family, who claim that this is the way it is. And
we say, no, I cannot take part in idolatry. Christ alone is
the high priest. He alone is the one by whom we
come to God. It's by his blood, not through
a man. We don't have a priest on earth because we have a high
priest in heaven who sits on the throne, who offered himself,
who purged our sins. There's no need for purgatory.
Christ purged our sins, you see. And so this theme of perfection,
look at verse 11 again. If perfection were by the Levitical
priesthood, For under it the people received the law. What
further need was there that another priest should rise after the
order of Melchizedek and not be called after the order of
Aaron?" Here we have a legitimate priesthood. Aaron and his sons. God set this up in the Old Covenant.
And now, and this is so difficult to remove from the thinking of
these people, God's going to say that Old Covenant has been
done away. And here's the proof. After the
Old Covenant was in place for hundreds of years, God spoke
in the Psalms, Psalm 110, verse 4, and He said, Thou art a priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek. And there was no priest in Old
Testament times who was made after the order of Melchizedek.
All the priests under the law were made after the order of
Aaron as a Levitical priesthood. There were no other priests.
If it wasn't, if you weren't a priest under the order of Aaron
in the Levitical priesthood, you were actually stoned or you
were put to death in the Old Testament. King Uzziah tried
to enter into the holy place himself and he turned into a
leper because he tried to take on the role of high priest. And
he was a king and he was cast out and he was a leper until
the day of his death. And that was a good guy. I mean, he was
a good king until he did that. So it was set down while they
were under the Old Testament, Old Covenant, that there could
be no one who acted as priest except those who were of the
Levitical priesthood. And there's only one other priesthood,
God says. And what is that? It's the priesthood
of Melchizedek. Who is Melchizedek? He was the
guy who met Abraham long before Moses, long before God gave the
Old Covenant on Sinai. And he met Abraham, and Abraham,
the father of Moses and Levite and Aaron, all these men, Abraham
met Melchizedek. Melchizedek blessed Abraham,
which means Melchizedek was greater than Abraham. And Abraham gave
tithes to Melchizedek, which meant Abraham was honoring him
as his high priest. And this man Melchizedek, there
were no other priests after his order until Christ came. And
Moses spake nothing concerning the priesthood of Christ in that
order. He didn't speak anything of him.
And so the Hebrew writer has got this secret weapon almost
to prove that the old covenant under Moses and that priesthood
was all swept away on the basis of what God said in Psalm 110
and what happened in Genesis 14 when Abraham paid tithes to
Melchizedek. Amazing, isn't it? That God would
reveal before the law was ever given, Christ was set up as a
high priest and it was sworn in Psalm 110 after the law was
given to reaffirm it. that the priesthood of Christ
was an eternal priesthood. It was a priesthood that would
do away with not only the Aaronic priesthood, but the whole law. Isn't that phenomenal? What could
be more devastating to the Jews' religion? 1400 years of God-given
laws and commandments and sacrifices and ceremonies. And God says,
now it's all swept away. Because the true has come and
the shadow is not needed anymore. And to cling to the shadow when
the truth has come is like a man who hugs the picture of his wife
and doesn't recognize his wife is in the room. It's ridiculous. But the Hebrews were tempted
to do that because of the trial of afflictions. And that's the
other theme in Hebrews. I want to get to this, because
the priesthood occupies the bulk of the book. But it's throughout
the book of Hebrews, there are warnings given. Warning are given. And there are temptations that
they have to face. Start in chapter 2. Look at this.
Chapter 2, verse 1, he says, Therefore we ought to give the
more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at
any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompensive reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great
salvation? You see what he's saying here?
Listen, you think the word of angels is authoritative and carries
ultimate consequences? What do you think then if you
heard the Son of God speak? What do you think if he spoke
of God's final, ultimate, fulfilled salvation and you just let it
slip? You just let it go like you're
holding the boat with a rope to the boat in the water, your
only salvation, and you just open your hand and let it slip
away downstream. That's what he's saying to the
Hebrews. What are you doing? What are you thinking? Don't
let this great salvation slip away. It's spoken by the Lord. It was confirmed by those that
heard Him. Now look at chapter 3. Oh, he says in the beginning,
wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider
the apostle and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.
And then he goes on, look at verse 8. He says, oh, he compares
Moses to Christ. He says, Moses was faithful as
a servant, in verse 5, over his house. But as a servant, for
a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after, which
was the new covenant, which was Christ. But Christ, verse 6,
as a son over his own house. And what is Christ's house? He
answers it. Whose house are we? If we hold
fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
What's he saying here to the Hebrews? Listen. Christ is the
Son. The people of God are His household. How do you know you're part of
His household? Because you hold firm, steadfast,
the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope to the end. You see? Faith is God-given. Faith is
God-upheld. But the evidence that we're Christ's
is that that faith is God-given. It will endure. And so, And so
then he contrasts this confidence of faith that endures, this persevering
faith, with the faith that the Old Testament Israelites had. He says in verse 8, therefore,
he says in verse 7, wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith today,
if you will hear his voice, whose voice? the Son of God, by whom
God has spoken in these last days. And he's speaking in those
olden days of the voice that came to them. He says, Harden
not your hearts. Today if you will hear his voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. in the day of
temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me,
and proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was
grieved with that generation, and said, They do all way earn
their heart, and they have not known my ways. So I swear in
my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest." Here's the warning
again. Take heed, brethren. Lest there
be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from
the living God." You see, it's about faith here. If you leave
Christ and go back to those outward, physical, shadowy things God
gave in the Old Testament, things that required your own personal
obedience in order to obtain the promise, things that were
earthly and temporal, and fleshly, and only cleanse the outside,
and not the conscience, not heavenly, not eternal, not things hoped
for. If you hold on to those temporary
things, things you can see tangibly, then you're holding to the weak
and beggarly things in unbelief. You're refusing to go into the
land of rest, which is eternal salvation in Christ. And he's
saying here, listen, take heed. Don't forsake this. Don't harden
your hearts. They did, and they fell in the wilderness. You will
be destroyed in a much more way, a much greater way. He says,
notice what he says in verse 13, one of the other themes in
this book. Exhort one another daily. Now, how can you exhort
one another? Daily, you gotta be together,
don't you? You have to communicate with one another, don't you?
And so later in chapter 10 in verse 24, he says, consider one
another to provoke unto love and to good works. Don't forsake
the assembling of yourselves together. You won't be able to
consider one another. You won't be able to provoke.
You won't be able to exhort one another. How can you do that
if you're not together? You're a body. How can the body
be built up by that which every joint supplieth if it's not together? How can you speak the truth in
love if the other person can't hear you? You have to get together,
you see. That's why last week when we
took the Lord's Table, we did it together. There's so much
in scripture that overlays on top of itself to emphasize and
reinforce these truths. And so in the book of Hebrews,
he says this over and over. The themes are this. There's
a warning of departing from Christ and going back to the old. There's
a necessity of growing beyond this infancy in the old covenant
to the manhood of the new covenant and faith in Christ. And then
he's also saying, and therefore, as believers, exhort one another,
lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, lest
you go back and you turn aside from him who speaks from heaven,
and you trample underfoot, effectively, the Son of God, the blood of
Christ. And so he goes on, look at chapter
10, and the last two verses, not just the last two verses,
He said, now remember, I said these people were tempted to
go back and they had suffered affliction. Here's where it's
verified that that's true. He says, let's see, I'll just
pick it up in verse 32, chapter 10, verse 32. He says, call to
remembrance the former days in which after you were illuminated,
You endured a great fight of afflictions. You suffered for
the gospel's sake. Partly, he says, partly you suffered
these afflictions while you were made a gazing stalk, both by
reproaches and afflictions, because they just, you know what it's
like in the olden days, 1600s, they would punish people in town
by sticking their hands in their neck in a stalk and people would
go by and mock them, like a gazing stalk. They probably got those,
constraints from this kind of a thought. Partly while you were
made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly whilst
you became companions of them that were so used. So they not
only themselves, some of them suffered personally for claiming
Christ was all, and the old covenant wouldn't save, the new covenant
was the only way God would save his people because in it Christ's
priesthood, Christ's sacrifice was accepted, and he sat on heaven's
throne ruling over all things. And we were looking for that
hope to come. But he says, also, some of you
suffered because you just became companions of those who were
treated this way. He goes on. Verse 34, for you
had compassion of me in my bonds, and you took joyfully the spoiling
of your goods. You showed compassion to Paul
in prison for the gospel, and you were glad that your goods
were taken from you, or you gave them for the gospel's sake, probably
more gave them for the gospel's sake, knowing in yourselves that
you have in heaven not on earth, in heaven a better and an enduring
substance. He goes on, cast not away therefore
your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. This is
referring to faith in Christ. Don't cast it off for the temporal
and forsaking because of the afflictions. Verse 36, For you
have need of patience, that after you have done the will of God
you might receive the promise. There's no promise obtained without
faith, patience of faith endured. For yet a little while, and he
that shall come will come, and will not tarry, Christ is coming.
Now, until then, the just shall live by faith, but if any man
draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are
not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe
to the saving of the soul. You see? See how significant
it is? We have one Savior, one Mediator,
one Covenant Head, one Covenant by which we're saved. It's all
in Christ. We serve the Lord Christ. We
believe Him. And we do not have an interest
in other things because we know that our sin is so great. Our
sinful nature is so prone to sin. And we ourselves are so
weak that we cannot be saved except by him. God will accept
nothing less than his holy sacrifice of himself in life and in death. And we're convinced of that.
In fact, that gives us boldness. Look at chapter 10, verse 19.
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by
the blood of Jesus. Boldness by the blood of Jesus.
We wouldn't have boldness before God. No one can have boldness
before God unless the boldness he has is what Christ has done. Any boldness based on anything
less is presumptuous arrogance and ignorance. Amazing. Boldness to enter to the holiest
of all. And then now look at chapter
13. Oh, chapter 12. Look at chapter 12. In chapter
12, he confirms all that we've been saying by drawing the conclusion
in contrast. He says the old next to the new.
It's like he takes and makes a list. Here's what the old was,
here's what the new is. Old, new, old, new, old, new.
Listen to this, verse 18. You're not come to the mount
that might be touched. In the new, you are come to Mount
Zion. And you're not come to that mountain
that burned with fire, nor into blackness and darkness and tempest.
What are you come to? You're come to the light of the
glorious gospel. You're not come to the sound
of trumpet that had pronounced condemnation, and the voice of
words, which voice they that heard entreated that the word
should not be spoken to them anymore, For they could not endure
that which was commanded. We can't endure God's law. If
so much as a beast touched the mount, it shall be stoned or
thrust through with a dart. And so terrible was the sight
that Moses himself said, I exceedingly fear and quake, but you are come. You see the contrast? There's
the old, there's the new. And what's in the new? Mount
Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
to an innumerable company of angels, To the generalists, the
angels are supporting us in this, this new covenant, angels are
there, elect angels. To the general assembly, not
to the nation of Israel, but the Jews and Gentiles. Abraham
and Rahab will stand together, a Jew and a Gentile. The father
of the Jews and the harlot will stand together because they stand
in the blood of Christ. To the general assembly and church
of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, eternally written
there, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of
just men made perfect before the judge of all. Can you imagine
it? And to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the
blood of sprinkling, his blood that speaks better things than
that of Abel, see that you refuse not him that speaketh. You see? And then he goes on in chapter
13. He tells us, look at chapter 13 in verse 8. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
today, and forever, be not carried about with divers and strange
doctrines, for it is a good thing that the heart be established
with grace, not with meats, which have not profited them that have
been occupied therein. And to be occupied with these
meats is simply to say I'm still under the old covenant because
that covenant was all hanging together on every ceremonial
law, every civil law, every moral law. It was all one covenant.
To say I need to be under this or benefit from this meant that
I'm obligating myself to do the whole law. We have an altar where
they have no right to eat, which serve the tabernacle. It's not
like, well, they're believers. I mean, they're going to go to
heaven just like us. No, he says, no, they have no right to eat
at this altar who serve the tabernacle. You see how strong the apostle
is saying this? The new covenant excludes all
those who trust in the old covenant. We have to come out. And so he
says, verse 11, for the bodies of those beasts whose blood is
brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned
without the camp. They took those animals, they
offered them, but they took their bodies and they burned their
bodies outside the camp. Listen, he says, verse 12, wherefore
Jesus also, that he might sanctify, make holy the people with his
own blood, what did he do? He took his place with the bodies
of those beasts that were burned outside the camp, outside that
city of Jerusalem, that place in Revelation called Egypt and
Sodom. that place where men depend on
their own works and in idolatry worship the works and the will
of their own hands. He said, therefore, let us go
forth therefore to him without the camp bearing his reproach. Standing for Christ costs. It
costs us when we stand and say Christ is enough, Christ is everything,
and to hold to something else is to deny Christ. Therefore,
may God give us this faith in our heart to lay hold on eternal
life in Christ and realize that He is the mediator of the new
covenant. He's the one whose blood put
it into force, inaugurated it, brought it to pass, announced
it, and explained it to us. He did it. And because of that
covenant, because it's made sure in his blood, then he says this
in chapter 13, verse 21, may the God of peace make you perfect
in every good work to do his will, working in you that which
well pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory
forever and ever, amen. You see, it all depends on God's
covenant in Christ for his people. set in place by his blood, brought
about by God's faithfulness, his power, his strength. Don't
go back like the Israelites. Don't look back like Lot's wife. Lay hold on Christ and stand. These people in chapter 11, some
of them were stoned. Some of them were sawn in half.
These people suffered a great deal, but they still hadn't received
the fulfillment of the new covenant in their lifetimes. They look
forward, and we also with them now, we have the new covenant.
Christ has come. He's fulfilled it. He sits on
heaven's throne. He declares it to us. And he
says, don't let it slip. Let us therefore fear, lest a
promise be left us of entering into his rest. We would seem
to come short of it. Don't harden your heart. It's
all in Christ, let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would
guide us in your word, that you would convince us, you would
build upon your own word and provide the arguments of your
own word to convince us. We are weak and we are sinful
and we lack faith and we're prone to wander, but the Lord Jesus
Christ is our hope. He is the high priest who can
have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the
way. And so, Lord, we trust in Him. And we come to Him, and
we find that He sits on the throne. And for those who come to Him,
it is a throne of grace to find mercy and help in every time
of need. And so we ask at this time, Lord,
in this country, in our own families, in our own lives, we would be
enabled to lay hold on Christ, and we would forsake everything
but Christ, that pretends to be true, that pretends to be
important. And we would look forward, like
Abraham did, and all these men and women in chapter 11 of Hebrews,
we would look forward to the hope set before us. where Christ
our forerunner has entered into the veil, and taken possession
for us in our name, and has given it to us, because we are His
body, and He did it all for His people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.