Let's turn in our Bibles to Hebrews
chapter 5, the passage that I began last week concerning this title,
Our Greater and Eternal High Priest. And as I said last week,
I decided to move slow through these first 8 or 9, 10 verses
because this is such an important subject to the people of God.
the high priestly office of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you followed
along when Brother Jim was reading that prayer, you have recorded
there, as the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle John to record it,
the high priestly prayer of the Savior. The Son of God speaking
to the Father in the spirit, on behalf of the people of God.
That's a marvelous thing. And I know we kind of tease each
other when I ask people to ask either Randy or I ask Jim or
I ask Mark to read. Well, it's his turn, it's his
turn. They're not reluctant to read.
But when I told Jim, I said, read John 17. And he come in
this morning, he was kind of on fire. He said, almost like
he wanted to preach. So come on, Jim. It's a beautiful
prayer, isn't it? That's the Lord's prayer. And
in that, you know, last week I made mention of this, you know,
that in reading out of the epistle to Timothy where Paul wrote,
there's one God and one mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus. And that is a set in concrete
truth. There's one way to God. Not many
ways. And I'll tell you, this is one
of the things that's offensive to the natural man, especially
people today. They want to think, well, there
are many ways to God. There's one way to God. And Christ
said it. He said, I'm the way, I'm the
truth, I'm the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me, he said. Peter spoke it. He said, there's
none other name given among men whereby we must be saved. Salvation. is in the Lord Jesus Christ by
the sovereign, free, full grace of God. And so when we think
of him as our mediator, our go-between, he stands in between the Father
and his people, his chosen people. There are basically three offices.
Christ is our prophet, Christ is our priest, and that's what
we're studying here in Hebrews 5, his qualifications to be the
one and only high priest of spiritual Israel, the church, the people
of God, and then he's our king. But what's so important about
his high priestly office is this, and this is why every believer
ought to study this. In fact, if you look there at
Hebrews chapter five, if you'll look down at verse 13, which
we'll be getting to in the next coming weeks, he says, everyone
that useth milk, milk being the word of God there, And he says,
is unskillful in the word of righteousness he's obeyed, but
strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, that is
full grown. What he's talking about there, he's urging the
people of God to grow in grace and in knowledge and to become
skillful in the word of righteousness, the gospel, that tells us of
the glorious person and the finished work of Christ. And I always
look at it this way. And I know you all will agree
with this. Don't let the preacher do your thinking for you. Now
I preach to you the word of God, but you think about these things.
You study to show yourself to be approved unto God, a workman
that needeth not to be ashamed. And the reason that it's so important
that we understand this work of Christ the high priest is
this. His high priestly office and the fulfillment of the duties
of that office for his people is the very foundation and ground
of our whole existence as sinners saved by grace. Now remember
I said there are three offices, prophet, priest, and king. Unless
Christ fulfilled the duties of his office as high priest, there'd
be no prophecy. There'd be no, what is a prophet? One who tells the word of God.
And we think of it as the good news, the gospel. Well, Christ
is our great prophet, but if he hadn't done his duty and fulfilled
the office of a high priest, there'd be nothing good to tell.
Did you know that? Be no good news for sinners like
us. if Christ had not fulfilled his duties as our high priest.
What did the high priest do? He represented the people before
God. That's what Christ is doing for
his people. It's what he has done and what
he is doing. Representing God's chosen people, the elect, before
holy God. What did the high priest do?
He brought in the sacrifice, the blood. We're going to talk
about that in just a moment. And he offered the sacrifice
on behalf of the people. And the human high priest did
it for himself and for the people. Christ did it for his people.
Not for himself, but for the people. Having our sins charged
to him. He brought the blood of the sacrifice
and that was his own blood. He's the Lamb of God. And that's
what the priest did. And so he offered himself without
spot unto God. Well, we talk about his kingly
office. Well, if he had not performed
the duties of his office as high priest, there'd be no kingdom.
His kingdom is a righteous kingdom, a righteous scepter. There'd
be no righteousness. So that's how important this thing is.
So let's look here at Hebrews chapter five. I'll move a little
bit quicker through here, but there are several points. Last
week, I majored on this first point that shows forth the glorious
person of Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? And it says
here in verse one, it says, for every high priest taken from
among men is ordained for men. That's speaking of the humanity
of Christ. Every one of those old covenant
priests under the old covenant, they were human beings, sinful
human beings. But in order to stand for, in order to represent
men from among men, the high priest had to be a man. Now Christ,
this speaks of His holy, harmless, sinless humanity. That He is,
who is Jesus Christ? He is God, Man. That's who He is. He's the Word
made flesh. He had to be made human. He had
to be conceived in the womb of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit,
not with the aid of man, not in the usual way, but without
man. He's the seed of woman, the scripture
says. He had to be born of the Virgin. Without sin, he had to have a
holy humanity in order to represent human beings. So Christ, as the
sinless God-man, stood as our high priest, representing men,
sinful human beings. And that's generic. In other
words, God's chosen people, male, female, black, white, out of
every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. That's who he represented. Remember the high priest I mentioned,
he had 12 names on that breastplate, the names of the tribes of Israel.
And that's who Christ has on his breastplate, as it were,
his heart, his chosen people. He prayed for them. He said,
those whom thou hast given me. When were they given to him?
Before the foundation of the world. God chose them and gave
them to Christ. That's what the scripture teaches.
Remember John recorded where the Lord said, all that the Father
hath given me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. You may ask yourself this question,
am I one, am I among that number that was given to him? Well,
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Are you calling upon the name of the Lord? The Lord of glory,
the Lord in this book, Jesus Christ as he's identified and
distinguished in the word of God. So Christ is very God, a
very God, the old writers used to say, and very man, a very
man without sin. And we read about that, how he
was made manifest, he's God manifest in the flesh. And then the second,
the second point here is the glory of God in Christ. Look
at verse one, for every high priest taken from among men is
ordained for men in things pertaining to God. In other words, this
is all about the glory, the majesty, the beauty the goodness, the
grace, the mercy of God. It's all about His glory. It's
not about you and me. You see, our gospel, the true
gospel, is not a humanistic gospel. It doesn't begin and end with
man. It's not conditioned on man. It's all conditioned on
Christ, the God-man. And it's to the praise of the
glory of His grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ representative,
the surety, the substitute, the redeemer, the intercessor of
his people. In Christ, we see the fullness
of the glory of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit. How
every attribute of God's nature is honored, magnified, working
consistently together to glorify God in the salvation of his people.
You see, God's reputation is the issue here. Not yours, not
mine. We have no reputation. We're sinners. We're nothing. He's everything and we're nothing.
This is not about applauding us. It's not about lifting us
up as far as our reputation and our works. The only lifting up
that we go through is He reaches down by the power of His grace
and He lifts the beggars off the dung heap. That's it. One old brother used to say,
he said, before I was saved my address was Dung Hill Drive.
That's what we are by nature. We fell in Adam, we rebelled,
born dead in trespasses and sins. This is not about the power or
goodness that we have. It's not about even our decisions.
People say, well, you've got to do the right thing. We don't
know how to do the right thing by nature. Not in God's sight
now. I'm not talking about as men
and women see us on this plane. But in God's sight, he says there's
none righteous, no, not one. There's none good, no, not one,
according to God's measure of goodness, not man's. You see,
mama and daddy and grandma and grandpa, brother and sister,
they'll all look at you and say, you're such a good guy or you're
such a good lady. But here's the issue, how do
we stand in God's side according to His measure of goodness, His
measure of righteousness? The Bible says that He commands
us to repent in Acts 17 30 because in verse 31 He says there, God
has appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness. And who is the standard of righteousness? By that man whom he hath ordained,
in that he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath
raised him from the dead. How righteous must I be to enter
the glory of God, the glory of heaven, glory of eternity. I
must be as righteous as Christ. I told a man that one time, he
looked, his eyes got that big, he said, well nobody can do that.
I said, that's right. And that's why salvation is by
grace and not by works. And grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. I must have
his righteousness charged to me, imputed to me. That's what it's all about. That's
the glory of God. That's how God can be just and
justify the ungodly. And then the third thing here
is the justice of God fulfilled by Christ. That high priest in
verse one here, he is taken from among men, he's ordained for
men in things pertaining to God that he may offer both gifts
and sacrifices for sins. Now everything that God accepts, everything that God blesses is
found by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Lord of
Glory. First of all, there's the gifts
there. That's talking about those offerings. We can look at it in our case
as the offering of praise, the offering of worship to God. But
it's all based upon the sacrifice, which is the blood offering.
You remember how the Old Testament high priest, he'd go into the,
one day on the Day of Atonement, he would go into the holiest
of all with the blood of a lamb. And he'd sprinkle that blood
on the mercy seat. What does that teach us? That
teaches us the biblical concept called propitiation. What does
that mean? Well, let me put it to you this
way. God is a merciful God. That was called the mercy seat. He's a merciful God. The Bible
says all over the place, in the book of Psalms especially, He
delights to show mercy. God is a God of love. God is
love, the scripture says. God is a God of grace. But here's
what people aren't hearing today. God's grace, God's mercy, God's
love cannot be shown towards sinners except on a righteous,
just ground. And that's where that blood comes
in. The soul that sinneth must surely die. The wages of sin
is death. God must be a righteous judge
as well as a loving, merciful father. And that's where the
gospel issue comes. How can a holy God, how can He
show mercy and grace and love to a sinner like me who deserves
nothing but His just wrath, who has earned nothing but His anger,
how can He look at me and show mercy and still be just? How can He be gracious to me
and still be righteous? How can He love me and still
be truthful? Somebody said, well, doesn't
God love everybody? No. Scripture says He hated Esau.
Psalm 5 says He hates all workers of iniquity. Aren't I a worker
of iniquity? Well, is there any way that God
can look at me and not charge me with iniquity? Well, my friend,
behold the wisdom, the glory, The mercy of God in Christ Jesus
as the great high priest who stood in my place and took my
punishment, took my wrath based on my sins charged to him. He paid my debt in full. He satisfied the justice of God. That's what propitiation is.
He satisfied the justice of God on behalf of his sheep. The ones
he prayed for in John 17. He said, I finished the work.
What did he do? He was speaking in anticipation
of his death on the cross, shedding his precious blood. What can
wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. You see, people have the idea
today that God can, he's just so much of a loving, sentimental
grandpapa that he can just, you know, he wouldn't send anybody
to hell. He wouldn't punish anybody. Oh no, you better look at the
Bible. Oh, but that's the God of the Old Testament. Oh no,
that's the God of the New Testament too. He's the same God, friend.
He saves one way. He shows mercy and love and grace
one way, and that's through Christ. And let me tell you something,
outside of Christ, There's no mercy. Outside of Christ, there's
no grace. Outside of Christ, listen to
me, there's no love from God. It's only hatred. A man told
me one time, he said, well, it's not right for God to hate anything.
I told him, I said, it's nothing but right. You see, God's hatred
isn't like ours. Our hatred is usually sinful,
selfish, self-serving, personal. God's hatred is His just wrath
against sinners to whom sin is imputed. That's why David prayed,
blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputed not iniquity. Blessed
is the man to whom the Lord imputed righteousness without works.
How's that possible? Only in Christ. Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's the issue. That's the
justice of God. And everything we are as believers,
everything we are as sinners saved by grace is accepted with
God as far as anything that we do in order to please God. It's
accepted not based upon our merits, not based upon our good intentions,
not based upon our resolutions, it's based upon the blood of
Jesus Christ. We're accepted in the beloved,
the scripture says. We offer sacrifices and praises
unto God, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, our Lord. Well, here's the fourth thing.
Here's the love of God in Christ for his chosen people. Look at
verse two. This high priest, one of the requirements, he had
to be one who can, it says. who can reasonably bear with,
is what it says there in your concordance, 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 it says,
verse three, and by reason hereof he ought, as for the people,
so also for himself, to offer for sins. The high priest of
Israel, these human high priests under the old covenant, had to
offer sacrifices on their own behalf as well as for the people
because they themselves were sinners. And it was required
of the high priest that he have compassion. Why? Because he was no better than
anybody else. That's why. Because he too was
a weak human being, a sinner who was in need of God's grace.
This human high priest now under the old covenant, the line of
Aaron. And in the exercise of this office,
he was never to be lifted up with pride as if he deserved
to be there. He was never to be lifted up
with self-righteousness, looking down on the people he represented.
And I'll be the first to tell you, if you read the history
of Israel, many of them failed in this. The reality, you see. But see,
the whole point of the book of Hebrews is that Christ is better.
Christ is greater. Christ is eternal. Just like
the blood sacrifices. The blood of bulls and goats
couldn't take away sin. They accomplished some things.
They accomplished what we call a ceremonial, temporal washing. Hebrews 9 tells us about that.
But it didn't accomplish the putting away of sins in the sight
of God. They did not accomplish the spiritual,
eternal cleansing. See, it took something better
than the blood of actual lambs and goats and bullocks. What
did it take to put away our sins? It took the blood of the God-man. The blood of Christ. Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world, John the
Baptist said. That's the sins of God's people all over this
world, isn't it? He's got a people out of every
tribe, kindred. Let me tell you something, if He took away your
sins on that cross, there's no way you can perish. That's right. Sin cannot be charged to you
if He took them away. And why did He do all that? It
was because of the love of God for His people. You see, Christ
didn't come into the world to die for His people to make God
love them. He came into the world to die
for God's people because God already loved them eternally. And Christ Himself as God-man,
even though He Himself was not a sinner, He was never made a
sinner, He was never contaminated. Listen, He was made sin, the
scripture says, 2 Corinthians 5.21. What does that mean? That
means all the sins of all of God's people were made to meet
on Him. He bore our sins. And what that
means is that God charged Him with the demerit of our sins.
They were imputed to Him. They were accounted to Him. He
took our debt. But He was never contaminated
with that sin. He was never transformed into
something called sin. Do you know that on the cross,
Christ, as guilty by imputation, the imputation of our sins, the
accounting of our sins, Christ bore under the wrath of God,
but in Himself, He remained perfect, holy, pure, separate from sinners. He never, on the cross, when
He was, look at the seven saints on the cross. Do they reek of
any sinfulness? Remember the thief on the cross
on the right hand? He started out blaspheming God, didn't he,
with the other thief. Then all of a sudden something
changed. Oh, I guess he heard the organ
playing softly. Or he heard the preacher down
at the alley begging him to accept Jesus. No, the power of God came
upon that man. And he was made willing in the
day of God's power. God changed his will, didn't
he? Changed his heart. But you see, Christ on that cross,
he had compassion on the weak. Think about his earthly ministry.
He had compassion on the sick and the poor because he identified
with us. Not in our sinfulness, but in
the infirmities of the flesh, the weaknesses of the flesh.
He had a human body without sin. You know that word compassion
here in verse 2. It speaks of being passionately
affected. It speaks of one who is not unduly
disturbed by the errors, faults, and sins of others, but he bears
them gently. You know that's how Christ could
sit down. and have a meal with publicans and sinners. He could
do that. That shocked the religious majority. That shocked the Pharisees and
the self-righteous. But he had compassion. And he
even made a statement like this. He said, they'll enter into the
kingdom of heaven before you religious folk will. Think about
that. He said, I didn't come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It's amazing. In Matthew 9 36,
you know, when he saw the multitudes, it says he was moved with compassion
on them because they fainted and were scattered abroad as
sheep having no shepherd. And so the way they were till
we see Christ, we're like sheep that have no shepherd. And this
is significant, you know, his compassion for them did not cause
him to compromise the glory of God and God's truth to gain their
favor and approval. He had compassion on them, but
he didn't speak peace to them. He dealt with them more gently
than he did with the Pharisees, but he didn't lie to them in
the name of love and compassion. Over in Matthew 15, he turned
to the same multitude. In verse 32, listen to this.
It says, Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said,
I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me
now three days. They have nothing to eat, and
I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. So
he had compassion on them. But listen to what he said in
John chapter 6. This is John chapter 6 and verse
26. I've got the wrong reference because there's not 26 verses
in John 26, but what he did is he turned toward the multitude
and he told them, he said, you follow me not for the miracles,
that miracle which testified that he is God. He says, you
follow me just for the loaves and the fishes. He knew their
hearts. So he had compassion because
of the feeling of our infirmities, but there's a very significant
difference between the human high priest under the old covenant
and Christ, the God-man, who is high priest under the covenant
of grace. And that's it, this. Christ had no sin and Christ
knew no sin. He did no sin. He is and was
the perfect God-man. And that's an amazing thing.
That was a qualification that he had to have for that. I said
that I had the wrong reference, but I didn't. I just turned to
the wrong page. But look at verse 26 of John 6. Usually I have
these little markers. They call them cheaters, you
know, and people say, well, how can you find those verses so
fast? Well, I got a little marker there, but I forgot to put one
here, but here it is. John 6.26, I did have it set
right. It says, Jesus answered them,
John 6.26, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, you seek
me not because you saw the miracles. Now what he's saying there is
those miracles were a testimony from God that Christ, that Jesus
of Nazareth is, was, and is God. And he's saying, you're not following
me because you believe I'm the Messiah. He says, but because
you did eat of the loaves and were filled. You just want your
physical hunger filled up. And then he says, labor not for
the meat which perish, but that meat which perisheth not. Well,
Christ had no sin. He knew no sin. He was the spotless
sacrifice. Well, then how could he have
justly died for our sins? Well, the same way that God could
justly save and justify sinners like us, He bore the sins of
His sheep. He said the Good Shepherd gives
His life for the sheep. Who were His sheep? That's God's
chosen people, given Him before the foundation of the world,
who fell in Adam into sin and death, born dead in trespasses
and sins. Sinners! That's what we are.
And He bore our sins. He took our penalty. Our sins
charged to Him. And in exchange, we get what?
His righteousness, by which we stand before God whole, justified. And from Him, we get spiritual
life, a new heart, born again, to look to Him and rest in Him,
and plead Him as our one mediator between God and men, to rest
in Him as our one and only high priest, who passed through into
the heavens on our behalf so that we might have free access,
unhindered access to the throne of grace and find help and mercy
in time of need. That's our great high priest.
There's no one better, there's no one greater, there's no one
else. It's all him.