Saved to the Uttermost

Seeking for the help of the Lord, I direct your prayerful attention to Hebrews chapter 7 and reading for our text verse 25. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. Hebrews 7 and verse 25.

Since man fell he has become alienated and separated from God and yet must stand before God, is accountable to God, and every blessing that he has, if he to have a blessing, must come from that God. Yet man himself cannot, in his sinful state and condition, approach unto God. Right from the beginning, it is revealed in the Word of God the need of a mediator, having the aim that God and sinners are to be reconciled. Man is to be brought nigh. A word like this that speaks to us of such a mediator, of such a one that enables a bringing together of a holy, holy God and a sinful people is something every one of us here needs to know of personally.

Not just, and the scriptures are very clear on this, not just a saying of what our Lord is able to do or what God can do through His beloved Son. but how he can do it, so that we can see the foundation, the justness of it. Although we are saved by faith, a trust in God alone, yet the Lord has been pleased to show upon what foundation that trust is made. Many atheists ridicule They say that if you have to have faith, then there is no evidence. And that faith, you say, is when you've just got to believe something. But the Scriptures very clearly set forth upon what foundation we believe, what foundation we trust, how God has brought about what He has brought about.

This enables us to as at the end of Hebrews 4, to come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, find grace to help in time of need. Or with our text, our text that begins with a wherefore has already set forth beforehand the reason why and how it is that The Lord Jesus Christ is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. Another thing that is very evident with this text and this portion is the oneness of the Scriptures and God's divine plan right from the beginning. We know our Lord Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and that God has loved His people with an everlasting love. They have been chosen in Christ, and He is the one that is appointed to be their Redeemer, their Mediator.

But especially in this particular We see the apostle, as I believe the Hebrews, is written by him. Some don't believe that, but I do. And we go back to Genesis 14, where we have this that Paul is referring to of Melchizedek, the king of Salem, and how there he comes after Abraham had gone out to rescue, launch and he blessed him. We are told here of a summary that he blessed him, he received tithes of Abraham and yet you don't read of his father, his mother, you don't read of any genealogy and the apostle puts a significance in that absence of information about him and so He draws from that account, but not just from that account, but going another thousand years further on to David in Psalm 110, where we have it testifying in verse 17 of this chapter, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. That's Psalm 110, verse 4. And then another thousand years to Christ a bit longer to this present time and you see over a period of two thousand or so years the unfolding of these truths here.

And it's good for us to remember that the truths of God are not something the Lord has suddenly thought up or suddenly seen a need of. He has foreseen that need. He has provided for it. these eternal counsels, eternal purposes. When we're thinking of the foundations upon which we are building for eternity, the deeper a foundation goes, the more solid it is. And especially when the foundation is going even before time, it cannot be changed by those things that are in time.

And then in time, where the Lord has shown, as he showed this with Abraham, before ever he had had his sons, his generations, that then led to Levi, before ever the law was given at Mount Sinai, written law, already the gospel is proclaimed and set forth.

And so we have glorious plan of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ as the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is at the right hand of God, ever liveth to make intercession for us. And then we have the tides and the shadows that illustrate it to Israel through Egypt through the wilderness, through the liturgical law, the ceremonial law, and also the moral law, and then coming to this chapter here. I hope it is with us each that when we listen to the word preached, when we read the word, that we're mindful that we're not just hearing about doctrines, teachings, we're hearing about things that we personally need to experience and need to know what these things mean ourselves, to us. And if ever we are to approach to God, be accepted by Him, we must know what it is to have a High Priest, a Mediator as our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, after the Order. of Melchizedek.

On to the two main points. Firstly, what he is able to do. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is set before us here in our text. And then secondly, there are seven reasons he is able to do this. The text begins with the wherefore, so it is gathering up the reasons that go before in the earlier part of the chapter. Firstly, what our Lord is able to do. He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him. able to save them to the uttermost.

This is thinking of sinners. This is sinners. Heimreiter says sinners can stay and none but they how precious is the Saviour. We must never lose sight that God's plan of salvation is not for those that are sinless, not for those that are perfect, not for those that can help themselves, but for those that are feeling sinners dependent on the mercy and grace of God.

When our Lord told the parable of the two going up to the temple to pray, it was the one that was pleading, God be merciful to me, a sinner, that went to his house justified rather than the other. In one sense you have a picture of coming before God, and each of them needing that mediator, needing one to come by, but one feeling that he could speak of all of his good works, all of his good deeds, and that is his merit before God.

In one sense he did not need, in his own feelings, a mediator at all. He was good enough to appear in the presence of God himself. But the other did. God be merciful to me, a sinner. May the Lord lie down to our hearts. Our need of a mediator is a feeling need, a feeling sense of our sinnership.

It is by the Lord we come to God because we cannot, we cannot stand ourselves, we cannot approach ourselves but this beautiful word, He is able. is able to do something that without Christ he could not do. God is able to save one of whom God cannot look upon sin but without utter abhorrence and yet he can save a sinner. He can be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in God. He can be righteous and holy and yet pass by the transgression of his people and justly do so. Some people have said, well, if God is so great, why did he have to put his beloved son to death and to suffer?

Why could he not just have just put away the sin, just forgotten it? Just blotted out the sins, just taken the people to heaven. He is not able to do that. He never has been able to do that. But he is able to do so when the debt is paid by Christ. When there is a way made into the holiest of all. This is a most beautiful word. He is able also to save them to the uttermost, not partial saving. If the Gospel is to be a Gospel at all, it must be complete.

It must not be as if we would preach and say, well Christ has come, he has suffered, he has bled and died, and now it is your duty to accept the Gospel as offered and to believe in And if you believe you're saved, and if you reject it, you won't be saved. You must repent, you must believe, you must work this and do these works, and all the time there's this word, must. Now it's vital, without repentance, no man shall see God. He commandeth all men everywhere to repent, for the gospel says. that He, the Lord Jesus Christ, is exalted to give repentance and remission of sins unto Israel, the people of God.

It is a finished gospel. Our Lord not only paid the debt, suffered, bled and died, but He is the mediator of the new covenant. He is the one that knows for whom He died and conveyed the blessings of His death to His people. And there is no weak link in it. Man cannot undo what God has finished and done. And He will save His people from their sins. And so it is to the uttermost.

You say, but isn't there not a condition here them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. What did our Lord say? No man cometh unto the Father but by me. No man can come unto me except the Father which sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. This is the work of God, yet ye believe in him whom God has sent, to be drawn to believe is the work of God, that come unto God by him, the great work of the Holy Spirit, he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you.

It is one of the things he receives and shows to a poor sinner. Here is a way that, sinful though you are, you may approach unto God. Come boldly unto the throne of grace a name to plead, the blood to plead, a way that God has made. Seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. And so then there's a intermating of that which again has gone before. But may you have this beautiful picture of the Lord able, able to say what a message to each ear. As of that you feel your sinnership, you see your sins day by day, you feel your need of understanding between you and God.

The desire not to flee from God, not to be separated from Him, but to come nigh, to be brought nigh, and you see here set forth in the Scriptures of truth the way that that can be so, the way that a poor sinner can be brought to God, to be saved, not partially, but to the uttermost. May we be like those in Hebrews 11, that see the promises afar off and embrace them. Some of these broods, though to be embraced by poor sinners, this is so suitable to me, this is what I need. This just suits my state and my condition.

It will be something that you and I plead before the Lord and encourage us to come before the Lord in prayer. Because when we pray, our Lord has said, if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. He appears in the presence of God for us. I will pray the Father, He will give you another comforter, which shall abide with you forever, tarry in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued in power from on high. Every answer to prayer and the answer to our Lord's intercession is an evidence of the intercession and the presence of God, presence of our Lord before His Father in heaven, a friend that sticketh us closer than a brother, a voice that speaks for us in heaven's high court for good. He is able to say them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. May we always make mention of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in prayer. be reminding our Heavenly Father of Him and speaking through Him as evidencing our value of Him and need of Him. I want to look then secondly at the reasons that are given here throughout this chapter. seven reasons that he is evil, wherefore he is evil. I'll look at them as we come through the order of the chapter. In verse 12 we read of a change of Lord.

For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. high priest going into the holiest of all, not without blood, once a year to make reconciliation for the sins of the people, and the veil being there thus signifying that the wound of the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the tabernacle remained. Remember when our Lord died, when his blood was shed at Calvary, and the veil of the temple was rent in twain? from top to bottom, the way into the holiest of all was now made known through our Lord Jesus Christ. But in the time of the tabernacle and the temple it was prefigured, it was pointed to it, but the intimation was that it was not yet come.

But it was the Levites that administered this, the Levites also the moral law, Now, I know many feel that this passage solely is dealing with the ceremonial law. But when we look at what the Apostle says of the law, the moral law, he said, the law is a schoolmaster unto Christ. You say, well, isn't that still the ceremonial law? Yes, in one sense.

But then you look at how the Apostle was converted And he says, I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And that which was ordained unto life I found to be unto death. And he was convicted of the commandment, Thou shalt not covet, brought from a Pharisee to a hell-deserving sinner.

Now we have our Lord when he was upon earth, He had those trying to trip him up and they came and brought a woman taken in adultery, so in other words a transgression of the moral law. And saying to our Lord that Moses commands that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? And trying to drive a wedge between our Lord and Moses. Well, our Lord dealt with it in a way they didn't expect, and he brought them all to be convicted of sin.

Not just her, all of them. He that is without sin let him first cast a stone at her, and began writing on the ground. And one by one they went out, the beginning at the eldest and the youngest. By the law is the knowledge of sin. No man is justified by the deeds of the law. The law is given that sin might abound, that all the world might become guilty before God. It takes away our own righteousness, shows us where we really are.

And it was under the Levitical law that that was done, that that was set forth under that law. We are told here there's a change of priesthood from the Levitical law to a priest after the order of Melchizedek and it is said in Psalm 110 that our Lord was thou art a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Well our Lord came from the tribe of Judah so a change of tribe, a change of priesthood or line of the priesthood, then a change of law. And so the Apostle in Hebrews especially is teaching them that the ceremonial law now does not apply, it is fulfilled in Christ.

But also a saved sinner, one that is trusting in from under the law as a condemnation. We are still, we are not lawless, by the law is the knowledge of sin, but the gospel is our rule of life, not the law. The gospel so far exceeds, we've only got to read in Corinthians, I think it was 2 Corinthians chapter 3, where you see going right through the comparison between the law written in tables of stone and that written on the fleshly tables of the heart.

The ministration of death and the ministration of the spirit. Then when Paul comes to Hebrews 12, then you have again a vivid difference between the two. We have here not come unto the mount which might be touched, that burneth with fire, nor blackness, and darkness, and tempest. Then so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.

But to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. The gospel and the law are both used by the Lord. If you and I are saved, it is not through the deeds of the law, whereby no man shall be justified, but it is through faith in Jesus Christ. It is through what the Lord has done, His finished work. And so, I would look upon this passage we have in our Articles of Faith, that the believer's rule of life is the gospel, not the law. It contains all of the things that are in the law, but much more, and it doesn't come as a condemning judgment upon a sinner, because the Lord Jesus Christ has fulfilled it. Luther, I believe it was, he had a dream, and Satan brought to him, in that dream, a list of all of his sins, and said, these are all your sins. And he said, yes they are, but right upon the bottom, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin. And so, the wherefore he is able to save is because of that change of law. Because there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. for them that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

The second reason is that he lives as in verse 16, not after the law of a carnal commandment but after the power of an endless life. Paul is comparing the priests that just live for a short time And then they had to die and pass over to another. But our Lord Jesus Christ has an endless life.

Then we have in verse 18, a disannulling of the commandment that is going before. For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before, for the weakness and profitableness thereof. and again interacted with the law and the commandment. We read in Romans 8, For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and forcing condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, which walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. And we have the weakness, the unprofitableness of types, or of shadows, or of a law even, that depends upon man to fulfill it. When Paul wrote to the Romans chapter 10, and he desired his countrymen to be saved, he says they were ignorant of God's righteousness, but going about to establish their own righteousness.

And he would set before them the righteousness of our Lord, the word that is preached, that is in thy heart and in thy mouth. If thou believe that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Then we have in verse 19, a better hope. The law made nothing perfect. but the bringing in of a better hope did, by the which we draw nigh unto God. We are saved by hope, hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? We are to have a good hope through grace, a hope beyond the grave, a hope that is founded upon what Christ has done, what He has said, what He has wrought in us as well, a foundation of hope. We have in the previous chapter where God, in verse 17, God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things, things that cannot possibly be changed, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation for our fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and entereth into that within the veil. And there is set forth our Lord Jesus Christ, where he is entered within the veil, a promise and an oath. And we have that better hope than just in ceremonies, in tithes, in shadows, in a law that we try to fulfill ourselves.

This hope is founded all on what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. The illustration, of course, is when the law was broken at Mount Sinai. The broken tables were replaced by unbroken tables and placed in the Ark, a type of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel proved even there a better home. May there be a word and season to those that were trying by deeds and works of the law to obtain the righteousness. To get yourself better, to overcome this sin, this habit, this failing, and the odd will labour is that? Well, even if you are 80, what kind of a hope is that?

A better hope is that which is upon Christ what He has already done, already fulfilled it, already paid the debt, and was undertaken to work in us, that which is well-pleasing. in His sight. You can be sure before a sinner is resting fully upon Christ. If the Lord has a kindness to us, He will frustrate every attempt and every desire we have, desire we have to fulfill the law and to make ourselves feel good as a good Christian, as one that is doing that which is right. Our works before we are saved, if we are not brought to be trusty in Christ, we will lean on those works. When the Lord saves His people, they will have good works. They are fruits. They are not the reason of salvation. They are not the cause of salvation. They are the fruits of it. We don't need to be of any use or to have any fruits as a saved sinner. to be very convinced right at the beginning that it is not by the deeds of the Lord we are saved, but by mercy alone.

The sixth one is that we have our Lord in verse 22 as a surety of a better testament. Better testament, not the Old Testament, but the New Testament in Christ's blood. Beautiful words that are spoken of at the Lord's This cup is the New Testament in my blood.

A receiving of it as a token, as a reminder that it is through the shedding of blood that there is remission. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission. And the Church of God, by the ordinances that God has given, the Lord has given, is never to forget that. It is through their precious blood.

And they have a surety. And what is a surety for? As soon as one cannot pay, as soon as one is guilty, arrayed before the law, as soon as Benjamin is told that he's got to stay with Joseph because the cup is found in his cup, his sack, then Judah says, I undertook to be surety for him. Let me stay instead. Let me pay his debt.

As Him go back to His Father, beautiful time of assurity. And we have that surety in our Lord Jesus Christ. Not once, but always, whatever is laid to our charge, whatever death is put to us, in our Lord Jesus Christ. He takes that death. He comes in our place. Every sin, from the original sin to the last sin will commence. all were laid upon our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane and put away at Calvary after being through to the judgment. Surety of a better testament.

And then we have in verse 24 of course referred to in our text that he hath an unchangeable priesthood. He continues, And really, if it was just left that he continueth ever, that would be a wonderful and blessed thing. But when we have that it is an unchangeable priesthood, if we have known his intercession, if we have known him making that intercession for us and being our high priest above, what he was once, he will ever be. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. He does not change. If ever there's to be a comfort in this portion, it is that He does not change. The Jews might have had a high priest of a certain character one year, and then he dies and another one comes along, and he's different. But with the Lord, He's the same. His character is the same, His work is the same, it's a once-offered sacrifice, His intercession is the same.

I wonder how often we think of that as we read the biblical accounts from the beginning of the Word to the end. The God we're reading about is the same God we have. It's the same power, the same might, the same plan of salvation. The way that Adam was saved, Abel was saved, is the way the last one will be saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're brought to heaven by the grace of God.

We shall see Abraham and Jacob and Moses and all those that have gone before. Sometimes we can look upon the scriptures and think, well, thousands of years, that was a different era. Well, outwardly, many things are different. But as far as sinnership and as far as the gospel and the way of saving, that never changes. Right through all the scenes of time, it is the same. The Lord Jesus Christ is the same. Wherefore, May we be able to see the foundation of the intercession of our Lord in heaven and know that we have a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Therefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost. Dear friend, may we be really encouraged to come unto heaven. to seek salvation and to ask that of Him. The Lord said, He will not come unto me that He might have life. He asked life of Him, He gave it Him even length of days. Our Lord Jesus Christ, because I live, He shall live also. May we come with sinful petitions to this our great High Priest and ask Him to give us life, to give us faith, to keep our souls, to bring us safely to be with Him, to number us amongst His people and to enjoy the blessings that He has purchased for the Church of God here below and in heaven forever and ever.

May there be specific things that we are asking of the Lord in simple, simple things. Tell Him what you want Him to do for you and what He is to you and how you need Him. You need Him as your High Priest and as your surety. Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, see He ever liveth to make intercession for them. Amen.

Saved to the Uttermost

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Saved to the Uttermost

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About Rowland Wheatley

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