For this hour, we're gonna be
in the same chapter of Hebrews. If you'd like to turn, Hebrews
chapter four. God has always declared his truth
from the very beginning. He told Adam and Eve, the day
that you eat of this tree, you shall surely die. And yet we
see that from the very beginning, men and women, we just don't
believe it. We just don't believe, we don't
take him at his word. We naturally cannot understand
it, cannot bow to it, can't believe it. If left to self, we will
always change the truth of God into the lie, and we'll worship
ourself, the creature, rather than the creator. This is always
true with how men approach God. But the Old Testament's clear.
The Old Testament tells us time and time again that he's unapproachable. He's unapproachable. When Adam
and Eve sinned, they throwed fig leaves together, as we heard
the first hour, that wasn't good enough to atone for the sin that
they'd done. Whenever Cain slew Abel, he couldn't have done anything
to make amends for what he had done. Justice had to be satisfied.
We see that God is unapproachable for those who are guilty. Mount
Sinai, when the children of Israel gathered there, he said, you
approach this mountain whenever I'm present, you will die. The
soul that comes near will be put to death. Yet men hear this
and they work religion. What do I mean work religion?
Well, anything that's works is not of grace. There's only one
true religion, the scripture tells us, and that's the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not many different ways
to God. As a matter of fact, Christ said,
I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, but the same that
climbeth up any other way, the same as a thief and a robber
desiring to rob from God's glory, and God won't allow it. Men work
religion, trying to climb up another way, thinking this changes
something, thinking that it makes them earn favor with God, makes
us more acceptable to God, but all the time it's not true because
we're just coming to the mountain whereby we're going to die. So
what is our need then? We need a surety. We need a substitute,
one that can come nigh into the mountain, one that can come nigh
into the Lord, one that can approach Him, and the scepter of righteousness
be held out of the king's hand. One that the Lord will say, approach. One that can stand in our stead.
One that can touch God and not be destroyed and touch us and
not be defiled. Here in our text, we hear these
words, our great high priest. That's what I've titled this
message, our great high priest. Let's read chapter four, verses
14 through 16 together. Seeing then that we have a great
high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the son of
God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest
which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let
us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace that we may
obtain mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. Seeing
We have a high priest, let us hold fast our profession, is
the first thing said here. What is our profession? What
is your profession? I remember a song in religion
that we would sing often as children. It said, I have decided to follow
Jesus. Have you ever heard that song?
I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.
Is that your profession? You've decided to follow Jesus.
How about I've made him Lord of my life? Is that your profession? I've made him Lord of my life.
I've started living better. I can see myself getting a little
better each day. Is that your profession? No,
the believer's profession is this, Christ is all in salvation. Christ decided to cause me to
follow Him. Christ decided to cause me to
know Him, to reveal to me that He is Lord over my life. Not
to give me an opportunity for Him to be Lord, He's letting
me know He already was. What I do didn't determine that.
What he did determine that. He's God. Christ is all in election. He's all in redemption. He's
all in regeneration. He's all in sanctification. He's
all in justification. He's all in resurrection. When
we're going to be resurrected one day, he's all in intercession.
intercession for his people. He's all in that. He is all and
he accomplished the salvation of his people. Did you know he
accomplished salvation on purpose? Think about that. We were talking
just a few minutes ago about how in religion men say that
Christ died for the sins of everyone. If that's the case, all the sins
of everyone's been put away. I mean, that's simple. Or what they're really implying
is, is Christ didn't do anything on the cross of Calvary. Not
a thing. You have to do something in order
to make it work. You have to finish it. The Lord
took the 99 steps. You've got to take the last one.
He just left it open. But the problem is, is we're
dead and trespasses and in sin. No, he on purposed put away the
sin of his people. He on purpose became a man. He
on purpose bore the sin of his people and and buried him in
the depths of the ocean, never to be remembered again. Cast
him as far as the east is from the west, all by himself, all
by his glory, all for his glory, all by his power, for his namesake.
This is the profession where we come boldly before his throne. Now boldly does not mean arrogantly. Somebody told me one time when
I was preaching They said, you need to preach more boldly. And
I thought for a second, and I said, what's the definition of boldly
to you? And they said, well, with more
power, with more authority. And I said, oh, you mean arrogantly.
I said, that's not how we preach the gospel. We preach the gospel
boldly. What's the definition of boldly?
Complete confidence. Do you want to approach God?
You have to have complete confidence. If you want to approach God,
you have to have complete confidence, not in yourself. in your substitute. Complete confidence in the finished
work of Christ. This is the only way you can
approach God. Approaching him any other way
is certain death. But if your confession, if your
profession is Christ is all, if he's given you that, by faith
you believe him, come boldly with full assurance that everything
he purposed to do he accomplished. Boldly to the throne of grace
and you will obtain mercy. He doesn't say come boldly to
the throne of grace and maybe you'll receive mercy. Maybe you'll
receive grace. Don't try to come to the throne
of grace. He didn't say that. We come boldly to the throne
of grace. We may obtain. We may obtain
mercy. We come with complete assurance
of faith, complete trust in Him. Completely believing. Completely
believing Him. Taking Him at His word. His word
from the very beginning. Man can't do that. Women can't
do that. Mankind can't take God at His
word. Did you know that? Not naturally. Not naturally. They believe what they want to
believe. Believe self. Believe what they hear. Believe
what they see with the eye. The Lord's people take God at
His word. We rest in His promises. We rest in His truth alone. If you want to come to Christ,
If you want to come to the throne of grace, you have to come boldly.
It's the only way you can come. And that is with complete confidence
of our high priest, what he accomplished by his own blood, his victory
on the cross of Calvary. You have to come completely dependent
upon him as all. You know, in one place the scripture
says this, he ever liveth to make intercession for his people. He ever liveth to make intercession. Not only can you and I not approach
God in and of ourself and obtain any favor whatsoever, but you
and I can't intercede on our behalf or on the behalf of another.
I can't go before the Lord and intercede before you and obligate
him to do anything. Can't do it. The Lord Jesus Christ,
when he pleads the blood before the Father, it's enough. He intercedes
for his people. He has mercy to his people because
of the blood. He has grace given unto his people
because of the blood. He intercedes for us, for his
people. This is the profession we hold
to. throne of grace. I'm a bit ahead
of myself because we're already down to the last verse. We're
going to back up and go forward again. That'd be all right. The
throne of grace is given freely. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be
the throne of grace. It'd be the throne of works. Now this is the most simple,
uh, truth that we can explain. The throne of grace is the throne
of grace. It's not the throne of works.
To come to the throne of grace means we come boldly. That means
complete confidence in what Christ has done to the throne of grace,
not the throne of works. Anything else other than that,
it's no longer the throne of grace. It's the throne of works.
That's so simple, isn't it? It's not complicated. I love
that the gospel's not complicated. If you want to come to Christ,
come with complete confidence to his throne of grace. Don't
declare anything of yourself that's good enough or anything
that you have or have not done. Come to Christ, come to the throne
of grace boldly in complete assurance of faith, looking to him. Freely
given by grace by our high priest. Now the writer here, he's further,
defining, and I want to look at this. He's further defining
the glorious definition or the glorious office of our Lord as
our great high priest. Now, Hebrews has given us several
instances of a high priest already, and we've looked at prophet,
priest, and king, and we've looked at the Lord as the high priest,
and we're going to revisit some of that a little bit. But Every
time it's mentioned, the reason is because he's writing to the
Hebrews. The Hebrews, they had all the ceremonies they had to
do, and everything hinged upon the high priest. High priest
was the only one that could go behind into the holiest of holies,
making an offering for the sins of the people. The high priest
was the one that was adorned in the robes that nobody else
could wear. The high priest was the one that was, he was the
head guy, if you will. He was of great importance. Now, I want us to look as our,
at our Lord and the difference between a man, just a man being
the high priest, and our Lord being our high priest. The first
time that this is mentioned in what he accomplished is in chapter
two, verse 17. Turn back there, let's read that. Wherefore, in all things that
behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might
be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to
God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. First
difference of him and every other priest that was present is he's
merciful and faithful to things pertaining to God. Now, yes,
some priests may have stood every single day and done what they
were supposed to do, but in things pertaining to God, Christ Jesus
was the only one that was faithful all the time. Merciful and faithful
as our high priest. And he was the only one that
could really make reconciliation for the sins of the people. All
the other priests had to enter in And they had to offer up the
blood of a lamb, the blood of a bullock, the blood of a heifer,
all these other different animals based upon how much you had, how much money
you had. If you couldn't bring a lamb,
then you could bring a bullock. You understand what I'm saying?
Nobody had an excuse. Everybody had an ability to bring
something, and that was the point. The priest would enter in by
that blood. But the scripture is clear, not by the blood of
bulls and goats, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. He entered in
Himself. into that place. That's how he
made reconciliation. These other priests didn't put
away sin. They went through a ritual that allowed them to worship
God, pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ himself and what he was
going to accomplish. Men talk about making sacrifice
today as if the Lord is going to be pleased with their sacrifice,
but no other sacrifice is the Lord pleased with, but the sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross of Calvary
by his own blood. Now look in verse 3, I'm sorry,
chapter 3, verse 1. Again, we see the Lord being a faithful high priest unto God. He is our confession. That's
what's being stated here. He is our confession. Whatever
notion we may have of any other confession, it's being declared
clearly by the writer. He's the one that we're confessing.
We're no longer confessing the rituals of what was going on
in the Old Testament. We're no longer holding to the
ceremonies. We're no longer holding on to the sacrifices we do. but
we're confessing him. Look in verse four of our text
again, verse four, verse 15, I'm sorry, verse 14. Seeing then, now what we have
saw is that he's merciful, he's faithful, and he made reconciliation
for the sins of the people. Seeing that, We have a great
high priest that is passed into the heavens. Jesus, the son of
God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest
which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
but was at all points tempted like we are yet without sin. Seeing then that we have. Right
now he is our high priest. Right now he is our faithful
and merciful high priest that made reconciliation for his people. He is the only high priest that
could take the sin of the people. He's the only one that could
have done that. All the other high priests, they didn't take the sin of the
people into themselves. No, that sacrifice had to be
made to appease the wrath of God for a year. But the Lord
Jesus Christ was the sacrifice. He was the high priest and he
took the sin of his people. And here, I love this part, he
says here, these two words, we have, we have. That's possessive, isn't it?
That's ownership, we have. I'd remind us, we don't have
him because we chose him. We love him because he first
loved us, but we really have a high priest. And he gives us
two negatives here, verse 15. We have not an high priest which
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. That's a
double negative. What he's saying here is, is we have a high priest
which was touched with the feeling of our infirmities, which is
touched with the feeling of our infirmities. What does he mean?
That means every sin that you and I have committed, everything
wrong with us, he owned them. He owned them on the cross of
Calvary. The scripture says that the terrors of the Lord can pass
him about on the cross of Calvary. It says that he was sorrowful
even unto death on the cross of Calvary. He owned our sin.
He grieved over our sin. He was touched with the feeling
of our infirmities and putting away the sin of his people. All the other priests drew attention
to themselves. bear the weight of the sin of
the people. They merely went through the motions of the ceremonies
as God had commanded them. But our Lord, our high priest,
Christ Jesus, he was touched. He was burdened with guilt, the
guilt of the people. He was bearing the sin of his
people when he entered into that holiest of holies by the blood
of himself. He was bearing the sin of his people. It wasn't
It wasn't that once his soul was made an offering for sin,
he entered into the holiest of holies by his own blood, sprinkled
it upon the mercy seat. And the Lord was satisfied with
that sacrifice, satisfied with that sacrifice. All the other
priests that entered in, not one time, think about this, not
one time did they put away a single sin, not one time. Every single
day they would stand there ministering. Every single day they would stand
there making sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. And yet not a bit of that put
away one sin. But this man. after he had made
sacrifice for sin one time forever, sat down on the right hand of
the majesty on high. Our high priest offered himself
up unto the father. Our high priest made an atonement
for his people's sin on the cross of Calvary. And by his own blood,
he purged our sin. He put them all away. He was the only one without sin.
All the other priests were sinful. He thought about that. Think
about. All of the. Burden of priesthood, these men
would try to minister into the congregation, they were. Their
hope was this high priest under the Lord, their hope, you've
got to enter into this holy place for me and put this blood upon
this altar. I can't do it. If you don't take this blood
and put it on the mercy seat, then the Lord's wrath will not
be appeased for the time he promised. If you don't take this blood
and put it upon the mercy seat, then our sin won't be covered.
We'll be under wrath. We'll be under judgment. They
were counting on the high priest. And so you can imagine what this
does to a man that's in that position. They drew attention
to themselves. Think about the time when the
Lord was on the earth, the high priests and all of them that
would come up and they would dope themselves and they would
say, look at me, and they would pray really loud over everybody.
Think about the Catholic church. That's exactly what it was like
when the Lord was here. You had the Pope, that's the
high priest. Look at me. I'm in this position of authority,
this position of leadership. But what did the Lord Jesus Christ
do? He humbled himself. unto death, even the death of
the cross as our high priest. He didn't draw attention to himself.
He took all the sin of his people unto himself and he put it away
on the cross in the blackness, in the darkness. He didn't glorify
himself by showing forth how extraordinary he was and the
way men think of having these great robes and these ceremonies.
No, what he did on the cross was between him and his father
for his people. And we see His glory manifested
when He burst forth from the grave by the Father resurrecting
Him. We see that all the other priests were sinful, drawing
attention to self, but, and it's interesting that they had to
offer a sacrifice for themselves first and then for the sins of
the people, but our Lord didn't have to do that. No, He offered
Himself up once, once. He poured out his soul unto death.
God made his soul an offering for sin, and our great high priest
entered into that veil, offering up his own blood freely for his
elect, and freely redeemed every one of them. God was eternally
satisfied with that sacrifice of our high priest. Do you believe
that? Is everything I've stated thus
far your hope? You believe Christ Jesus successfully redeemed.
You believe everything required, He satisfied God. Every demand,
He satisfied God. Then come boldly. Boldly to the
throne of grace. Complete confidence in that.
The word boldly means complete confidence, but did you know
it also means possession? Possession. It's been given to
His people. The throne of grace is yours,
purchased by his own blood. The throne of mercy is yours.
It's his people's, given to us freely by his grace. He is saying
we approach by the blood freely given to us. We've obtained it. We've received it because he's
given to us. He actually lets us take ownership. We call it, and we hesitate to
do this because we know it's his faith given, but Paul calls
it my faith. My faith, how can that be? How
can that? Well, in one place, David said
the joy of thy salvation, but in another place we say my salvation.
How can that be? Because he's given it to his
people. That's how. It's not something we've produced
or something we've earned, but it's really been given freely
by his grace. It's the gift of God into eternal
life. He bought it by the sacrifice
of himself. I like the proverb, or not the
proverb, Ecclesiastes talking about, said my beloved is mine and I
am his. How can that be? He owns me,
he's bought me, and I own him because he bought me and he owns
me. That's what they're talking, that's what it's talking about.
No, we come boldly to the throne of grace because he's given it
to us. He's given us the right to come by his own blood. That's
the only way we can come, is by his own blood. I was thinking
about, and I may have said this to you before, I have a dog. And you remember the woman, the
Seraphim woman that came and the Lord called her a dog and
she said, truth Lord, but the dog desire the crumbs that fall
from the master's table. I'll be eating supper, or dinner
as some of you call it, And as I'm eating, that dog ever so
slightly gets closer and closer and closer and knows that I don't
like the dog next to me while I'm eating. That dog will get
so brave sometimes, she'll put her paw up on my leg. And I say,
no, go to the couch. And she knows that means, OK,
dad disapproves. So she tucks her tail, and she
goes and gets on the couch. 30 seconds later, here she comes
again. She's slunking her way through
the dining room up to my leg again. Giving me those sad eyes,
asking again, can I just have a crumb? Can I just have a morsel
from your table? No, go to the couch. This isn't
for you. This is for me. And you know,
sometimes I give her something. You know how that goes. But she
would risk my wrath. She would risk me getting a wooden
spoon and whopping her on the behind. She would risk my harsh
rebuke. She would risk everything. Why?
For one morsel from my table. Brethren, coming to the Lord's
table, you do not risk the wrath of God in any way, shape or form
because it has been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. Your right to come to the throne
of grace boldly has been purchased by his own blood. As a matter
of fact, you're commanded to come as a dog to the table, the
throne of grace. to obtain mercy and find grace
to help in the time of need. That's what our high priest has
done. That's what he accomplished by his own blood. Do you desire
a crumb? Come boldly to the throne of grace. He purchased your right
to do so. He says, come, whosoever will,
let him come. Take of the water of life freely.
If you desire the crumbs from the master's table, the most
glorious news is Mephibosheth didn't sit on the ground and
beg at the table. No, he sat at the table as one of the king's
men And he was covered by the cloth in front of him. Nobody
saw his impotency, his inability to walk. He ate at the king. I love that last verse. And he
ate at the king's table continually. Till when? Till the day he died.
You and I will eat continually at the king's table because of
what our high priest accomplished by his own blood on the cross
of Calvary. Come boldly to the throne of grace. Let's read that again in closing,
verse 16. Let us therefore come boldly
to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace
to help in the time of need. Notice, it does not say come
seeking. It says may obtain. There's a
difference. You and I, when we approach,
we're going to obtain it if we approach by faith in Christ.
If we approach him, clinging to his promises, he says, you
will receive it. It will be bestowed upon you There's no restriction. There's
no restriction of God's grace and mercy to his elect. There
is no restriction. You can't restrict it. You can't
resist it. You can't cause it not to happen
because you're too bad or you're not good enough. There's no restriction. There's no limit On the grace
and mercy of God to his people, Christ's blood was that sufficient.
There's no limit. You can't limit it. There is
plenteous mercy with our great high priest. As a matter of fact,
the Lord said his mercy is everlasting. It never had a beginning. It'll
never have an end. From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
His mercy endureth forever. The oceans of grace the depths
of which are unsearchable. We can't find out the depths
of his grace. You can't do, you can't sin enough
to go beyond his grace and mercy. Can't, it's impossible. Your
sin's been put away. Your sin's been put away. There's
redemption in his precious blood. If you believe that, come boldly
to the throne of grace and obtain mercy. and you'll find grace
to help in the time of need. Are you needy? He's got plenteous
grace. Plenteous grace with thee is
found. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe him as our high
priest who by himself accomplished our salvation. I love that he
intercedes for us. Every time we come before his
throne begging, Lord, I need this, I need that, he already
knows. He already knows what you have
need of. He's already ordered everything and provided everything
for you for the very last day you die. And then in eternity,
He's provided everything there as well. Come to the throne of
grace boldly. Believe on Him. Let's pray. Father calls us to believe in
our great high priest. Calls us to come as dead dog
sinners. Calls us to be found in Christ. You said you would in no wise
cast us out. calls us to come boldly in Christ's name. Amen. In closing, let's turn to number.