Jesus the Great High Priest (Heb. 4:14-16)

This sermon was preached on 5/5/2013

Often religion plays an important part in the life of a society and one of its features is the necessity of a special person who can help them understand God and approach him. The special claim that Christianity makes is that Jesus is that person. Usually Christians will contrast Jesus with the leaders of other religions. They do that today, and they have done so throughout history. And the author of Hebrews does it as he provides evidence for his readers that Christianity is superior to Judaism. Judaism had its important religious leader who worked in its most significant religious place – he was the high priest who served in the temple in Jerusalem. Could the author show that Jesus is greater than the Jewish high priest? 

In chapters 3 and 4 the author has described how Jesus was the Apostle who brought his people into the place of rest. Now he begins to explain how Jesus keeps us in the place of rest and the way he does is connected to his role as High Priest.

Call for confidence in Jesus our High Priest

The author of this letter answers three very important questions about Jesus as our High Priest. The questions are, ‘Where is he?’, ‘Does he understand?’ and ‘How can he help?’ We can understand why such questions would arise. After all, most of the activities of the Jewish High Priest were visible. While we don’t know where the readers lived, it would have been easy for them to travel to Jerusalem and see him. No doubt, many of them had done so in order to keep the annual Jewish feasts such as Passover and Pentecost.

What more important place could there be than Jerusalem, the city in which God’s temple was located? There was only one place that was more important and that place is heaven, the actual dwelling-place of God. And other author says that is where Jesus is and that is where Jesus functions as High Priest.

The author says that Jesus has passed through the heavens. Probably he has in mind the Jewish concept of three heavens, which Paul also mentions in 2 Corinthians. The first heaven is our atmosphere and the second heaven is the planets and stars, and beyond them is the third heaven where God’s throne is located. Jesus has gone beyond the first and second heavens, which means that no one can find where he is. Even if one could build a spaceship big enough and fast enough to travel into the depths of space, its crew would not find where Jesus is. He no longer lives in our universe as far as his humanity is concerned. Instead he is in the third heavens, the dwelling place of God.

Of course, this raises another question, which is, ‘Why did he pass through the heavens?’ Clearly, he was on a journey. When did this journey commence and where did it begin? Strangely, the journey began in heaven in a sense and it commenced when the Son of God became a man. That was when he became Jesus, the name that was given to him at his birth, and which indicated that he was the Saviour. The journey took him through the years of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, to the cross of Calvary where he paid the penalty for the sins of his people. Throughout those years, often called the years of his humiliation, he did not lose his identity as the Son of God. Nor did he, when he passed through the heavens, lose his identity as Jesus.

So as we think about his journey to the third heaven, there is a sense in which we can say that Jesus was going home. Yet he was going home as Jesus, the one who had made atonement for sin and defeated the power of death at his resurrection. His arrival in heaven was a crucial stage in his exaltation: it began with his resurrection, was followed by his ascension, which was followed by his enthronement, and which will yet involve his role as final Judge at the end of human history.

When we compare Jesus with the high priest in Jerusalem, we can see immediately that he is superior to the Jewish leader. He is superior in who he is (God and man) and in where he is (heaven). Unlike the Jewish high priest, Jesus is great. After all, the Jewish high priest was only a man and he had no power (his country was in bondage). Jesus in contrast is divine and is in the place of power. Because this is the case, the author tells his readers to hold fast their confession.

The word ‘confession’ is usually used in negative ways today – for example, we say that a criminal makes a confession of his misdeeds. In Christian practice, the word is usually used in connection to our admittance that we are sinners. Nevertheless the word also has positive aspects in the Bible. For example, Paul writes in Romans 10 that we are to confess Jesus as Lord.

Here are four brief descriptions of this confession to which we are exhorted by the author of Hebrews. First, this confession is verbal. By this, I mean that it is an intelligent, accurate, understandable announcement. Second, this confession is doxological in that it is an expression of worship (after all, Jesus is great). Third, the confession is communal in the sense that it is made together by God’s people. Fourth, the confession is continual in that believers make it all the time, wherever they are. We intelligently, worshipfully, communally and continually profess that Jesus is our exalted Leader. Of course, we can add many other aspects – for example, we also confess him gratefully and bravely. What is important is that we maintain our confession about Jesus.

Confidence in Jesus and what he does

We have seen that we can have confidence in Jesus because of who he is and where he is. Those two aspects are more than sufficient for ensuring that we have strong convictions about him. But the author, guided by the Holy Spirit, wants us to have more information about our great high priest. So he goes on to tell us what Jesus does for us in heaven.

The author summarises the work of Jesus in heaven under the category of sympathy. Sympathy is a word with which we are familiar, yet there are distinctions in how we use it. When we use it, do we mean that we have sympathy for the person or sympathy with the person? For example, we will all have sympathy for a person who has lost a parent, but only those who have gone through the experience can have sympathy with the person. When we apply the word to Jesus, we can see from the author’s description that Jesus does not merely have sympathy for a person but he also has sympathy with a person, because he has been previously where they are now.

The word that the author uses to cover the experience of Jesus is tempted or tried. Those temptations and trials that we go through highlight our weaknesses. Sometimes they seem so unique that we imagine that no one else understands what we are experiencing. Yet the author says that there is one who understands and he is Jesus, the one who now is exalted in heaven. It is important to note what the author is not saying. He is not stating that Jesus had to endure the exact same temptations or trials that we face (after all, Jesus was not tempted to misuse a television or a motor car, nor did he experience the trials connected to old age). Instead he means that Jesus was tempted and tried in all types of ways similar to how we are tempted and tried.

In what ways similar to situations we face was Jesus tempted or tried? Here are some of them:

Jesus knows what it is like to be misunderstood by parents.

Jesus knows what it is like when family members don’t believe in him.

Jesus knows what it is like when professed disciples give up following him.

Jesus knows what it is like to be ostracized by a community.

Jesus knows what it is like to move to another community because of rejection.

Jesus knows what it is like to be betrayed by close friends.

Jesus knows what it is like to be hungry and thirsty.

Jesus knows what it is like to experience excruciating pain.

Jesus knows what it is like to suffer bereavement in family and friends.

Jesus knows what it is like to be alone.

Jesus knows what it is like to be tempted severely by the devil.

Jesus knows what it is like to be the victim of injustice.

Jesus knows what it is like to be despised.

Jesus knows what it is like to be misread maliciously.

Jesus knows what it is like to be lied about.

Jesus knows what it is like to be made a public shame.

The possible list could be extended into many areas of life. But these are sufficient to let us know that Jesus can sympathise with us when similar experiences are known by us.

Jesus experienced those situations fully or in every respect. In other words, he was affected emotionally (he loved those who mistreated him, he grieved over their sins), he was affected intellectually because he knew they were all making big mistakes, and he was affected physically (either as the victim or as the opponent of sin).

Moreover, Jesus experienced those temptations and trials sinlessly. Often those occasions are when we sin. His response means that he is our example in such situations. But it also means that with regard to some of them he resisted far longer than we do, which means that he felt their power more strongly. Yet it is important always to remember that there was nothing in Jesus that would respond with interest to any of the temptations that he endured. He always hated sin in any form. John Owen sums it up when he writes: ‘He neither was tempted by sin, such was the holiness of his nature; nor did his temptation produce any sin, such was the perfection of his obedience.’

           

Confident approach to God

The sympathy Jesus has with us means that he is willing as well as able to help us. There is no situation in which he cannot help us. Since that is the case, what should we do?

First, we must realize that we are responsible to ask for divine help. The author exhorts us to come with confidence into the presence of God. We are to come with a sense of liberty and not with slavish fear. This is one of the privileges of the family members, but it is also one of their obligations. We will receive help if we ask for it.

Second, coming for divine help does not involve a long journey time wise.  We can reach the heavenly throne in a second. That is how far away our help is. We can get there right away. I suppose we could say we make the journey quicker than the blinking of an eye.

Third, we note that we have access to the throne of God. Obviously this means that we approach him reverently, aware of his greatness. We also approach him through Jesus, our High Priest, whose atoning death makes it possible for us to draw near.

Fourth, we come to receive from God. The author points out that we will receive mercy and find grace. We only ever get mercy. By mercy, the author means more than pardon. Instead it is God’s vast compassion. Another way of saying it is that we discover the riches of his grace as he gives freely and overflowingly to our souls.  

Fifth, we are to come recurrently. The phrase translated ‘time of need’ has the idea of a suitable time. Obviously we can ask God for wrong things and for wrong motives, and when we do so it is not a suitable time of need. But times of trial and temptation are suitable times when we can expect a large supply of divine help, whether in protection or in comfort or in transformation of character.   

With all this promised to us, why give up on Jesus? And with all this available for us, why stay away from following him?