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HOLY HELP FOR THE HOPELESS THROUGH GOD'S APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVEHebrews 5:1-10INTRODUCTION As some of you know both of my parents have fallen and broken their hips in the past three months. Mom, who is 77, broke her hip just after Christmas and Dad, who is 92, broke his hip on Feb. 15. My parents have been very independent people who have spent their lives taking care of themselves and helping others. Asking for help and relying upon others has never been a part of their lives. Prior to their injuries my parents only called my siblings and I for help on a couple of occasions. Before being injured, they knew very little about and had no interest in the help Physical and Occupational therapists provide and the care available through Home Health Care Workers. However, both of them are now willingly, if not always eagerly, asking for help from and depending upon their children and grandchildren, therapists, care givers, friends and neighbors. Even my dad meekly depends upon the therapists in the rehab facility where he is staying right now. I don’t think my parents are much different from most of us. Most of us do not like to ask for help. We don’t like being in the position of need or weakness. We want to be strong, independent and self-sufficient. When it comes to our relationship to God, that attitude of self-sufficiency is deadly. When Jesus was asked by the religious leaders of his day why he was hanging out with the “bad” people in Jewish society, the people who didn’t take religion serious, like prostitutes and tax-collectors and the like, he answered by comparing himself to a doctor. Doctors, he said, don’t go to healthy people but only to sick people. And so, he says, He did not come to save those who think that they are acceptable to God as they are, who view themselves as spiritually healthy, but he came to save people who know they are unacceptable to God. He came to heal spiritually sick people. The presupposition of the passage we are considering today is that you and I are not acceptable to God in ourselves. We need someone to represent us to God because if we were to approach God on your own, God would burn us up in the fire of his anger against our sin. What we are going to discover about Jesus this morning will not be good news to you unless you know and care that God is angry with you and your sin and will not welcome you into his presence if you come to him by yourself. This passage aims to persuade us that Jesus is able to successfully represent us to God so that he does forgive and he does not punish us, though that is what we deserve. We are going to see this morning why it is that only Jesus is able to represent us before God. MAIN POINT Jesus is able to successfully represent you before God because…I. Jesus, while sharing our weakness, does not share our sin (vv. 1-3) At the end of chapter 4 the author has identified Jesus as our high priest for the third time in the letter without explaining what that means. So he begins in this section the process of describing Jesus as our high priest. In v. 1 he gives a basic description of the person and work of the high priest as described in the OT law. First, he notes that the high priest is taken from among men. Every high priest, including Jesus, has to be a human being. Only a human being can represent humans. A non-human cannot represent humans. The language here reflects how God in the OT selected Aaron and his sons to serve as priests. In Exodus 28:1-4 God says that Moses is to set apart Aaron and his sons “to serve him as priests” from among all the descendants of Abraham. The second thing that v. 1 tells us about every high priest is that they are appointed or put in charge of the things that relate to God in behalf of all the people from among whom they are chosen. As the NIV has it, they represent before God the group of human beings from among whom they are chosen. In what way does a high priest act on behalf of men in relation to God? The end of v. 1 tells us. They offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Right here we are told that the only reason that we need a high priest is because of our sins. If there were no sins there would be no need for a high priest. The reason we need a high priest is because our sins need to have gifts and sacrifices made for them. There are dozens of chapters in the OT describing in great detail the kinds of gifts and sacrifices that the people of Israel had to offer through the work of the priests so that God could safely dwell in their midst. Exodus 29, which describes the ceremony through which Aaron and his sons are set apart as priests ends by telling them they must offer a lamb every morning and a lamb every evening along with the appropriate gift of grain. Then God says: “For the generations to come this burnt offering is to be made regularly at the entrance to the tent of meeting before the Lord… Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them.” In order for God to safely dwell with his people and his people to safely dwell with him there must be a priest, chosen from among his people, who represents them to God by offering gifts and sacrifices for sins. If there were no sin, then God could dwell with human beings without a priest and without sacrifices, just like he did in the Garden of Eden. However, because every sin deserves death, God cannot live among people unless there is a priest who offers gifts and sacrifices for sin. If there is no priest offering gifts and sacrifices, then God must destroy men for their sins in order to remain just. When the priest kills the lamb and splashes its blood against the altar and burns its body on the altar he is signifying that God accepts the death of the lamb in the place of the death of the sinful human who offers the lamb. Every sin deserves death and therefore, in order for God to dwell with sinful humans a substitutionary death must occur or God must kill the sinful human. The second verse tells us that priests don’t grow impatient with the sins of the people they represent because they literally “wear the weakness of the people.” The priests don’t refuse to make the morning and evening sacrifices or to offer the various gifts and sacrifices the people bring throughout the day because they know by their own experience how necessary it is to atone for sins. They are sympathetic to the people’s need for sacrifices because they need the same sacrifices to be made for them. In v. 3 we are told God commands that every high priest has to make an offering for his own sins before he can make an offering for the sins of the people. The priests while chosen out of the people to represent them are not better than the people as demonstrated by the fact that they regularly offer sacrifices for their own sins, even the high priest must do this. In v. 3 the author has in mind in particular the offerings made by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. In Leviticus 16 there is a very clear explanation of how the high priest must sacrifice a bull for his own sins before he can offer the male goat for the people’s sins. Why is the author telling us this? First you have to remember that the people to whom he is writing are Jewish people who became Christians but who are now on the verge of rejecting Christ and returning to Judaism because of fear of persecution. Therefore, they would return to this system of being represented before God by human high priests who must offer sacrifices not only for the sins of the people but also for their own sins because they wear the weakness of humanity fully. While he doesn’t explicitly say it until chapter seven he is showing that high priests in the OT system were inadequate. They were only signs pointing ahead to a greater high priest who would not have to offer a sacrifice for his own sins because he never sinned. The fact that high priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sins shows that they were not the ultimate representative but a foreshadowing of the perfect high priest. There is the sharpest of contrasts between the merely human high priests and our great high priest Jesus who while sharing our weakness and temptation never shared our sinfulness, as did every high priest beginning with Aaron. Only a thoroughly human but sinless high priest can successfully represent you to God. The human high priest in the OT was always only a symbol or type of Christ who is the only one who can represent us because he has no sin of his own for which atonement must be made. It is shear insanity to rely upon either yourself or some other human being to represent you to God because your sins and the sins of every other human being require the death penalty. Only Jesus does not need to offer any sacrifices for his own sins. Only Jesus does not have a death penalty hanging over his head and therefore need not make a sacrifice for his own sins. He shared our weaknesses and our temptations but without sinning and is therefore able to successfully represent us to God. Jesus is able to successfully represent you before God because…
II. Jesus was appointed as our representative by God (vv. 4-6) Verse four continues the description of a high priest by telling us that the only legitimate high priests are those who are chosen to be so by God himself. He draws attention to the fact that this was indeed the case with Aaron and his sons. In Numbers 18:7 God says to Aaron, “But only you and your sons may serve as priests in connection with everything at the altar and inside the curtain. I am giving you the service of the priesthood as a gift. Anyone else who comes near the sanctuary must be put to death.” God is the only one who has the right to appoint who it is that can come near to him to represent others. No one can volunteer to be a priest, God must choose you. God will kill anyone who attempts to approach him whom he has not chosen. This is similar to the way it is in the U.S. Supreme Court. Not just any attorney can go before the Supreme Court to argue a case. The Supreme Court itself decides which attorneys can make arguments before them. We have several attorneys in our congregation and none of them can go before the U.S. Supreme court to represent a client. The court must select you before you can represent a client in their presence. If Dave or Mike or Arich tried to walk into the Supreme Court to represent someone they would be thrown out. The court would not listen to anything they have to say because the court has not called them. If you were the one they were representing, then your case would not be considered by the court because the one you were counting on to represent you was not chosen by the court to do so. So it is with the high priest, only the one called by God dare approach him to represent others. The point of vv. 4-6 is that just as Aaron did not decide to be the high priest but was called by God so also Christ, the Messiah, did not decide on his own to be the high priest but God also called him. The proof that God is the one who called the Messiah to be his high priest and that the Messiah did not take this honor upon himself is found in two quotes from Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. Psalm 2 if you will remember is the Psalm that declares that God, though opposed by the world of human beings has established his king, the Messiah, upon his throne. God declares this king, in Psalm 2:7, to be his son. This verse was quoted already in chapter 1 as proof that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who became a man, a descendant of King David. Even in chapter one there is a hint that the Son is a priest because this one who is declared to be the Son of God, “made purification for sins”, which is a description of what priests do. So in Hebrews 5:6 he quotes Psalm 110:4. Psalm 110, is the most quoted OT chapter in the NT. Psalm 110:4 is quoted or alluded to at least a dozen times in this letter to the Hebrews. Jesus quoted the first two verses of this psalm in his controversies with the religious leaders to prove that he, the Messiah, is also God. Here, the author to the Hebrews quotes v. 4, which tells us that the Messiah is a priest. However, he is not a priest in the line of Aaron but a priest in the line or order of Melchizedek. In chapter 7 we are going to learn what it means to be a priest in the order of Melchizedek. But right now the point is that God has called and established his Messiah, the king, who is the eternal Son of God, as his priest. Christ did not take the glory of being a priest upon himself. God bestowed it upon him, as he declares in Psalms 2:7 & 110:4. We do learn something here about the nature of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity. While it is clear from chapter 1:10-12 that the Son is fully God because he is the Creator of all things and is eternal, yet here we discover that this Son is submissive to his Father. Though he is fully divine, yet he only does what his Father says. He does not assert himself to take upon himself the honor of being the high priest but he receives it from his father as a gift, just like the entirely human Aaron and his sons did. As he tells the Jewish religious leaders in John 8:54 he does not seek to glorify himself but his Father is the one who glorifies him. The mutual regard that exists within the Trinity is shown here. The Son honors the Father by submitting to him and doing his will and the Father honors the Son by bestowing upon him the glory of being our great high priest. The calling of Aaron and his sons to be the only priests was challenged by members of the people of Israel. This is recorded in Numbers 16 & 17. A group of men led by Korah, Dathan and Abiram, asserted that every Israelite was holy and that the Lord accepted and lived with every Israelite and so Aaron had no right to claim that only he and his sons could be priests. These men claimed that there was no need for a special representative. Everyone was equally acceptable to God and therefore could approach God on their own merits. This is opinion of the majority of the six billion people who live on earth right now. Most people are convinced that God will accept them because they are not bad people. It's just like what I thought prior to my becoming a Christian. I told people that I didn't think that God existed but that if he did he liked me just fine. I could see no reason why I needed someone to represent me before God, I was good enough in myself, just like these rebels in Numbers 16. Moses responds by telling the rebels that the Lord alone has the right to choose whom he wants to come near to him. Then he says this, “It is against the Lord that you and all your followers have banded together. Who is Aaron that you should grumble against him?” Aaron is not a priest because of who he is but because God chose him. The rebels are not priests because God did not choose them. The point is that no one has the right to approach God except the one God chooses and so if you reject the one that God chooses to be the representative then you are rejecting God. This is why Jesus says repeatedly that everyone who accepts him accepts his Father and everyone who rejects him rejects the Father as well because the Father is the one sent Jesus. If you will remember, God, through Moses, commanded the earth to open up and swallow Korah, Dathan and Abiram along with their families and possessions and he sent fire out from the Holy of Holies to burn up the 250 other men who followed them. Jesus is the only one whom God has chosen and appointed as the high priest between himself and men and therefore if you reject him you are rejecting God. If you reject him; if you believe that you can approach God on your own merits or you can safely approach God through another human being, you, like Korah and his followers will be destroyed. However, if you will trust and embrace Jesus Christ, the one God has called and appointed as high priest, then you can be absolutely confident that he will not throw you out of his courtroom but will accept you and forgive you through him. Jesus is able to successfully represent you before God because…
III. Jesus earned the right to be our representative (vv. 7-10) The fact that God called or appointed Jesus to be our high priest does not contradict the fact that Jesus earned the right to be our high priest. In fact, this follows the same pattern as that of Aaron and his sons. While no one else except Aaron and his sons could be the high priest, yet they had to submit themselves to a number of regulations to be consecrated as priests. If they did not submit to God’s requirements for priests, then God would reject them as priests. The extreme example of this is the case of Aaron’s two oldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, who, shortly after going through the week long process of being ordained as priests went into the Holy Place with a homemade mixture of incense. God had commanded them not to do this. They were to burn only incense made the way he wanted. Therefore, God sent fire out from the Ark of the Covenant and burned them both up. The appointment to the priesthood had to be followed by obedience to the requirements of the priesthood. All who were appointed as priests also “earned the right” to be priests by keeping the regulations God gave for priests. Every attorney that is chosen to appear before the Supreme Court must have proven themselves competent as lawyers prior to their appointment and they also must follow the protocols required by the court or they will not be permitted to argue their case before the court. So it is the same with Jesus. He became our high priest as a result of a life of obedience and submission to the Father. Look at how the life of Jesus is described. Don’t miss the connection. He is appointed a priest by God and then vv. 7-9 describe his service as our high priest. While v. 7 is clearly connected to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, yet the opening phrase, “in the days of his flesh” point out that the offering up of prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears was not limited to just that one occasion. Rather, his whole life was characterized by anguished prayer to the one who could save him from death. This is confirmed in v. 8 where we are told that he learned obedience by what he suffered. Again, the ultimate obedience and the ultimate suffering was the cross, yet throughout his life he was learning obedience from what he suffered. So the Garden of Gethsemane and the cross are the ultimate suffering and obedience that resulted in his perfection, but these were preceded by an obedient, prayerful life that was full of suffering. What was the cause of his desperate, anguished prayer throughout his life which climaxed in the Garden? From the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry he talks about the fact he is going to be betrayed, tortured and killed. Not once does he indicate that he fears this cruel and unjust death. He acknowledges that the reason he was born was to die and that his death would be the cause of his glorification. Yet, in the Garden of Gethsemane he says that his “soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Why is that? In his prayer he asks the Father, “…if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” Whatever Jesus means by “this cup” is the reason for his overwhelming sorrow, his loud cries and tears. The cup referred to here is identified throughout the OT as the “cup of God’s wrath” (Isaiah 51:17 & 22, Jer. 25:15-31, 49:12, Obadiah 15-16). Philip Hughes in his commentary on Hebrews describes so well the source of our Lord’s loud cries and tears, “…now, in the Garden the moment has come, in his self-identification with mankind, to plumb the depth of human depravity and "fallenness" to its very depths as he prepares, in all his innocence and purity, to submit himself in the place of sinners to the fierceness of God’s wrath against the sins of men… The agony of Christ at Gethsemane was occasioned by something other and deeper than the fear of physical death; for what he faced was not simply a painful death but also judgment… the disintegrating experience of separation from God. Hence the terrible cry of dereliction on the cross: ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ In a real but deeply mysterious manner, which no words of man can explain, the incarnate son as he hung on the cross endured the desolating anguish of being torn away from his Father… The loud cries and tears which accompanied Christ’s supplication are to be understood, then in relation to the indescribable darkness of the horror that he, our High priest, was to pass through as, on the cross he bore not only the defilement and guilt of the world’s sin but also its judgment. At Gethsemane and at Calvary we see him enduring our hell so that we might be set free to enter into his heaven.” At the end of v. 7 we are told that Jesus’ prayer was answered. Notice that his prayer was directed to the one who was able to save him from death. What was Jesus’ prayer and how was it answered? His prayer as we know in the Garden is that God’s will be done. What Jesus knew was that God’s will not only included his going to hell for us but also God’s raising him from the dead. Just as often as he told the disciples he was going to die at the hand of the Jewish leaders and Gentile kings, he said that he knew he was going to be raised from the dead. He knew, as Psalm 16 says, that God would not let him, his Holy One, undergo decay. So Jesus while shrinking from the horror of hell also knew that resurrection life awaited him on the other side. He prayed that God would fulfill his word by raising him from the dead after he died upon that cross. That’s why this author is going to say in chapter 12 that it was for the joy set before him, the joy of resurrection, that Jesus endured the cross. I want you to follow the logic from the end of v. 7 through v. 10. The reason God answered Jesus’ prayer by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand is because Jesus submitted to the Father’s will by dying on the cross. Jesus earned the right to have all things placed under his feet by his reverent submission to the will of God, as the end of v. 7 says. Verse 8 makes this crystal clear. Even though he was the eternal Son of God who was already perfect, yet, as the Son of Man, as our human representative, he had to learn obedience in the school of suffering in order to be made perfect. It is by being made perfect that he earned the right to be our priest in the order of Melchizedek. The result is that he is now the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. There can be no salvation for any human being unless some human being fulfills the conditions that God set down at the beginning of creation. God made an agreement, a covenant with Adam that if he obeyed him that he and all of his descendants would live with him forever in his eternal rest. Adam, as we know, did not obey and thus he brought all of us into this fallen state of sin. Jesus, under the most extreme conditions, did what Adam never did and so now he is our priest, our representative in the presence of God. We receive eternal salvation because he did what Adam and every human since him has never done, perfectly obey God. The final thing you have to see is this: Jesus is the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him. If you do not obey Jesus than he is not your high priest and you are on your own. By saying we must obey Jesus is he saying that we are to earn our salvation the way that Jesus earned the right to be glorified as king and priest and savior? The short answer to that is no. The words for obey and obedience only occur three times in this letter, two of them are right here. On the other hand there are 34 uses of the words for faith. In Hebrews 11:8 we find the other use of the verb “to obey” along with one of the uses of the term “faith.” It says, “By faith Abraham obeyed when called to go to a place he was to receive as an inheritance…” Abraham’s obedience was the result of his faith. If we look at 11:8-10 we can see how this works. Abraham believed that God was going to give him an inheritance and he believed that the inheritance God was going to give him, “the city with foundations” was better than a secure life in Ur, his hometown and more than adequate compensation for living his whole life in tents, with no permanent home. He believed that God would do what he said and he believed that what God promised was better than everything in the world and so he obeyed. Therefore, the only people for whom Christ is the source of eternal salvation are those who believe that Jesus will do what he promises, forgive your sins and take you to live with him forever in heaven AND that what Jesus promises is better than life. This faith always produces obedience to the commands of God. If there is no obedience to Jesus then there is no faith in Jesus--that is the point. The Hebrew Christians can suffer the loss of property and life because their future is secure and that future is infinitely more valuable than life here with no suffering. You can risk your reputation and the loss of your time and comfort in loving others because your future is secure and that future is infinitely better than a life here without the hassle of loving others. You can bear whatever suffering God sends with joy, while offering prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, because Christ has earned the right to represent you before God and has secured your place in his kingdom. Jesus is able to successfully represent you before God because…
© Copyright 2007 John Swanson.
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