"Why the God-Man?" (Hebrews 4:14-5:10)

Transcript:

Well, turn now with me to Hebrews. We'll be in chapter four, starting in verse 14, and we'll read through five, verse 10. If you're using a Pew Bible, this is on page 1189. 1189. Hear now the word of the Lord from Hebrews 4:14 through 5:10.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. For every High priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.

He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this, he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins, just as he does for those of the people. No one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God. Just as Aaron was, so also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, who but was appointed by him who said to him, you are my son, today I have begotten you. As he says also in another place, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death.

And he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts tonight in prayer. Gracious Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you most of all for the way that it points to our mediator, the priest, the great High Priest that we have, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that our Lord Jesus was the ultimate high Priest who was perfect in every respect, who laid down the final once for all sacrifice of himself, and that by his sacrifice we have been reconciled to.

And so tonight, Father, I pray that by your spirit you would give us hearts to understand, eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of your son, our savior, Jesus Christ. It's in Christ's name. Amen. Well, tonight our catechism leads us to consider what Christ did for us as our mediator. And we see two parts to this.

According to both of his natures as a true human being, he drew near to us, near enough to help us. But as true God, he was mighty and powerful to save us in a way that mere human beings are not able to save us. And to think about that dynamic, I think in some ways of being a father, especially a father of very young children and infants. You know, when we first had infants and every new wave of infants, you really forget all of the ways that they are so utterly helpless. You know, even your children, as they get a little bit older, they're at least able to kind of help with, you know, moving their arms a little bit when you're trying to get their clothes on.

But when they're first born, they're just utterly helpless. They don't help you at all. They just lie there limp when you're trying to get their sleeves on, as though they don't care at all about how difficult it is to get their little thumbs through the sleeves, you know, but you have to know this. You have to know that they're helpless. You have to come alongside them.

They can't move themselves, they can't dress themselves, they can't change their diapers, they can't feed themselves. They have so many needs. And so they need a parent who is like them in many respects, who's sympathetic, understands what it's like to be hungry and therefore is able to respond to their needs for hunger and food and to feed them. Someone who understands what it is to be cold and is able to clothe them and bundle them during the cold winters. Someone who understands in the summer what it means to be hot and to make sure they're not overly dressed.

All of these things that we understand. We are like them in many respects, and yet because we are in a stronger position, we are able to help them. But someone close to them, able to care for them with a sympathetic and understanding.

Now, again, it's a little bit of surprise to become a father and to learn that your parents did all of these things for you. As I think back to my own childhood, I think of many things that my parents did for me. But it's all of those early things that are so need driven, need oriented for the little children that I don't have any memory of. It's a remarkable thing. All the things that my parents did for me, and on a much grander scale.

Our Lord has done far more for us than we often realize or imagine. We needed someone who would sympathetically draw near to us to become one of us, to be born as a little baby, to be a little child who could not help to change himself, feed himself, any of those things, and needed his parents to do so, but then grew up to be like us as a man in every respect, like we are yet without sin. But we also needed a mediator who was strong and who was mighty to save as almighty God. So tonight, our theme as we study this passage is this. Seek mercy and grace from Christ in your time of need.

Seek mercy and grace from Christ in your time of need. Now, we'll look at this in three different sections. And the sections are a little bit out of order. I'll explain why that. But first, sympathy and service, starting in chapter five, verses one through three.

Then second, the suffering source of our eternal salvation in chapter 5, verses 4 through 10. And then third, supply of mercy and grace. And we're going to come back to the beginning of the passage we read here in chapter four, verses 14 through 16. Now, as we get into our first section, let me explain that why the first section is suffering and sacrifice. And this is chapter five, verses one through three.

If you look at the first word in this chapter, chapter five, verse one, the first word there is for. Now, this word for explains what was just said. Whenever you're reading the Bible, especially in the Apostle Paul or in the Hebrews, whenever you come across this word for, it's like the author is saying, okay, I just said something, but I don't think you understand what I was saying or why I was saying it. Let me back up and explain to you what I meant and how to understand it. And then you can understand what it was that I just said.

And so we're going to look at this passage, and then the application part especially is in verses 14 through 16 of chapter 4. So we'll come back at the very end to that. Now, our catechism in question, number 16, first insists that our mediator must be a true and righteous man. And the reason it gives is because God's justice requires that human nature, which has sinned, must pay for its sin. But a sinner could never pay for others.

Now, there are two implications of this. First of all, there has to be a real connection, a real sympathy between the sinners and the Savior who seeks to save those sinners. God would be unjust to Just ignore our sin, to just sweep human sin under the rug, or to turn a blind eye to it. Rather, God for his justice, requires that if a human being has sinned, a human being, whether that human being or another human being, must pay the penalty incurred by that human's sin. And so we have here in chapter five, verse one, a statement of the connection, the sympathy that is here on our behalf, that every high priest chosen from among men, notice that from among men has to be one of us is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices.

Now, before this. Now just peeking back a little bit. In the previous section, in chapter four, verse 15, the author of Hebrews said that our high priest has to sympathize with us. Now that word means he has to suffer with us, or he has to have fellow or common suffering along with us. We need a high priest who is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses.

A high priest who is in the trenches with us. Not one who simply offers well wishes to us from afar. Again, it's like a parent who understands a child's hunger, but is also close enough to feed a child when that child is hungry. So again, it has to be one who is appointed from among men. But also look at this, one has to act on behalf of men in relation to God, chapter 5, verse 1, specifically by offering gifts and sacrifices for sins.

So again, in the Old Testament, the priests were one of us. They were in the trenches with us because they were fellow sufferers with us. They were weak, sinful men like us. And with that sympathy, in verse two, we read this high priest can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. High priests from the Old Testament had no problem with this.

But what's amazing about Jesus is that he actually took upon our weaknesses for himself. Our human frailties and weaknesses, not the weaknesses we have in sin. But he had to sleep, he had to eat. He got thirsty at times. Indeed, on the cross he said he was thirsty and asked for something to drink.

He had all of these human frailties and weaknesses that he entered into so that he could sympathize with us. To understand the kinds of things that we deal with in this broken world. He has a real connection with us because he was made like us in every respect. Hebrews 2:17 says this. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

So it's not only that our mediator has to have a connection to us in order to deal in our behalf with God, but he truly must mediate. And the way he mediates is not just by talking with God, praying to God on our behalf, although he does that. But a mediator must make sacrifices to atone for our debt sin. And so in verse three, we read because of this. And now we're talking about the Old Testament high priest, but illustrating something about Christ.

Because of this, he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins, just as he does for those of the people. This is the limitation of Old Testament priests. Their work was never finished because as soon as they sacrificed for themselves so that they could sacrifice for the rest of the people, well, just as soon as they were done with that, they were already defiled again, already polluted again, already sinful again. And so the work was never finished, sacrificing for themselves, much less sacrificing for the other people. But Jesus, on the other hand, does not need to keep sacrificing.

Hebrews 7:27 says that he has no need, like those priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. Now, it's interesting, as a parent of children, you know, there does come a point when your children become increasingly independent, that you don't have to feed them on their own. You know, you don't have to put food in their mouths. You don't have to change them. You don't.

You could. They can go to the bathroom by themselves, they can put on clothes by themselves. But in terms of what our priests do for us, there is never a point where we become independently righteous enough to take care of ourselves. We never outgrow the need for a mediator to make a sacrifice for our sins. Indeed, as Heidelberg Catechism 13 says, actually, we can't pay our debt.

We increase our debt every day because of our sins. So the Old Testament priests were not able to accomplish this. But what the author of Hebrews is asking us to do in this light is to consider what a great high priest we have in Christ. Now, I want us to think about these two ideas of sympathy and sacrifice, this coming close to us and also mediating by offering sacrifices on our behalf. The Old Testament priests did this, but Jesus does this to such a greater effect, let's apply these two ideas very briefly before we move on.

Regarding sympathy, do you Ever wrestle with whether God hears and understands your prayers? So often we are tempted to think about God or to think about others. You just don't understand me. You ever say that? You just don't understand what I'm going through?

You just don't understand what I am facing. But we cannot say that to God because God's own Son, who is himself true God, God took upon a human nature like ours. And again, Hebrews 4, verse 15. We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet is without sin. And because of this, as we read in verse two, he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, I.e.

with people like you and me. You know, regarding sympathy, some of you are reading the McShane Bible Reading Plan and we're in Job, even Job's friends were helpful for seven days. When they showed up and just sat with him, just sympathized with him for seven days. It was only when they opened their mouths that they stopped being helpful. But there's a great deal of help that you can do by just offering sympathy to someone who is going through a difficult period time.

And yet sympathy can only go so far. And this is where that sacrifice piece comes in. Jesus not only sympathizes with us, he doesn't just sit with us and commiserate and say, boy, that is tough. He actually did something about this. He sacrificed.

And not only bulls and goats, or not bulls and goats at all. He sacrificed his life for us.

But so many others, particularly the Old Testament priests, sacrificed so much at so many times before Jesus. The next question we need to ask is, what makes his sacrifice different? And here we come to the second section in verses 4 through 10 of chapter 5. As the suffering source of our eternal salvation. The suffering source of our eternal salvation.

Our catechism reminds us that God the Son was appointed by God the Father in eternity past to this role. Question 19 asks, how do you come to know that the Lord Jesus Christ is our mediator? And we should remember that this is a playoff of what we saw in Heidelberg. Catechism number three. How do you come to know your misery?

Well, the law of God tells us our misery. But what tells us that Jesus Christ our mediator, how do we come to know that it's the gospel? The answer is the holy gospel tells me God himself began to reveal the gospel already in Paradise. That's Genesis 3:15. Later he proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs in Genesis and the prophets, and foreshadowed it by the sacrifices and ceremonies of the law.

And finally he fulfilled it through his own beloved Son. In this morning's sermon text In Acts, chapter 10, verse 43, Peter declares to these Gentiles, sorry to him. All the prophets bear witness. In the entire Old Testament, God was always foreshadowing and promising the coming of his Son. The whole Bible tells us the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now there's a sampling of old text that we have here. In our passage we read in verse four that no one takes this honor of priest for himself, but only when called by God, just as as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said, you are my Son, today I have begotten you. That's from Psalm 2, 2, 7. That was from our call to worship this morning.

And here the idea of begotten, it's not what we confess in the Nicene Creed this morning, talking about the eternal begetting of the Son, that the Son is eternally begotten. This is the idea that he was begotten in the sense of appointed. And as our mediator in the eternal council of God, God planned that he would send forth his Son to serve as our mediator. So that's Psalm 2, 7. And then in verse 6 we read Psalm 110.

4, as he says also in another place, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. This is significant because this means that Christ's appointment as our priest is not according to the Old Testament, the old Covenant law, the law of Moses. It's on a better ground, it's on a stronger ground. It's according to God's promises. So again, what we are seeing here is what the catechism reminds us, that the whole Bible is declaring that Christ would indeed be our mediator.

But the second aspect that this text is getting at, especially in verses 7 through 10, is, is that he would be a different kind of mediator, a mediator who would move beyond the mediation of the Old Testament priests. What they did was good indeed. Through their ministry, people came to faith in God and looked forward in faith to the coming mediator, and were saved. And though the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away the sins of you and me, nevertheless, for the old covenant believers, as they looked in faith to the sacrifices that were offered in front of them, and recognize that God would one day set all of this right through those sacrifices, God was leading them to faith in the Redeemer who would one day shed their blood for them and one day finalize the sacrifice that they needed for their sins. They were saved by looking at those sacrifices.

And yet their work was never complete. Their work was never done. Done. They had to keep offering sacrifices and keep offering sacrifices, ceaseless sacrifices, until they died, their work not even being completed by their own deaths. But Jesus mediation would be different.

In verse seven, we read, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. Now again, the Old Covenant priests, they could not do what they needed to do. Hebrews 7:23 25 says, the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office. But he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever.

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. But that intercession began in his own life, when Jesus was looking to His Father perfectly, without sin, without failure, without shortcoming. He was offering up prayers and supplications to His Father as He was in his true humanity. And he was heard in a unique way, in a special way that the Old Covenant priests were not because of his reverence, because of his holiness. He was uniquely righteous in the mediation that he offered during his lifetime on this earth.

But more than this, we read in verse 8, although he was a son, he's the Son of God. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through through what he suffered. That is, at every step in his life, Jesus accomplished everything that was fitting to fulfill all righteousness, getting one step closer to fulfilling all that he had accomplished so that he could be the perfect sacrifice for sinners. And then we read at the end of verse B that he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all, all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

This is no common human being. He endured no common share of suffering. He accomplished not a common standard of righteousness, but he established the fullness of righteousness that God demanded of us that we could not accomplish for ourselves. But this brings us to the final piece of what our catechism is teaching us. Why must he also be true God?

Question 17 so that by the power of his divinity he might bear in his humanity the weight of God's wrath and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life. He was a son. He was God's only son. He was perfect. He was uniquely reverent, and therefore he was uniquely capable of saving us to the uttermost when he offered himself as a final sacrifice for sinners.

But I want to come back to this practical question that we've put off so far. So what? And here we have to go back to chapter four, verses 14 through 16, where we have the application. Here again, this was front loaded. We saw what we are to do.

And then the author of Hebrews says four and begins to explain the grounds on which we are able to do what we need to do. And again, here's where I want us to consider really practical questions. How does this apply to my work? How does this fix my marriage? How does this help me to parent my children?

And when we come here, we see that what the great High Priest can do for us is all encompassing in our lives. And so here is the third section, A Supply of Mercy and Grace. And again, our theme tonight is to seek mercy and grace from Christ in your time of need. The first thing that we learn in this passage is that because Christ has succeeded as our mediator, we may hold fast. And we must hold fast to our confession of faith in him.

Verse 14. Since then we have a great high Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession. In other words, there's no hope elsewhere. None of these other mediators that you have depended upon in the past were able to save you then.

And there is no other mediator in this world who can save you now. As Paul writes in First Timothy 2, 5. For there is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. There is salvation nowhere else. But as Heidelberg Catechism 18 says, Our Lord Jesus Christ was given to us for our complete deliverance and righteousness.

Now, as we're called here to hold fast, I want to ask you if maybe that's not what you're doing tonight. The opposite of holding fast is drifting. Are you drifting tonight? Are you drifting? Because you are being carried along by overwhelming sorrow, maybe growing indifference, maybe strengthening temptation, maybe nagging doubts, maybe unmet needs, what this passage is calling us, exhorting us to in light of the great Redeemer, the great Mediator that we have, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who has accomplished everything we need.

There's a call here. Hold fast to your confession. Do not leave this because there is no salvation outside of this.

But the second Thing that we are called to do is to draw near to the Lord in prayer, confidently to receive mercy and grace in our time of need. And here again we come to this idea of sympathy that we talked about earlier tonight, verse 15. For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. This morning we considered the great privilege of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Again, Old Testament mediators were ineffective, but they had access to God that ordinary people did not.

They could go into the presence of God in the way that you would not have been able to do. The priests were able to go into the holy places in a way that we would not have been able to do. And this is not true. Today you have God's Holy Spirit dwelling in you through faith in Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Mediator who has accomplished our complete deliverance and righteousness.

But we have a High Priest who has not forgotten about us. He knows our needs. He's able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, and yet he sympathizes with us by giving us help though he is gone, though he is in heaven, until he comes again, he has given us another helper, another comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord Jesus Christ has sent to apply all the accomplished things through his mediation. The redemption that we have is entirely trinitarian. The Father sent His Son into the world.

After the Son accomplished everything the Father sent the Son to do, he ascended back into heaven. And the Father and the Son together sent the Holy Spirit into this world. And the Holy Spirit takes the benefits of what God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ accomplished in the flesh all that His Father sent him to accomplish. And the Holy Spirit takes that and applies it to each of our lives. But what do we get from that in day to day life?

Well, we get this access to the throne of grace. That's verse 16. Let us then with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. I want to go back to what we talked about this morning, about the great privilege we have that we often devalue of prayer and hearing God's voice speaking by the Holy Spirit through the word of Scripture that is given to us. Let's start with prayer.

What are the reasons that we don't pray? Let's be honest with ourselves. We sometimes struggle to pray. Why? Well, sometimes maybe we doubt whether we may come before God, because of our sin, you know, there's some kind of guilt, some kind of shame, that boy.

The more we feel this, the more it drags on us, the more that we start to drift from God. We don't want to talk to him because we know that if we go, we have all of this sin that stands in the way of our relationship with Him. But the promise here is that we have a great high priest who has accomplished everything. He has passed through the heavens, through Jesus Christ. We may be reconciled again today to God.

We are not worthy to come into his presence. But he, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, is indeed worthy. He has conquered as the Lamb who is slave, and he is the one who qualifies us. Or maybe we struggle to pray because we doubt whether God really understands us or cares about our lives and our struggles. But again, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, and yet is without sin.

Or maybe we struggle to pray because we doubt whether God will answer our prayers. But here we are called to draw near to God's throne of grace with confidence. God assures us here that beyond doubt that he will provide us with mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. And how does he do this? Well, he does this.

He provides grace by very ordinary means. Again, let's think about scripture and prayer. I am not your mediator. I am not your priest. I'm your pastor.

What this means is that I can proclaim God's word to your ears, but I cannot whisper with God's voice to your heart. I can pray about you, and I do, but I cannot pray for you. In other words, I cannot pray in your place. The priests did that. They would go into the holy places with the blood of the sacrifice.

They would go to the altar of incense. They would take their blood soaked hands and rub it on the altar of incense. And that's where they would offer up the prayers of the people in the presence of God. They prayed in your place. I cannot pray in your place.

I can exhort you with words, but I cannot lift your drooping hands or strengthen your weak knees with the spiritual strength you need to persevere in prayer. Now, all of that may sound very bad. What good is it to have a pastor if he can't do any of those things? But in fact, this is very good news because you have one mediator, not me. You have one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus and further, the same Holy Spirit who anointed Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah is the same Holy Spirit who indwells you today.

If your access to God were bottlenecked through me, you would not have access to God in the way that you do because your Mediator has ascended into the heavenly places and he has poured out his Spirit upon us. But you do. You have access to God. You have direct immediate access to God by the Holy Spirit through Christ where you can come boldly into the presence of your Father in Heaven. So what do we do with this again?

Take up your Bibles and read. Get on your knees and pray. Enjoy the immediate direct access that God Almighty gives you to Himself by the Holy Spirit and through the once for all sacrifice of the God man Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that we would take all due advantage of the ordinary means of your grace to seek mercy and grace from you in the time of need by looking to your word and hearing the voice of your Spirit speaking to us in the pages of Scripture, and by having the great privilege of coming confidently to lay our requests before you in prayer.

We do that tonight. We lifted up earlier the needs that we had in this congregation and asked that you would hear those needs. And Father, we continue to do so through the rest of this week. And we pray that we would come boldly and with confidence, knowing that our great High Priest ever lives to continue interceding for us. Father, draw us to Christ.

Draw us to you through our Mediator and by your Holy Spirit and Father, I pray that you would make each and every person here so attentive to your word and attentive to you in prayer this week as we seek the mercy and grace that we need in our time of need. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.