Our Great High Priest

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Transcript:

Well, some of you have been to the Grand Canyon, I know. I’ve heard your stories about it. I went a few years ago, several years ago, I guess, and I thought that the rock formations and the colors there were just absolutely beautiful.

But what was the most surprising, I think, and the most memorable about the whole experience was just how big the thing is, the sheer size of the place. It’s huge. In some places, it’s as wide as 18 miles across.

It’s a big, wide-open chasm that you cannot possibly cross. And what’s more, I doubt that you could call to somebody on the other side and have them be able to hear you. You might not even be able to see some of the people on the other side of the Grand Canyon that’s so far away.

Someone standing on the south rim of the canyon is completely cut off from somebody who’s on the north rim. The abyss of the canyon separates us, just like our sin separates us from God. All of our disobedience, folks, stands as a great Grand Canyon-sized moat between us and God.

And you and I are powerless to get across this great divide and be restored to fellowship with God. We just can’t do it. But the five verses we’re going to look at this morning show us how Jesus bridged this gap when nobody else could.

So turn with me, please, to Hebrews chapter 2, if you haven’t already. Today we’re going to study verses 14 through 18. Now this passage says, starting at verse 14, For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it 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. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to suffer them that are tempted.

Now verse 14 starts off by talking about our human nature. It says the children are partakers of flesh and blood. Keep in mind that the verses we looked at last week talked about how we’re adopted into the family of God as his children.

So when this verse describes the children, It’s talking about those of us who’ve been adopted into his family. It’s talking about us. Now, despite our adoption and our rebirth, we still have this human nature.

And that’s what it means by saying that we’re partakers of flesh and blood. We, even as Christians, we share in that human nature that’s common to all human beings. Now, look at this.

It says, for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, meaning that just as much as we are human, it says that he also likewise took part of the same. Now that second phrase is talking about Jesus. And altogether, it means that Jesus took on a nature that was every bit as human as ours.

Just like we learned about weeks ago, Jesus started out as God, and he never stopped being God, but he took on a fully human nature in addition to his fully divine nature. That’s a pretty big step to take, to say I’m just going to take on human nature. So it’s natural for us to ask why he would do that.

And this verse, like some that we’ve already studied in Hebrews, explains why he did it. It says that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. So according to this verse, Jesus became man so that he could die for man.

That basic fact has already, has been repeated a few times already in the book of Hebrews, as we’ve seen in the passages that we’ve studied. The writer of Hebrews wanted to ensure that his readers really understood this. They had been steeped all their lives in a religion where the innocent had to die for the sins of the guilty.

And all of that prepared them to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death. But under the sacrificial system they were used to, there had been no perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice. You know, after the bull died, or the goat, or the lamb, or the dove, or after the ram had died, there would be more sins and more sacrifices would be needed.

So the writer of Hebrews refused to let them forget that when Jesus died, God the Son had died for their sins, and his sacrifice was worth infinitely more than any animal ever could be. When he died for us, there were all sorts of benefits as a result. Last week I talked about adoption and sanctification being two of those benefits.

Verse 14 describes another benefit when it says that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, which is the devil. Now that verse doesn’t leave us in doubt who it’s talking about. It says it’s the devil who has the power of death.

He came to destroy the devil who has the power of death. Now this power of death doesn’t mean that he can just kill us whenever he pleases. That’s not what the power of death is.

What it means is that he is a bringer of death. Romans 5. 12 teaches that death was inflicted on the world through man’s sin in the Garden of Eden.

And we know that in Genesis 3. 4, the devil told Eve, you won’t die. He said, they wouldn’t die if they gave in to temptation.

And he said this in direct contradiction to God’s word. The devil’s goal was to get back at God by talking man into sinning and inflicting death and separation from God on Adam and Eve and all their posterity. The devil loves death.

He loves it. In 1 Peter 5a, Peter called the devil a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Jesus said in John 8, 44 that the devil was a murderer from the beginning.

Everywhere the devil goes, he leaves death and destruction in his wake. And that’s what it means that the devil has the power of death. He just has this influence where he brings death everywhere he goes.

But the good news is that because Jesus became a man and died for man, His death destroyed the devil’s power of death over us. You may wonder then why we have to worry about the devil at all. It all goes back to the meaning of the word destroy.

And I found this week that there are a few different Greek words in the New Testament that are translated as destroy. And a few of them mean something along the lines of annihilate. You know, when I burn wood in my fire pit or my fireplace, I destroy it.

If I do it right, there’s nothing left but ashes. Right? It’s just been annihilated.

that isn’t what destroy means here you know the devil’s not going to get off that easily and I say that with a little bit of smirk because it serves him right doesn’t it? the devil’s not going to get off that easily Revelation 20. 10 says that the devil will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone and shall be tormented day and night forever he doesn’t get to just be annihilated and stop existing he’s not getting off that easy he’s going to be punished forever for his crimes against God and us, and he’s going to feel every minute of it.

That’s not what destroy means. This word, this word for destroy means something else. Let me give you an example.

In October 1916, it’s not a history lesson, it’s a sports lesson. I actually do know a couple things about sports. I know y’all are shocked.

In October 1916, Georgia Tech’s football team went out to do battle against the players from Cumberland College in Tennessee. Georgia Tech’s coach at the time was John Heisman for whom the Heisman Trophy is named. And he kind of had a little bit of a grudge against Cumberland College, and it showed in the playing of the game.

Because by the end of the game, Georgia Tech had racked up, get this, 222 points against Cumberland’s score of zero. To this day, that game still stands as the most lopsided score in the history of college football. 222 to zero.

We might say that Georgia Tech destroyed Cumberland. that day. That doesn’t mean they stopped their players from existing.

It doesn’t mean they annihilated them. It means they rendered them totally ineffective. I mean, they might as well just not even showed up to play that game.

And that’s what the word destroy means here. That’s what this word for destroy means in Greek. It means to render it totally effective.

Jesus’ death neutralized the devil’s power of death. Through sin, the devil brought death to man. But through his death, Jesus brought us life.

And the devil’s power of death over us is rendered totally ineffective. I love that. Now let’s look at verse 15.

It says, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Now it’s talking about something else here that he accomplished through his death for us. He put the devil, he first of all put the devil in a corner where he belongs and said sit there.

And then he set free those who were held in bondage. And when he described those who were in all their lifetime subject to bondage, the writer of Hebrews was talking about those who were under the law of Moses. At one point in their lives, the initial readers of Hebrews, the ones this was written to, were in that category.

They had believed that their salvation depended on following the law. And some of them, as we’ve already talked about, were even considering going back to that view, which is why he wrote Hebrews. But Christianity teaches that the law was made just to show us our sinful condition by our inability to keep the law so that we would recognize our need for Christ. And by the time Hebrews was written, the law had already served this purpose, and so it was no longer necessary to be bound under the law.

I want to stop there for just a second. That doesn’t mean that we’re just free to do whatever we want. The New Testament talks about the law of Christ, which goes back to, I believe, the two commandments that he said were the greatest. love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And the second, love your neighbor as yourself. Follow those two. It takes care of everything else.

So while we may not be bound to all the little rites and rituals and every jot and tittle of the law of the Old Testament, every little detail and all the things that would be impossible for us to keep, we’re not bound to those things. It doesn’t mean we just get to go do whatever we want. We’re no longer under bondage to the law for our salvation.

Instead, we have the privilege of obeying the law of Christ out of gratefulness for the salvation he’s already provided. And before Jesus’ death, though, these people in the Old Testament, they were bound to the law, and they struggled with this impossible task of trying to keep, of trying to perfectly obey every command, of trying to perform every ritual, and they did this under the constant threat of judgment. They were in continual fear of the consequences that would come for breaking the law.

But Jesus fulfilled the demands of the law, and he set us free. And as I mentioned last week, the Jews thought the law of Moses would save them. That’s one of the things they were trusting in.

But the ultimate reason for the law of Moses was to point people to Jesus Christ. By his death, Jesus overcame the power of death, held by Satan, and he overcame the fear of death, wrapped up in the law, and he did all of that for you and me. And verse 16 says, For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. He didn’t become an angel to save us.

Angels are mentioned 13 times in the book of Hebrews. I think we’ve hit almost all of them. 13 times in the book of Hebrews because the Jews had so much reverence for them.

And repeatedly, they’re brought up because the writer was trying to make the point that Jesus is higher, he’s stronger, he’s better, he’s more glorious than the angels ever could be. So he’s always making this comparison back to the angels. The angels can’t save us, Jesus can.

And he didn’t need to become an angel to save us, he needed to become a man. And he not only became a man, but in his humanity, he became a descendant of Abraham. He did that because he came here to be the Messiah promised all throughout the Old Testament.

And as I mentioned last week, just like the Jews thought that they would find salvation through the law of Moses, they thought they were going to be at peace with God because they were the descendants of Abraham and they would inherit the promises that God had made to Abraham. What they failed to realize though is that Jesus was the fulfillment of those promises made to Abraham. In Genesis 22 18 for example God told Abraham in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

Now when God made that promise he ultimately had Jesus in mind. Jesus was born from Abraham’s lineage, and he was a blessing and is a blessing to all the nations of the world by bringing salvation to all those who will believe. And on top of that, Galatians 3, 8, and 9 tells us, and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed.

So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. So it wasn’t the physical descent from Abraham that was going to justify them before God. It was the faith in the Messiah that God raised up from Abraham’s seed.

It’s the same way Abraham was saved. It was by faith. And this Messiah that came from Abraham’s lineage was what was going to lead them to salvation as well.

Now let’s move on to verse 17. It starts out by saying, wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren. Now, if he was to be our Savior, it was a requirement that he first had to become one of us.

And I’ve explained that to you before. He couldn’t die if he was not man. So he had to become one of us.

And don’t miss what he calls us here. This goes right along with what we talked about last week. Jesus doesn’t say that he had to become like one of those pitiful little humans, although that’s pretty accurate.

My son loves superheroes. Benjamin, I don’t know what Charlie loves. Charlie loves mama.

Benjamin loves superheroes. I don’t understand superheroes. That’s Charles’ department.

But one of them that Benjamin loves is the Hulk. And Benjamin will say things like, he’s got some Hulk toys, and he’ll say something like, puny human, I smash. I guess that’s something Hulk says.

Jesus doesn’t look at us like Hulk and say, oh, puny humans. I have to become like one of those things over there. No, even though that would be accurate, we’re called his brothers.

That’s how Jesus looks at us. He calls us his brothers multiple times throughout chapter 2 here. He died for us so that we could be adopted into the family as the sons and daughters of God.

That’s how Jesus feels about us. Now, he went through all of this for us. God became a man to reconcile God to man.

That bears repeating. That’s central to the whole message this morning. God became a man to reconcile man to God.

And as we look at the latter part of verse 17, it demonstrates that. It says, Jesus became like his brethren. It says that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.

Here we go. To make reconciliation for the sins of the people. He came to reconcile us to the Father by being our high priest, our great high priest. And as a high priest, this verse says that he’s merciful.

He’s compassionate toward us. He’s forgiving toward us. Jesus, as your high priest, looks on you with love and forgiveness.

He will judge your sin if you refuse to accept that forgiveness, but he’d much rather affect a reconciliation between you and God. And it also says he’s a merciful high priest. He’s a faithful high priest. I’m sorry, it says he’s a faithful high priest. That means he’s trustworthy. He’s never going to let us down.

He’s never going to fall down on the job of being the high priest. If Jesus says he’ll reconcile you to the Father by the blood that he shed on the cross, then you can rest assured that he’ll do just that. He’s trustworthy. He’s faithful.

He’s a faithful high priest. And Jesus, as our high priest, stands ready to meet these spiritual needs, to meet your spiritual needs, because he understands your spiritual needs. Verse 18 says, for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to sucker them that are tempted. Now, Hebrews 4.

15 says that our high priest is well acquainted with our struggles because he was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. So he was tempted every way that you’ve ever felt tempted, and yet he didn’t sin. He was tempted just like any human being, but because he was God, he was able to withstand the temptations.

And because he’s been through those struggles, he knows what it takes to help us. He knows how to help us. The word sucker here means to aid or relieve, and that’s what Jesus does.

That’s what he does for us. He not only reconciles us to the Father, but he helps us in the midst of our temptations and our infirmities and our weaknesses and our shortcomings. It’s not by accident that this passage calls Jesus our high priest. He’s called the high priest in the book of Hebrews about a dozen times.

I actually lost count. The original readers would have recognized what this meant. But as Christians, the high priest is not an office that we really know from experience.

So if we want to appreciate what the writer of Hebrews was telling us when he said that Jesus is our high priest, we need to go back and try better to understand what the role of the high priest was. So here are just a few points of comparison for you this morning. First of all, the high priest had to be someone who was holy.

Leviticus 21. 6 says of the high priest, they shall be holy unto their God and not profane the name of their God. Obviously, the human high priest of the Old Testament could not be holy in the sense that God is.

Yet the character of the high priest was supposed to reflect God’s commands. You know, good enough is not good enough to get us into heaven. But when it comes to the character of the high priest, you know, there’s no possibility of him being perfect.

But he needed to be somebody who was living a good life. Somebody whose character reflected what God expected. and throughout that chapter of Leviticus 21 there are numerous restrictions on what the high priest could and could not do there were restrictions on what he could and couldn’t eat there were restrictions on whom he could and could not marry all sorts of restrictions for the high priest because he had to be a holy person all sorts of regulations and these were meant to separate the high priest and reinforce the idea of him being holy and separate unto the Lord Okay?

Our high priest, Jesus Christ, didn’t just have this outward appearance of holiness based on his adherence to a set of rules. He was truly holy. He is without sin.

Where the other high priests would have had to purify themselves by going through these rituals of washing and burning incense before they could ever enter into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies once a year. They would have to do that, but our high priest is worthy to enter into the presence of God anytime he pleases and intercede for us. Jesus is holy.

Second, the high priest offered sacrifices. Now, not only did he participate in offering the more routine sacrifices, but it was his job to make atonement for God’s people. And so the high priest, as I mentioned, would go into the Holy of Holies, which was the most sacred and forbidden part of the temple, he’d go in there once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and he would first wash himself as the law required, and he’d burn this incense as a covering, and he would offer a bull as a sacrifice, as a payment for his own sin, and he would carry the blood with him into the Holy of Holies.

And when he came inside to the Holy of Holies and came to the Ark of the Covenant, he would take the blood and he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat to cover his sin and appease the wrath of God toward his sin. And then he would take two goats for the sins of the people. And one he would sacrifice and he would sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat, just like the blood of the bull.

So it would be a covering for the sins of the people. And the other goat, the second goat, would be the scapegoat. We kind of know what that word means.

You make somebody a scapegoat for something that happened. He would lay hands on this goat, on this scapegoat, and he would confess over it the sins of the people. And the guilt of the people was ceremonially transferred.

It was placed on this scapegoat who was then released into the wilderness to carry the guilt of the people’s sins far, far away. And so you’ve got the blood offering as a payment for sins, and then you’ve got the scapegoat to carry the guilt away, and it kind of figures in with what the Bible says about Jesus’ blood covering our sins and because of him God choosing to remember our sins no more, putting them as far away from us as east as from the west. You got that temporarily with these goats that were offered. And through these sacrifices that the high priest offered, the people were restored to a right relationship with God for the next year.

It didn’t last forever. It lasted for a year. Jesus, our high priest, he offered a sacrifice for our sins, but it wasn’t a temporary band-aid of the blood of bulls and goats.

He offered himself as a perfect sinless sacrifice that would be sufficient once for all, the book of Hebrews says. Once for all men and women, once for all sins, once for all time. It would cover everything.

His blood, the sprinkling of his blood, provides an infinite covering for our sins. And when the guilt of our sin was transferred to him on the cross, the Bible says that he who knew no sin was made to be sin for us. When it was transferred to him on the cross, it was punished.

Your sin was punished. It was paid for. And it was put away from you forever.

The high priests made sacrifices for God’s people. But our great high priest sacrificed himself for God’s people. And third of all, the death of the high priest set captives free.

This is something I did not know. Something I did not know until I started studying on this passage. I knew about the cities of refuge that I’m going to talk about.

I had no idea about the role of the high priest in it. In the Old Testament, there were a number of cities scattered throughout Israel that were designated as what they called cities of refuge. And when someone committed murder, they were supposed to receive the death penalty.

But when someone committed manslaughter, meaning they had killed someone unintentionally, the victim’s family members had the right to take vengeance on them if they could get their hands on them. The only hope the perpetrator had was to flee to one of these cities of refuge. There he could live under the protection of the priests and the Levites, and he couldn’t be harmed.

But he also couldn’t leave the city of refuge and return home. No one kept him there. No one kept him there in the city of refuge, but if he left the protection of the city to venture out, he would be vulnerable to attack by the family of the deceased.

He was essentially a captive of the city of refuge. But Numbers 35, 28 says, and this was new to me, after the death of the high priest, the slayer shall return into the land of his possession. When the high priest died, whoever was high priest at the time, when he died, the captives could pour out of the cities of refuge.

They could return home. They could retake all the property that was theirs. They could do all of this without fear.

The death of the high priest brought them their freedom. Our high priest, Jesus, also purchased our freedom by his death. Before his death, we were held captive, not in the cities of refuge, but in the bondage of sin under the law.

But by Jesus’ death, we were set free. The death of our high priest gave us our freedom. And these are just a few of the things that the original, there’s more that the high priest did, but these are just a few of the things that the original readers of Hebrews would have understood about Jesus being our high priest when he was called that so many times.

And while these men, these mere men, these high priests had worked for millennia to try to reconcile man to God through the bulls of goats and through the blood of bulls and goats, one at a time, one sacrifice at a time, Jesus, in contrast, is our great high priest who through a once-for-all sacrifice reconciled men to God for all time. And this was the whole purpose. This was his whole purpose for coming to earth and living among us.

God became a man to reconcile man to God. Reconciliation is Jesus’ goal. Reconciliation is a wonderful thing. It can take a relationship that seems broken beyond repair, and it can make it stronger than ever.

And when I think of the word reconciliation, I remember a story that was told years ago by an acquaintance of mine who served as a missionary in the Middle East, and he would train Christian workers from all over the region by holding events in various relatively open countries. And I remember him talking about a conference where two national missionaries met for the first time. One of them was a former Israeli soldier, and one of them was a former Hamas terrorist. And these two men once stood on opposite sides of the green line, and each would have killed each other if given a chance.

And I remember this missionary talking about the tears that welled up in his eyes when these two men who were formerly mortal enemies now embraced one another as brothers in Christ. That’s what reconciliation looks like. Because of Jesus, this gulf that stood between them was bridged. This relationship that appeared broken beyond repair was made stronger than ever.

That’s what Jesus wants to do for us. God became a man to reconcile man to God. We made ourselves the enemies of God through rebellion and disobedience.

We severed the relationship that we were created to have with him, and there’s nothing that we can do to fix it and bring about reconciliation, even if we had wanted to. We were stuck. Humanity was stuck, separated from God.

We stood on the opposite side of that great Grand Canyon-sized moat of sin with no way to get back across. There’s no way to cross the Grand Canyon until Jesus came and built the bridge of salvation. God the Son took on human nature so that he could die for us.

He came to be the great high priest who would bring us peace with God. God became a man to reconcile man to God. And now you and I can have the relationship with God that we were created to have.

We can go from being his enemies to being his children. It’s incredible. But what you have to understand is that you can’t be reconciled to God on your own.

You can’t be good enough to reconcile yourself to God. You can’t clean your life up enough. You can’t go to church enough.

You can’t give enough money. You can’t be moral enough. You can’t be religious enough to reconcile yourself to God.

You can’t reconcile yourself to God through baptism or any other ritual or anything else that you can do. Romans 5. 1 says, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to be reconciled to the Father, if you want to have peace with him, you have to go through the Son.

And folks, every disobedient word or thought or action has earned you the consequence of separation from God. But Jesus died to pay for all of those sins in full. Because our high priest offered himself as a sacrifice, today your sins can be paid in full.

and they can be covered under his precious blood at the mercy seat. Because our high priest made himself our scapegoat, your sins, the guilt of your sins can be transferred to him, can be put on him and be put away from you forever in the sight of God. I know that doesn’t sound very fair, but I heard a song years ago that says the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.

That’s what grace is. Your sins can be put on him. He willingly takes them.

They can be put on him and put away from you. And because our high priest died, we’re set free from the captivity of sin permanently. Doesn’t mean you’ll never sin again.

It just means you’re not in bondage to it. It means you can fight back. Rather than have you separated from God forever in hell, Jesus came to bear the penalty of your sins and to pay the price for them in full.

And so Jesus was nailed to the cross and he shed his blood and he died for your sins. And he rose again three days later to prove that he had the power to forgive those sins. Today, he offers you salvation.

He offers to forgive your sins. He offers to reconcile you to the Father and give you eternal life in heaven with him if you’ll simply trust in him alone as your Savior. You have to admit that you’re a sinner in need of a Savior.

You have to believe that Jesus died to pay for your sins and rose again. And you have to ask God to forgive you for your sins. When you do that, you have a high priest in heaven who stands ready to reconcile you to the Father today.

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