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| Strength for the Journey #5 Our Compassionate High Priest |
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Our Compassionate High Priest
Reading: Hebrews 4:14-5:10
Introduction: For some reason they call it a movie “trailer”. We experience it not as something that comes after or behind but as something that precedes. It’s the movie preview. I’m told that the origins of the name “movie trailer” may come from the fact that, in the early days of motion pictures, they attached the preview at the end of the movie reel. You only saw these in the theater. When the theater owners received the reel they would cut and splice the trailers of movies together and show them first as a means of getting the audience to stick around, perhaps for the double feature that followed. Now of course, we get to see them not just at the theater, but at home on our television screens and on our computers over the Internet. Previews are supposed to invite us into the world of a movie just enough to hook us. Good previews don’t show just the best scenes of a movie (although if it’s a bad movie, sometimes the 1 minute clip exhausts all that’s worth seeing in the movie). A good movie trailer gives us glimpses of the story without telling the whole story. It invites us into the world and characters without revealing outcomes. We see just enough to be enticed into the theater to see the whole picture.
At two levels, the preacher of Hebrews wants us to hear and see his work as a preview. The book as a whole is written to entice his audience into sticking around for the main attraction, the feature presentation that is yet to come. But within his story, within his sermon, our text today also functions as a preview of what he is going to discuss in greater detail in the chapters that follow. Twice already, the preacher has referred to Jesus as high priest (2:17, 3:1). Now he begins to explore why it is so important for his audience to understand that Jesus not only is the Son of God but also our high priest. Whether they came to faith out of a Jewish heritage or from pagan belief systems, these people understood the role of a high priest within religion as the great mediator of salvation for the people. The high priest was a necessary intermediary between the gods and the people. God—or gods, is they were not Jewish—was a being that normal humans could not and should not get close to. Only specially appointed individuals were given the task of actually going into the presence of the Holy in order to offer gifts of thanksgiving or repentance to God.
Part of the difficulty for us living 20 centuries later is that our vision and version of God is much tamer than the Biblical vision, particularly this preacher’s vision. His God is a consuming fire. His God speaks and what pours forth is a deadly sharp two-edged sword that slices and dices the human soul. From his perspective, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” We, on the other hand, tend to think we have graduated and left behind the God of judgment. We know better than to preach hellfire and brimstone. But the preacher of Hebrews believes in that God of judgment. From his perspective, one dare not forget that the God of promise is also a consuming fire.
The preacher remembers the stories of Scripture, and he expects his audience to remember them as well. The movie he is previewing is a sequel to stories that have already been seen. Thus he can repeatedly return to Scripture and assume that his audience will recall the rest of the stories with him. He writes to people who already have the narrative of Jesus and the narrative of Scripture as background information to his exhortation. When it comes to his understanding of God, he remembers the God of the burning bush who confronts Moses in the Wilderness. The bush was on fire but not consumed, and Moses needed to take off his shoes out of respect for the Holy.
The preacher remembers that awesome scene recorded in Exodus 19 when the people encounter the God who has redeemed them at Mt. Sinai. God calls Moses to himself and tells him to report these words to his fellow travelers: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites” (Exodus 19:4-6).
Moses goes to the Israelites and reports these words and then the people are commanded to spend three days consecrating themselves and preparing for God to appear to them and speak to them from the mountain. “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and prepare for the third day, because on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. You shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Be careful not to go up the mountain or to touch the edge of it. Any who touch the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch them, but they shall be stoned or shot with arrows; whether animal or human being, they shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they may go up on the mountain.” So Moses went down from the mountain to the people. He consecrated the people, and they washed their clothes. And he said to the people, ‘Prepare for the third day; do not go near a woman.’
“On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently” (Exodus 19:10-18).
When the people have received from Moses just the beginnings of God’s will for their lives (20:1ff), when they had endured just the initial presence of God in thunder and lightning and earthquake and smoke on the mountain, they were afraid and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.” Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:19-21). God offered to make them a priestly kingdom, a kingdom in which they would all be mediators of his covenant to the rest of the world, but they experienced his consuming presence and were afraid, opting instead for a kingdom with priests.
The preacher of Hebrews remembers the stories and he prods his audience to remember the stories. He remembers the story of Isaiah, who went to church one day just like any other day, only this time to his surprise God showed up! To actually see God was to be struck with terror: “The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’” (Isaiah 6:4-5). You don’t come into God’s presence lightly. The preacher and his audience understand the value of a divinely called and qualified high priest—a mediator who stands in the gap between heaven and earth and brings sacrifices of thanksgiving and sin offerings of remorse and repentance before God. Even if the preacher’s audience is not Jewish they understand the importance of such mediation.
So he reminds them of Jesus, the last and most important revelation from God, superior to all prior revelations because he is greater than angels or Moses or Joshua, he is Son of God. As Son he also is a superior high priest. In our text today we are given some one-liners similar to those one gets in a movie trailer. He is a “high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” His prayers come with “tears and loud cries.” The Son of God “learned obedience through what he suffered.” He is a high priest unlike their familiar earthly high priests. This high priest has not merely entered the temple precincts or even the Holy of Holies, he has entered the heavenlies. This high priest gives us superior confidence to draw near to God ourselves. His conversation with God empowers our conversation; his experiences as a human being, even while being the divine Son of God, allow him to plead our cause before God in superior ways. His experiences of suffering legitimate our own suffering. God did not spare himself from human suffering but fully participated in it. He used the very experiences we would most like to avoid to learn what human obedience is and thus become our perfect high priest, the pioneer and completer of our faith.
Listen to the language of chapter five: “Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. And one does not presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one 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, according to the order of Melchizedek.’ In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:1-10).
In the coming weeks we will hear the preacher go into much greater detail about the significance of this connection to Melchizedek and why it is necessary for the audience to understand Jesus as the mediator of a superior covenant relationship with God. But he gives this preview to make a very specific point about his audience’s present fears and struggles with continued faith and identity. When their world seems to be falling apart around them; when their lives do not seem to be easier but harder; when God seems to be distant and even absent in the midst of their sufferings and hardships and aloof from their prayers; they need to know that their circumstances actually authenticate God’s presence, not his absence.
This preview of Jesus as high priest follows another of the preacher’s exhortations to his audience: “Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16).
The preacher wants his audience then and now to understand that Jesus is our perfect high priest because he shared our weaknesses and temptations—he knows what it is like to face every circumstance that we face. But unlike earthly high priests, his mediation for us is not delayed by his own sinfulness. Before they can mediate for us, they have to make sacrifices for their own sins. True, such priests can sympathize with us because they’ve been there and done that. But Jesus has been there without doing that. So his mediation is direct while his sympathy and understanding of us is more complete because he learned obedience just like us. He knows what it is like to cry out to God in the midst of the human condition. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” On the one hand, it is easy to understand this verse as a reference to the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. But I wonder if that is not the only time in his life that Jesus offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. We know of his distress at the tomb of Lazarus. We know of his tears as he looked over the city of Jerusalem and longed for the people to receive him. We know of his great frustration when his own disciples were powerless to help a demon-possessed boy while he was on the mount of transfiguration. Then he just looked to heaven and sighed. There were multiple times in his life when he was heard by God even in the midst of all that would not, could not change on this earth during his ministry. Yes, those events including Gethsemane shaped his learning obedience just as the cross itself shaped his experience of humanity. What he learned he carried back to the heavenlies, he took with him back to the throne room. What he learned as a human allows him now to be the perfect mediator on our behalf, the one who gives salvation to those who obey him, the one who can sympathize with our weaknesses and our tears and our heartaches and losses.
Therefore we approach God with confidence, not like the people of Israel at the mountain, nor even like Isaiah after he was touched by an angel. The Son has returned to the heavenlies and he knows everything about us—every emotion, every temptation, every longing of our souls, every unfair and unjust circumstance, every untimely suffering, even untimely death. We cry out to God in our suffering as he himself cried out in his. We have confidence that we are heard and that our suffering is not a sign of disconnection from God or disconnection from what is real, but rather our suffering is participation in that which is most authentic. When we seem most out of step with our cultural circumstances we may actually be most in contact with the realities of the heavenly realm. Just as with Jesus himself, our earthly circumstances may not be what we would choose, but we must remember that we are just living the movie trailer. This is just the preview, not the feature presentation!
Delivered at Woodmont Hills, September 22, 2002
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