Truth For Life

Alistair Begg: What possible hope do we as sinners have before a pure and holy God? Even on our best days, we fall short of his perfect standard.

We're going to look at this question together today on Truth For Life as Alistair Begg explains the essential role of Jesus as our great high priest.

Alistair Begg: Hebrews chapter 10, and verse one.

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. For this reason, it can never by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly, year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. With burnt offerings and sin offerings, you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am, it is written about me in the scroll, I have come to do your will, O God.’”

First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings, you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them,” although the law required them to be made. In other words, it was not God’s ultimate purpose. Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.”

He sets aside the first to establish the second, and by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again, he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sin.

But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time, he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says, “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he adds, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”

And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.

Alistair Begg: Amen. We thank God for his word.

We come this evening to the title of Christ as great high priest. When we looked at Christ as our prophet, we said that he comes as prophet to deal with our ignorance of God. The work of the prophet is essentially that of representing God to men.

Now, as we consider him as priest, he comes as priest to deal with our alienation from God. And the work of the priest is essentially the reverse work. Rather, it is the representative of the people to God.

And those who were the initial readers of this letter were well familiar with all of the aspects to which the writer alludes. It is perhaps the most Old Testament of all of the New Testament writings. And indeed, it helps us better perhaps than any other New Testament book to get a grasp of all that is contained for us in the unfolding story of redemption as it is provided throughout the Old Testament record.

Now, let us try and think if we can, as if we were first-century Hebrew believers, because we're not. We are twenty-first-century believers. At least tonight, we are, many of us. But the Bible was written to historic situations, to people who lived in specific periods of time.

And some of us, as ministers, spent a little while encouraging one another today, and we had occasion, at least a couple of us, to reflect on the ministry of Dick Lucas, and to rejoice together in all that we have learned of him and from him in terms of how to tackle the Bible. And he, more than anyone else, has reminded myself and others with me of the importance of making sure that we understand the context to which the scriptures were originally written before we make application of those same scriptures to the context in which we're preaching them.

So, for example, if we are living in Cleveland and we are studying First Corinthians, it is important that we understand where Corinth is and who the Corinthians were and what they were doing and why it was that the spirit of God prompted Paul to write this epistle to these first-century Corinthian believers. And having then done that, we might be able to make application of a letter written to the first-century Corinth to twenty-first-century Cleveland.

But if we don't do that, we can use the Bible as a trampoline, allowing us to bounce up and down and make all kinds of applications in all kinds of ways. And indeed, our series is an endeavor to help us to remember that it is, as we heard in the song, all about the Lord Jesus Christ. Many a pulpit has on it the little phrase, "Sir, we would see Jesus."

And too many of us have fallen foul of the notion of thinking that it is all about us when the Bible is taught. So, we immediately look for ourselves. I don't know if they have these books over here, Where's Waldo, but if you've seen those books, Where's Waldo, they can keep you awake long into the night trying to find that funny little character with a strange hat because he's so difficult to find.

And the whole purpose of the book, every single page of the book is the same thing all the time, "Where is Waldo?" And if we're not careful, congregations come to the preaching of the Bible asking, "Where is Waldo?" Waldo being themselves. And they're never satisfied and content until it becomes apparent that this is actually very important, and it is about them.

Well, no, actually what the question we're supposed to be asking when somebody preaches a sermon is, "Where's Jesus? Where is Jesus?" And so, here we find ourselves trying to understand what it was to be a first-century Hebrew Christian. Now, think about it.

Till the point where they came to understand the work of Christ on their behalf, all of their lives had been wrapped up with the Old Testament sacrificial system. All of their lives, all of their faith, was directly tied to the temple and to its precincts. It was to that place that they would routinely go, in the honoring of time-held traditions, in the exercise of the commandments that they had revered.

And it was in that community that they enjoyed the encouragement of one another. But now, in Christ, their lives had been turned upside down. Now, they were no longer in the temple precincts. Now, they were, if you like, disenfranchised. In some senses, disinherited from their history.

They were, if you like, excommunicated from the realm that had previously represented security and stability to them. And if you think about that for a little moment, you will realize how unsettling and how devastating and how challenging it must have been for children to say to their dad, "Dad, why are we not going to the temple as we used to go? Do you not like those people anymore, Mom? Why is our life so revolutionized?"

And the father would have to say, "Well, we have found in Jesus the one who is the fulfillment of all that we have previously enjoyed in our religious exercises." And if that would have seemed a bit of a mouthful to the average ten-year-old, the father would have been pressed to say, "I know, Levi, that you think somehow or another we no longer have a God, or we no longer have a priesthood, but I want to assure you, Levi, we have in the Lord Jesus a great high priest."

And in one sense, the entire book of Hebrews is written to unpack what that means, and to assure these first-century Hebrew Christians that while in one sense, externally and routinely, everything has been turned upside down, if they will hold firmly to the faith they confess, they may come boldly to a throne of grace, and they may rest securely in the once and for all provision that has been made in the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, if we keep that in mind, then the passages in Hebrews will begin to make far more sense for us. So, for example, when we read, and we'll be dotting around a wee bit, when you read the beginning of chapter two, you find these words. The writer says to his readers, "We must pay more careful attention," he says, "therefore, to what we have heard." Why? "So that we do not drift away."

The temptation for these folks, absent all of the externals that had been so important to them, would, if they were not careful, be to run back to what was familiar and what represented security. And so, the writer is encouraging them in this way. He says to them, "You know, we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but we are those who continue and are saved."

Or in verse 12 of chapter three, "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." Well, of course, we've heard sermons on that plenty, haven't we? And can we make application of that directly to ourselves? Yes, it is an exhortation that needs to be heeded in every generation. But when we understand what the writer was addressing when he wrote in this way, then it actually comes to life.

"But encourage one another daily, as long as it's called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if we hold confidently, firmly, till the end, the confidence we had at the first." As it's just been said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Tremendous pressure on them to capitulate to all that was going on around them.

And so, he writes to assure them, "We have a great high priest."

Now, I have no Cs for you this evening. I just have five observations. So, maybe that's five Os. But here we go, concerning the priesthood of Christ, and we could be here for a month of Sundays on this without any difficulty at all. And so, there is something relatively arbitrary about the way in which I direct our thoughts now.

But first of all, to notice that this high priest is both merciful and faithful. He is both merciful and faithful. And I'm quoting now from Hebrews chapter two. "Since the children have flesh and blood," this is verse 14, "He, that is Jesus, shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death."

By their fear of death. You know, I think that fear of death is the great fear known to man. I'm not a psychiatrist, nor a psychologist, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in large measure, to a large extent, all of human fear is somehow or another wrapped up in this great fear, the fear of death.

And there is only one who has an answer to that dilemma. And it is this one that the writer says has come to set people free. He helps surely not angels but the descendants of Abraham, and for this reason, for this purpose, in order to accomplish this end, "He had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become," and here you have it, "a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted."

And Christ's experience of temptation was temptation to the nth degree. No one ever has endured temptation the way Jesus did. For all of the rest of us have finally succumbed, no matter how well we have done. But Christ has been taken, if you like, in temptation to the very zenith of what it might mean, and yet without sin.

And therefore, when we find ourselves confronted by sin, confronted by temptation, chased down and harried by things, each of us, in our own lives, drawn away and enticed by our own evil desires, as James says. We have confidence in this, that the great high priest Jesus is both merciful and he is faithful. Or if you like to change the terminology, he is both approachable, wonderfully approachable, and phenomenally reliable.

We can always go to him. He's not like a bad school teacher. He's like the best of our school teachers, who said, I'm sure as she saw me coming, "Oh, here comes Begg again." But by the time I reached her desk, she said, "And how can I help you?" She stands out because the rest had no such sympathy for me at all. They just chased me for my life.

But it is a wonderful thing, and you see these dear first-century Hebrew Christians no longer going through the same motions, no longer going through the same rituals, and saying to themselves, and being buffeted by all kinds of thoughts, what are we to do now? And here this book comes to them, and he says, "You know, you have in the Lord Jesus Christ, one who is phenomenally approachable and utterly reliable, because he has become like his brothers in every way, in order that he might fulfill this purpose under God."

And even when our best friends are unreliable, and even when Satan accuses us, and even when our own hearts condemn us, Christ as our great high priest is both faithful and merciful.

Secondly, Christ as our great high priest has done all that is necessary in relation to God. And here I'm in chapter 10, and in verse five and following. I won't be tedious and read it all the way through again. We've already read this section. But you will notice there that Christ is described as taking up the words of scripture and quoting them in relationship to himself.

"You didn't desire that this would be the final solution, Father, but you prepared a body for me, and I arrived, and I said, 'Here I am, I'm the one it's written about me in the scroll, in the unfolding drama of redemptive history. Here I am, and I have come to do your will, O God.'" And in the doing of the Father's will, Christ as our great high priest has done everything that is necessary.

Theologians talk about both the active and passive obedience of Christ. In his active obedience, he has fulfilled all righteousness. You remember in his baptism when John the Baptist says to him, "I think we have this the wrong way round, shouldn't I be being baptized by you?" And Matthew records that Jesus on that occasion said, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness."

In other words, this is the right and proper thing for me to do as he identifies with those who will follow in his train and is baptized in the Jordan. Christ in his active obedience did everything that the law required. We are law-breakers, he is the law-keeper. He fulfilled the law in every dimension. He was without sin.

And in his passive obedience, he then bore the penalty that our law-breaking deserves. In other words, he completes all the demands of God's justice. God demanded that the law would be kept. Christ kept it. God demanded that a penalty would be paid for the sins of the law-breakers. Christ paid that penalty.

And in doing so, he bore that which was due to us. Verse 26 of chapter nine. "Nor did he, that is Jesus, enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the most holy place every year with blood that is not his own." A reference to the Day of Atonement, as we have it in Leviticus 16, and out from there.

The writer says, "Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world, but now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself." And this is a recurring theme already for us in these talks, the great exchange. He became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

A righteousness that God requires if ever we are to stand before him. A righteousness which God achieves in the once for all sacrifice of his son. A righteousness which God declares in the proclaiming of the gospel. And a righteousness which God bestows on all those who believe the gospel. Jesus has done everything that is necessary in relationship to God.

Alistair Begg: You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. We'll hear more about Jesus, our great high priest, tomorrow.

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