Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Lord God, we come before you, we pour out our prayers before you, for you are our hope, you are our God. You have made your covenant with us and sealed it in the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ. and you have bound us to yourself to be yours and to be yours completely and utterly and forever. We pray that you would therefore care for us, protect us and guide us, that you would teach us the way in which we ought to go, that you would work in the midst of us and inside us by your grace, that we would will and to do your good pleasure, for your good pleasure is good, your way is just, your Excellence is the glory that we know that you have revealed in your word. We pray that you would inspire in us virtue which reflects your image. We pray that you would bless the reading of your word, the preaching of your word, that we would receive it with faith, that we would be enlivened by your gospel and comforted by your grace. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. If you have your Bibles, you can turn with me to Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 2 and 4. We'll actually read two portions of the epistle to the Hebrews. Epistle was written to Christians who lived in a particular city, probably Rome. That's what most people believe was probably the case. And as the title indicates, especially has a focus on the Old Testament background and particularly Jewish believers, although it probably was not exclusively Jewish believers that it was written to. But I actually might get to some of the historical context as we look at these passages, but let me first read them. Hebrews chapter 2, verses 16 through 18, and then chapter 4, verses 14 through 16. First, Hebrews chapter two, verses 16 through 18. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 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. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. And then to the end of chapter 4, starting in verse 14. 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. This is the word of the Lord. In several other sermons that I've given today and last week, I've proclaimed the birth of the Lord Jesus, particularly in light of him as our king, as the heir of David, as the one who fulfilled those promises that had been given concerning this king who would come. and that being part of the meaning of the word Christ, the anointed one. Kings were anointed, the anointed king who would deliver his people, who would establish the kingdom of God, who would raise up the fallen booth of David and extend its borders to the ends of the earth. In this passage, we're going to look at another aspect of that word Christ, the anointed one. Another office that was appointed by anointing in the Old Testament was that of priest. Priests were anointed, and Jesus was born not only to be our King, but also to be our priest, our high priest. And that's what this passage speaks of in these two passages from Hebrews. Jesus was born to be our priest. And to appreciate his priesthood, you have to remember two things. The holiness of God and the depravity of man. And how utterly incompatible those are without any priest, without a mediator to reconcile God and man. When God is holy, and man is depraved, twisted by wickedness. Apart from Christ, mankind is defiled by sin. He is guilty of iniquity. The guilt, the defilement, the shame, the alienation, the condemnation, all of this engulfs mankind in a destiny of doom, which is just because of his sin, his breaking of God's law, his rebellion, which is even now rooted in his nature. God, on the other hand, is light. In him is no darkness. No darkness at all. He is holy and he is utterly hostile to unrighteousness. He is a consuming fire. His holiness will remain pure and unstained and will not tolerate evil. Mankind therefore dwells under the wrath of God. justly condemned, alienated from its creator, and bound for judgment. The wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. Nevertheless, God loved the world, even after this fall into sin. And he sent his son to make provision for the removal of his wrath, so that God and sinners would be reconciled. And this we find in the coming of Jesus Christ. Now in these passages, it alternates nicely between doctrine, between a teaching of what is true and what is the case, and a use of that doctrine, an imperative, an exhortation, let us therefore do this. And so in chapter two, verses 16 through 18, we find the doctrine that the son of God became like us, flesh and blood, human. He became like us to be our high priest. You see that in verse 16, he does not help angels, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. He, therefore, did not become an angel. He became a man. Some angels sinned and fell away. Others angels remained faithful. And that is the way it will be. But God, out of his mercy, took pity upon the human race, which utterly fell in one head and in a new head in the Lord Jesus. would be redeemed, those who believe in him. And so he, to redeem the people that God had given him to save the offspring of Abraham, which is here defined spiritually, not merely and only his physical descendants, but Abraham's children by faith. And so to help them, he became like them. To help them, he had to be make like his brothers in every respect. And that's what we find in verse 17. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect. He became true man. He remains God. But he's also a true man. He has assumed, has adopted, has taken on and made his own full human nature. And in its present weakness, that is a mortal human nature. It would, after he died and rose again, become incorruptible, but when he assumed it, it was mortal. It was able to die, to suffer. He has a true body. He would prove that by eating and drinking and being touched. He was tangible. He also has what our catechism calls a reasonable soul. That means it was a soul that could reason, one with intelligence, with will, with affections. He had a soul. It's not like his divine nature replaced the soul, but he had a full human nature as well as being God. That means, as we find in the Gospels, that Jesus sorrowed, that he feared, that he had compassion, that he had anger, righteous anger, but was even provoked to a godly anger on occasion, that he could take delight. He had the same human affections and emotions in every respect. except for sin, and we'll get to that in a second. But he became a true person. He sighed. He mourned. He took delight in. He wept. He was like us in every respect. He even, and this is mind-boggling to me, is when the gospel of Luke says that he grew, not only in stature, he grew from an infant to becoming a full man, but also in wisdom and in the favor of God and man. That he studied and would learn things because he was a man and was in that condition to be learning things and to grow in wisdom, even though as God, he knew everything. It's a mystery. It is spectacular that he assumed this human nature and made it his own so that one who was truly God was doing these things as man. But it was necessary that he be made like his brothers in every respect. And this was necessary that he would be a high priest, to be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, that is with respect to God, for his brothers, for those whom he came to save, that he would be our high priest. He would be merciful to us. He would be faithful to God. and he would bring us to God and would be a high priest in the service of God. In particular, in verse 17, it mentions one particular service and a very important one that a priest would do, especially a high priest, would be that of propitiation. Propitiation is a big word. It refers to satisfying or turning aside one's wrath. removing that, satisfying it, so that one is no longer angry. And he made propitiation for the sins of the people. The high priest in the Old Testament would do this. for example, on the Day of Atonement, where he would go into the Holy of Holies with the blood and make atonement as a symbol. But the Lord Jesus would do this with a sacrifice of himself, a perfect sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. He himself would offer it too as the priest, and he would do so even going to heaven itself to intercede for us on the basis of this sacrifice, that He did it truly and eternally by His own death on the cross. So He was the propitiation for our sins. And which is to say that he appeased the just wrath of God and incurred God's favor by atoning for our sins so that now God is propitious, is favorable to him and to his people. And so his Christ's sacrifice with his flesh and blood, which he assumed as our own, is the grounds for our forgiveness, for the forgiveness of your sins, the debt of sin having been paid by Christ. It is also the basis of his continued intercession, his prayers to the Father on your behalf today, so that your person and so that your works, your service might be accepted by God, even though it remains imperfect and stained by sins, that you continue to sin today, yet God can continue to look upon you with favor and forgive your sins, Christ himself interceding at his right hand. praying for us, mediating for us, being our high priest. John Murray puts it this way in explaining propitiation, the way the father and the son interacted. He says, the doctrine of the propitiation is precisely this, that God loved the objects of his wrath so much that he gave his own son to the end that he by his blood should make provision for the removal of this wrath. It's not that the father and the son were against each other, but no, both of them united in this goal of reconciling sinners with God, with him. So the son became like us to be our high priest. Chapter four, verse 14, picks this theme up again of Jesus being our high priest and uses it for exhortation. In verse 14, it says, Let us hold fast our confession. Do not let go of the confession that you have made. A confession would be something that you say that you believe is true. It refers in scripture, of course, to the confession of our faith in Jesus Christ, the profession of the true religion revealed in scripture, the confession of our hope that we place our trust in Jesus Christ and the redemption that he gives us and will give us when he returns. We ought not to waver, therefore. Hold fast to this. Don't let it go, but cling to it. Do not waver from it. Continue to confess it and to live accordingly to that confession. Cling to Christ. This is an exhortation to endurance, an exhortation that the writer of the epistles of the Hebrews is going to come back to time and again. In chapter 3, verse 6, he uses similar language where he says, and we are God's house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. We need to hold fast to, instead of using the word confession here, he refers to our confidence and our boasting in our hope, our expectation of the resurrection and eternal life in the favor of God forever. There's going to be a similar expression in chapter 10 verse 23. And this was important to the context of Hebrews. This is where I was going to say might bring in a little of the historical context, what we can find from the book itself. It seems that there was a coming wave of persecution, that there had been an earlier wave of persecution, the plundering of their goods, some being thrown into prison, but then another one was about to come. It was coming upon them. And so the, The preacher who's writing this is exhorting them to stand fast, to endure to the end. And particularly there was a temptation, like I said, probably in Rome, probably looking to perhaps the persecution under Nero, that there would be a temptation to repudiate Christ and to return to Judaism to escape persecution because they would be more accepted than the Christians were. And so he's saying, no, it's important you remain faithful to Christ. The old shadows of the law, the ceremonies and the types, they were fulfilled in Christ and he is the substance and you ought to continue holding fast to the confession that you have made. And you ought to do so because he is our high priest. He has passed through the heavens. He is greater than any high priest that could intercede for us. He is the true high priest and he endures forever. He makes atonement for sin. In this world, you'll meet with various temptations, perhaps not the exact same ones that the audience of the Hebrews experienced, but there will be other trials, tests that will tempt you to waver, to let go, to shrink back. You may be tempted by weariness, growing weary in fighting the same battles, holding fast to the same thing, feel that itch to do something new or to try something different instead of enduring in the right way and holding fast to our blessed hope. You may be tempted by ridicule, people making fun of what you profess, making fun of your hope, laughing at you, You may be tempted by persecution, by people reviling you and throwing you down into the dirt and taking your goods and being harsh with you. You might be tempted by hardship, perhaps not even intentionally directed against your faith, but simply the evils that we find in this world can be heavy upon us. There is much that is distressing. The creation groans. under a curse, and it is difficult, and we are prone to despair, to lose hope, but we ought to hold fast to the confession that we have made. Hold fast to the content of that confession, which is Jesus Christ and the gospel. You may be tempted by sin. Sin looks alluring. Sin is incompatible with God, and one who is prone to love his sin maybe will be tempted to leave his Savior. and so hold fast to our confession. You may be tempted by guilt and fear to shrink back from God, thinking that God hates you, that God is displeased with you, rather than holding fast to the confession of a savior, Jesus, who is our high priest, who has passed through the heavens, who is there interceding for his people. So hold fast. Let us hold fast our confession. know that you have such a great high priest. Notice it says that we have a great high priest. He's not merely a high priest out there for someone, but he is ours. We have him. He is the high priest of the offspring of Abraham. He is the high priest of God's people, those who place their faith in him. He is the high priest of those who are baptized and have received the grace promised there by faith. He is our high priest. We have him. Don't despise that. He is our high priest, and who is he? He is Jesus. He is the very son of God. He is able to say, for he himself is God, will endure forever. He was able to bear the sins of all without shrinking, without failing, without totally collapsing, that he was able to endure the judgment upon sin and to follow through to the end. He is the son of God and he himself now intercedes at his father's right hand. He has passed through the heavens. He is exalted above all. So hold fast, for Jesus is well able to save you and to fulfill your believing hope, our expectation of complete salvation and resurrection. In verse 15, we go back to doctrine, to a teaching which supports this exhortation. Hold fast also for this reason, not only because we have a great high priest who is high exalted, who is the son of God, but also hold fast because he is compassionate. 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. We do not have a high priest who is cold and heartless, unapproachable, who only helps begrudgingly, who is grumpy and cranky. We do not have one who is haughty, but rather we have a high priest who is sympathetic. We have a high priest who is compassionate. He is able to sympathize with your human weakness. We're not dealing with an angel who does not know what it is like to be a human, to be flesh and blood, to be mortal. Rather, we have a high priest who is exalted, who is divine, but who is also human, who also knows that experience because he is man as well. In fact, Jesus is so bound to us that he associates with his brothers. As it says earlier in chapter two of Hebrews, he's not ashamed to call us brothers. He, in fact, the first thing when he rose from the dead was to say, tell my brothers to go on to Galilee. He is with his people and when his people are persecuted, he takes that as a persecution of him. As he said to Paul, why are you persecuting me? He is therefore compassionate to his people and their suffering is not hidden from him. He is loving of them, of us, of you. He has been tempted also in every way. When he was on earth, he was tempted and tried and tested, but without sin. One who in every respect, not only has he been made like us in every respect, but he has been tempted like us in every respect. But unlike us, he did not sin. He did not give in. He did not give in to sin the least bit. He did not sin. He had no sinful desires. He did not desire to break God's law. He had no inclination towards sin. He internally, externally continued to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, with all his mind, to love his neighbor, as himself and to even lay down his life for others. He was one who fulfilled the law perfectly. But otherwise, he had the full human experience. He experienced temptations that appealed to his physical hunger and thirst. He had temptations that appealed to his affections, his sorrow, his fear. He experienced sorrow, the fear, fear of death, fear of bearing God's wrath. He was tempted by the devil, appealing to hunger to turn the stones into bread. He was tempted by the devil with the promise of glory and riches and dominion. He was tempted by the scorn of the world who reviled him, who mocked him, who sought to cower him into submission. He was tempted by, like I said, the devil himself. But he withstood all these temptations without giving in. He felt their full power in the midst of human weakness without bending to them. And so he remains both one who can sympathize with us having experienced that, having gone through that in our weakness, and yet remaining holy and pure such that he can continue to be our priest, our mediator, one who does not have sins of his own to need saving from. So he was tempted like us in every respect, yet without sin. Of course, you might say, well, sin continues to tempt us to sin more. He didn't have that temptation. Yes, because he did not sin. But in some respects, not giving in to sin one bit meant that he faced the full pressure of sin. Once we give way to it, There's a certain relief because we've already given up, we've given in. But he continued to hold out no matter how much pressure was put upon him to remain faithful. So hold fast to your confession, knowing first of all that He is God, He is the Son of God, He is pure, He is able to save, He is powerful, He is exalted, also because He is a fellow man. He is a sympathetic high priest who has known our weakness, our limitation, and continues to be man, continues to be human, and also to be our high priest, being compassionate towards us. And so the next verse in verse 16 gets back to applying the doctrine. Therefore, verse 16, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. This is similar to the end of chapter two, where it says, for because he himself has suffered when being tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. He is able to help. He is our sympathetic high priest, and as a consequence, we ought to approach the throne of grace. We ought to see God's help, knowing that we have a mediator interceding for us who is sympathetic to our pleas for our distress. So draw near to the throne of grace, this would be through worship, through prayer, through song, directing our pleas to God, and do so with confidence, expecting to find help, that he has an attentive ear to us as we face the temptations of the flesh, the world, the devil, as we come against our own human limitations, needing our daily bread, dealing with sickness and weakness, that we need help to remain strong in spirit and to do what is right. Notice this also implies that to hold fast our confession, we need help. It's still connected with that exhortation to remain faithful, to hold fast And to do so, that means we need help. And so therefore, to call upon our God for help in the time of need, in the time of temptation, when we grow weary, when we grow allured, when we are beginning to waver, and even before then, to seek help from our God with confidence. God's mercy and his grace are there for the asking. As Jesus said, ask that you might receive, knock and it'll be open to you. Pour out your distress to God, knowing that you have a sympathetic mediator to intercede for you. So in conclusion, the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, one with, one substance with the Father, one who has always existed in glory, who is, as Paul says in Philippians, equal with God, did not count that something to be grasped. He remained God, but he humbled himself by taking on our flesh and blood, by becoming man to be our high priest, to make propitiation for our sins, to intercede for us that we might be accepted and approved of and favored by God, his wrath being appeased and his favor secured. Having such high priest hold fast to your confession. You have a marvelous gift in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not take that for granted. Remember that you have a sympathetic high priest who has known your weakness, who has been tempted as you have been tempted, yet without giving into it, and is therefore a rock solid support in time of need. He is merciful and gracious. So approach the throne of grace for help. with confidence, and he will bear you through it. He will give you perseverance, growth, and what we hope for, the blessed consummation of all our hopes in the resurrection and the coming of Christ. So let's give thanks for The Incarnation not only is the coming of our King to defend us, to protect us, but also our High Priest who reconciles us with God so that our worship and praise might be indeed to the glory of God, pleasing in His sight, and that our lives might be lived in a way that is a joy because they are acceptable to God when done with faith and love through the intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's pray. Dear God, we thank you for your kindness to us. that though we deserved your wrath and disgust, that you had mercy upon us and sent your only begotten son to be our high priest to mediate for us that we would be reconciled with you. We pray that you would work in our hearts to purge away sin, to purify us of its stain and its power, that we might be holy, even as you are holy. We pray that you would accept our prayers, our worship, our good deeds, even though they be stained with imperfection and sin, that you would help us to do better and to live to your glory. We pray that you would help us in time of temptation, that you would give us perseverance in faith and in faithfulness. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.