OK, we read the text today, Hebrews 4, 14, and I wanted to go through. I was just going to go through the end of the chapter, and then as I was reading on ahead, I thought the first two verses of chapter five fit a little bit with what I was going to say anyway, so I thought I would add them in and we'll look at those more also next week. So I'm going to start off telling you just a little. Tale that happened to me several years ago. As we all know, our church uses a hymnal. There might be three churches left in the country that do that, I think. But a lot of people don't understand what hymnals are, how they work. Hymnals are these structured books, and you can open it up, read the index, and discover that they're ordered in a very specific way. They're ordered systematically. And it depends on, of course, the goals of the editors. The hymnal that we use is the Trinity Hymnal Baptist Edition. And it follows the same outline as its Presbyterian counterpart, just the Trinity Hymnal. And it keeps about 99% of the songs. It just substitutes only a couple of songs that wouldn't otherwise fit our Baptist distinctives. It changes some of the tunes, sometimes for the worse, but that's the way it is. And it added a psalter index so that at least a part of all of the psalms are represented in song. So as I was thinking about this little story, I wanted to figure out, what does the hymnal actually say about this? So there's 774 songs in our hymnal. And in the index, this is just the index, 170 songs are devoted to Christ. And those topics include his deity, praise, love, and grace, his advent, birth, life, atoning work, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and the offices of Christ, prophet, priest, and king. Now, of all of these songs, how many do you suppose are devoted to the office of Christ as a priest? So that was a question that was posed to me many years ago by a pastor who knew the answer and thought that it was not only surprising but shocking. In the index, the answer in our hymnal is two. Two songs are given over to Christ as a priest. Now things aren't actually quite that bad as I'm able to do a word search. through every word in the hymnal, there's about a dozen of them that at least mention the word. So it's not quite that bad, but that's not a good thing. Calvin is often credited as the source who really brought to the attention of the church the threefold office of Christ as a prophet, priest, and a king. And their importance, and this is what he said about the importance, in order that faith may find a firm basis for salvation in Christ. and thus rest in him, this principle must be laid down. The office enjoined upon Christ by his father consists of three parts, for he was given to be a prophet and a king and a priest." So if it's so important, you'd think that two songs dedicated in an index to the topic of Christ as a priest would seem underwhelming, to say the least. Though we may actually, in fact, have two more songs about Christ as priests than a lot of Christians do these days. Still, I wanted to use that as a backdrop against the importance of not only what Calvin saw in the threefold office, and especially the priesthood, but of how Hebrews thinks of the priesthood of Christ as well. So the priesthood of Jesus Christ will now become the dominant feature of the book of Hebrews. After he has introduced Jesus to us by telling us that the son is greater than all the angels, because first of all, he created them all. And second of all, he became a man who died on the cross and conquered Satan. After this, he began telling us in chapter two, verse 17, that this God-man became a faithful high priest in service to God. Now his primary motivation was to help us know that Jesus suffered when he was tempted and therefore he's able to help us when we are tempted. But he only talked about Christ as priest for two verses and then all of the sudden he switches and goes in another pastoral direction, warning his hearers to pay very, very careful attention to Jesus unless they fail to enter God's rest. Though they are Christians and confess Christ, confessing Christ has to be done out of faith in Christ. not just lip service that arises, but it has to come from a tender heart for Jesus, not just because, well, that's just what we do. We confess Christ. If we don't think about it this way, then we are in grave danger and there are terrible consequences for us. And that warning continues in one form or another for almost two more chapters. And it concludes with a warning about God's word that we looked at last week. And as was mentioned in the prayer, and as we saw last week, it talks about the word as a double-edged sword. And we saw that that's a term that's used for both swords that are made for war, but also priestly knives that are used for circumcision and sacrifices. And so I thought this might have been the signal in the preacher's mind to bring himself back to Christ as the high priest, which now happens here at the end of chapter 4. And thus the chapter finishes with these words. Since 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's 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. And then from here, he's going to spend three chapters talking about how Christ's priesthood is superior to the high priesthood of Aaron, and four more chapters on how Christ's priestly ministry is greater than the ministry of Aaron. So that's almost half of the book. But for today, we only want to introduce ourselves to this rather unsung office of the Lord Jesus. Christ is a great high priest. And this is a marvelous note to sing. So let's begin with the basic question that arises from the title given to the son of God. Notice he's called the son of God in verse 14. He likes that title. And he's called a great high priest. The question is that I want to ask, what is a priest? Now it might seem an odd question since most of us have an opinion already on the answer. However, we need to realize that the reality is we no longer see priests today in the same way that the ancient world had them prior to the coming of Jesus. And frankly, some of us don't see anyone called priests at all in our lives. So priests were found everywhere, in every part of the world, in every religion on earth. If you had a temple, and almost everyone did, then you had a priest and you had a priesthood. Today, you still find them in most pagan religions, but closer to home, you also hear the word priest used in certain segments of Christianity. We're not one of them, but Rome, Anglicanism, and Orthodoxy all refer to certain offices in the church as priests. The problem is this can bring confusion to what a biblical priest actually was. So let's think about this. In the instance of the Anglican or the Episcopalian That's basically the American version of the English church. The term is basically a synonym for an elder or a bishop. So they say, we have priests. They mean elders, bishops. They use the same word, overlapping terms. And the terms refer to an oversight of a various group of people. Now, many people don't realize that the Old Testament, in the Greek translation, these terms are also used, elder and bishop, presbuteros and episcope. They're used for many different kinds of groups, but priests are one of them. The priest would have oversight of the tabernacle and religious instruction. And so they could be called, in some sense, elders or bishops. But that only scratches the surface of what a priest in the Old Testament or anywhere else in the ancient world did. Yes, they had oversight, but there was more that they did than that, much more. And that's why using the term priest in something like Anglicanism is confusing, I think, and unhelpful. Now in Rome, at least based on what they believe, I think the term fits better for them. The problem here, of course, is what they believe. Calling a certain ordained man a priest in Rome is an idea that is also tied to these words, elders or bishops. But in Rome, it's more because the priest is the only one who can perform the mass. Why does that matter? It's because of what the Mass is said to be. The Mass is said to be the same sacrifice, listen to that language, sacrifice of the literal body and blood of Christ at the cross re-offered. And listen to that as well, re-offered. Since it is thought to be a sacrifice, the word priest came to be used. That makes sense. It's this sacrificial component of priestly work that usually comes to our mind. If I said, what is a priest? You'd say somebody offers a sacrifice. And that's exactly what Hebrews 5.1 says, which is why I wanted to add it today. For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed on behalf of men in relation to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. That's really important there. Back in Rome, if you add to this things such as priests are the ones that the lady have to confess their sins to and priests become the ones who perform the sacraments and you start to see why the word came to be used there. There's actually some good that can be found in these things. There's always truth in error. Some of the there is continuity, some continuity between the Testaments with regard to this. And the idea of a priesthood is certainly one of them. I'll talk about that in a minute. It isn't a bad thing, of course, to confess your sins to someone. And the church obviously needs trained teachers in the scriptures. And this was the job of Old Testament priests and priests in all church traditions. So there's good that you can find, but the bad outweighs the good in my view. And as such, I do not find it helpful to refer to New Testament office as the office of a priest. First of all, the New Testament calls all believers priests. It's a weird thing. You know, you go on a ski lift and sit next to somebody and they curse, curse, curse, and then they ask you, what do you do? You say, I'm a pastor. And they stop cursing, right? And then halfway up, they start calling you a priest. Like I'm not a priest, OK? I'm a pastor. That's what I am. God gave the priesthood to the believers. That's in line with Isaiah, who predicted that Levitical priests would arise out of the Gentile nations. Now, as priests, we do offer our bodies as living sacrifices. and other priestly temple terms like we have offerings and there's the incense of prayers and the ministry of the gospel and those kinds of things are used in the New Testament. But there simply is not a special office using the Greek term for a priest anywhere in the New Testament. The New Testament uses terms that do not include the idea of sacrifices for sin in the New Testament offices. Second, these priests are, at least in the case of the Mass, as it came to be understood, through more and more traditions that would confuse things, they started usurping the role of the high priest. You see, what is the high priest? That's what's in our text. He was a special man among all the other Levites of Israel. The official office in the nation of Israel for a high priest began with this man named Aaron, who is Moses's brother. And only someone from his lineage could serve as the high priest of Israel. Now, much more will be said about a lot of these things later on in Hebrew, so I'm going to defer a lot of this talk until later sermons. By the end of Hebrews, you ought to know a lot about the priestly ministry, OK? Perhaps the most important job, though, of the high priest is what I want to look at today and right now, and that's his offering up of the great bloody sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, an offering for sin. Not even another ordained priest could do that. And the high priest is the one who's in mind in Hebrews 4.13. So once a year, and we read this for the law, and only once a year could the high priest enter the most holy place and offer up a sin offering for himself. For himself, notice. Did you catch that in the text? He had to offer the sin offering for himself and then for his people. It had to be Aaron or one of the descendants of him. It couldn't be anybody else. And that helps us understand what the most basic function of the priest was. They were mediators. They were intercessors. They were go-betweens. They were representatives. They maintained the place of intercession, which is the temple. And this is where God would meet with the people. They offered sacrifices in order to intercede between God and man. Let me talk about this just for a minute. Many of you know this, but it's helpful, I think. Christ held these three offices in his person. He was a prophet, priest, and king. So prophets and kings are also representatives and go-betweens. The king would rule for God instead of God as a vassal for the great suzerain, and the prophets would speak for God. They have God's words, they see God's word, and so their intercession is downward, from God to man. Now the priest did teach the people, okay? And so they were kind of like prophets in that regard, they were supposed to be. So it's a little bit downward, telling people what God wanted. But in their capacity as a mediator of a sacrifice, the priest is the reverse. It's man to God, it's upward in his intercession. That becomes really important for what Hebrews has in mind here. If man sins, the priest intercedes and through a sacrifice he offers appeasement or placation to avert God's wrath. If this is true of a daily sacrifice for sin, how much more the high priests sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, right? Of course, there are various other kinds of offerings, like thank offerings or freewill offerings, and the priest also oversees those on behalf of the people as somebody who's set apart by the Lord. But the point is, the priest represents the people to God. So I'm going to look at the implications of this, because that's what the rest of our passage is really talking about, at least the end of chapter 4, because I want to focus on the last two verses. So I guess we'll stay here in verse 14. The first is the idea of a great high priest. Jesus is being given this title. It's the third time that he's been called this, but now Hebrews is going to start focusing on it. We've learned a couple things in Hebrew so far about this. In 217, Jesus became a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. And then it says to make propitiation for the sins of the people. In other words, it's His role in offering a sacrifice for sin that is coming to the forefront. Now in our verse, we learn something more about this sacrifice. It says that he has passed through the heavens. What does that mean? Well, we understand it by comparing it to the priest on the Day of Atonement. The law concerning this very special day begins by telling Aaron, go tell Aaron, your brother, not to come at any time into the holy place inside the veil. before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat." Now, there's a lot going on there. First and most important thing here is this veil. The veil is that that you passed through. It was between the holy place and the most holy place. So that's the connection to passing through in Hebrews 4. A second, inside the Most Holy Place, there was this glorious Ark of the Covenant. This golden box that was covered with a golden lid, which had two cherubim on the top, and the lid is called the Mercy Seat. And the idea is that it was the seat of a king. And that's why he says, I will come and I will come on to the mercy seat. It's where the king of Israel sits. And he says, I'm going to come in here, so you better do all sorts of things to make sure you don't die when you come in on that one day. Hebrews tells us that the tabernacle, we'll see this later in Hebrews 8 and 9, it was a replica of heaven itself. But it was not heaven itself. It's a replica, right? It's a copy. So the high priest in the Old Testament did not enter into heaven. He entered into a copy of heaven. Nevertheless, even there, it was still dangerous for him to enter the throne room of the most holy place because Yahweh had chosen to indwell that space as an act of condescending grace for the people. It's amazing that Yahweh would come there and that would be gracious the way he would graciously act. But if you came near to that throne, you will die. He would be their king in their midst, but because he was also holy and the people are sinful, nobody could go in there to meet with him. They would be destroyed. Except that one day a year, that day God set aside whereby one sacrifice would make atonement for the sins of the whole nation, including the priest. On that day alone, he could enter the most holy place to make atonement. Did you catch that it said, but don't forget to light the incense. So there's a big cloud there. So you don't see me there. On that day alone, he would enter and make atonement, and God's wrath would be placated through the animal sacrifice. Propitiation would be offered. That's what it was in chapter 2, 17. Sin would then be dealt with, but it was on a temporary basis. We'll see this also later in Hebrews. But anyone who trusted in this God by faith because of that sacrifice would be forgiven of their sins. What Hebrews is saying is that something new and better has happened than that. It is the reason why everywhere Christianity has gone, and I don't know that we can fully appreciate this, everywhere Christianity has gone, the priests of the pagan religions go away. There's no more offering of animals and sacrifices and blood. It is the reason why the world no longer looks as dark as it once did. Jesus has passed through the heavens. He can do this, it says, because He is the Son of God. Only God could enter a place like that. Only God's Son could enter a place like that. What is heaven? Heaven is pure. Heaven is undefiled. Heaven is where God dwells in unapproachable light. Heaven is God's throne, Isaiah says, and Jesus, the Son of God, has passed between the veil of this earth into heaven itself through his own flesh and has made an offering for our sins. Now, it's curious that the verse ties in the second thing we learned about the high priest back in chapter 3. So we learn in chapter two that he offers this sacrifice as a propitiation. In chapter three, it talks about the priesthood with regard to our confession. And it brings that up again here in 414. Now, confessions of faith can be long and drawn out, or they can be really simple. But whatever they are, it's vital to confess the faith. Our confession of Jesus here is that he is the great high priest and the son of God. Two things that you confess. In 3.1, Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession. And now it says again, let us hold fast our confession that He's our great high priest and the Son of God. What does that mean? There is no other high priest who can offer a sacrifice for sin, not even the same sacrifice for sin like Rome claims to do. The Son of God alone passed through the heavens and has made atonement for our sins. The Son of God alone offers the sacrifice of His body and blood. Christ alone, not a priest in some mass. You see how that usurps what Jesus has done? In this way, something extraordinary has happened. It's something I don't know that anyone in the Old Testament could have fathomed, at least not in this way. And atonement has been made that is far superior to the Old Testament day of atonement. Because it knocked out that Old Testament ceremony, kicking it right off the map. No longer is there a need for animal sacrifices. because the lamb has been slain. No longer is there a need for priests to offer them up. For thousands and thousands of years, that was what the world knew. Ever since Abel offered up the firstborn of his flock, and that can only happen if blood is drawn, right? That's all the world has ever known. That's what they did. All pagan perversions of the truth did that. The Old Testament did that. Everywhere you went, that is what was done. It's what had to be done, and they all understood that to some degree, but not anymore. And it's, I think, almost impossible for us to fathom how radically different the world is because of this one event in human history. Look around you. And you will see a mighty absence of things. Because Jesus is a high priest who's gone into heaven itself. If there is anything worth confessing in this world, my friends, that has to be it. For such an event by such a person could so radically change all of religious history in that way, surely it's worth confessing. Jesus Christ of the Son of God, and he has passed through the heavens is our high priest. So besides entering into heaven now once for all a second implication of the priest representing people is something that our preacher thinks is really important to tell you about. He's able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. Now, have you ever stopped and asked yourself, before we kind of think about maybe some implications, just ask yourself, why would he even say such a thing? Of course he's able to sympathize with us. What a completely self-obvious thing to say. But in the first century, was it really? Could they have been thinking something about this great high priest that would have made him unable to sympathize with them? Allow me to speculate. I cannot figure out a reason for bringing this up unless he was continuing to think about what he's already said about the Son of God. Remember how he began the book in the first two chapters. Jesus is greater than angels. But do you remember the climactic reason given for why he's greater than them? It's because He took on human flesh and became one of us. Well, maybe something was going on with these people, and it might just be something that goes on with us as well, and we might not even realize it, although it may not go on for the same reasons. Is Jesus really human? You can imagine someone back then saying, no, He couldn't be. We've heard that the Word of God was an angel. The angel of the Lord. That has to be it. Our great high priest is an angel. But of course, as an angel, he wouldn't be able to sympathize with anything about us. You imagine that? In fact, this is a teaser for a future sermon. We know with certainty that some before Hebrews was written, the Jews at Qumran thought that the high priest of the town called Salem and the days long guy, a man named Melchizedek, was actually an angel. In fact, they equated him with Yahweh himself. So this could very well be the exact context of our verse and why it's written and what it's written to address. Can angels sympathize with us? Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. The Greeks were divided. Some thought they didn't even have emotions. Others thought, of course they do. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. But I said that we might fall prone to the same kinds of error, and that's what I really want to think about. How? Well, we may not think of Jesus as an angel, but we are prone to things that also make us think that He's not able to sympathize with us today. Now, theologians can do this. There's a great temptation in us to split the two natures of Christ. Every single Christological heresy has done this without exception. People think, well, the God side of him couldn't possibly undergo such and such a thing. So they say, well, his divine nature didn't do such and such. Or they say, well, the human nature couldn't possibly withstand this or that. And so they say, well, his human nature didn't withstand this or that. Do you hear the refusal to think about Jesus as a single person, But they feel the theological necessity to split them into parts in order to protect one side or the other. But when you do this, suddenly it makes it a lot more difficult to think about a single person who could sympathize with us. Maybe the human side could, but certainly not the divine side or something like that. But even that's theologians, maybe ordinary Christians never bothered worrying about the relationships of Christ, like the Aryans or Nestorians or Apollinarians or Eutychians or whatever you want to say. These all these heretics have done. Maybe we can forget about Christ altogether. We become practical Muslims. Has this ever happened to you, Lord? You wouldn't understand. You understand what I'm going through. My life is hard. You're much too high and lofty to care about me. You are God and I can't bother you. I don't want to bother you. My problems are way too small compared to your immensity and your transcendence. Of course, we also have to be aware of the opposite problem of turning my great high priest into my buddy doll or something like that. Where I go, he goes, my buddy, right? There's too much of that going on. But there's also too much of the other problem. And this is the point. They were obviously prone to things like thinking that high priests couldn't sympathize with us. And whether it's from bad theology from the Son of God incarnate or ignorance of the gospel or stubbornness of their heart. But we are prone to it as well. Hebrews here is concerned with anything that causes you to think that God couldn't possibly understand what you're going through because He's God. If God were the Muslim, the Muhammad version of Allah, He wouldn't care. He couldn't sympathize. It would be impossible. But in redemptive history, in the Bible, God comes to us through his son and his son became one of us. And he became a great high priest. If the high priest represents the people, the God, then the priest has to be a human being. How can you represent someone that you're unable to relate to, right? Unable to sympathize with, unlike in every way. In a different context, Gregory of Nazanzes wrote long ago, that which Christ has not assumed, he has not healed. But that which is united to his God has also saved. The Son of God has passed through the heavens as our high priest. And so he unites anyone with faith to him, to God. And so he saves them. But this high priest came to us as one of us, fully man in every way, except for one, as we will see. But because he came as one of us and like an angel or even a completely transcendent God, he can sympathize with you. No other God or deity does that, nor could they. But this is just at the place where it hits us hard. This gives us the reason and the scandal of the incarnation. He has been tempted in every respect as we are. Jesus Christ is a man and Jesus Christ is God and Jesus Christ was tempted. How is that not utterly scandalous? How many squid have spilt their ink so that we could fill up pages of books to figure out what that means? You like that analogy, squid and ink? Come on, that's pretty clever. I'm not going to go into all this today, because Hebrews doesn't, but instead I just want to remind us of the background of this tempting. This refers to Jesus in the wilderness in the gospel stories. Jesus goes out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This is a recapitulation of the Exodus temptation and also of the temptation of our parents in the Garden of Eden. And the amazing thing is, there's basically three temptations in both of those Old Testament stories and in Jesus' story, and they all correspond to the great three sins of the world, as John tells us. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. You get those three, you've been tempted in every possible way. I just want to think about the first temptation here of Jesus. He's out in the desert, nothing but sand and rocks out there. He hasn't eaten for 40 days. So Satan takes him to one of those rocks and he tempts his flesh. Turn those into bread. Now, that temptation is remarkable because because for you and I, we couldn't do that. Wouldn't be any temptation. Hey, Tim, go turn that stone into bread. You'd be like, what? That's not a temptation. How's that a temptation? But Jesus is God, right? And so there's something being tempted in his divinity here. There's a tempting of God himself. But Jesus is also a man and he's hungry. And so he's being tempted in the flesh. Both of those things are going on. The thing is, if Jesus was tempted in the flesh, he understands my temptation in the flesh. But this is just the kind of a thought when we start thinking about it, it causes us to be tempted in our own flesh in a different way. Listen, maybe we start theologizing and we start saying things like, but Jesus was God. He couldn't really be tempted. Right? Somebody notices the part that I left off so far and says, see, it says he was without sin. Does the Bible, um, start splitting up the God and the human? You know, this is the question, right? Could Jesus as God have sinned? Could Jesus as man have sinned? The very question starts to split up the two natures of Jesus, doesn't it? Have you ever thought about that? I was kind of convicted a little bit this week writing this. The Bible doesn't do that. It refused to speculate on things like that and questions like that. And maybe that's leading us into wisdom. Asking questions about it might be helpful, and God knows I've asked this very question many times, but maybe they might not be. If we let the answers that we have to questions like that, carry us away, or if we come to some solution in our mind that we miss the teaching of Hebrews here, then it makes it more difficult for our Lord Jesus to sympathize with us as a priest. And if that's what's happening, then we're in trouble. And what do I mean by this? Why is this talk about Jesus sympathizing with us said? It's said to encourage you. Your God is not remote and distant. He's not so utterly far from you that he has no thought of you, much less the things that you go through. This is because of Jesus. God has come near to us in Christ Jesus. He's come near to us because he's become one of us. Let's just think about the problem of evil for a minute. Be it the evil that's all around you that causes so much hurt in the world. That's the way most people think of the problem of evil. Or the evil that's in your own heart. And why can't I get rid of this as a Christian? Why do I keep sinning? Beloved, these questions are answered not first in coming up with some kind of good arguments about why God is good and He allows such things or in creating new laws to keep people from sinning. The answer to the problem of evil is found in the incarnation and in the cross, in the father sending the son, in the God man, Jesus Christ, to die for us. What I mean, what I mean is God did not withhold from himself the very turmoil that we ourselves undergo. And I say that in Christ, he didn't do this in Christ. Why is there such great evil in the world? You know, I might have my own explanations that I think are pretty good, but at the end of the day, maybe I really just don't know the answer to that. But I do know this, Jesus experienced the evil and the sin personally. Why do I sin time and time again? Why do I often feel so helpless against my own depravity? If I'm a Christian and I have been given the Holy Spirit and a new nature in Christ, I might have some great theological answer for you. But again, at the existential level, at the end of the day, maybe I just really don't know why I do that. But I do know that my God is able to personally sympathize with me because Jesus was tempted in every single way that I am. And I also know that he's more powerful than my sin. And he's able to save me because he didn't give into those temptations. Is that not one of the most incredible little phrases in all the Bible and yet without sin? He never sinned. How is that not incredibly encouraging to read about? There's one more thing in verse 16. Verse 16 is kind of takes us away from the theology of it and it moves you to do something very specific. If you have the right head knowledge, it's supposed to move your feet and your hands to do something. What is it? Well, it's something that perhaps you're sometimes timid or even worried about doing. Let us then with confidence drawn near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find help in time of need. Do you ever have problems doing that? What an extremely cheerful verse this is. Does it not lighten your burden almost immediately once you hear that? Well, let's think about the parts of it. First, because Jesus is a man like us in every way, tempted to sin, but without sin, and because Jesus is also the son of God and he's gone into heaven and he's made atonement for our sins as the great high priest, He's opened the way into the Most Holy Place. This is itself a staggering thought. If you were a Jew, it would hit you a million times more than it hits us today, 2,000 years later, as Gentiles all here in America, where we have no idea about what's going on with this, really. Remember how the most holy place in the throne room of God, the priest could only enter it one time a year? One priest, one time a year. That's it. Nobody else, no other priest, no other person. Nobody could go into there. David couldn't go in there. But Hebrews is saying that you may enter it right now. But it doesn't use some possibly fearful term like the most holy place. No, he calls it the throne of grace, doesn't he? This is where we come to receive mercy. Why do we need mercy? Well, it's because we sin. At the first moment of repentance, when God justifies us once for all, we need mercy. Though we're justified, and our sins will never be counted against us, we still sin and we grieve the Holy Spirit. And our sin wreaks havoc in our lives, in our minds, our bodies, our families, our souls, our neighbors, everything around us. And it makes us depressed. It makes us worry. It makes us anxious. It makes us angry. The sins make us doubt. They make us fearful. They make us not want to go before a holy God, even though we've been justified. If that's not your experience, that's mine. Tell you the truth. But you know, despite these sins and the subjective feelings that they bring up in us that keep us from having close communion with God, we are gently told that we may come and receive mercy. any time, for any reason. In fact, 5.2, that's the reason I wanted to add this verse, says that because he's a priest like this, God can deal gently, listen to the language, with us ignorant and wayward people. Isn't that great? I'm an ignorant theological fool. I have no idea, really, That's why I keep sinning. I'm a wayward person, and God can deal gently with me because of Jesus. What God is there that can be like that? Why do we do so little in our conversations with other people about God? Why do we do so little in telling them about that? He's a God who can deal gently with you in your sin because he's a high priest who's been tempted in every way as you are. God will heal those who come to him in Christ. God will sanctify us anew each and every day or moment that we turn to him and away from our sins. He will never stop forgiving those who ask for forgiveness ever. Because in Christ, God is merciful to man. But more than this, we also find grace. And we've heard this before. Mercy is getting something you is what is it? Mercy is not getting something that you deserve. Grace is getting something that you do not deserve. In this case, what is the grace? It tells you what it is. It's help. Help. Oh, Lord, help me. There's a promise here that when you turn to the throne of grace, the great high priest will bring you to God and help you. The context is particularly, it's not that of, you know, kind of wants of the world. It's of sin. That's the context. This is why the time of need is written. What is the time of need? The greatest time of need is when you're caught up in sin. When you're tempted to sin, you need to turn to God in Christ, and he gives you the reason why you can do that here. Go to the throne of grace, receive the power of God anew so that you can resist the devil, as James says. It's when we're not in the throne room of God that we're sinning, isn't it? What do I mean? What Hebrews is talking about here is praying. Prayer is how you ascend into heaven and commune with God. Prayer is where you talk to God. People think prayer is all about asking God for things. It's not. It's about talking to God. It's about having communion. It's what it is. Prayer is also where you bring your requests before the throne. Prayer is where you pour out your soul. Prayer is where you cry out your tears. Prayer is where you grapple in war with the devil and the power of sin. Prayer is where you rise into the temple of heaven and meet with God. Prayer lifts you into the very throne room of the heavenly places. It takes you to the very place Isaiah saw. In Isaiah 6, the place that Daniel saw in Daniel 10, the place that Stephen saw right before he was put to death, takes you into that place. You ascend into heaven itself. Through prayer, you can now go to the place that was reserved only for one individual in all of Israel once a year. And God will hear you as he hears no other. know others in this world because of Jesus. And I want to say one more thing and then we'll just be done. It has to be said in our pluralistic culture where everyone is offering up prayers to God. If there's one thing Facebook's for, it's for kind of vomiting on people and then people say, I'll pray for you. I'll pray for you. And everybody says, I'll pray for you. Friend, it's not on your own that you go to God. It's not in the name of another God that you go to God. It's through the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only God-man, whoever was or is or will be. He is the only way to the Father, because the only high priest that's ever done this. Christ alone is the one who saves us. Christ alone is our intercessor. Christ alone is the way that you go and get heard by God. There is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved. And so no other way that you can enter into the throne room because no one else was ever worthy in himself to enter heaven. No one else has ever offered a satisfactory offering to appease God's wrath for sin. And no one else has ever actually gone into that place except Jesus. That's why we can't give up Christ as our high priest. This is the doctrine of Christ as our high priest. This is the neglected doctrine in our songs. This is the doctrine that has brought us salvation. Let's pray. Lord, we've been able to think, I think, on one of the loftiest subjects in all of your word. And I would pray that as we begin this Journey into Hebrews thinking about Christ as a high priest that it would be a great blessing to your people and I pray that the word today that has gone forth from this pulpit would also be a blessing to your people to give them encouragement for I think that's why Hebrews is saying what it is is it teaches us to think rightly so that it would cause us to Act in a very specific way by going before the throne even as we're doing right now boldly before the throne of grace, not worrying that you're going to cast us out if we come to you, pleading the blood of Jesus on our behalf and going with Him as our intercessor and our priest. I pray you would make this word impressed upon the hearts and the minds of your people today. For Christ's sake, amen.