All right, if you will find your seat, we'll go ahead and begin. All right, good evening. All right, if you will join me in Hebrews chapter five, please. See, my sermon is titled, Pay Attention to the Priest Behind the Curtain. Does anybody get the pop culture reference? Okay, good. Thank you. All right, Hebrews chapter five. Now I'm going to read verse 1, then I'll read verse 4, 5, and 6. For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Verse 4. And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him 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 after the order of Melchizedek. Let's pray. Father, as we examine your word tonight, Lord, as we look at your role as a high priest and what you have done on our behalf, Lord, I pray that you will give me the right words to say, that I will speak clearly, and that you would give everyone in the audience the ears to hear. And may you be glorified and honored by the preaching and teaching of your word. We ask this in your name. Amen. All right. So my secondary title is six reasons why Jesus is a better high priest than Aaron. On Thursday night, it was 13 reasons. So I've done well to trim it down. So if anyone complains that I missed something, yes. I picked six because I have 45 minutes. So six it is. So the Levitical priesthood is a huge deal in Judaism, an absolute massive deal, and it cannot be overstated how important it was to them. Because prior to Moses, prior to the giving of the law, was there any Jewish culture? There was none. There was no Jewish culture. There was no tabernacle. There was no law. There was none of this. Now we do have plenty of instances of people before Moses who obviously worshipped and exalted Yahweh. We see these men here. Seth. Noah, Job, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All of these men are recorded as having made sacrifices to Yahweh. So obviously people were worshiping him, but there was no Jewish nation and there was no Jewish culture associated with it. So when I say there was no Jewish culture, the faith was not clearly outlined and defined in a codified manner. their food, their fashion, their festivals, their folk songs. And I tried to think of something that started with the letter F for languages, but I couldn't. But these were things that define a culture and that did not exist prior to the giving of the law. See, when Jacob and his family moved to Egypt to live with Joseph, there were only 70 of them. Now, they might have had some family customs, that they practiced, but that's hardly a culture. We have no idea exactly how different they were from the Egyptians in their looks, in their clothing, in their dietary practices. We have no clue. But what we do know is after 400 years of being in bondage in Egypt, At the start of the book of Exodus, they are called the Hebrew people, and they are distinct. They're distinct enough where they are separated from main Egyptian society, and they are treated as slaves. So when Moses leads them out of this captivity in this amazing event called the Exodus, and as they're in the wilderness, God appears to Moses and gives him the law. And this is the formation of this ragtag band of ex-slaves being formed into a powerful nation with this very own unique culture. So by the time Jesus comes on the scene, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious leaders, they are entrenched with their culture. They are proud of their culture and they want to hold on to it with everything they have. The focal point of this new nation, the focal point of their culture is what? One single piece of architecture. It's the temple. They love their temple. This is a very simple elementary drawing on it. But this temple, the design for it was given to Moses. God told him, I want you to build this tabernacle, this tent, according to the pattern that I'm going to show you. So whatever it was that God showed to Moses on that mountain, he took that and he erected this. I hope my pointer works. It does. Can y'all see that little green light? So you had this large outer wall that went around everything. This kept the common people away from it. Then you had this altar here for burnt offering. Twice a day they offered sacrifices. Once in the morning and once in the evening. And they did this every single day. God said, behind that, you will place this bronze laver. That's held the water where all the ceremonial washing would do. There's these very elaborate washing ceremonies that had to be done before the priests were able to walk into the tabernacle proper to do their rituals. So the tabernacle proper itself is divided into two chambers. This first part is called the holy place. In it, you have this golden lamp stand, you have this table of showbread, and you have this altar of incense. And in this area, the priest who were chosen from the tribe of Levi would go in there and perform daily rituals. That golden lamp stand had to maintain its light. So every day someone had to change that oil out. At the table of showbread they had these 12 loaves of bread that represent the 12 tribes of Israel and that had to be rotated out on a weekly basis. The altar of incense is where the priest would bring the incense and put it on fire, and the smoke that came up would rise through the tent and would represent the prayers of the people of Egypt going up to God. And this was a huge, huge deal. This squiggly line right there is called the curtain or the veil wall, and it was massive. It was 90 feet tall, 60 feet wide, and about three inches thick. And behind this huge curtain, was the Ark of the Covenant. Who here has seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark? OK. It's not quite canonical, but that's a good movie. So the Ark of the Covenant is residing behind this super thick, impressive curtain, this veil wall. Curtain doesn't do it justice. It's a wall. It's a veil wall. And that Ark of the Covenant represented God's presence before his people. And not just any priest could walk in there. Just because you were a tribe of Levi, just because it was your month to serve in the temple, only one man was allowed to go behind that curtain and approach God's presence. And that was the high priest. You see, all priests were Levites, but not all priests could serve in that capacity. Only the people who were descendant of Aaron, Moses' brother, were allowed to hold that office. And how often did he go behind that veil? Does anybody know? One time a year. It was a huge, huge honor to do that. So Leviticus gives the priest an idea of how he's to conduct this. It says, Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. He shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself. And skip down to verse 15. Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring his blood inside the veil, that is behind that curtain, behind that veil wall, and do with its blood the same as he did with the blood of the bull. So what did he do with the blood of bull? And what did he do with the blood of the goat? He will sprinkle it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. And the mercy seat is simply the lid over the Ark of the Covenant. So what would happen is if this right here is the altar of incense, The huge veil would be in front of it. The priest would come up to this altar, take some of its coals, put it in a little lantern, and go behind that massive curtain. And there would be the Ark of the Covenant, he would set the lamp up, the smoke would cover everything, and he would take the blood from the bull and sprinkle it on the altar. For whom? for himself, for himself. Then he would go back out, sacrifice the lamb, and come back in and take the lamb's blood and sprinkle it over there. And that would be for the sins of the whole people. Now, why was it necessary for this holy and righteous man, the high priest, to offer a sacrifice of a bull for himself first? Because he is a sinner. He is a sinner. You're right. This entire system right here was to tell all of us how holy and separate God is from us because we are sinful people. There was layer after layer after layer keeping God's presence from being experienced by us. And the only person who could ever go back there was the high priest, and only once a year. And he had to jump through a bunch of religious hoops to be able to get back there and do it. Does everybody understand how much of a big deal this is? So Levitical High Priest, Hebrews 9.8 says that this veil wall, this curtain, is a huge, huge deal. It says that this veil wall is used by the Holy Spirit to indicate that the way into the holy places is not yet open as long as that first section is still standing. So as long as that veil is there, as long as that veil exists, there is no way for us to approach God's presence. So I used Hebrews to go back and kind of interpret the Old Testament. Pastor Sean mentioned this morning, and I got very worried he was going to steal my analogy because he brought out a pair of glasses. Fortunately, he did not. Anybody know what this is right here? Have you all seen this before? It used to be on a box of cereal. And you would dig to the bottom of the cereal, you would grab those glasses there, and you'd be able to read the encoded message. So the way I see it is that encoded message is the Old Testament, and you're supposed to use the New Testament to properly read it. Now I'm not saying you have to have the New Testament to study the Old Testament. I'm just saying you're not going to see it clearly and as correctly as you should. I mean, I can kind of read that. It says very plainly, no illustrations are perfect. Yep, that's what it says. All right. All right, so we'll review. Who's in junior high? Where are my seventh and eighth graders? OK, what is the role of the Levitical high priest? Oh, I just said it. Somebody's going to make eye contact with me. I'm going to call him out. All right, grownups, what's the role of the high priest? What does he do? He makes sacrifices. He sacrifices on behalf of the nation. He's an intermediary. He can go between God and humanity. The high priest is necessary because God is holy and we are sinful. We are separated from God. So why does the high priest have to offer sacrifices for himself? He's a sinner. How often were sacrifices made? daily, some weekly and some yearly. But all the time, continuous sacrifices were being made in that temple. When the priest, when it was their time to serve, they did not sit down the entire time. There was no recliner in the temple. You were supposed to be working the entire time. You never sat down. And where did Moses get the designs for the tent? From God himself. Whatever God shown him the reality that Moses saw, that tent was a copy, a reflection of it. All right, turning your Bibles to Hebrews chapter nine. Starting in verse 19. I'm getting to the point where I need a Bible with large font. For when every commandment, the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood, both the tent and all the vessels that were used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. That should be underlined in your Bible. Thus, it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites. What I want you to focus on is that last thing right there in 923a. it was necessary for the copy of the heavenly things to be purified with the blood sprinkling. So after everything was done, he took that hyssop and that wool and he sprinkled the blood on absolutely everything. On the table of showbread, on the candle, on the altar of incense, on the ark of the covenant, on the temple itself, on the priest and on the people. The first covenant was inaugurated with the sprinkling of blood. Hebrews 8.5 says that they, the Levitical priests, serve a copy and a shadow of heavenly things. And it goes on to quote that other verse. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. So the tabernacle or the tent of Moses is a reflection of a greater heavenly reality. Here's another picture of what the temple, or the tabernacle looked like. I'm gonna use temple and tabernacle interchangeably. I mean tabernacle, okay. All right, so what was everything purified with under the old covenant? Everything was purified with blood. What was required for the forgiveness of sins? Shedding the blood, okay. And what's the tabernacle a copy of? Greater heavenly things. All right, so now that we've talked about this old covenant, now we're gonna talk about our high priest. We talked about the Levitical high priest and how they conducted their service. Now let's talk about our high priest, who is Jesus. Hebrews 4.15 says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. So let's focus on this tempted as we are. When and how was Jesus tempted? By Satan in the wilderness. When else? Okay. How about this? His entire life. We don't have much recorded about Jesus from after his birth until he's 12. And then there's another long gap until he begins his ministry approximately the age of 30. The fact that Joseph does not appear, his earthly father does not appear at all during his ministry account means he probably died. Could you imagine knowing that you are the son of God, knowing who you are and what you came to do, and watching your father die, and watching your mother grieve, watching other loved ones and family members, friends pass away, go through hard times and difficulties, knowing you had the power to do something about it, but being perfectly obedient to the Father, you didn't. The temptation that he faced in the wilderness is but a snapshot of what he went through. Jesus was tempted every day and every single way, just like us. Now is that the fundamental truth of that verse that I just read? I want to bring that verse back up. What's the biggest truth in that verse? He is without sin. This cannot be overstated. And I say this because of studies that are done like this. This is from Christian Headlines, and they're reporting on another story that was done. They asked about 2,800 people, all of whom identified, they self-identified, as Bible believers. Of those approximately 2,800 people that they asked, 44% said, yep, it's possible that Jesus has sinned. That is absolute heresy. If you ever walk into a church and they teach you that it's possible that Jesus has sinned, you leave that church as quickly as you possibly can. Of course, that is not Orthodox Christianity. So why is it so very important that Jesus was sinless? Well, if he's going to pay the price for our sins, he needs to be. He has to be. 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made the one who did not know sin, that being Jesus, to be sin for us. He had to be sinless in order to pay for our sins. You know, let's say after the service, my wife and I decide to go knock off a convenience store, and we shoot a couple of clerks, okay? We're standing before the judge facing the death penalty, and I, you know, heroically stand up and say, your honor, I am going to take my wife's penalty. Why is that absolutely absurd? I'm under the same penalty. I'm facing the exact same condemnation. I can't pay for anyone else's sin if I have my own to pay for. So it is critical that Jesus Christ be sinless if we want Him to pay for our sins. Second thing, if Jesus is not sinless, then God's a liar. Here's two verses, there's plenty more, but you got one from Peter and one from John that clearly say Jesus never sinned. So either Jesus never sinned or the Holy Spirit which inspired these men is lying. And you can just toss your Bible out and go home and watch football. All right, so the very first thing that I want you to take away from tonight's sermon, this is one of six, is that Jesus is sinless. Our high priest is sinless. All right, let's look at Hebrews chapter 5, and these are the ones I read, but we'll read it again. We'll just read 5 and 6 for brevity's sake. So Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him, this of course being God the Father, who said to him, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And he says in another place, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So Jesus has made a high priest by two declarative statements. The first one, this about you being my son, is from Psalm 2-7. The one about being a priest at the order of Melchizedek is from Psalm 1-10, verse 4. This first verse, the one from Psalm, that you are my son, today I have begotten you, that has nothing to do with his physical birth. So don't let your brain go to his incarnation. This verse has to do with the coronation of a king. So this, you are my son, today I begotten you, that's talking about Jesus fulfilling the office of a king. And the second one, when it has to do with being a priest, that means Jesus is going to hold two offices which, under the Mosaic law, were not allowed to be held by the same individual. Priests could not be kings. Kings could not be priests. Yet Jesus is going to hold both at the same time. And this order of Melchizedek, briefly, he only pops up in the Old Testament in Genesis chapter 14. Abraham had just defeated the combined might of several pagan kings. And he's going back in victory, he has this massive treasure, the spoils of war, and Melchizedek comes out to meet him. Melchizedek is the king of Salem, and he's a priest of the Most High God. And when Abraham meets this Melchizedek guy, he recognized him as somebody who was very important. This is somebody who I need to honor. And Abraham gives him a tithe of all of his spoils that he had just won. And the Bible points out that it's the inferior who gives tithes to the superior. So if Abraham recognized Melchizedek as his superior, then Melchizedek is the superior of Levi. He is the superior to Aaron. And people who are a priesthood of Melchizedek outrank all those who are the priesthood of Aaron. And this is also true in the Mormon church, but that's different. So why did God make Jesus a priest after the order of Melchizedek and not after the order of Aaron? Because he's of the tribe of Judah, and he has two at one time. That's true. There's no mention of Melchizedek's birth. There's no mention of his death. Just like Jesus had no, well he had a birth, he had no date of I began to exist and he has no date where he will cease to exist. Alright, well the short answer is Jesus was of the tribe of Judah and Levitical priests couldn't be king. There's a much longer answer. So this is like your 5th grade answer that you can expect elementary kids to give. I'm going to give you a slightly higher one. At least 7th graders. 7th graders could be able to give this one. So let's look at Hebrews chapter 7. Hold your finger there and then go to Hebrews chapter 10. We're going to kind of go real quick between the two. Alright, Hebrews chapter 7 verse 11. He's going to ask a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is one of those where it doesn't actually expect an answer, it's more to prove a point. Now, if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the law, what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek rather than one named after the order of Aaron? Now, I realize this is a rhetorical question, but I'm going to answer it anyway. There would have been no point for a priest to come after the order of Melchizedek if perfection had been attainable under the Levitical priesthood. For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. So when Christ comes on the scene and he's declared a priest of Melchizedek, what is being said is the Aaron priesthood, the Levitical priesthood, is going away. And because the priesthood is changing, the law itself must change. So we're headed towards what? If the priesthood's going away, if the law's going away, what are we headed toward? new covenant. Now let's look at Hebrews 10, we'll read verses 1 through 4. So why does the change in priesthood necessitate a change in the law? What was wrong with the law? For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, Instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year after year, make perfect those who draw near. The law can never make anybody perfect through its sacrifices. Verse two, if they could, would they not have ceased to be offered? Since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices, the sacrifices done under the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant rather, in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Nope, went the wrong way. So the second thing I want you to understand is that Jesus is a king and a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He's sinless and he's a king and a priest after the order of Melchizedek because the law could never make anyone perfect. Back to Hebrews chapter nine. I'm gonna keep it up on the screen there. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, because remember the law was a shadow of the good things to come. When Christ appeared as the high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent. What's this more perfect tent? Well, it's one that's not made with hands, and it's not even of this creation. Jesus entered once and for all into the holy places. He went behind the curtain, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. And then I added, for those who believe in him. Verse 18, therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant. So there's a true tent. There's a heavenly tent that's up in heaven. And what Moses had built, what Herod had built in Jesus' day was a poor human attempt to reflect the glory of what was truly up in heaven. And when this new covenant that Jesus is inaugurating, when it started, it says he went behind the veil of the true tent. He went behind it. into the very presence of God Almighty. And when he brought sacrifice, it wasn't the blood sacrifices of goats and bulls. What blood sacrifice did he bring with him? His own. His own. So just as the first covenant and everything associated with it was inaugurated by the blood of bulls and goats, this new covenant is going to be inaugurated by something far superior, something far more precious than the blood of animals. It's the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ himself. He walked behind the heaven reality of that curtain And of course, the ark represented God's presence on earth, so he went into the presence of God Almighty directly. So number three, our high priest has established a new and a better covenant. And when you say something is better, what are you saying about the old one? It is inferior. And Hebrew says in other verses, we don't have time to look at tonight, it's ready to just vanish away, it is obsolete. Staying in Hebrews chapter 10, look with me in verse 11. And every high priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. Now based on that verse, the way it reads, We think Hebrews was written prior to the year 70 AD because of verses like that. The way the author writes it, it makes it seem like these sacrifices are still going on right then and there. And he says, see those priests over there in the temple? They're still sacrificing. Jesus has already paid the price. He's already started the new covenant. They're over there making sacrifices right now. And he tells his audience, you know what? It's pointless. What they're doing now is a waste of time. It will never make them clean. It will never make the nation of Israel clean. They're just killing animals at this point for the sake of killing animals. He goes on to say, verse 12, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, what did he do? He sat down. This is one of those sentences in the Bible that I never realized how profound this was. Just underline, he sat down, because it's super important. Remember what the priest would do when he went behind the curtain? He couldn't, he had to work. He sprinkled the stuff, he did his ritual, I have no idea how long it takes, let's say it took 10 minutes, and then he left. He was done until the next year where he had to do it all over again. But Christ walked by there, walked behind that curtain with his sacrifice, made atonement for his people and all who would ever believe in him. and he turned around and sat down he had a seat he sat next to his father and he is still sitting there right now Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25 yes ma'am consequently He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since Jesus always lives to make intercession for him. Jesus said, I am the way and the life and the truth. No one comes to the Father but through me. And he says he is making intercession for them. What does intercession mean? Communicating with? Mediating on our behalf. Mediating on our behalf, intervening for us, He stands in the presence of God and says, God, that one's mine. She's mine. Her sins are forgiven. She's believed in my name. Her sins are covered. He belongs to me, Father. That's what Jesus is doing for us right now. No human high priest could ever do that. No sinful human could ever do what Jesus is accomplishing right now on our behalf for us. Right now, He's doing that. He is still sitting on the right hand of the Father and He will continue to be sitting at the right hand of the Father until the Father tells Him, alright son, go claim your bride. And that is what we are looking forward to. That is the High Priest whom we serve. Alright, so how many sacrifices did Jesus have to make? One. And that is why I disagree with the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, where Christ's body is broken repeatedly, every time, over and over. He sacrificed himself one time, and it was good enough to gain eternal redemption. It doesn't need to be repeated. One time. And what does perfected mean in this sense? It has to do with the forgiveness of sins. When you look at how the Bible says, these sacrifices that were done in the Old Testament, they can never make anything perfect. And then it says, by the blood of bulls and goats, forgiveness of sins cannot be obtained. So when you see perfection, it's talking about the forgiveness of sins, the removal of this guilt that we have for our sins. And what is Jesus doing right now on our behalf? He's interceding for us, making intercession on our behalf. So we have our high priest is sinless. He's a king and a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He has established a new and better covenant. He has made one perfect sacrifice and is interceding on our behalf right now. Jonathan, I love the song, The Power of the Cross. And in there, it has a line that says, curtain torn in two. What is happening right here? And you see what's in the background there, right? You can't see that there. There. I'm over there shining on the back wall, wondering why no one's looking. After Christ said his final words, it is finished, and breathed his last, at that same moment in that temple, while the priests were still performing their daily duties, that 90-foot-tall, 60-foot-wide, one-inch-thick mammoth curtain, the veil wall, was torn from the top down to the bottom. Back in Hebrews 9.8, it told us that as long as that veil remains, it is the single most powerful imagery of the separation of God and humanity. So when Christ died in that curtain torn in two, he is now telling us that we all have access to the throne of God itself through him. And in the rest, if you keep reading the rest of Hebrews, which we don't have time to do, it says that the curtain was actually the flesh of Christ himself. Everything in the Old Testament, when viewed correctly through the eyes, through the lens of the New Testament, will point towards the reality of who Christ is and what he came to do. Because that curtain was torn in two, we have confidence to enter the true holy place by the blood of Jesus. we can draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, which is the true holy of holies, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. So our great high priest Jesus is sinless. He is a king and a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He has established a new and a better covenant. So why anybody want to hold on to that old one? I don't know, but some people love it. It's not for me, I like bacon cheeseburgers. He has made one perfect sacrifice. He is interceding on our behalf, and he grants us access to God's throne. 40 minutes. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you. for your work as a high priest. Lord, we thank you that you are interceding on our behalf right now. Lord, we are looking, Father, to the day where you leave the place at your father's side to come and reclaim us as your own. Lord, I pray that this has been a profitable time. I pray that people have gained a greater appreciation for you, for your word, and for the work that you have performed for us. I ask that you bring us all back together safely next week, and may everything that we say and do glorify and honor you. In your name we pray, amen.