As we continue to look at God's word together today, we'll first be reading from Leviticus chapter 16, verses 1 through 5, and then we'll turn to our text in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 to 16. Leviticus chapter 16, beginning at verse 1, this is God's inspired, inerrant, and infallible word. Now the Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they had approached the presence of the Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron and he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat, which is on the ark, where he will die, for I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. Aaron shall enter the holy place with this, with a bull for the sin offering and a ram for burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen tunic and the linen undergarments shall be next to his body, and he shall be girded with the linen sash and attired with the linen turban. These are holy garments. Then he shall bathe his body in water and put them on. He shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering. and one ram for a burnt offering. Hebrews 4 verses 14 to 16 is our text. I'm going to read just a few verses from chapter 1 and chapters 2 and 3. Hebrews chapter one verse three, and he that is the son of God is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. When he had made purification of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Chapter two verse 17 and 18, Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted." Chapter 3 and verse 1, therefore, holy brethren, Partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. Chapter four, verse 14. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Amen. Be seated, please. Let's turn together once more to God's throne of grace to seek his mercy and his grace in the preaching and the hearing of his word. Your word, O Lord, is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. It illumines us in our journey throughout the Christian experience. You've given it, O Lord, for so many things, for so many purposes. You've given your word to comfort us. You've given your word to encourage us. You've given it to warn us. And we ask, O Lord, that we would receive all that you have for us in this portion of your holy word by the help of your Holy Spirit. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. We've just finished a long section that began in chapter 3 and verse 7 and ran all the way to chapter 4 and verse 13. It's a section that pertains to the quotation from Psalm 95, which is given to us as a negative example. The example of Israel who failed to enter God's rest, which is a picture in the land of Canaan, a picture of God's eternal rest, and Israel failed to enter it because of their unbelief. And we are being warned throughout this passage not to follow the example of Israel. encouraged, we're being urged to be diligent to enter into God's eternal rest and not to harden our hearts as Israel did in the wilderness. And now we're beginning another long section in Hebrews, beginning at chapter 4 and verse 14, that runs even longer than this, what we might even now call a shorter section, all the way to chapter 10 and verse 39. And it has to do with the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the priestly work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the authors already introduced that work to us. He introduced it to us implicitly in the prologue in chapter 1 and verse 3, which we read this morning. We read that the Son of God, after he had made purification for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty. And then we read in chapter 2, verses 17 and 18, 3 and verse 1, where the writer introduces these in a cursory fashion. He simply inserts these into the text. And now in chapter 4 and verse 14, the writer's taking this up in a far more elaborate way. He's going to elucidate the priestly work, the priestly ministry of Jesus Christ from chapter 4, verse 14, all the way to chapter 10 and verse 39. In these first two sections, we want to see that these are a unit, that they run together, chapter 4, verse 14, to chapter 5, and verse 10, that the discussion is being resumed now of Christ's priestly ministry. Verse 14 resumes that discussion and begins to give it a detailed consideration. And then in chapter 5 and verse 10, 5 verses 1 through 10, rather, Following the author's pattern of contrasting and comparing Jesus with Old Testament figures, he presents the uniqueness of Jesus as high priest in relation to Aaron and Melchizedek. That's what we'll be dealing with next time, Lord willing. But first, he presents Jesus as high priest in terms that are full of encouragement for the believer. Hebrews 4 verse 14 gives us an overarching statement about Christ's priesthood, and verses 15 and 16 stresses the sympathetic nature of Christ as our mediator. Together, verses 14 to 16 exhort us to action, and they give us a reason. They give us a basis for that call to action. These verses combine exhortation and encouragement. They're addressed. to a people who are in a time of need. They're addressed to needy Christian people, Hebrew Christians. And we can gather what their need is just by simply reflecting back on that long exhortation we just dealt with. They've been given warnings. They've been warned not to fall back into the pattern of unbelief that Israel did, as Israel did in the wilderness. They're being urged to press on, to be diligent, to enter into God's eternal rest. And that negative pattern of unbelief is set before them as a warning and as an encouragement The writer reminds them that they had a high priest who would help them in their endeavors to persevere in the faith. Like the Hebrew Christians who received this letter, we are in a time of great need. It could be said that Christians throughout their lives, at any given point in their lives, between the ascension of Christ and his return, in the last days, that Christians are always in a time of need. We're always dependent upon the Lord. We're always needy. We come as beggars to the Lord. and ask Him to meet our needs. So we need to be diligent to enter into God's rest of eternal salvation. We need to be diligent to heed the warning of chapter 3, verses 12 and 13, that there not be in any one of us an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. and that none of us will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We need the encouragement of our text. We need the exhortation of our text. We need to know that we have a high priest who can help us in our time of need. You need to hear this text. Every one of us does. Every Christian does. Everyone who hasn't believed on Christ needs to hear this text because if you don't heed this warning and you don't enter into this eternal rest, the alternative is that you spend eternity in the destruction of hell. This text shows us that believers in Jesus Christ, in our text, believers in Jesus Christ are urged to hold fast to their confession and confidently draw near to the throne of grace for help, grounded in the reality that they have a supreme and sympathetic high priest. Believers in Jesus Christ are urged to hold fast to the confession of their faith and confidently draw near to the throne of grace grounded on, based upon, the reality that they have a supreme, sympathetic high priest. And those are the two things that we'll consider today. Our great high priest's supremacy and our great high priest's sympathy. Supremacy and sympathy. That's what our author, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, sets before us. So in the first place, we'll consider our great high priest's supremacy. Christ's supremacy Our text begins to tell us in verse 14, is of the highest order. There are three aspects here of Christ's supremacy here in verse 14. First, the author of this letter to the Hebrew says, we have a great high priest. Emphasis on we have and great. We have a great High Priest. First emphasis, we have. That form of the verb, we have, is used repeatedly. The writer uses this repeatedly. We could look at a number of passages here, but just for example, he's speaking of Jesus and our hope in Jesus in chapter 6 and verse 19. And he says, this hope we have as an anchor of our soul. And then again, in chapter 8 and verse 1, he says something very similar to what he says here in chapter 4 and verse 14. Now the main point in what has been said is this, we have such a high priest. And then in chapter 10 and verse 19, Also, using similar words to the words we find in our text, therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart, full of assurance, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Constantly saying to these Hebrew Christians, this is what we have. This is what we have in our possession, And from that we can reasonably deduce that those who are being addressed were forgetful of their privileges. Now that's true of all Christians. We're often forgetful of our privileges. We forget who we are. We forget what we have. We forget what God has given us. We forget the blessings that God has bestowed upon us. That's true of you, every one of you here today. If you're a Christian, you're a forgetful Christian. It's true of me. We are forgetful Christians. And perhaps these Hebrew Christians were living with a have-not mentality, and that's the reason why the author to the Hebrews needs to remind them, we have a great high priest, that they were comparing the elaborate sacrificial system, the old system, the old covenant system with the relatively simple new system of sacrifice, of offerings to God, not by the blood of bulls and goats, but through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So perhaps they were comparing where they were now unfavorably with the old covenant ways. of the sacrificial system. And that was particularly true with regard to the high priest. The Hebrew Christians, when they were practicing Jews, had a high priest, just as those Jews who were still practicing Judaism had a high priest at the time that this letter was written. The writer not only contradicts such thinking, the have not mentality, by telling them that they have a high priest. But he also turns their thinking on its head by adding the adjective great to high priest, to qualify high priest. So he's not only asserting that they do have a high priest, but he's saying that they have one that's infinitely better than the one that the Jews possess. In Old Testament times, remember, there was one priest who was designated as high priest. Aaron was that first high priest. He was designated so for life. When he died, that honor would be passed on to a son in the line of the priests. That priest would be called high, the high priest. It's actually more literally great priest. But the author of Hebrews uses both adjectives here, great and high, to indicate that their high priest was far superior to all Jewish high priests. As we've noted, the comparison between, and the contrast between Jesus, high priesthood, and that of the Old Testament high priest will follow beginning in chapter five. But immediately, this word great strikes us. It grabs us. It gets our attention. The combination of great high priest occurs only here in the Bible. No Old Testament priest was ever designated great high priest. It applies only to Jesus. So Jesus doesn't rank in line with other high priests, but rather in this and in everything else, Jesus stands alone. as his high priesthood is beyond compare. It's unique. He's the greatest of all high priests. He's the incomparable high priest. And that greatness is further enforced when the writer says, secondly, that Jesus has passed through the heavens here in verse 14. What does the writer mean? when he says that Jesus has passed through the heavens. Well, remember that in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for heaven is plural. It can refer to the visible heavens in which the sun, the moon, the stars appear, or to God's dwelling place. Sometimes God's abode is called the heaven of heavens or the highest heaven. In the New Testament, heaven occurs both in the singular and the plural forms. So the heavens here in Hebrews 4.14 refers to the visible heavens that Jesus passed through, informing us that Jesus ascended through them to the very throne of God, God's eternal dwelling place. That's Christ's current exalted status as our great high priest. That's where Christ sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Primarily, then, the phrase refers to Christ's ascension into heaven. But there's also an allusion here to the Old Testament high priest's activity on the Day of Atonement, part of which we read about in Leviticus chapter 16. The high priest passed through the tabernacle and the temple and through the veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies once a year and entered into God's presence to stand at the mercy seat. Old Testament scripture says that God is enthroned above the cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant, which you remember was placed in the holy of holies. The author of Hebrews will later show that all the old covenant priests could do, the most that they could do, was to go behind this man-made curtain into the holiest place, one which was itself constructed out of earthly materials, and make a sacrifice for himself and for the people. But this isn't what Jesus did, the author of Hebrews is telling us here. Jesus has gone beyond the heavens. Jesus has gone beyond all that is external to God. And Jesus is now actually in the presence of God for his people at the right hand of the throne of God. chapter 8 and verse 1 tells us. The reason that Jesus is a better high priest, the reason that Jesus is a great high priest is because he presented himself as an intercessor in God's own personal presence in the heavenly places. He passed through the heavens, not through a man-made building, Not a copy of the heavenly temple as the writer to the Hebrews will later call it in chapter nine, but the real heavenly temple. That's where Jesus is. In other words, Jesus has unique access to God as our great high priest. And therefore, he can be with God to plead our case. He alone, this great high priest alone, has standing to be the intercessor that we need. And therefore, his intercession is uniquely effective on our behalf. But there's another reason that Jesus' intercession is so effective. The reason, the difference between earthly high priests And our great high priest isn't just where Jesus is, but also who Jesus is. Notice the language the author uses when thirdly he says, Jesus is the son of God. He adds that title here to make an important point. Jesus can intercede for us forever because he is the eternal son of God. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you have genuinely put your trust in Christ and Christ alone for salvation, He will never ever stop loving you. He will never ever stop pleading your case and representing you before the throne of God. And that means when God looks at you, He sees the righteousness of his son surrounding you. That's what it means to be represented by Jesus. And that never stops. And we can have eternal security, having believed in Christ. because we have the eternal Son of God interceding for us. The exhortation that comes at the end of verse 14, let us hold fast our confession, is the inference of having Jesus as our great High Priest. Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus, the Divine One. Jesus, the God-Man. is our great high priest. Remember that the author informs us in 1322 that this whole letter is an exhortation. And the main substance of his exhortation is to hold fast. That's the exhortation that we find here at the end of verse 14. Let us hold fast to our confession. He's already said that. He said it implicitly. Chapter 3 and verse 6, he said it explicitly. In chapter 3 and verse 13, he'll say it again explicitly. In chapter 10 and verse 23, the writer is saying, don't abandon what you believe about Jesus. Don't give up the confident expectation of your hope that is in Jesus, because there's nothing or no one better than your great high priest as your representative and intercessor in the throne room of God. That's our great high priest's supremacy. Secondly, The writer begins to discuss our great high priest's sympathy in verse 15. First, he tells us that as our high priest, Jesus sympathizes with our weaknesses. Having used that double adjective, great and high, to describe Jesus as high priest, In verse 14, the writer now uses a double negative. In verse 15, we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize. This adds emphasis to the positive resulting affirmation. We do have a high priest who can sympathize. But why put it in the negative? Why use this double negative? Why didn't he just say, we do have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses? He does so in order to stress that his supremacy does not diminish his sympathy. That's what these Hebrew Christians needed to realize, and that's what we need to realize, that Jesus, as our great high priest, is highly exalted. He's greatly exalted in the heavens, on the throne, but he's also near to us. as our high priest. The high priest we have isn't only one who couldn't have been greater and couldn't have been higher, but he's our representative, the one who couldn't be near as our sympathizer. He couldn't be closer to us, couldn't be closer either to God or to us. The one who is the divine son in heaven not only has been on earth, but he still remembers what it was like to be on earth. And it's as such that he ministers to us and sympathizes with us in our earthly estate. Time and again, In the course of our Savior's life, Jesus experienced real felt weakness. In the manger, in a cattle stall, born in a cattle stall, laid in the manger as a baby, hungry for 40 days in the wilderness, before his temptation, weary and thirsty at the well in Samaria, weeping in great turmoil and anguish at the grave of the one whom he loved, Lazarus. Spending nights in prayer in anguish before his father, with loud cries and tears to the one able to save him. Hebrews chapter five and verse seven will tell us, crucified in weakness, 2 Corinthians 13, four, agonizing on the cross, enduring the pains of hell for you and me. Jesus did not shield himself from the fallenness of this world. He was despised and rejected by men He was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief, Isaiah tells us in that wondrous prophecy of his substitutionary atonement in Isaiah 53. He really did experience everything in this life that's dark and difficult and problematic, from physical suffering to emotional turmoil. And when he hung on the cross, he wasn't only scorned, by all those who were around him, but he drank the cup of his father's wrath, wrath that was poured out in the place of sinners. So the author of Hebrews first tells us that Jesus sympathizes with us, and then he tells us why. Our great high priest sympathizes with us, sympathizes with our weaknesses, because the writer says, he has been tempted in all things just as we are. He was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, tempted by wealth, tempted by power, tempted by the comforts of this world. He was tempted in the Garden of Gethsemane to avoid the cup of wrath that the Father had ordained for him. Whatever you're tempted by, Jesus can relate to that temptation, to that weakness, The last phrase of Hebrews 4.15 is important. He was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Unlike any other high priest, unlike any other human, Christ has no sins of his own. He's the perfect man. Jesus' perfection and purity are important because his righteous deeds are accounted to us by faith. God looks at you and he sees you as a pure person in Christ Jesus. You're perfect in his eyes. Because Christ's righteousness covers you. It wraps around you. All of that hangs on the fact that Jesus was, in fact, sinless. Now, given Christ's divinity, the question arises, how could Jesus be tempted? Thankfully, we have studious men who have dealt well with this topic so that I didn't have to rewrite the book on this, and one of those men is the Puritan John Owen. John Owen answers this question, how could Jesus be tempted if he was divine, by noting two aspects of temptation. Some temptations, he says, are in principle sin as they proceed from sin within. That is, men are tempted to sin by sin, to actual sin by habitual sin, to outward sin by indwelling sin. That's what James tells us in chapter 1, verses 14 and 15 of his epistle. In other situations, temptations come upon us from the outside, from outside circumstances to entice us to sin. These are only sin if one acts on those temptations. For example, Someone finds a large sum of money, and the outside circumstance tempts the finder not to report it to authorities, but simply to keep it for himself. It's the second aspect of temptation that came upon Christ. John Owen is arguing. He writes, none of them, that is, none of these temptations in the least degree had any effect on Jesus. The Orthodox Reformed tradition following historical Christian tradition has made two general points about Christ's temptability. First, Christ had no indwelling sin. Second, Christ's temptations were real, despite the fact that he was the divine Son of God. Regarding the more abstract question of whether Christ was, in principle, capable of sinning, the Reformed tradition has consistently held that the person of Christ was not able to sin in these temptations because of the union of his divine and human natures. That's a brief summary of volumes that have been written on this question of how it is that Jesus could be tempted by sin. He is without sin. He was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. And then the encouragement that flows out of this great thought that Jesus can sympathize with us in our weaknesses is that we can draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. The author's already mentioned that point in chapter two and verse 18. For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he's able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. But he reiterates here in the confidence here isn't a confidence that says, I'll be okay. Because I'm, I'm pretty good. I'm a pretty good person. I'll be okay before God. Because I really haven't done anything that bad. I've not murdered anybody. I haven't committed adultery against my wife, so on, so forth. That's not the confidence that the author speaks about here. It's not our confidence. It's confidence in Christ as our great high priest. It's confidence in Christ's perfect representation of us before the throne of grace. You have, our author declares here, bold and direct access to God's throne room in heaven because you have Christ as your great high priest. We have free access to the throne of grace because of what Christ has done. This is what we have. In Christ, our great high priest. And we need to be not like the have-nots who forget their privileges. We need to be as those who remember what we have in our great high priest. And God has in his wisdom ordained a remembrance of our great High Priest, Jesus Christ, that we're to observe frequently. The Bible doesn't say how frequently we're to observe it, but he tells us that we're to observe it frequently, as often as you eat. Paul's institution of the supper says, And we owe it to Luke and to Paul that this is a remembrance, that the Lord's Supper that we observe today is a remembrance. It's a memorial. It's not merely a memorial, but it is a memorial, and we're remembering what we have in Christ. The Lord's Supper is a remembrance of Christ's sacrifice as our great high priest. Every time we observe the supper, we're reminded that we have a great high priest who has offered the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. The elements of the sacrament are divinely calculated to present this truth to us of Christ's priestly work on our behalf, to bring them to our memory so that we will not be like the have-nots. so that we will remember what we have, that we'll remember we have a great high priest. The broken bread represents to us Christ's broken body. His body broken for us, brutalized on the way to the cross and on the cross itself. The cup represents to us Christ's shed blood for us, reminding us that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, Hebrews 9, 22 will later disclose. The Lord's Supper is a visible exhortation to hold fast to our confession and to approach God's throne of grace to receive mercy and grace in a time of need because we have a great high priest. The theme that is revealed in our text today should thrill the Christian soul. It doesn't always, but it should always thrill your soul as a Christian that you have a great high priest. And so God in his wisdom has ordained that he would constantly keep it before us in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. We have a great high priest. We see him visibly portrayed for us in the elements of the sacrifice. This priest stood in our place in the judgment of the cross, and Hebrews emphasizes that he now stands as an advocate for us before the throne of grace. Here at Christ's righteousness, his perfect merit pleads for his people. And only a people who don't understand this, only a people who don't realize what they have are tempted to go back. Like these Christian Hebrews were tempted to go back to Judaism, to the old sacrificial system. Like we as Christians are tempted to go back to our old way of living because it just seems like it was so much simpler at times. Not so many burdens upon us when we didn't have to deal with all of God's requirements. Do you understand, Christian, that you have a great high priest through whom you are perfectly acceptable to God? Amen, indeed. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven. While we know that we can never plumb the depths of this passage, we can nevertheless cry out to you, thanks be to God for his infinite mercies to us in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to you, O God, for our great high priest. Thanks be to you, O Father, for the one who sympathizes with our weaknesses, the one who represents our interests before the throne, the one through whom you, O Father, look at us in perfection with His righteousness covering us, wrapping around us, His righteous obedience accounted to us for our righteousness. Oh Lord, we would not be among the have-nots. When we lapse into that mentality, we pray, oh God, that you would remind us that we have a great high priest. who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Bring that to our remembrance today. As we commune with you around the table, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.