And our verses this evening, our focus is verses 14 to 16. Especially verse 16. 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. Don't know how many of you have heard of the English preacher of the 19th century, a man called Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon. Glad one has, thank you. Yeah, he was a remarkable man. He preached in London and often his congregation was filled with tens of thousands of people every Sunday. His sermons were published, usually by the following Monday, and went out to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. They were called the penny sermons because that's how much they cost, a penny a sermon. And he probably saw, as far as we know, probably saw more people converted under his ministry than anyone since Pentecost. A truly remarkably blessed man. And yet, Charles Spurgeon suffered terribly, mentally and physically. He was overwhelmed at times with depression, and he was overwhelmed with gout, an inflammatory disease that racked his body with pain. Some of the statements he made about this are, I could say with Job, my soul is weary of my life. I could not lay hold on a promise, neither could I rejoice in the truths which at other times have been my delight. My spirit was sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for. In another place he said, fits of depression come over me which I cannot describe. They crush me as with millstones. Another said, I find myself frequently depressed, perhaps more so than any other person here. And as if that mental pain was not enough, he had that physical pain as well. He said in one sermon, I have preached the gospel when every joint of my body has seemed to be a door creaking on its hinges with rust, and when my head has throbbed until I have scarcely known whether I should have a head five minutes longer. So much suffering did he endure that the last third of his ministry, he spent about three months every year in the south of France, in the sunshine, trying to rekindle his spirits. One verse kept Charles Spurgeon afloat time and time and time again. And it was this verse here. 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. The apostle here, Charles Spurgeon, then hopefully ourselves too, have an answer to this great question that we sometimes ask, how can weak and needy people like us approach a powerful and perfect God? It's not something we're used to in this world, is it? It's easy for us to approach someone on the same level as us or maybe below us in our estimation. but much harder to approach someone above us in power or influence or importance. And yet here we have the highest throne that we are encouraged to approach boldly to find grace and help in our time of need. This passage contains two of the lettuces in Hebrews. If you look at verse two of this chapter, sorry, verse one, it says, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to come short of the promised rest. And again in verse 11, let us therefore strive to enter that rest. And then in verse 14, let us hold fast our confession. And here in verse 16, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. Hebrews is full of these let us statements. And it's very much encouraging, coming alongside. It's not going, you do this and you do that, but let us together do this together. Now, last week I didn't have time to deal with verses 11 or 12 to 13, where it speaks of the word of God being a living and active and double-edged sword. It's a sword that pierces the heart, that divides asunder the soul and the spirit and leaves us naked and exposed before Him with whom we have to do. And it seems out of place because up until that point, it's all about the gospel of rest. Come and enjoy the rest of the gospel. Time after time, as we've seen in that reading, rest, rest, rest, rest. And then at the end of the chapter, we've got more let us and let us. It's encouraging, confidence inspiring. And here there's a really scary bit. In the midst of this, very encouraging chapter, there's words that might actually terrify us. The idea of the word of God piercing into our hearts. So what's the connection? Well, basically what he's saying is if we want to enter gospel rest and eternal rest, we need two things. We need the word of God and we need the priesthood of Christ. The word of God here to prod, to prompt, to convict, and the priesthood of Christ to encourage and support and come alongside us. And this evening we want to look at this great high priest. And we'll look first of all at let us hold fast our confession. What you see here is a strong hand holding a thin, weak hand that's holding a Bible. And that's really what's pictured for us in verses 14 and 15. It's saying we have a confession, we have weak hands, We feel very frail and fragile in this difficult world, and yet we've been given a testimony, a confession. We've been given the truth to hold fast. And at times it feels like it's slipping from our grasp. We can't hold on any longer. So great are the trials and the troubles. But what we're told here is, We're not left alone, just our weak little hand holding this testimony. But our great Jesus, our great high priest, holds the hand that holds the confession. So two things were told here. Jesus holds us fast, and therefore, we hold our confession fast. So let's look first of all at Jesus holds us fast, or tight. Verse 14, since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. We're told here we have a great high priest. In the Old Testament, there were multitudes of priests. There was also always a high priest who was over them all and who had special privileges. but there was never a great high priest. And here Jesus is introduced as the one that all these lesser priests pointed towards, the perfect priest that these imperfect priests pictured. This perfect go-between, mediator, someone to represent God to us and us to God, He is great and awesome and above all other priests. He's great in his person. He's great in his position. He's great in his perfection. He's great in his performance of all his duties. He has a great name. He has a great dignity. He has a great power and influence with God. And we have him. We have. a great high priest. He's not over there. We can have him, possess him. So he's great, but he's also successful. He has passed through the heavens. One of the things that the high priest did once a year was go through the curtain that covered the holy place containing the tabernacle. On the Day of Atonement, he walked through that to offer a sacrifice for the whole of Israel. And there was always a question, will he come back out after meeting God there? And so much so that the Jews used to actually laterally tie a bell to the priest so that they could keep hearing it and be assured that he was still alive as he ministered to God in that holy place. And then even later, they actually used to attach a rope to his foot so that if he did die in the most holy place, for his sin or God's anger, they could pull him out again without entering that holy place. So when they saw the high priest coming back out again, it was a wonderful moment. He had passed through the curtain, and had come out again. And of course, that curtain was depicting heaven and God's holy presence above. And we're told here that this high priest has passed through the heavens, not just an earthly curtain in an earthly building, but he's gone into the holy place and he's passed through, and we have a picture here really of him there, settled. never to come back out again. He's there permanently representing his people. We have a successful high priest, someone that you can put your trust in. He's done what no other priest could do. And he's unique. The priests in the Old Testament were either sons of Aaron or they descended from a man called Melchizedek. Jesus, though, is the Son of God, and therefore uniquely suited to represent sinners to God and God to sinners. So he's a great priest, a successful priest, and a unique priest, and therefore we can say Jesus holds us fast. He has us successfully before God, working for us, doing all that needs to be done for people like us. He holds us fast and therefore, we can hold fast our confession. That's the link that the apostle makes. Since then, We have a great high priest who's passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast, hold tight our confession. Because Jesus holds us, let us hold fast our confession. And this was something that the Hebrew Christians were being tempted to give up. They'd made a confession. They had said they were Christians. And because of persecution and the loss of social connections, because of their faith, they were thinking, let's just give this up and go back to what we used to have. And he's saying, look, you can survive this. You can keep going. You can maintain your confession and your witness no matter what you're facing because Jesus is your great high priest. You can hold tight because he holds you tight. And it's a tremendous encouragement to us here. So hold it so that you don't give up one line, one truth, one crumb, one atom of this confession. And we have to because if we don't hold it tight, you know who's trying to prise our fingers off our testimony and our confession all the time? The devil. So let's hold fast our confession. But how can we approach such a great and glorious high priest? Well, that's what the apostle addresses next when he says, let us come to the throne of grace. Let us come to the throne of grace. And we see two truths here. Jesus comes to us with sympathy for our weakness, and we come to Jesus for grace and mercy in our time of need. So let's see, first of all, Jesus comes to us with sympathy for our weakness. Now, there's a double negative in verse 15, which makes a positive. You notice it says, we do not have who is unable, right? Which I put in yellow here, it basically means for we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. He is touched. Every time we feel our weakness, he feels in his heart. He's not touched by our strength. When we feel strong and self-sufficient, that doesn't touch the heart of Jesus. What touches his heart, what plays and plucks the strings of his heart is weakness. As it says here, we have a high priest who is able to sympathize, able to feel, able to be moved, able to enter into our sorrows, our weaknesses. And this is a great contrast for the Hebrew Christians. The priests in these days were very high and haughty and arrogant people. They were a class apart. Far from approachable, they portrayed themselves as untouchable. Not Jesus. He is the most touchable priest in the whole of human history. No one has a more sympathetic heart. Yes, he's left his suffering behind when he left this earth, but he didn't leave his sympathy behind. He still has it. He's still touched. I'm told that if you have two harps in one room and you pluck the strings of one harp, that without touching the other one, if you go close enough, you can hear the same note resonating on that harp. It responds without there being any physical contact, and that's what the apostle here is encouraging us to think with. Every time that heart string is plucked by pain, by sadness, by sorrow, by loss, by conflict, by disappointment, by fatigue, exhaustion, failure, injustice. Every time you feel that minor key plucked, that painful plucking, if you listen by faith, you can hear it in heaven too. Be assured there's not one time that sorrow plucks your heart that he does not feel it and respond to it. He comes to us with sympathy for our weaknesses. And how is he able to do that? Because we're told, he was tempted as we are, yet without sin. He's passed through trials and temptations as well. Now, people say, well, how can Jesus have the same temptations as me? Because he was perfect. So he didn't have like lust and greed and jealousy coming from within his own heart. And that's true. What this is teaching is not that he experienced every single particular kind of temptation that people have ever been tempted with. But if you think of the difficulty of temptation as a scale, for example, on one end of the scale, there's a temptation that's easy to resist. At the other end of the scale, There's a temptation that we would think that's impossible to resist. And when it says that he was in every respect tempted as we are, it's saying he experienced every single point on that scale. That the degree of temptation that we have suffered with, he has been there and beyond. It's like you take a, I don't know, a piece of coal, and you hammer it, and it breaks, right? Breaks into lots of pieces, charcoal. You take a diamond, you can't break it with a hammer. You maybe get a crushing machine, you know, one of these that goes tighter and tighter and tighter and something, and you see the pounds building, the pounds of pressure. a hundred, a thousand, 10,000, and that diamond does not break. Which of these, the charcoal or the diamond, has experienced more power, strength, opposition to it? It's the diamond, isn't it? And that's how Jesus was perfect and therefore, like the diamond, able to be crushed and pressured and tempted to a degree that is far beyond the temptations we had. And the primary temptation he had was disobey God. God's given you a plan. God's called you to do this work, and time and time and time again, the devil, sometimes the disciples, sometimes his enemies, they said, give it up. Stop. Just go back to heaven where you say you came from. And the crushing was so great and reached its peak in the Garden of Gethsemane. when he was crushed so much that he sweated great drops of blood. Such was the pressure and oppression of temptation to give up. Every temptation presents a choice to us. As we go through this week, we're gonna have lots of choices in front of us, and it's gonna be do that or do that. That's the essence of temptation. Sometimes it's easy, isn't it? Some temptations we can look and go, yeah, I can avoid that. You might like, I don't know, a certain kind of cookie. It's not your favorite. You'll like it. No, I'm on a diet. I can give that up. Then maybe you go to your favorite restaurant and you see your favorite dessert, maple blondie at Applebee's in my case. And no matter how much you try, you cannot resist. Well, in a far greater way, Jesus had the greatest temptations and the greatest pressure and the greatest pull to turn away from God's will to his own, to the devil's, to his disciples, to his family. Every single source in his life was a source of temptation. And he said, no, not my will, but your will be done. So, Jesus comes to us with sympathy for our weaknesses, whether it's a cookie, or a maple blondie, or to gossip, or to lie, or to watch that movie, listen to that music, go to that website, take that pot, take that drink, go with these people, whatever it is that comes to us. The pool, the pain, the stretch on your conscience that you feel there, He feels it too. And He comes to you with sympathy. And therefore, we come to Jesus for mercy and grace. Because all that's true, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. There's lots of thrones in the world, aren't there? There are weak thrones, there are unjust thrones, there are unstable thrones, there are abusive thrones, there are detached and aloof thrones, There are thrones where all that is dispensed is justice. There are unholy thrones, there are unpredictable thrones, but not this throne. This is a throne of grace. It's perfect, it's stable, it's sure, it's reliable, and it's full of grace. That's not what you often associate with a throne, is it? but that is how this throne is described. You know, when we think of justice, that's getting the punishment we deserve. When we think of mercy, it's simply not getting the punishment we deserve, and that's great. But when you think of grace, that's getting the opposite of the punishment we deserve. That's the kind of throne that our high priest sits on. It's a throne characterized by grace. And therefore, he says here, let's draw near to it with confidence. It's not with cowardice or fear, but with courage, with boldness, with optimism. that we may receive mercy and grace to help in time of need, times of affliction, times of trial, times of suffering, times of temptation, times of defeat, times of failure, times of conflict, times of loneliness and exhaustion, times of being in hospital, being in the nursing home, times of dying, all these times of need. There's no time of need where we can say, I don't need the throne of grace. Every time of need is an opportunity to approach the throne of grace. So let's come. There's no gatekeeper. Don't need to think like Esther, if I go, I could be killed, but if I perish, I perish. No, it's if I go, I know I'm going to get grace and mercy. There's nothing else there but grace and mercy. So let's go. Let's encourage one another. Come as you are. Say what you want. Ask what you feel. Don't hold back. Just lay it all out there in front of the throne. Come and keep on coming. That verb here, draw near, is a word that's not just for a one-off, but a continual coming again and again, no matter how far away you've been, or no matter if you've never been before. You know, if you don't come to the throne of grace, you'll end up at the throne of judgment. And that's your choice. You have the throne of grace where you can find mercy and grace, or you can have the throne of justice where you will get what you deserve. It will be too late to use the priesthood of Jesus. He will not be touched by your suffering after that. That picture really moved me when AI produced it. I just thought, that's it. That massive throne and little old me. And yet I can come there boldly. You know, you see that Elon Musk's son X, I think is his name, this little And he's playing around the White House as if it's his nursery, isn't he? It's just, there's no, he's got no fear, there's no thought that he's in some special place. He tweets President Trump like his grandpa. And just, there's a complete relaxation. No matter how, that he's in the most powerful place on Earth. and this is what we're invited to. So how can weak and needy people like us approach a powerful and perfect God? Well, our answer is clearly approach God boldly because we have a great and gracious high priest who loves to give us grace and mercy. And if I had time this evening, I don't, I could give you verse, paragraph after paragraph of Spurgeon laying hold of this throne of grace in his greatest times of need. This verse, Hebrews 4.16, is dotted all through his sermons and books and sayings. This is where his whole life revolved around. This is what kept him going. when he was down and out. And this is where the apostle points us as well. So let's come. Come for the first time. Come for the second time, or the third time, or the hundredth time, or the umpteenth time. You can never come enough to this throne in your time of need and find exactly what you need. So let's encourage one another. Yes, let's hold fast our confession, but let's also come to the throne of grace. Let's pray. We are weak and needy, but you feel our weakness and our need, and you call us to bring it to you so that you can deal graciously and mercifully with us. And especially, O Lord, if we need salvation, help us to come boldly, knowing that You can supply even that greatest of needs in Jesus' name.