Full Transcript

Why is it that we have no difficulty placing singers, actors, sports figures on a pedestal to be revered and held in high esteem when all that has been given to them comes from God? There’s only one who is perfect and deserves that honor, and that is part of today’s topic. Welcome to Share the Word. Hebrews chapter 5. The Perfect High Priest. If you happen to be visiting southern France anytime soon and want to see something really creepy, visit the Basilica Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.

I knew all those years of studying French in junior high would pay off someday. To many, this is a very important and holy site. In fact, the third most holy tomb in Christendom according to the Roman Catholic religion. The basilica itself is not that impressive on the outside, but inside, it’s a very ornate medieval Gothic-style chapel with a very impressive altar. But that’s not the draw. Old Catholic churches are all over Europe.

The real reason many make their way to this place is in the cellar. They call it the crypt. Go down there into what amounts to a subterranean cave, and you will see encased in glass a creepy, sorry, but I can’t think of a more fitting word, golden reliquary in the shape of a woman’s upper torso, neck, and hair. It’s being held high by two golden-winged angels, and where the head would be on a normal statue sits a dark bony skull. A human skull, they claim, was the actual head of Mary Magdalene. You kind of have to see this to even form a mental picture of it.

Google it. It’s like something straight out of a movie like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Why am I bringing this up in relation to Hebrews chapter five? Tony and I were just talking the other day about the strange need we humans have to believe there are or have been special people who are so holy, much closer to God than the rest of us mortals. The Roman Catholic Church has intentionally fostered that notion with their elevation of some too-so-called sainthood, like Mary Magdalene, for example. According to the Gospels, she knew Jesus personally and was a devoted follower of his.

She stood by his cross with John and Jesus’ mother Mary and was one of the first witnesses of the resurrection. So, I guess by virtue of those experiences, she’s elevated above other early Christians, venerated, in fact. So venerated, devoted Catholics make pilgrimages to see and pray at this spooky shrine in the cellar of that old basilica, to just be in the presence of what the religion claims is her actual skull. It’s not just the Roman Catholic religion that encourages this notion either. That is, that there are rare individuals who are closer to God, unusually in touch with the divine, who we should revere and through whom we too can approach the divine. Pretty much every religion does this.

The Native Americans had their mythical medicine men. African tribes, their shamans. The Buddhists, their Dalai Lama. The Muslims, their Sufi. In America, we’ve had our own examples of people who their followers believe are spiritually connected to God in some higher way and so are revered, like Mother Ann Lee we talked about before, Ellen White. The cultist David Koresh, Jim Jones, many others.

Even some evangelicals fall into this trap, venerating famous pastors or authors or evangelists who gain the aura of being unusually anointed, only to be let down too often to find out in some very disappointing way that even their evangelical saints are just as mortal as the rest of us. In Old Testament times, among the Jews, the person placed on such a pedestal was the high priest of Israel. He actually did have an important role to play as the nation’s spiritual leader, but the role was largely symbolic, illustrative, to stay with a word I’ve been using lately. The first high priest was Moses’ brother Aaron. Moses and Aaron were from the tribe of Levi, and that tribe became the ministers in the nation of Israel.

They were the priests, the worship leaders, the singers, first at the tabernacle, the temporary house of worship built during the wilderness wanderings, and later in the great temples constructed in Jerusalem. By the way, descendants of that special tribe of ministers remain today. Interestingly, Jewish people with a last name of Levin or Siegel or Cohen or Klos are very likely descended from the ancient tribe of Levi. The high priest in Israel needed to not only be a Levite, but a Levite directly descended from Aaron. And even the high priest we read about in the gospel accounts, who were the antagonists in the arrest and trials of Jesus, and the persecutors of the early church, men like Caiaphas and Annas, were direct descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron, Israel’s first high priest.

Which kind of proves the point that being in a high religious office has nothing to do with being holier than other people or closer to God in some mystical way. But the high priest in the Old Testament Jewish religion did have a special role to play. He represented God to the people and the people to God. He was the principal spiritual mediator with the unapproachable God Most High. He and only he could meet God in the Holy of Holies on a special day called the Day of Atonement and offer up a blood sacrifice for the people’s sins. Today, the Jews call it Yom Kippur.

But since there is no longer any Jewish temple in Jerusalem and so no functioning priesthood, that annual sacrifice and ritual no longer happen. But when the epistle to the Hebrews was written, the Day of Atonement was still being observed. The last high priest in Jerusalem was named Phanias ben Samuel. In the last few years before the destruction of Jerusalem, he would have carried that blood sacrifice into the Holy of Holies. Exactly how this special sacrifice was to be offered to God, down to the exact clothing the high priest had to wear that day, the specific animals that could be used, and so on, is all prescribed in Leviticus chapter 16. The truth is, however, the value of all that had ended earlier, the day Jesus died on Calvary.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that on that afternoon, when Jesus called out from his cross, It is finished, the thick veil that enclosed the 30-foot by 30-foot chamber called the Holy of Holies inside Jerusalem’s temple was supernaturally torn completely in two. It was torn from top to the bottom by the hand of God Himself. That place where the Ark of the Covenant had been housed and where only the high priest of Israel could enter on the Day of Atonement was then opened wide by God Himself. Why? Because the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lamb of God for mankind’s sin rendered it all obsolete. All the sacrifices offered there by high priest after high priest over the centuries had only been illustrative of what Jesus, the Messiah and Savior, would finally do once for all.

On Calvary, within view of that temple, Jesus offered up Himself as the final perfect offering for our sin. The Jews continued empty rituals in that temple for a couple more decades, but in 70 A.D. even that stopped when Jerusalem was destroyed, as Jesus had predicted it would be in His Olivet discourse. The Epistle to the Hebrews, penned right around that time, was to convince the Jewish people that what God was doing now was far, far better than what they had known in the past, far better than all the things they, their religion had revered, far better than the prophets of old, or the angels, or the nation’s founder Moses, and far better than their high priests offering animal sacrifices in a temple built with human hands. This case is made by our author beginning here in chapter 4, starting at verse 14 and continuing into chapter 5, where I’ll read a few more verses. Listen carefully.

Therefore, since we have such a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet who did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Then into chapter five, every high priest is a man chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers sacrifices for their sins. And he is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses.

That is why he must offer sacrifices for his own sins first and then for theirs. And no one can become a high priest simply because he wants to be. He must be called by God for this work, just as Aaron was. That is why Christ did not honor himself by assuming he could become a high priest. He was chosen by God. Now, while Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pled with loud cries and tears to the one who could rescue him from death.

And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a high priest, a perfect high priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. I think that line about Jesus learning obedience to God through the things he experienced while he was on the earth, that’s very interesting to me. Christians believe Jesus, before he came into our world, was God the Son, part of the eternal Godhead or Trinity, as we call it. What could he possibly have to learn?

Well, sort of like the TV show Undercover Boss, when the guy who owns a company goes undercover for a few weeks to work as a pizza delivery guy for Domino’s or work as a garbage man collecting trash for Waste Management. He learns a lot by experience. He understands much better than what his employees have to deal with. He always gains empathy from that experience. That’s exactly what this means about Jesus. Although our Creator, he became one of us for a time to learn through experience what it’s like to be one of us, and that’s part of what qualifies him to be our perfect high priest.

Israel had some pretty good high priests over the centuries, like Aaron and Phinehas and Zadok we read about in the Old Testament, and some pretty bad ones like Caiaphas and Annas and Phanias ben Samuel in the first century. But only one could be a perfect high priest. The writer of Hebrews is arguing that one is Jesus Christ. Imagine now a conversation at the time this letter was written between a Jew who had accepted Jesus as their Messiah, like the author has, and a friend or acquaintance of his who was unconvinced yet and still clinging to the religion of his ancestors. I’m pretty sure one of the key points of debate would have been about this very issue. The traditional Jew would probably argue, We have a temple in Jerusalem and the rituals of animal sacrifice and a high priest who represents us before Hashem—that’s what they call God.

He offers up sacrifices and offerings to atone for our sins. You Christians have left all that. You have none of those things anymore. This section I just read would be how an early Christian Jew could respond to that. The writer makes several great points. First, he could say, Wait a minute, we Christians do have a high priest, and that is Jesus.

He’s far superior to whatever fallible man happens to hold the office in Jerusalem at the time because he’s divine. He’s the Son of God. Realize he wasn’t appointed a high priest by a council of men or by the Roman government. He was chosen by God the Father. But the traditional Jew would probably shoot back something like, No, no, the high priest has to be a man like us so he can understand our failures, be empathetic to us, truly intercede for us. True, the author could say.

That’s why Jesus, although divine, left heaven to come into our world. He actually became a man for a time, a flesh-and-blood man, so he could experience what we experience. When he was here, he went through all the human things we do, including temptations and serious suffering, and he learned what it was like to be a human in this world. Try to wrap your mind around that. God the Son came into our world to become like us, just so he, as both God and man, could become our perfect mediator and eternal high priest. Hmm.

Interesting. Here’s something else to consider, the author could continue. Israel’s high priests, even the best of them, like Moses’ brother Aaron, obviously would not be available to millions of people. Although they held a special office, they were just men with human limitations. In fact, even the best of them have been sinful men like you and me. That’s why, before they could offer sacrifices for the people’s sins, they had to first offer sacrifices for their own sins.

But Jesus is the divine Son of God. Although he was tempted, he never sinned. That too is what qualifies him to be our perfect high priest. Wait a sec. I thought Jesus died and you Christians claim rose again and returned to heaven. How could he keep acting as our high priest then?

How could he keep offering sacrifices for our sins so that we can stay right with Hashem? Great question. The answer is, he doesn’t need to. True, Israel’s high priest had to keep offering different kinds of sacrifices day after day, week after week, and even the annual Day of Atonement, they could only offer a sacrifice to cover people’s sins for one year. So that had to be repeated year after year after year. But Jesus, who was the divine Son of God, became the ultimate sacrifice for sin.

That’s why his sacrifice is powerful enough and valuable enough to atone for all of our sins forever. We don’t need a priest to keep offering the blood of sheep and goats. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has the power to cleanse us from all sin. He offers us, if you will accept him as your Messiah and Savior, not temporary forgiveness, but eternal salvation. I see what you’re saying. And you really believe that Jesus was the divine Son of Hashem?

I do. He fulfilled so many prophecies assigned to the Messiah by our prophets. He performed miraculous signs only the power of God could do. Those authenticated him. And most remarkably, I believe in him because he said he would lay his life down on the cross, and he did. And he said he would rise again in three days, and he did.

Lots of people witnessed these things. Interesting. This deserves some more thought on my end. Do you want to know one more thing? Maybe the best thing about being a Christian. Sure, tell me.

Those of us who have accepted Jesus as our Messiah and Savior, we now have access to God through him anytime we need it. We don’t need priests anymore. We can approach God in prayer through Jesus. We can confess and receive forgiveness of our sins through Jesus. He is our personal high priest, anytime we need his help. Conversations like that, I bet, were going on all over the Roman world at the time the book of Hebrews was written.

And if the early Christians who got into them were anything like the author of Hebrews, you know they would end such conversations with, It’s more than interesting, friend, sergeant. If what I’m sharing with you is ringing true, you sense something inside saying, You should listen to this. You should respond to this. That’s God’s very voice, so don’t harden your heart. Today, if you hear God’s voice, accept Jesus as your Messiah too. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow.

Maybe you have a Jewish friend or family member. I do through marriage. This all raises a real question that should cause Jewish people to think, because they have no temple today. They have no priest today descended from Aaron to offer up sacrifices for their sins. That stuff’s all gone now. So how will they have their sins forgiven?

It’s not through the sacrifice of Jesus like the rest of us. How is it going to happen? In the next couple chapters, we’re going to learn a lot more about Jesus’ role as our high priest, and about a mysterious figure mentioned in passing here named Melchizedek, who is going to get a spotlight shown on him. The author is going to argue that Jesus’ high priesthood is much more like this guy Melchizedek, who appears way back in the book of Genesis before there ever even was a nation of Israel, than to Aaron’s or those who followed him in the Jewish office of high priest. But before we leave this chapter, let me point out something which may now have become obvious to you, just in case it hasn’t. And it is this.

Because of who Jesus is and what he has done, not only don’t we need the intercession of priests in Jerusalem’s temple offering up sacrifices for sins every day, every week, or on special days like the Day of Atonement, we don’t need priests, period, or saints, or supposed skulls of dead people who lived long ago to help us connect with God. We don’t need other mediators. God has appointed Jesus to be the one powerful, available, qualified, perfect, eternal high priest. He ever lives, the Scripture says, to make intercession for us. That is what I was raising at the outset. Let go of the wrong idea too many people hold on to that there are some extra holy people, people in some kind of extraordinary mystical relationship with God beyond your reach, and we need these special people to somehow aid us in getting God’s attention and favor and blessing.

Priests, saints, gurus, healers, whatever your religion calls them. I know some who will listen to this who’ve been taught that. But friends, we don’t need them. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy chapter 2, there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for us all. God appointed Jesus to this unique role. He became a man like us so he could become not only our Savior, but our empathetic mediator, advocate, and intercessor, our holy high priest.

And he is uniquely, divinely capable for that role. How could God illustrate that any more clearly than to tear apart the veil between himself and us as he did the day Jesus died? He opened wide the entrance to the Holy of Holies, symbolic of his very presence. Then, to be sure we don’t miss the point, he used the Romans to tear down the temple itself completely in 70 A.D. Because we don’t need temples and priests any longer. We don’t need anything beyond Jesus Christ, the perfect High Priest, to connect us to God.

As this section in Hebrews invites us, urges us even, so then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it. Thanks for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thank you, Paul. This is such a critical and important chapter.

My question to all of you is: have you come to understand and accept Jesus as High Priest? If you’re still focused more on religious traditions like confessing your sins to someone behind a curtain or praying to Mary, the saints, and the apostles as a way to God, along with a myriad of other traditions, I challenge you to get back into the Bible, study the Word, and stop living on milk and move to solid food. If you have any questions, please email us at info at sharetheword dot org.