The Round Church
at St Andrew the Great
Cambridge
A Sermon Preached
on Sunday 2nd February 2003
by Mark Ashton
In her excellent little guide to
studying the letter to Hebrews, Carrie Sandom suggests that this is a summary
verse for the whole letter: ‘Therefore, since we have a great high
priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold
firmly to the faith we profess’ (4:14).
Certainly this paragraph with which chapter
4 ends reveals what I have called ‘The Logic of Hebrews’.
1)
The Logic of Hebrews 4:14-16
‘Therefore, since we have a great high
priest who has gone through the heavens, 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 sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in
every way just as we are − yet was without sin. Let us then approach the
throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to
help us in our time of need’ (4:14-16).
The logic of the letter can be set out
like this:
Perseverance requires confidence -
If I’m going to go on persevering at
something, to go on doing it even though it’s getting difficult and I am
getting tired, I must be confident that there is some point in carrying on;
that there is a worthwhile goal, or at least that the end is in sight for me.
With that confidence we can persevere. A week ago, at home, I tried to adapt a
piece of furniture to fit under something else. It involved cutting through a
tubular metal frame with a hacksaw. It’s the sort of task I abhor: I’m very bad
at that sort of thing; I rapidly lose patience and usually give up in despair
and tell my wife her hopes cannot be fulfilled. Well, despite a very blunt
hacksaw and my incompetence at DIY, I persevered through about 25 minutes of
cacophonous sawing, because I could see I was getting somewhere. I would
eventually achieve my objective, and I did. It wasn’t pretty and it didn’t
quite fit. But I didn’t give up because I had confidence.
But (the second stage of the logic):
Confidence requires knowledge …
As I began to use the hacksaw I didn’t
have any confidence at all. It was only as I saw that the hacksaw was
cutting the metal at an acceptable rate, that that knowledge gave me the
confidence to persevere. I knew I was making progress: I was going to get there
eventually. And so knowledge gives us confidence to persevere.
Look for a moment at the structure of
this paragraph. It begins with a fact about Jesus: ‘… we have a great high priest
who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,’ (v. 14a).
Then, there is an exhortation to persevere: ‘… let us hold firmly to the
faith we profess’ (v. 14b). Then there is more information about Jesus:
‘For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are − yet
was without sin’ (v. 15). This is followed by another exhortation: ‘Let
us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need’ (v. 16). This is
then followed by 10 more verses of information about Jesus as a High Priest. In
fact, the whole letter follows more or less that pattern – encouragements to
persevere as Christians based on confidence in our knowledge of Jesus. The
writer knew that if you and I are going to keep going as Christians, to hold on
to Jesus, we need to know more and more about Him. That’s his logic:
Perseverance requires confidence – Confidence requires knowledge … of
Jesus.
That’s the whole letter to the Hebrews
in its logic, set out before you. And that’s why I think chapter 4 verse 14 is
a very good centre verse: ‘Therefore, since we have a great high
priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold
firmly to the faith we profess.’
Florence Chadwick was the first woman
to swim the English Channel in both directions. In 1952 she attempted another
long-distance swim, from Catalina island to the mainland of California. It was
a chilly, foggy day. She swam for 15 hours and gave up − only to discover
that she’d been just half a mile from the shore. She had not been able to see
it through the fog. She said later, “If I could have seen the shore, I would
have made it.” Two months later, on a
clear day, she did. If she had known where she was the first time, she would
not have given up.
Well, the letter to the Hebrews
concentrates on giving us knowledge about Jesus − who He is; what He has
done for us; where we stand with Him (where, as it were, we’ve got to) −
so that we may have the confidence to keep going as Christians, to persevere.
The world tells us today that when we are distressed, when we come under
pressure, we need to give ourselves more attention, to take our own needs more
seriously: “Give yourself a break. Have a little time to yourself.” That sort
of thing is the world’s advice to us. The Bible tells us to forget about
ourselves and to focus on Jesus. And it does all it can to inform us about
Jesus in order to help us focus on Him.
Now, the greater and the more complicated,
the more sophisticated a topic, the harder it is to teach it simply. You have
heard preachers like me struggling to illustrate spiritual truth adequately –
struggling and failing (even in this sermon. I have no doubt at all – it’s
inevitable, I guess – as my puny mind tries to grapple with matters of infinite
magnitude). Well, one way the writer to the Hebrews teaches us about the
enormous subject of who Jesus is, is by this picture of the High Priest. If we
find it a bit obscure, perhaps that should not be entirely surprising: it will
be partly because of the greatness of the subject matter and the limitations of
our own understanding. Nevertheless, it will be a vivid and effective
illustration – and get ready for it, because it’s going to dominate the next
five chapters of Hebrews. That’s why I’m not going to deal with it in great
detail today.
2)
The Great High Priest 5:1−10
This title was introduced back in
chapter 2: ‘For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in
order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to
God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he
himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being
tempted’ (2:17, 18). The title reappears, as we have seen, in verses 14
and 15 of chapter 4. But it is at the beginning of chapter 5 that we begin this
detailed discussion of it: a discussion that’s going to last, with one
interlude, through into chapter 10. So all I am going to do now is to skim over
three sub-points. There is still much to come on the High Priest. The writer
says to us: ‘We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you
are slow to learn’ [he said it, not me!] (5:11). So we are going
to spend a good deal of time on the High Priest, but let’s just take three
points today.
Notice verse 1 of chapter 5: ‘Every
high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in
matters related to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.’
(a) ‘… from among men …’ The
High Priest represented men to God; but he was also able to sympathise with
men: ‘He
is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since
he himself is subject to weakness’ (5:2). Jesus, too, knew the pain of
temptation: ‘Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help
those who are being tempted’ (2:18); ‘For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been
tempted in every way just as we are −yet was without sin’ (4:15).
Now, in physical pain there is a point at which the sufferer loses
consciousness, and knows no more pain. I’m glad to say I’ve never reached that
point. I did pass out once when I had a wisdom tooth pulled out, but I think
that was just the shock of seeing the dentist holding it up in front of me for
my inspection. With its roots it looked about six inches long at that point.
The last thing I remember him saying was, “Don’t pass out!”; whereupon I
promptly did.
But there will be some present who have
lost consciousness under physical pain. Imagine how someone would suffer if
they did not lose consciousness when they reached that point. Well, in the
suffering of temptation Jesus never gave in. So He must have experienced the
anguish of temptation to an unimaginable degree. But, for you and for me, there
is not just the suffering of being tempted, but also the suffering that results
from falling to temptation: the guilt, the shame, the separation from God, the
backlash of sin in your and my life. How can we say that Jesus suffers from
temptation like us − if He was without sin and never knew the entailment
of sin, its awful consequences, spiritual and psychological?
Well, of course, He did actually have
that experience too: when He died on the cross – all the guilt, all the shame,
all the alienation He too passed through. Not for His sins, but for ours, when
He was made sin for us. Jesus knew the pain of resisting temptation, and
He knew the pain of falling to temptation, even though He Himself never fell.
The reality of His identity with us is brought out further in verses 7 and 8 of
chapter 5: ‘During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and
petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death,
and he was heard because of his reverent submission [or His Godly fear]’
(v. 7). Jesus’ experience of prayer was
real: it wasn’t a sham put on for our sake. He needed God’s strength in the
Garden of Gethsemane in order to face the cross. ‘Although he was a son, he
learned obedience from what he suffered …’ (v. 8). Not that He hadn’t
been obedient before, but He experienced what it was to obey God by passing
through suffering. To obey God is to suffer. That is true for us, and it was
true for Him. And it was essential for the completion of what He came to do: ‘…
and once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who
obey him’ (v. 9). Not that He had been imperfect before, but only by
incarnation and death and suffering could He be Saviour. Imagine that Maradona,
the famous Argentine footballer, or Pele, the Brazilian, had never actually
kicked a football in their whole lives. Say they had been born somewhere where
they don’t really play football, like America, even though all their innate
abilities were just the same, Pele and Maradona would not have been great
footballers. They had to get on a football field for that. For Jesus to be
Saviour He had to be obedient, to suffer and to die on a cross. That was what
it was to save. Without that, no Saviour, no salvation.
We have rather strayed from our point.
But now I want to deal with the other two little points there.
(b) The High Priest was also appointed
by God – as it says in chapter 5 verse 1: ‘… is appointed to represent
them in matters related to God …’ Now look at verses 4-6: ‘No-one
takes this honour upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So
Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But
God said to him, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.” And he says
in another place, “You are a priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek.” ’
The same God who acclaimed Jesus as His Son in Psalm 2:7 (that’s what is quoted
there in verse 5) has also acclaimed Him as perpetual High Priest in Psalm 110
verse 4 (quoted in verse 6). You can’t award yourself a knighthood or the
O.B.E., and no man could appoint himself (or anyone else, for that matter) High
Priest. It had to be done by God. What it means to be a priest for ever in the
order of Melchizedek, we will leave for chapter 7 to explain to us.
(c) To deal with sin. The High
Priest role was that of reconciliation, of atonement: ‘… to offer gifts and sacrifices
for sins’ (5:1b); and here there was a sharp contrast between a normal
high priest, ‘This is why he [the normal high priest] has to offer sacrifices for his
own sins, as well as for the sins of the people’ (v. 3), and the High
Priesthood of Jesus Christ: ‘… and once made perfect, he became the
source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to
be high priest in the order of Melchizedek’ (vv. 9, 10). Because He was
the sinless High Priest (completely unlike all others) who gave His own life as
a sacrifice for the sins of others, so with Jesus’ High Priesthood, all other
priesthoods came to an end, all other sacrifices for sin came to an end. All
human religion was dispensed with for ever at that point.
But the next five chapters will deal
with all of that in much greater detail (and much better than I’m able to). So
we’re going to return to what I think is one of the loveliest invitations in
all the Bible: ‘Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we
may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need’ (4:
16). What an invitation to the non-Christian! If you’ve not yet entered into
the experience I am talking about this morning, What an invitation! In Jesus,
God is accessible to you, He is available – you can approach, not to be burned
up by the fire of His holy judgment, but to receive mercy and to find grace.
It’s there for you.
3)
Receiving Mercy and Finding Grace 4:16
‘Let us then approach the throne of
grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us
in our time of need’ (4: 16).
I don’t think that approaching/drawing
near to the throne of grace with confidence is primarily a reference to prayer,
as though this is just something we are to do from time to time when we
remember to pray. I think rather it is to live in the presence of God. This
week, if I stop during the day for a moment – do I have to do anything special
to experience the presence of God? No! I don’t have to feel holy; I don’t have
to close my eyes; I don’t have to adopt a mental attitude of prayer. If I have
put my trust in Jesus Christ, if you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, you and
I are right there and then before that throne where grace is found and mercy
received. ‘Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence …’ not just occasionally. It’s where the
Christian life is lived − in the presence of the living God, where mercy
and grace flow out to you and me, moment by moment in our lives. Our time of
need (end of the verse) is now, and always. I need grace and mercy every moment
of every day of my life, and Jesus has brought me to where they are to be had
− even for me, even for Mark Ashton. Even for you.
Remember Florence Chadwick saying, “If
I could have seen the shore I would have made it.” Hebrews is saying to us:
look at Jesus – who He is; the great High Priest, who has died (He’s paid the
price) for your sins; so that God has dealt with them for ever; so that you and
I can have an entirely clear conscience before God. We can approach that throne
with absolute confidence, and stand up before God, because Jesus has placed us
there, with our heads up. We have seen
Him if we are believers this morning. We have
seen Him, and so we can make it. (“If I could have seen the shore, I would have
made it” − Florence Chadwick).
Imagine the Atlantic Ocean from the point of view of a
European in the 15th Century. They did not know that America lay on
the other side of that vast stretch of water. You can see on that little map
the route that Columbus sailed in 1492. By the 16th Century,
Europeans knew America was there. But imagine, earlier in the 15th
Century, before Columbus, sailing to within a few hundred miles of the American
coastline – sailing all that way, terrified that you were going to fall over
the edge of the world, terrified of what might happen to you; your water
getting lower and lower and your supplies almost gone and then turning round
and going back again to your starting point in Europe. And then imagine a few
years later how you’d feel after 1492 … “If only we’d known … if only
we’d known what a huge, hospitable continent was waiting for us just there! But
we didn’t know. And we turned back. We
gave up. If only we’d known.”
It will be a very great tragedy if when you and I get
to heaven (if we’re Christians) and we find ourselves saying: “If only I had
realised how safe I was in the hands of Jesus. If only I had realised what a
great Saviour He is: who He is, what He’s done, how He saved me, I would have
pushed on more strongly in the Christian life. I would have kept heaven before
me every day, and lived for it – not for the things of this earth: the family
concerns, the career concerns, the money concerns, the things that press on you
and me all the time”. If only we’d known, we would have pressed on; we would
have persevered.
We need to know. In order to persevere, we need to
have confidence; and in order to have confidence we need to know. And so the writer to the Hebrews tells us so
much about Jesus: the whole Bible does. I need to hear a sermon every week
about Jesus, in order to go on believing until next Sunday. Is that true for
you? It’s true for me. You may think vicars fly on autopilot, but I need to
hear about Jesus every day of my life. I need Sundays. I need to hear Steve
preach at 11.30 and Simon preaching tonight, and what they will tell me about
Jesus – to keep me believing. So that I can push on in confidence. Because of
how great a Saviour I have, I need my eyes turned to Him all the time. ‘Let
us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need’ (4: 16).
What a verse! Will you live this week in the strength
of it? And if what I am saying now is a complete puzzle to you, drop everything
and come to Arena tomorrow night, and start to hear a little bit more about
Jesus so that you, too, can put your faith in Him. And so that you can realise
what lies beyond what we can see in this universe in which you and I live.
I’d love you to meet Jesus and discover for yourself
why the writer of this letter and all Christian believers are so crazy about
Him.