A Superior Mediator

Moses did not lead the people of Israel into the promised rest, in fact, he was forbidden to enter the land. Joshua led them into their physical rest, but not into the promised spiritual rest (see 4:8). But what about Aaron, the first high priest? Is it possible that the Aaronic priesthood, with all of its sacrifices and ceremonies, can bring a troubled soul into rest?

The Hebrew Christians who received this letter were sorely tempted to return to the religion of their fathers. After all, any Jew could travel to Jerusalem and see the temple and the priests ministering at the altar. Here was something real, visible, concrete.

When a person goes through persecution, as these Hebrews were, it is much easier to walk by sight than faith. Some of us have doubted the Lord under much less provocation than these people were enduring.

The central theme of Hebrews is the priesthood of Jesus Christ, what He is now doing in heaven on behalf of His people. Is the high priestly ministry of Christ superior to that of Aaron and his successors? Yes, it is; and the writer proves his assertion by presenting four arguments:

1. Jesus Christ has a greater Designation

Hebrews 4:14–16 (KJV 1900)

14 Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.

15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

"Seeing then that we have a GREAT High Priest.

(4:14, emphasis mine). Aaron was a "high priest," but Jesus Christ is the GREAT High Priest. No Old Testament priest could assume that title. But in what does our Lord's greatness consist?

To begin with, Jesus Christ is both God and man.

He is "Jesus, the Son of God." The name “Jesus means "Savior" and identifies His humanity and His ministry on earth. "Son of God" affirms His deity and He is God. In His unique person, Jesus Christ unites deity and humanity, so He can bring people to God and all that God has for them.

Not only in His person, but also in His position Jesus Christ is great. Aaron and his successors ministered in the tabernacle and temple precincts, once a year entering the holy of holies. But Jesus Christ has "passed through the heavens" (4:14, literal translation). When He ascended to the Father, Jesus Christ passed through the atmospheric heavens and the planetary heavens into the third heaven where God dwells (2 Cor. 12:2). How much better is it to have a High Priest who ministers in a heavenly tabernacle than in an earthly one!

But there is another aspect to Christ's position: He is in heaven and enthroned. His throne is "the throne of grace" (Heb. 4:16). The mercy seat on the ark of the covenant was God's throne in Israel (Ex. 25:17-22), but it could never be called "a throne of grace." Grace does not veil itself from the people.

Grace does not hide itself in a tent.

Furthermore, ordinary people were not permitted to enter the holy precincts of the Tabernacle and the temple, and the priests got only as far as the veil.

The high priest alone went beyond the veil, and only on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), every believer in Christ is invited, and even encouraged, to "come boldly unto the throne of grace.” What a great throne it is, because our Great High Priest is ministering there.

Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, is in heaven and He is enthroned. Something else makes Him great:

He is ministering mercy and grace to those who come for help. Mercy means that God does not give us what we do deserve; grace means that He gives us what we do not deserve. No Old Testament high priest could minister mercy and grace in quite the same way.

When an Israelite was tempted, he could not quickly run to the high priest for help and certainly could not enter the holy of holies for God's help. But as believers in Jesus Christ, we can run to our High Priest at any time, in any circumstance, and find the help that we need.

Now, two important conclusions can be drawn because of the superiority of Jesus Christ, the Great High Priest over that of Aaron. First, there is no need to give up our profession just because we are going through testing and trial (Heb. 4:14). The word translated as "profession" means confession.

." These Hebrew Christians were tempted to give up their confession of faith in Christ and their confidence in Him (see 3:6,

14). It was not a matter of giving up their salvation since salvation through Christ is eternal (5:9). It was a matter of their public confession of faith. Returning to the Old Testament system, they would be telling everyone they had no faith in Christ (see Gal. 2:11-21). This kind of unbelief would only bring reproach to Christ's name.

After all, the great purpose of salvation is the glory of God (see Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). It was the glory of God that so concerned Moses when Israel broke God's Law and made the golden calf (Ex. 32). God offered to destroy Greater than Aaron the High Priest / 49

the nation and to begin a new nation from Moses, but Moses refused the offer. Instead, Moses interceded for Israel based on God's glory and promise; God spared the people, even though He disciplined them for their sin (Ex. 32:11-13).

The second conclusion is this: there is no need to go back because we can come boldly into the presence of God and get the help we need (Heb. 4:16). No trial is too great, no temptation is too strong, but that Jesus Christ can give us the mercy and grace that we need, when we need it. "But He is so far away!" we may argue. "And He is the perfect Son of God! What can He know about the problems of weak sinners like us?" But that is a part of His greatness! When He was ministering on earth in a human body, He experienced all that we experience and even more. After all, a sinless person would feel temptations and trials more excellently than you and I could ever feel them.

Christ was tempted, yet He did not sin, and He can help us when we are tempted. If we fail to hold fast our confession, we are not proving that Jesus Christ has failed. We only tell the world that we failed to draw on His grace and mercy when it was freely available to us.

2. Jesus Christ has a greater Position (5:1, 4-6)

I had to show my ordination certificate and prove that I was ministering at the church.

One day I received a frantic phone call from one of our members. Some Christian friends were being married the next day by a relative from Michigan, and they discovered he was not authorized to perform the ceremony!

Could I help them? The visiting pastor could read the ceremony as well as I could, and he knew the couple better than I did, but he lacked the authority to minister.

No man could appoint himself as a priest, not a high priest.

King Saul invaded the priesthood and lost his kingdom (1 Sam. 13). Korah and his fellow rebels tried to make themselves priests, and God judged them (Num. 16).

When King Uzziah tried to enter the temple and burn incense, God smote him with leprosy (2 Chron. 26:16-21).

God chose Aaron to be the high priest, and he was duly ordained and installed in office (Ex. 28).

He was chosen from men to minister for men. His main task was at the altar: to offer the sacrifices God had appointed (see Heb. 8:3-4; 9:14). Unless the sacrifices were offered in the right place by the right person, they were not accepted by God.

The very existence of a priesthood and a system of sacrifices proved that man is estranged from God. It was an act of grace on God's part that He instituted the whole Levitical system. Today, that system is fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus Christ. He is both the sacrifice and the High Priest who ministers to God's people based on His once-for-all offering on the cross.

The subject of ordination stated in Hebrews 5:1 is further developed in 5:5-6. Jesus Christ did not appoint Himself as High Priest. He was appointed by God the Father. The quotation in Hebrews 5:5 is from Psalm 2:7. This psalm was already quoted in Hebrews

1:5, to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But the emphasis in Hebrews 5:5 is on the priesthood of Jesus Christ, not on His deity. What significance, then, does this quotation have for the argument?

The answer to that question is in Acts 13:33-34, Greater than Aaron the High Priest / 51

where the Apostle Paul quoted Psalm 2:7 and explained what it means. The phrase "today have I begotten Thee" does not refer to the birth of Christ at Bethlehem but to His resurrection from the dead.

The Son of God was "begotten" into a glorious new life in His resurrection! He ascended to heaven in a glorified body to become our High Priest at the throne of grace. When Aaron was ordained to the priesthood, he offered the sacrifices of animals. But Jesus Christ, to become our High Priest, offered the sacrifice of himself and then arose from the dead!

But God the Father not only said, "Thou art My Son" in Psalm 2:7; He also said, "Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 5:6, quoted from Ps. 110:4). This psalm was also quoted earlier in Hebrews (1:13) to affirm Jesus Christ's final victory over all His enemies. When Aaron was ordained, God did not speak directly to him and declare his priesthood. But the Father did make this special declaration concerning His Son.

Two factors make Christ's priesthood unique and, therefore His ordination greater. First, He is a High Priest forever. No Old Testament priest ministered forever, because each priest died and relinquished the office to his successor. The word "forever" is an important one in this epistle. At least six times the writer affirms that Christ's high priesthood is forever (5:6;

6:20; 7:17, 21, 24, 28). And, since He is a Priest forever, He gives His people salvation forever (7:23-28).

The second factor that makes Christ's ordination unique is that He belongs to a different order from the Old Testament priests. They belonged to the order of Aaron; He belonged to the order of Melchizedek. This is a key concept in Hebrews, so we must take time to examine and understand it.

Melchizedek is mentioned in only two places in the entire Old Testament, Genesis 14:17-24, and Psalm 110:4

Psalm 110:4 KJV 1900

4 The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever After the order of Melchizedek.

His name means "King of Righteousness," and he was also "King of Salem (peace]." But the fascinating thing about Melchizedek is that he was both a priest and a king! King Uzziah wanted to be both a priest and a king, and God judged him. Only in Jesus Christ and in pre-law Melchizedek were these two offices combined. Jesus Christ is a High Priest on a throne!

Jesus Christ can be “a priest forever” because He belongs to the "order of Melchizedek." Regarding the Old Testament record, Melchizedek did not die (see Heb. 7:1-3).

Of course, he died at some time because he was a real man, but the record is not given to us. So Melchizedek becomes a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, a priest forever.

But Melchizedek also pictures our Lord as a heavenly High Priest. Jesus Christ could never have served as a priest when He was on earth because He did not belong to the tribe of Levi. Jesus was born of the seed of David, the tribe of Judah. He became the sacrifice on earth that He might become the High Priest in heaven. All of these truths will be developed in Hebrews 7-10, but they are introduced here.

3. Jesus Christ reveals a greater Compassion (Hebrews 5:2, 7-8

Hebrews 5:7–8 KJV 1900

7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; 8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;

Every Old Testament high priest had to minister to people who were "ignorant, and . . . out of the way (wayward|" (5.2). God made no provision but judgment for high-handed sins of rebellion (see Ex. 21:12-

14; Num. 15:27-31). But He did make provision when people sinned through ignorance or weakness. An Old Testament priest could identify with the sinners, since he himself was a sinner. In fact, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest had to offer a sacrifice for himself Greater than Aaron the High Priest / 53

before he could offer one for the nation! (Lev. 16; Heb. 9:7)

You would think one sinner would have compassion for another sinner, but this is not always true. Sin makes a person selfish. Sin can blind us to the hurts of others. Sin can harden our hearts and make us judgmental instead of sympathetic. Remember how heartbroken Hannah, who was praying for a son, was accused by high priest Eli of being drunk? (I Sam. 1:9-18) And when King David was confronted with a story of a rich man's sin, he had no sympathy for him, even though David himself was a worse sinner (2 Sam 12).

No, the spiritually minded person with a clean heart sympathizes with a sinner and seeks to help him (see Gal. 6:1). Because we are so sinful, we have a hard time helping other sinners. Still, because Jesus is perfect, He can meet our needs after sin. I John 1:9

Our Lord was prepared for His high priestly ministry during His days of ministry on earth (Heb. 5:7-8).

The phrase "in the days of His flesh" means "in the days when He was on earth in a human body." From birth to death, our Lord experienced the sinless infirmities of human nature. He knew what it was to grow and mature (Luke 2:52). He experienced hunger, thirst, and weariness (John 4:6-8, 31). He also faced temptations to sin (Matt. 4:1-11) and persecutions from the hands of sinful men

How could the Son of God "learn obedience"? In the same way any son must learn obedience: by the experiences oflife. We must remember that our Lord, in His earthly walk, lived by faith in the Father's will. As God, He needed to learn nothing. But as the Son of God come in human flesh, He had to experience that which His people would experience, so that He might be able to minister as their High Priest. He did not 54 / Be Confident

need to learn how to obey, because it would be impossible for God to be disobedient. Rather, as the God-Man in human flesh, He had to learn what was involved in obedience. In this way, He identified with us.

This preparation involved the experience of death.

The Hebrews (5:7) writer focuses on our Lord's experience in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36-46). As He faced the cross, it was not the physical suffering that burdened Jesus, but the fact that He would be made sin and separated from His Father.

Other servants of God have faced death and not expressed such great emotion, but no other servant ever bore the whole world’s sins on his body.

In His Gethsemane prayer, our Lord did not oppose the Father, but prayed, "Not My will, but Thine, be done" (Luke 22:42). He was not praying to be spared from death, but to be saved out of death. He was praying for resurrection from the dead, and God answered that prayer. He had prophesied His own death and had made it clear that He was laying down His life of His own free will. This ties in with the quotation from Psalm 2:7, cited in Hebrews 5:5, that promised His resurrection from the dead.

The writer of Hebrews states that Jesus' prayer "was heard" (5:7), that is, answered by the Father. Since He died on the cross, this could not have been what He was praying about; if the Father had answered, the Son would not have been crucified. He did not pray to be saved from death, but out of death; and God answered His prayer by raising Him from the dead.

No one else ever died the kind of death that Jesus died. He was made sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24). Men have died because of their own sins, but only Jesus died for the sins of a whole world. He experienced the ultimate in suffering and therefore, He can sympathize with His people when they are suffering. The readers of this epistle were going through difficult times, but they had "not yet resisted unto blood" (Heb. 12:4). Their goods had been seized and they had been ridiculed (10:32-34), but they had not been crucified and forsaken by the Father.

No matter what trials we meet, Jesus Christ is able to understand our needs and help us. We need never doubt His ability to sympathize and strengthen. It is also worth noting that sometimes God puts us through difficulties that we might better understand the needs of others, and become able to encourage them (see 2 Cor. 1:8ft.

When Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a young preacher in London, his successful ministry aroused the envy of some of the clergy; and they attacked him with various kinds of slander and gossip. His sermons were called "trashy," and he was called "an actor" and

" pulpit buffoon." Even after his ministry was established, Spurgeon was lied about in the press (including the religious press); and this was bound to discourage him.

After one particularly scurrilous report in the press, Spurgeon fell before the Lord and prayed, "Oh, Lord Jesus, Thou didst make Thyself of no reputation for me. I willingly lay my reputation down for Thy sake." From that time on, Spurgeon had peace in his heart.

He knew that his Great High Priest understood his need and would give him the grace that he needed for each hour.

4. Jesus Christ offered a superior Substitution (Heb. 5:3, 9-10)

This topic has already been touched on, and the writer of Hebrews discusses it in detail in chapters 9 and 10.

Two crucial matters are involved.

The first is that Jesus Christ did not need to offer any sacrifices for Himself. On the annual Day of Atonement, the high priest first had to sacrifice for himself. and then he could offer sacrifices for his nation (Lev. 16). Since Jesus is the sinless Son of God, there was no need for Him to sacrifice for Himself. He was in perfect fellowship with the Father and needed no cleansing.

The second matter is that our Lord's sacrifice was once and for all, whereas the Old Testament sacrifices had to be repeated. Furthermore, those sacrifices could only cover sins and never cleanse them. It required the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God for sin to be cleansed and removed.

Because He is the sinless, eternal Son of God, and because He offered a perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ is the "author of eternal salvation" (Heb. 5:9). No Old Testament priest could offer eternal salvation to anyone, but that is exactly what we have in Jesus Christ.

The phrase "being made perfect does not suggest that Jesus was imperfect! The word means "made complete"; we described it in our study of Hebrews 2:10.

Through His earthly sufferings, Jesus Christ was equipped for His heavenly ministry as our High Priest.

He is able to save, keep, and strengthen His people.

Does the phrase "them that obey Him" (5:9) suggest that, if we do not obey Him, we may lose that eternal salvation? To "obey God" is the same as "to trust God," as "them that obey Him" is a description of those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ. "A great company of the priests were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7).

"But they have not all obeyed the Gospel Rom.

10:16). "Ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth" (1 Peter 1:22). Once we have put our faith in Jesus Christ and thus obeyed His call, we experience His eternal salvation.

It is difficult to resist the four arguments presented in this section. We must conclude with the writer that Jesus Christ the Great High Priest is superior to Aaron. It would be foolish for anyone to return to the inferiorities of the old Law when he could enjoy the superiorities of Jesus Christ. Then, why were these Hebrew believers tempted to go back into legalism?

Because they were not going on to maturity in Christ!

For this reason the writer paused, to exhort them to grow up in the Lord; and that is the theme for our next chapter.