HEBREWS 4:14-5:10 - The Last High Priest

Introduction

We have noted in our study of Hebrews that this book was written a few years before the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. So that would place the writing of Hebrews right around the time of the great Jewish Revolt against Rome, which most historians date from A.D. 66 when Jewish riots erupted in Caesarea in Galilee when some Greek merchants provocatively offered pagan sacrifices on the front steps of the synagogue there. The entire province of Judea had been a powder keg for decades (even during the days of Jesus’ ministry), and this was the spark that lit the final, short fuse. The rioting spread to Jerusalem where it was fueled by anti-Roman sentiment over taxation, racial animosity between Romans and Judeans as well as long-simmering religious tensions between different factions of Judaism.

One of those factions, the Zealots, began maneuvering to wrest control of the High Priesthood from the hands of the Sadducees (the pro-Roman religious liberals—Caiaphas, the high priest that condemned Jesus, was a Sadducee) by breaking the ancient tradition of choosing a priest from particular families (they had abandoned the practice of choosing Levites decades earlier). Instead, the Zealots “cast lots” to determine who should be High Priest. The ancient historian Josephus describes how the man who would turn out to be the last High Priest of Judaism received his office:

...By fortune the lot so fell as to demonstrate their iniquity after the plainest manner, for it fell upon one whose name was Phannias, the son of Samuel... He was a man not only unworthy of the high priesthood, but that did not well know what the high priesthood was, such a mere rustic was he! Yet did they hail this man, without his own consent... as if they were acting a play upon the stage... they also put upon him the sacred garments, and upon every occasion instructed him what he was to do. This horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the other priests, who at a distance saw their law made a jest of, to shed tears, and sorely lament the dissolution of such a sacred dignity. (Josephus. "Book IV §151-158". The Jewish War)

At the time of the writing of the Book of Hebrews, the High Priest of the Old Covenant people of YHWH in Jerusalem was a mere puppet of radical political forces, installed to that office through open fraud and blatant disregard of the laws of God and man. Add to that the outbreak of hostilities between Jew and Roman led to a fever-pitch of nationalistic fervor for Israel as a nation and the Covenant of Moses that defined her.

So you can begin to see, can’t you, how the readers of Hebrews would be pressured in so many ways to go “back” to the Old Covenant of Moses—it was the “patriotic” thing to do; it was the way they identified themselves in defiance of Roman culture; it was their defense of their way of life. The high priest in Jerusalem may be a clueless rube who was being manipulated into serving the will of his political masters, but at least he isn’t a Roman!

Understanding this context helps us see why the author of Hebrews spends so much time teaching on the high priesthood of Christ. (In fact, we will see this theme continue, in one way or another, through at least Chapter 8!) This was a day when the high priest in Jerusalem was completely incapable of performing his office—and yet these Christians were still being tempted to go back to that priesthood! And so we see the exhortations over and over here—do not let go of Christ. Pay closer attention to His work, hold fast to their good confession of Christ.

The author begins to lay out his argument here for why the Old Covenant priesthood (represented by Phannias) could not be trusted (but his readers’ situation is so precarious, their grasp of Christ so tenuous, that he interrupts his own argument in Chapter 6, urgently warning them not to go through with the return to Judaism that they are contemplating). The argument of our passage this morning is summed up in Chapter 4, verse 14:

Hebrews 4:14 (LSB)

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us take hold of our confession.

He points them back to their confession of faith in Christ and says hold on to that confession. Phannias and all he represents of the Old Covenant cannot be trusted. Only Christ’s High Priesthood is worthy of holding on to. Here in our text this morning the author is laying out for his readers the glorious nature of Christ’s role as high priest—demonstrating why He is more worthy of their faith. And so the way we can summarize the point of this passage is to see that the author is exhorting his readers to

Take hold of Christ by your good CONFESSION of the EXCELLENCY of His PRIESTHOOD

Do not look to the things that this world says will “save” you; do not look to your own abilities to enter into a right relationship with God (or for that matter, don’t look to your own abilities to maintain a right relationship with God!) Consider the excellencies of your High Priest Jesus Christ—the last High Priest that anyone will ever need!

The writer of Hebrews defines a high priest’s job in the first verse of Hebrews 5:1

Hebrews 5:1 (LSB)

For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins,

The Old Testament describes how the high priest was to enter the Holy of Holies once a year to offer the blood of a sacrifice in order to atone for the sin of the people—imagine having to depend on someone like Phannias to represent you before YHWH! Imagine having to trust someone like him to plead for your life before the holiness of the Ancient of Days!

In the same way, beloved, you cannot afford to have anyone but Jesus plead for you before the Throne of the Majesty of Heaven. You cannot trust anyone but Christ—

I. Take hold of your COMPASSIONATE High Priest (Heb. 4:15-5:3)

Hebrews 4:14–15 (LSB)

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us take hold of 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 like we are, yet without sin.

The excellencies of your High Priest, Christian, are found in the fact that He is a sympathetic high priest—He can “sympathize” with our weaknesses. Over and against the modern concept of “empathy”, which insists that we must get down into the misery of someone and participate in that misery with them, the biblical concept is one of sympathy. Empathy (which is not found in the Scriptures) is a form of emotional hostage-taking, where your emotions are subordinated to the one in misery. Sympathy, which Christ offers to sinners, on the other hand, is a state where our condition is subordinated to His. Empathy jumps into the quicksand with the victim; sympathy stands on the bank and offers a firm footing for rescue out of the mire.

Here in these verses we are promised that our great High Priest can look at us in our weakness and understand us because

He UNDERSTANDS our TEMPTATIONS far better than we do (4:15-16)

See that verse 15 tells us that Christ

Hebrews 4:15–16 (LSB)

has been tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin...

We tend to think that we understand temptations to sin far better than Christ, since we succumb to them all the time. But the Scriptures show us just the opposite—that since Christ never succumbed to temptation, He understands the way temptation works far better than we do!

One commentator illustrates this by imagining ten men walking in a hurricane. As the winds grow stronger, all but one of them eventually get knocked to the ground. One of them stays on his feet the whole way through the storm. Which one of them understands hurricane winds better? The one who weathered all of them!

In the same way, you and I get knocked down and dragged away by our own lusts and fall to temptation when the winds are only at 50 MPH—Christ walked through 150 MPH winds and never staggered once! Christian, your High Priest is a compassionate High Priest, because He knows exactly how bad those winds can get—even more than you do! So take hold of His compassion!

The excellencies of Christ’s high priesthood are seen in His compassion—that He understands our temptations far better than we do—and as Chapter 5 opens we see that He is a compassionate High Priest because

He IDENTIFIES with our GUILT though He is INNOCENT (5:1-3)

Hebrews 5:1–3 (LSB)

For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins, being able to deal gently with the ignorant and misguided, since he himself also is beset with weakness; and because of it, he is obligated, just as for the people, to also offer sacrifices for sins in the same way for himself.

Consider for a moment where these verses say a high priest comes from— “Every high priest taken from among men...” In other words, a priest has to be one of the people he represents, so that he can offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. The excellency of your High Priest, Christian, is that He is one of us. Jesus Christ is our flesh-and-blood Savior, who can perfectly represent us before God.

And these verses tell us that He represented us so perfectly; He identified with us so completely, that He even took on our own weaknesses—though He had no sin of His own to suffer for, the infinite pity and compassion of your great High Priest was such that He was willing to bear your guilt on that Cross! Phannias was utterly incapable of such a sacrifice (in fact, none of the 83 high priests in Israel’s history, stretching all the way back to Aaron himself were capable of what your High Priest did!) And even if they would be capable, what other priest would be willing to suffer such agony on that Cross, offering not the body of a bull or goat, but offering Himself for the slaughter? See such wondrous love as this from your Savior, and take hold of your confession of this supremely compassionate High Priest!

Take hold of Christ by your good confession of the excellency of His priesthood—take hold of your compassionate High Priest, and

II. Take hold of your PERPETUAL High Priest (Hebrews 5:4-6)

Look with me at verses 4-5:

Hebrews 5:4–5 (LSB)

And no one takes this honor to himself, but receives it when he is called by God, even as Aaron was. In this way also Christ did not glorify Himself to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”;

This is the second time we have seen this verse from Psalm 2 quoted in Hebrews. You’ll remember that this was the verse that Paul quoted during his sermon in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13 in the context of God raising Christ from the dead:

Acts 13:33 (LSB)

that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.’

You’ll remember that the “begetting” in this verse does not mean that there was a time when the Son of God didn’t exist—this is not an indication that Christ was created; this is a recognition that

He is the FIRSTBORN from the DEAD (vv. 4-5)

Our author quotes this reference to Christ’s “begetting” as a comparison with the way Aaron received the high priesthood. Now, follow the author’s argument here: How was Aaron called by God into the high priesthood? Was it not by virtue of his birth? Aaron qualified to be called by God into the high priesthood because he was born of the tribe of Levi. And all of the succeeding high priests (until the Intertestamental period, at any rate) were descended directly from Aaron’s line. You could not take the glory of the high priesthood to yourself; you had to be born to it.

And so do you see the comparison here? In the same way that Aaron and his sons received the office of High Priest from God because they were begotten by the tribe of Levi, in the same way Christ received His superior High Priesthood by virtue of His being begotten by God in His Resurrection. Jesus is a better High Priest than Aaron because He is the firstborn from among the dead—He is a perpetual High Priest.

And because He is a resurrected High Priest, that means that

He will SERVE in His office FOREVER (v. 6)

This is the point our author is driving at by referencing Melchizedek in verse 6:

Hebrews 5:6 (LSB)

just as He says also in another passage, “YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.”

Melchizedek was a priest who appears in the account of Abram’s life in Genesis 14—he comes out of the city of Salem (Jerusalem) to bless him after his defeat of the coalition of kings of the valley, led by King Chedorlaomer. There is far more to be said in a few weeks about this mysterious high priest, who simply appears to deliver a blessing to Abram, and then fades back into obscurity. For now, it is enough to understand that the writer of Hebrews understands Melchizedek to be a representation of perpetual priesthood—in Hebrews 7:3, he writes that Melchizedek is

Hebrews 7:3 (LSB)

Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest continually.

When Jesus was crucified and rose again, the high priest in Jerusalem was Caiaphas; he had one of the longest tenures as high priest of any that followed him—about 18 years. But after Caiaphas, the high priesthood in Jerusalem went through sixteen other high priests, ending with poor Phannias, who only lasted two years before he was killed during the destruction of the Temple. The average tenure of a high priest in the forty years between Christ’s ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem was (with one exception) about 2-3 years. The high priest’s tenure usually ended either in premature death or assassination or a political ouster.

And so you can see why the writer of Hebrews is so insistent on demonstrating (here, and later in Chapters 7-8) the excellencies of Christ’s High Priesthood—He is a High Priest who serves forever! He cannot die (since He has already died and risen again!), He cannot be deposed, He cannot be restrained, He cannot be thwarted from faithfully representing His people before the throne of YHWH!

Take hold of Christ by your good confession of the excellency of His priesthood—take hold of your compassionate High Priest, take hold of your perpetual High Priest, and

III. Take hold of your REVERENT High Priest (Hebrews 5:7-10)

This is the next excellency of Christ’s High Priesthood that we are called to confess is His reverence—look with me at verse 7 of our text:

Hebrews 5:7 (LSB)

He, in the days of His flesh, offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence.

The Greek word underneath the English translation reverent is a word that describes “[the mingling of] fear and love which, combined, constitute the piety of man toward God” (Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Vol. 2, p. 230). T. Nelson.)

Christian, your High Priest is a far better high priest because of His reverence—contrast Christ’s loving fear—His fearful love—of His Father with Aaron the high priest in Exodus 32. When the people demanded gods to worship while Moses was on the mountain with YHWH, Aaron fearfully caved to their demands (because, as he told his brother in Exodus 32:22, they were “a people inclined to evil.”)

But when your great High Priest was fearing for His life in the Garden of Gethsemane; when all the horror and agony of the evil of unrepentant Israel and the iron fist of Rome was about to fall on Him? HE DID NOT FALTER!

Mark 14:35–36 (LSB)

And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”

In that Garden that night, your High Priest obeyed the will of His Heavenly Father. And that means that

He understands the PRICE of OBEDIENCE (vv. 7-8)

No one in all of creation understands the cost of saying “Not my will, but Yours” better than Jesus Christ! Our first father Adam succumbed to death through his disobedience in the Garden of Eden; our Great High Priest Jesus Christ was delivered through death by His faithful prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears in His obedience to God’s will the Garden of Gethsemane!

And because your Great High Priest obeyed His Father in the Garden that night and obediently suffered all of the agonies of being tortured to death on that Cross, He became the perfect Savior for all who follow Him in that obedience! Here is the confession of your hope that you cling to, Christian—that through your Great High Priest’s perfect obedience,

In Him you have the OBEDIENCE that SAVES (vv. 9-10; cp. 1 John 3:23-24)

Hebrews 5:9–10 (LSB)

And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

When you obey His voice that calls you to repentance and faith, you are united by faith to Him and thereby are granted the salvation that His obedience earned! The gift of salvation in Christ is the gift of obedience to Him. He gives us the obedience to respond to His call to salvation—Paul calls salvation “the obedience of faith” in Romans 1:5; he warns that at the Second Coming of Christ there will be vengeance for those who “do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess 1:8).

And the entire Christian life is described in terms of obedience to God—the Apostle John describes our coming to Christ and our living in Christ all in terms of obedience:

1 John 3:23–24 (LSB)

And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He gave a commandment to us. And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He gave us.

The Old Covenant priests could only call you to obedience; but see the excellencies of your Great High Priest, Jesus Christ, that when He calls you, He gives you His own obedience! “Having been made perfect”—in other words, having accomplished perfect obedience to His Father— “He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation!” When you come by faith to Him for the forgiveness of your sins, all of your record of past disobedience, all of your guilt, all of your disregard for His laws, all of your past rebellion against God is completely wiped away and replaced with His record of perfect obedience! The obedience He perfected throughout His life here on earth—His active fulfillment of all that His Father told Him to do, and His passive submission to all that He suffered—it is all credited to your account when you come in repentance and faith to Him!

So Christian, take hold of your good confession of Christ as your compassionate High Priest. Do not succumb to the slanderous lies of the devil that would lead you to believe that your High Priest is angry with you or frustrated by your weakness. Your Great High Priest is no more angry or frustrated with your weakness or temptations than a parent is angry when their child is weak from an illness. No parent in their right mind would hate their own child for suffering from disease; a parent hates the disease that is attacking their child.

And beloved, in the same way your Great High Priest does not despise you in your weakness; He understands better than any other human being in this world just how hard temptation and trials can be. And like any loving parent who ever said “I would rather get sick than have my child get sick”, Jesus did the same thing—stooping down and taking on your weakness as His own, and conquering it by His death and resurrection! He is a compassionate High Priest—take hold of that good confession as you battle the sin and weakness that you face, knowing that He loves you and He understands!

Christian, take hold of your good confession of Christ as your perpetual High Priest. He will never be threatened by death, since He has already died—He received His high priesthood because He was begotten by God as the firstborn from the dead. He can never be deposed by a rival; He will never fail to bring you to His Father! This world is full of broken promises from men and women who claim to “represent” us and our best interests, who are supposed to look out for us, protect us, be an advocate for us. And every single one of us has been burned by their broken promises. Whether it was a parent who crushed your spirit instead of sheltering you, a spouse who betrayed you instead of being faithful to you, a sibling or a friend or a co-worker who you entrusted with your heart who then turned on you—or even just a string of broken promises and unfulfilled words by well-meaning but weak people who let you down.

See here in God’s Word that you have One representative Who will never fail you! When you come in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ for your salvation, you have a Great High Priest Who cannot fail to keep His promise to present you holy in the sight of God! Because He is a one hundred percent flesh-and-blood human being He can represent you before God; and because He is the sinless, resurrected Son of God He is utterly able to do everything He has promised. So do not succumb to the doubts and anxieties that say “Can He save me?” “Will He keep His promises?” There is no other promise in the world that you can cling to like the promises of your Great High Priest to save you and keep you and deliver you safe to the shores of your eternal home with Him in Heaven!

Take hold of your good confession of Christ as your reverent High Priest—by His perfect submission to His Father, you have been counted as perfectly submitting to Him as well! The Apostle John writes in 1 John 2:3:

1 John 2:3 (LSB)

And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.

You know that you belong to Christ—you know that you are holding fast to Him—when your life is marked by obedience to His commands. Can you see your life being transformed into greater and greater obedience to your Great High Priest? Can you see a deeper love for His Word, a growing hunger to be with His people, a flourishing delight in submitting yourself to His will revealed in the Scriptures? Then take hold of the evidence of obedience in your life as evidence of Christ’s High Priestly work in you as His son or daughter.

But if you do not see a growing love for God, if there is no reverence for His Word or delight in His people, if you look back and realize that your life is filled with promises you have broken to God and to others, if you have a more comfortable relationship with your sins and weaknesses than you do with the Holy Spirit’s voice of conviction, if there are habits and interests in your life that you’d rather keep to yourself because “typical Christians wouldn’t understand”, that you have a more “broad-minded” understanding of morality than others; if you reject the “narrow-minded” attitudes that fear God’s wrath over sin because you have a different “take” on what “sin” really means, and so much of it is less about God and more about how religious people want to control you with threats of punishment from “God”—then do not shut your ears against the voice of the Great High Priest this morning.

Because what you take to be “open-mindedness”, God calls foolish ignorance. What you call “sophistication” about sin, God calls misguided peril. Where you think you are “strong”, God warns you are really weak. And your lack of reverence before Him has placed you in a very dangerous place indeed. Because that irreverence before God, if you do not repent, will result in your someday being cast away from His presence into eternal torment in Hell.

But here is the Good News for you—there is a High Priest who will deal gently with your weakness! He offers you rescue from your wicked ignorance, He offers you deliverance from your damnable irreverence. Jesus Christ has suffered the full brunt of the wrath of God, obediently submitting Himself to punishment that He did not deserve but you did, so that by His death on that Cross you can have life! He offers you His perfect obedience for your rebellion, His complete reverence for your arrogance, His infinite compassion for your sinfulness. He delights to offer you forgiveness by His blood; He is speaking through His Word even now to assure you that He has become to all who obey Him the source of eternal salvation—when He cried out to the One who could save Him from death, He was heard—and because He was heard, He promises you will be heard when you cry out to Him! So make the good confession of your Great High Priest’s exellencies this morning; take hold of Him this morning and never let go of your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Jude 24–25 (LSB)

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________