Chapter Four: Able to Sympathize

As we consider this Jesus who is gentle and lowly in heart, as we take His yoke on us and learn about Him (Matt. 11:28-30), we begin to see the benefits. We could easily call this the result of His gentle and lowly heart with relation to us.

When I refer to us I refer to believers, not just those of us who are present. This is a benefit for those who have taken His yoke, those who are learning about Him. It refers to those who in hopeless desperation have called upon the name of the Lord and are saved by His sovereign grace. It is a marvelous benefit. It is a mind-boggling benefit. It is an oft-neglected and ignored benefit.

My prayer is that by the end of our time tonight, you will be renewed in your understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of this sweet and delightful statement: He is able to sympathize. Let’s look at this thought of sympathy and then why He is able to sympathize with us.

I. Our High Priest Sympathizes with Us- 4:15

We step, as Moses did in Exodus chapter 3, on holy ground. It is holy because of the One we are considering: Jesus. He is able, the author of Hebrews tells, to sympathize with us. Ortlund helps us understand this word when he writes, “‘Sympathize here is not cool and detached pity. It is a depth of felt solidarity such as is echoed in our own lives most closely only as parents to children....His human nature engages our troubles comprehensively.” (46)

We will see why this is the case in a moment. However, consider this incredible thought. He is able to sympathize with you. But this sympathize concerns something specific: our weakness. To what does this refer? What is our weakness?

Our weakness, that perennial problem every son or daughter of God faces is disobedience. Disobedience is the failure to obey, but disobedience is only the fruit of the matter; it is not the root. The root is unbelief. Look back at Hebrews 3:12, 18 and 19. And look at Hebrews 4:6 and 11. All of these tie our weakness to unbelief which manifests itself in disobedience.

I think an example will help demonstrate this point. A child that is disciplined consistently and properly will still disobey, but not nearly as much as a child who is either disciplined inconsistently or not at all. A trip to the grocery store proves this. A child that wants a toy will either obey the parents command to stop asking or continue to throw a fit until the toy is purchased or the parent leaves the store in utter embarrassment without finishing the grocery purchase.

This is our weakness. We own it. But this is the very thing that Jesus sympathizes with us. He feels the depths of our weaknesses more than we do. He knows the struggles of our weakness in greater detail and intimacy than we are even capable of.

He is our Great High Priest. The question is, how? How can Christ know these things? It is because He has been tempted like we are and because He has not sinned.

II. Our High Priest has Been Tempted Like Us- 4:15

One of the benefits of a human high priest is that they are human. Take Aaron, for example. Aaron, the brother of Moses, served as Israel’s first high priest. Aaron knew first hand how difficult it was to work with an ungrateful group of people. Aaron knew what it was like to give into peer pressure (think Ex. 32). For the people, this would have been encouraging.

Sometimes we forget that Jesus is human or we do not grasp that we is fully human. While not denying His divinity, we cannot forget His humanity. Summarizing the many experiences of Jesus as human, Ortlund writes, “He knows what it is to be thirsty, hungry, despised, rejected, scorned, shamed, embarrassed, abandoned, misunderstood, falsely accused, suffocated, tortured, and killed.” (47)

Every single experience (sometimes experienced more than once) defies our understanding. The God who spoke water into existence did not have enough water. The One who holds all breath in His hands could not get enough oxygen. The One who is worthy of all worship and glory and honor was despised. The One who made every animal and fruit and vegetable and all their varieties was hungry. The God Who is Truth incarnate was accused of falsehood. The One who owns a cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth in every mine, and every other thing (both physical and spiritual) did not have a place to lay His head.

The One Who is life died. All of these and many more examples would demonstrate that Jesus was tempted like we are. He faced the temptation to anger when people mocked and doubted Him. He faced the temptation to despair when swathes of Israelites rejected their Messiah.

He faced the temptation to loneliness when His disciples forsook Him. He faced the temptation to lust when beholding a lovely woman. He faced the temptation to doubt God’s Word when He was hungry (Matt. 4:4). He has been tempted like as we are. Meditate on that statement. Let it weigh in your heart heavier than a thousand anvils.

This is one reason why He is able to sympathize with us. He knows, first hand, what it is like to live as a human being. In fact, He knows more intimately than you and I could ever imagine. And He sympathizes with us.

He has been tempted like us, but in a way, He has been tempted unlike us. Because we give into sin, if not every time then at least some times. This brings us to our last thought for this evening. Our high priest is sinless unlike us.

III. Our High Priest is Sinless Unlike Us- 4:15

Hebrews 2:18 “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Jesus is God, and thus cannot sin. He is incapable of sin, as we learn from Hebrews 7:26-28. But this does not undermine His temptations; it strengthens them.

Listen to a couple of quotes that I think helpfully discuss this mind boggling truth. John Murray writes, “It was his impeccable holiness that added intensity to the grief of temptation. For the holier a person is, the more excruciating is his encounter with solicitation of the opposite…In the case of our Lord, this is true to an incomparable degree because he was perfect.” (Jones, Knowing Christ, 115)

Or, as Dane Ortlund writes on page 49 (read quote in orange).

You see, Christ is able to sympathize with us precisely because He has faced our temptations and not sinned. He knows, first hand, how difficult temptation can be. And because He knows this He is able to help (Heb. 2:18) and to offer grace and mercy, to sympathize with our weaknesses.

M’Cheyne quote

Because of all this, I see three take-aways this evening.

Realize that Jesus sympathizes with you beyond your wildest imagination.

Remember that every temptation you face has been faced and defeated by Jesus.

Relish that sympathy, fly to the throne of grace and enjoy the sweet fellowship and forgiveness.