Jesus Christ, the Perfect Priest
Hebrews 5:1-9
Tonight we're continuing in our study of the book of Hebrews and we come to really begin our study in Chapter 5. As we begin to look at Chapter 5, let's bow together and ask a word of prayer. Our Father, we come now to the sacred pages of this book and Lord, we would not be so bold as to assume that we of our own strength have anything to say. Nor in our own wisdom, and so with Paul we say we speak not in the wisdom of men, nor with enticing words, but we may desire of all things to speak in the power of God.
And oh Father, we would ask that only Jesus Christ be lifted up. That He be exalted as we shall see Him in the simplicity of His majesty as our great high priest. Father, we would ask that each of us might be able to set aside all of the things that would distract us. Some here tonight, Father, may be weary in their bodies and find it difficult to concentrate. Lord, give them just a real supernatural sustenance to keep them alert for what it is You want to teach them.
And Father, even though perhaps some of it is truth that we know, Father, refresh our minds in the knowledge of the fact that it is truth that You want us to be assured of in order that we might even have the opportunity to share it this week. You do the teaching Lord. Keep my mouth from error and may the Spirit of God indeed be the one who proclaims the truth. We'll pray in Jesus' name and for His glory. Amen.
The design of the book of Hebrews is very simple. The design of the book of Hebrews is to present the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish believers outside the area of Jerusalem to show them that they had made the right step in receiving Jesus Christ, for in fact Judaism did...Judaism was replaced by Christianity. There are also through the book of Hebrews warnings to unbelieving Jews to know that Jesus Christ is greater than all of the Old Testament figures. The New Testament, the new covenant greater than the Old Testament, the old covenant.
But in the midst of this, there is a very natural question that is going to arise. For to tell a Jew that the new covenant is greater than the old, says something about the priesthood of the old covenant. For the old economy, the Levitical economy, the Old Testament, Judaism, is based on priests taking men's messages to God. Mediating between men and God. And the first question perhaps that a Jew, with any kind of perception, would ask is this. If this new covenant is better, where is your high priest? Where is that mediator that takes man to God?
And perhaps in somewhat of a deriding sense and unbelieving Jew would say your new religion is deficient in the very first and most vital thing. That is you have no high priest. Perhaps a Jew would say how are your sins going to be pardoned when you have no one offering sacrifices and no one interceding for you? How can you claim that this new covenant supersedes the old and is in every way superior and spells the nullification of the old if you have no high priest?
We saw last week a very clear and simple answer to that in Chapter 4, verse 14 which says, "Seeing then that," watch this, "we have a great," what, "high priest." Christianity, the new covenant, is not without a high priest. We have a great high priest. Now having stated that tremendous fact that there is a mediator between men and God, and that there is not a multiplicity of them, 24 different ranks of them as there was in the Levitical priesthood, but that there is only one mediator, only one high priest, one great high priest, having stated that fact in 4:14, beginning in Chapter 5 and running through the end of Chapter 10, that entire section is the proof that Jesus is, in fact, that great high priest.
And this then takes the heart of the book of Hebrews from 5:1 to 10:39. The largest single portion dedicated to any theme in Hebrews and strategically located in the middle of the book, around which everything else revolves is the proclamation that Jesus Christ is, in fact, a great high priest superior to Aaron or to any other high priest whoever lived. And that Christianity does have a high priest who takes men to God. That's the purpose of Chapters 5 through 10, the eternal and perfect priesthood of Jesus Christ.
And you see, this is the real key to the supremacy of the new covenant to the old covenant. This is what sets apart Christianity as better than Judaism, because our high priest is so superior. He can do what all of the priests put together in the old economy could not do. Now keep in mind a basic point, and that is this, that God is by nature holy. That means that God by nature is separated from sinners. That God by nature is transcendent. That is he is apart from our understanding.
Now since that is true and God, from a human viewpoint, is unapproachable man faces a real a dilemma. Who takes him to God? Who gets him there is the question. Well, in the old economy, God chose certain men to intervene. And certain men to mediate between Himself and other men so that He might be approached. They were divinely chosen men, specially prepared, specially trained, and of them were made special requirements.
They were required, first of all, to sacrifice for their own sins for they themselves were sinner and then having cleansed their own sin, they were permitted under God's grace to enter into God's presence to sacrifice for the sins of the people. Then the whole bevy of priests that populated the old economy were bridge builders to God. For men could not come into God's presence directly, therefore, God appointed certain men to be the ushers, as it were, to bring them into His presence.
And the way to God was only opened as the priests did the sacrifices day in, day out, day in, day out presenting the atoning blood to God. Priests then were the mediators from men to God. Now I told you this morning that as we saw in studying the kingdom of God, kings and prophets and judges, etc., were mediators bringing God's rule to men. Priests take men to God. Do you see? Those are the two sides of the issue. So priests then are able by God's ordained patterns to perform certain duties that bring men into the presence of God.
But suddenly as we come to the new covenant and the New Testament, the entire pattern of priesthood comes to a screeching halt and it's over with. All of it, every bit of it is done. And one stands out alone as the great high priest and there is no other priest. And that one is Jesus Christ. He is the great high priest whose one great act of sacrifice in which He sacrificed Himself so that He's the priest and the sacrifice at the same time, provided eternally for man an opening into God's presence. And that is so graphically symbolized in the New Testament as we see in the death of Jesus Christ, the veil of the temple went from the top to the bottom and that veil separated men from God's presence in the holy of holies and it's ripped wide open and the holy of holies is exposed to men, because Jesus has opened it up by a new and living way.
And so Jesus Christ in one act at one point in history accomplished what thousands upon thousands of sacrifices into the millions of sacrifices by multitudes of priests could never accomplish. That is to open the way to God permanently so that any man at any time by faith in Christ might enter into God's presence. And as a result of what Christ did, it says at the end of Chapter 4, in verse 16, "Let us therefore come," what, "boldly unto the throne of grace. That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help while we still have time.
And so the great high priest has provided a new and living way. And consequently my friends there are no more sacrifices. There are no more priests. Jesus Christ now sits at God's right hand interceding for us. He is our living mediator. He is the only priest needed, the great high priest. It's interesting in view of this that the Italian Pope still styles himself by this title. Pontifex Maximus, which translated means, the greatest high priest.
That's blasphemy. He is not the greatest high priest. Jesus Christ is the great high priest. He has no equal. And in the truest sense in the new economy of the new covenant, there is no other priest period. None at all. And to say that there is lessons the exclusivity of the priesthood of Jesus Christ.
The strongest point then or the strongest part of the mosaic economy, the thing that held the Jews was the Aaronic priesthood. And by Aaronic we're meaning the name of Aaron who was really God's choice that began the whole deal. The whole priesthood is what captured and riveted the attention of the Jews to the old covenant. They...for so many years, they had gone through the ritual and now Jesus comes along and says forget it all and it just is not that easy for some of them. You can understand that, can't you?
Those patterns are hard to break. And so in writing to the Hebrews, He must show them that we have a priesthood, that we have a high priest who once for all offered a sacrifice and obliterated the need for the rest. That's so important because they're locked into an understanding that there must be an atoning sacrifice offered by a priest and so He shows in 5 to 10 that Jesus has done exactly that and in a way that no other priest could ever do.
And so all of the ritual that had riveted like a charm, the minds of the Jews to that nullified Judaistic system and prejudiced them against the simplicity of the gospel, must be set aside with the understanding that Jesus Christ is, in fact, and in truth the great high priest and there is no other. And though Christianity is simple, though the new covenant is as simple as a relationship with one individual, Jesus Christ, it's just that simple.
Yet it's priesthood is more glorious and more perfect than ever was the Judaistic priesthood. And we'll see in our test and we'll see for weeks to come how Jesus fulfills this priesthood. Now specifically coming to Chapter 5, He does something very interesting to begin this study of the priesthood of Jesus. The first thing He does is...and He, I mean the Holy Spirit. As I've said before, we don't know who wrote Hebrews from a human standpoint, so we'll say the Holy Spirit and be right for sure.
First of all, what He does in the first four verses of Chapter 5, He gives the qualifications for a priest and these are standard Jewish qualifications. He's reminding them, now what were the qualifications of a priest. And in verses 5 to 9, He says, now let me show you how Jesus meets every one of them. And this is a very important question for them to have answered because in their mind, Jesus wouldn't fit any qualifications for a priest. He was a part of the wrong tribe. He wasn't born in the right family. And He apparently had not spent His life preparing for this. There's no indication that He, in any way, fit what they thought were the qualifications, at least the extraneous ones. So it's important that Jesus Christ be seen as the one qualified to be the priest.
So in verses 1 to 4, we have the qualifications. In verses 5 to 9, the qualified one. And in verses 1 to 4, you have an outline there. You can kind of follow along. In verses 1 to 4, we see three qualifications, selected by God from men, sympathetic with men, and sacrificing for men. And then we see Jesus Christ fitting everyone of those three major qualifications. And as proof here is sufficient and it renders obvious the fact that Jesus Christ is qualified to be the high priest.
Now once He states that Jesus is the high priest, then He'll move on through the rest of the book to show how His high priesthood really functions. But first He must show Jesus Christ fitting the qualifications. All right, let's look at the qualifications as we examine the text. The first qualification for a high priest was he had to be selected by God from men. Notice in verse 1, "For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men." Stop right there and we'll come back later to the rest of the verse.
Every high priest taken from men is ordained for men. So he must be taken from men. Now to show you that He's taken by God, look at verse 4. "And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of," whom, "God as was Aaron." And Aaron is a good illustration. All right, then we see several important things. A true high priest had to be taken from men. That is he had to be a man. He had to minister for men, verse 1, and he had to be chosen by God. All of this is involved in his selection.
All the Old Testament priests, for example, were chosen by God from among men. Going back to specifics in Exodus 28. Don't look it up, I'll just read it to you. Verse 1, "And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother and his sons with him," this is God talking to Moses, "from among the children of Israel that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. Even Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons."
Now here is God very pointedly and very directly choosing His priests. He selects in a very direct sense Aaron to be His high priest. Old Testament priests were chosen by God. And you know as well as I do that anyone in the Old Testament economy who ministered apart from having been chosen by God got into a lot of trouble. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram tried to minister in a way that God had not ordained them to minister and the ground swallowed them.
In Ezekiel, Ezekiel says in Chapters 8 to 10 when he sees the desecration of the temple, he sees men in there ministering as priests and it's blasphemous. True high priests are ordained of God. Now notice in verse 1 it says, "That every high priest taken from among men." Now God chooses His priests from among men in the old economy. We're still dealing in Old Testament terms. Whenever God began the priesthood, He selected His pattern of priesthood from men. The priest then must partake of the nature of the person for whom he officiates.
God didn't choose angels to be priests. He didn't choose animals to be priests. He chose men who would act on the behalf of men. Angels didn't have the nature of the men. They could not understand men. They did not have the free open communication with men. They did not exist in the patterns of men, therefore, they were not chosen to mediate for men. It had to be a man who was subject to the temptations of men. It had to be a man who had experimental acquaintance with suffering like men have in order that they might minister in a merciful way. And only a man could rightly minister for men.
Now remember to whom this Epistle is written, you can see the importance of this very simple little point. It is just this, the Jews could not understand the incarnation. That was always a problem in their basic understanding along with the cross which they couldn't understand either why a Messiah would have to die. But another problem they had was really getting a grip on the incarnation, Jesus Christ, God, and human flesh.
And here the Holy Spirit very simply answers the problem of the incarnation in just one avenue. You see God had to become man or He never could have been the great high priest of men, do you see? Unless God feels what men feel and goes through what men go through, then He has no basis experimentally to operate as a high priest for men. So God did not keep himself aloof, transcendent, separate from sinners, He entered into the world of men and felt everything that men will ever feel in order that He might be just a sympathetic and merciful and faithful high priest.
If God had never become man, He could never have been a high priest. He could never have been a mediator. He could never have been an intercessor. He could never have offered that sacrifice for the sins of His people which divine justice required. And so the incarnation wasn't an option friends. It was an absolute necessity. It was an imperative if salvation was to be accomplished.
John Calvin said "It was necessary for Christ to become a real man. For as we are very far from God, we stand in a manner before Him in the person of our priests, which could not be were He not one of us. Hence that the Son of God has a nature in common with us, does not diminish His dignity, but commends it the more to us for He is fitted to reconcile us to God because He is man." He had to come down to where we are in the simplest sense to scoop us up and get us back to God, you see.
And so to minister for men, He must be from among men. And it's interesting, because always in the old economy God was unapproachable. Genesis 3:24, God drives man out of the Garden and from then on, God is unapproachable. The children of Israel got in the wilderness and the information coming out of Sinai was get away, get away, get away. Don't come near. In the tabernacle and the temple, God was behind a veil and men could only get to God through this priest, chosen from them.
And only a priest who was one of them could on their behalf minister before God. And so Jesus Christ as we saw in our last study, having accomplished His great sacrifice, passed through the heavens and entered into the holy of holies in heaven and left the way wide open for us, didn't He? And not only does He enter in for us, but we can enter in on the basis of His merits, and that's a first.
Now notice an interesting word in verse 1. It says, "Every high priest taken from among man is ordained for men." The word ordained means an authoritative appointment to an office. And here you have the fact that priests were not arbitrarily selected, nor were they selected on the basis o