A series on the book of Hebrews:
Jesus as the great high priest
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Hebrews 4:14-5:10
[When
you first start to follow Christ, often it’s done with great excitement. It’s
like falling in love when all you can think about is the other person, and you
want to tell everyone you know. But then the day-to-day pressures of living can
push out those feelings and dull your enthusiasm. In this series, we will look
at how the author of Hebrews tried to counteract falling out of love with
Jesus.]
In 2022, an advertising campaign was launched titled, “He Gets Us”. According to Wikipedia, the purpose of the ads, are “to reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible”. And to do this with “an emphasis on inclusion, compassion, and radical forgiveness".
This should raise a question for us. Who is
this Jesus of the Bible?
At Mount Sinai, God directed Moses to set up a
priestly sacrificial system that would model God’s holiness. With that in mind,
the high priest was the only person who could enter the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle,
and then only once a year.
The Most Holy Place was where the presence of the Holy
God was. In a way, it was His home. The purpose of the high priest was to offer
a sacrifice for his own sins, as well as the sins of Israel.
As the author of Hebrews points out, a high priest was
chosen to represent the people of Israel to God. He was their mediator. Also, the
high priest understood their weaknesses because he too was human and had the
same weaknesses.
In these verses in Hebrews, you may be surprised to
read that Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered. In other
words, through his weakness of being human. Verse seven is a reference to Jesus
pleading with God in the Garden of Gethsemane, to “take this cup from me;
yet not my will, but yours be done”.
7 While Jesus was
here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to
the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of
his deep reverence for God.
8 Even though Jesus was
God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. 9 In
this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source
of eternal salvation for all those who obey him. NLT
Because we have a high priest who is the Son of God,
and because he is also fully human, he understands us. As the commercials
state: “He gets us”.
15 For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we
have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not
sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of
grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help
us in our time of need. NIV
For the Jewish Christians who received the letter to
the Hebrews, the above verses brought out an important distinction for them to
understand. They were considering rejecting their Christian faith to return to
their Jewish roots. But Jesus was clearly the superior High Priest.
For us today, these verses teach us an important lesson.
Unlike the Jews of that day, we don’t have to wait once a year for the Day of
Atonement. And our sins have been wiped clean once and for all by Jesus. He now
sits at the right of God the Father, and we can approach him anytime, anyplace.
He gets us!
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