He Gets Us!

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!

 

Copyright 2025 Joseph B Williams

Feel free to share this blog with others.

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

The Final Word

A series on the book of Hebrews:
Christ is greater than the prophets and angels
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Hebrews 1-2:18 

[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 life settles in and can push out those feelings. The day-to-day pressures of living can dull your enthusiasm. In this series, we will look at how the author of Hebrews tried to counteract falling out of love with Jesus.]

  

Caitlin Clark has been in the news constantly during the current WNBA season. In case you’re unaware, she’s a 2^nd year phenom basketball player who seemingly is being targeted by other players for hard and flagrant fouls. What makes it worse is that the refs aren’t calling them.

 

The referees are the authority in every game. They have a whistle and a striped shirt. They have access to replay monitors. They’ve been trained and are certified by the WNBA. They have the final word on what gets called… or not called.

 

Jesus, the Son of God, was the final word from God. In the past, God spoke to the nation of Israel through the prophets and his nurturing angels. But now he spoke through his Son who has the authority that goes far beyond a striped shirt.

 

³ The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.          NLT

 

The letter to the Hebrews was written during the first century to Jewish Christians who were struggling possibly because of being persecuted. They had come to a crossroads in their faith where they were considering whether it would be better to return to their old religion of Judaism, or continue to follow Christ.

 

¹ Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.           ESV

 

And what was it that they had heard? Based on the Law and the sacrificial system that God instructed Moses to set up, the High Priest was the only person who could enter into the presence of God in the Temple. He did so to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.

 

However, what they had heard was that Jesus changed everything. He was the fulfillment of that ritual. He was the High Priest in the New Covenant. He made the sacrifice for sins so that no further sacrifices were needed.

 

¹⁷ Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people.           NLT

 

Jesus did this not just for the Jewish Christians in the first century, but for all of us. It was the only way to provide forgiveness of sins once and for all. Jesus had the final word.

 

¹⁴ Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. ¹⁵ Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.         NLT

 

Copyright 2025 Joseph B Williams

Feel free to share this blog with others.

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

The Rest of the Story

A series on Isaiah 9:6 – The Child of Prophecy
 – Son of Man
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Daniel 7:1-18; Hebrews 4:14-16 

[Jesus was a child of prophecy. The Christmas story in the Bible was predicted in many Old Testament prophecies but the centerpiece of these is Isaiah 9:6. It was written nearly six hundred years before Jesus’ birth. In this series we’re going to look at the meaning and implications of this amazing prophecy.]

 

The story below was taken from a Paul Harvey radio broadcast in 2004.

 

During a winter storm one Christmas Eve, a man discovered that a flock of birds had flown into his picture window seeking shelter from the snowstorm. They were huddled outside under the window trying to survive.

 

Seeing their plight, he attempted to save them by getting them into his barn. First, he opened the barn door and turned on the lights. Then he made a trail of bread crumbs leading to the door. Finally, he tried shooing them into the barn. Nothing worked.

 

Suddenly, he realized that they were afraid of him. He thought, if only I could become a bird, then they would follow me into the safety of the barn. No sooner had this thought passed when he understood. That’s exactly what Jesus had done to save us.

 

In 605 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and defeated Judah. The king ordered that some of the best and brightest of the Israelites be deported to Babylon where they would serve him in his court. Daniel was among them.

 

Being uprooted was a challenge for Daniel and the others. They were forced to leave their family, their home and their Temple; to live in a land that they had never seen and amongst a people whose culture and gods they were in conflict with.

 

In chapter 7 Daniel has an apocalyptic dream about four beasts that represent four kingdoms that rise to power on earth. They were the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian alliance, the Greece kingdom and the Roman Empire. But then Daniel saw a vision of another kingdom.

 

¹³ As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was led into his presence. ¹⁴ He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.                    NLT

 

From these verses, Jesus chose the title that he most often used for himself… “Son of Man”. Like the man in Paul Harvey’s story, Jesus realized that he needed to become one of us so that we would trust him and not be afraid.

 

Isaiah prophesied, “For to us a child is born”. He became one of us… not a god or a king, but a child. The writer of Hebrews described what it means for the Messiah to be born a child.

 

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

 

As Paul Harvey said at the end of all of his broadcasts, "And now you know... the rest of the story".

 

Copyright 2024 Joseph B Williams

Feel free to share this blog with others.

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com