Jesus is Our Great High Priest

What you believe matters. What you believe determines the choices you make in life. In most cases, your beliefs guide your choice of a mate. You need to go through life with one who shares your values and your faith. If you don’t have that, you’ll have a hard time making it. In fact, your beliefs undergird almost all your decisions. Your beliefs will determine how you spend your money. Your beliefs will guide you on how use your time, and your beliefs give you a foundation for how you handle the trials and the temptations in your life. That’s why the evil one is constantly attacking your beliefs with his deceptions and lies. For if he can get you to doubt your salvation; or get you to believe God doesn’t really care about what you are going through; or if he can get you to believe God won’t forgive you when you mess up, then he’ll eventually get you to do what he wants most of all: He’ll get you to turn your back on Jesus and go it alone in this world. And if he can erode your faith to that point, he can put you in a place where he can use the trials and temptations of this life to destroy you. So yes, what you believe about Jesus matters.

That’s why the writer of Hebrews gave us two warnings last week from Hebrews 3. The first warning told us that when God speaks, we need to listen and obey. For if we don’t, If we just hear God’s Word, and never put it into practice we are in danger of hardening our hearts to God. And the second warning reminded us that we need to continually cultivate a faithful heart. One way we can do that is to receive daily encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ. For if we go it alone in this harsh world, we put ourselves in a position where our hearts can be turned away from God by the deceitfulness of sin. So, we were reminded that isolating ourselves from God’s family can lead us to unbelief. And if unbelief takes hold, we won’t just harden our hearts to God, we may turn away from God altogether. And that’s precisely why we face so many trials and temptations in this world. The evil one wants you to try and handle trials and temptations on your own, and not to rely on your faith in God. And if he can get you to do that, he can get you to turn your back on God.

And it’s this reality that the writer of Hebrews wants to address with us today: He wants us to see how what you believe about Jesus matters, so that when trials or temptations come your way, you will not face them alone, but you will hold onto what you know to be true about your relationship with Jesus – and draw near to him to receive mercy and find grace in your time of need. So, if you brought your Bible with you today, I want to encourage you to open it to Hebrews 4:14-16, where the author lays out three ways holding onto your faith in Jesus can help you stand strong in a world that’s gone wrong. And the first way is this:

Hold onto Jesus who has saved you: Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. Hebrews 4:14 Here we see that the writer wants us to understand that we have something pretty amazing in Jesus. We have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven. There were many high priests in the Old Testament. But Jesus is the only Great High Priest.

What makes him so great? We saw in chapter one that He was the one who has made purification for sins. This was something that was impossible for us to do on our own. We have no ability to remove our own sinfulness. We have no ability to wash away our sin. This is something only God could do for us. So out of His great mercy, God who is rich in love, sent His Son to be the perfect offering for our sin. That’s why He as an innocent, sinless man, went to the cross and shed His blood for your sins. Then, after rising from the grave, defeating sin and death, He ascended into heaven as our great high priest to present His own blood to God to secure your full, perfect and final forgiveness. Jesus did that for you. He’s the only one who could do that for you. And now because there is no sacrifice for sin left to make, Jesus took His seat at the right hand of the Father, symbolizing that His work is done. Therefore, it is Jesus the Son of God, who made your salvation possible. He entered the holy of holies with His blood. And because He did that, if you have trusted in Jesus, his blood has cleared the way for you to enter the holy of holies. His blood has made it possible for you to come near to God, to know God, and to be fully embraced by God as His redeemed and adopted child. Because Jesus offered up Himself on your behalf, your sin no longer separates you from God. This is why Jesus is our Great High Priest.

And now, what the writer calls you to do with this truth, is to hold onto your profession of faith in Jesus. Don’t ever let it go. It’s this belief that will help you stand strong when life goes wrong. What is our profession of faith in Jesus? Paul lays it out for us in his letter to the Romans: “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” Romans 10:9-10

In other words, we are to hold onto this profession. Our salvation is based on professing the truth of who Jesus is “Jesus is Lord” and on believing what Jesus did, “He rose from the dead.” This is the belief that saves us. We live in a day where people discount truth, saying that what you believe doesn’t really matter. Yet, throughout history, Christians in every generation held onto key beliefs. It is these beliefs that sustained them in times of trials and temptations. The world today wants you to base your convictions on your feelings, not on the facts of your salvation. But your feelings can betray you. They are fickle, they can’t be trusted. However, the facts of your salvation will never change. So, hold onto the truths that Jesus is the Son of God; that Jesus is your Great High Priest who shed His blood for you and brought His blood to the mercy seat of God so you could be forgiven, and then given a new life with God, who will never leave you nor forsake you.
What you believe about Jesus matters.

And if you don’t have strong convictions about Jesus, then the evil one will try to take advantage of you. You see, he wants you to live like God is still holding your sins over you. He wants you to be motivated by fear of judgment – so you won’t rely on Jesus but rely on yourself. In this way, you’ll never have peace, never be free, and never know the love and acceptance of God. The evil one wants to keep you paralyzed with guilt and fear. He doesn’t want you to live in the joy of your salvation.

So, the writer of Hebrews says, let us hold firmly to our profession of faith. Let us keep believing in who Jesus is and what Jesus did for us. Here’s the point: If you never let go of Jesus and what he’s done for you, then the devil can never have power over you. So, hold onto Jesus who has saved you. Hold onto to your confession of faith in Jesus. Never stop believing in what He did for you. Jesus removed your sin once for all the moment you believed. And Jesus satisfied Gods’ wrath against your sin, so that now God no longer holds your sin against you. His blood reconciled you to God. And you now have access to His throne of grace forever. Nothing can change that. Do you believe this? If you do, and you hold onto your faith in Jesus, you’ll be able to stand whenever you face trials and temptations. That’s the first way your faith in Jesus helps you stand strong in a world that’s gone wrong. Hold onto Jesus who has saved you.

Here’s the second truth the writer wants you to hold onto. A second truth about Jesus that will help you sustain your faith. Hold onto Jesus who knows what you’re going through 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. Hebrews 4:15 God wants you to remember that you have a great high priest who knows what it’s like to be you. He’s faced your temptations. He knows that in your flesh you’re weak, you will fail, you will sin at times, you will lose your way at times. But you and I need to know that Jesus has been tempted in every way as we are, but he is not weak, and he’s never failed, because He did not sin.

Now, most people seem to think of God as being far removed from human life and concerns. That He doesn’t care or even notice your struggles. However, as the very Son of God, Jesus’ divine nature did not prevent Him from experiencing our feelings, our emotions, our temptations, or our pain. Jesus became like us in every way so that He would share in the same tests and temptations we face every day. Why? So, He could become our sympathetic and understanding High Priest.

And now as our great high priest, He’s our advocate before the Father. He intercedes on your behalf when you sin. And the reason he can do that is that Jesus has experienced all our weakness, all our temptations, and yet, never sinned.. Here’s the good news of Jesus having faced the same trials and temptations as us: Jesus didn’t come simply to die for us, He became one of us, so He could experience what we experience in order to help us.

Jesus experienced hunger and thirst. He knew what it was like to go without sleep, to face hard things. He knows what it was like to be misunderstood, to be disbelieved, to be rejected. Jesus experienced the depths of grief at the tomb of Lazarus. He sweat drops of blood when he was tempted to not go through with the crucifixion. Jesus experienced the sting of betrayal in the garden, the abandonment of his closest friends in his greatest time of need. He endured the hatred of mockers, and the misery of the cross when our sin broke his heart. And because He experienced all these things and more, Jesus is now able to sympathize with you in whatever you’re going through.

So then, right now, sitting at the right hand of God you have a great high priest who knows your weakness, your fears, your temptations, and he can do something about what you are going through. Again, I love how Professor Richard Phillips speaks to this. This is a point the author has made before, so it must be an important one. Jesus is not aloof from your trials but feels them with intimate acquaintance. He is not disinterested or cold to what you are going through; he came to this earth and took up our human nature precisely so that He might now be able to have a fellow feeling with us. Therefore, He is eminently able to represent you before the throne of His heavenly Father, pleading your cause, securing your place, and procuring the spiritual resources you need.

Again, this is why you are to continually hold onto to your faith in Jesus. For you don’t just to have someone who understands your trials or temptations, you have someone who’s experienced whatever you’re going through and handled it without failing – he never sinned. So now you have someone in your corner who is able help you. You’re not alone in what you’re facing. Jesus knows what you are dealing with, and he cares enough for you to do something about it. Which leads to the third way of standing strong in Jesus in a world that’s gone wrong. And that is this:

Draw near to Jesus when you need His help: 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. Hebrews 4:16 What we have here is an invitation from God to come to His throne of grace whenever we need His help. What a privilege!

God’s throne is no longer a throne of judgment, but a throne of grace. That’s why we are encouraged to approach the throne of grace with confidence. This isn’t a confidence found in ourselves. It’s a confidence based on what Jesus has done. When Jesus died for you, and you received Jesus, you received God’s mercy. You deserved the wrath of God for your sins, and that would have been a just punishment. But Jesus took your punishment upon Himself so God could give you mercy. Our God is a merciful God. His mercy has no limitations. That’s why when you are weak, when you do succumb to temptation, when you do hurt the ones you love, when you sin against God, God leaves the door open for you to come and find mercy. And Jesus is the one who opened that door.

This is why you are to come in Jesus’ name. Left to ourselves we would have no such confidence to come. You see, our confidence to come before God and receive His mercy is not natural to us. For when we sin, we feel unworthy to come. We feel like we’ve let God down. We feel guilty and ashamed, and unworthy of His name. And if you’ve ever found yourself in that state, that’s exactly where the evil one wants you to be. The evil one wants guilt to be your master, not grace. He wants you to listen to his accusing voice, not God’s forgiving voice. He wants you to stop to believing Jesus paid it all. He wants you to pay, so you’ll stay away from the mercy God so freely gives.

But when you hold onto Jesus, when you believe Jesus provided your forgiveness, when you believe Jesus made you acceptable in the Father’s eyes, then… When you hold onto Jesus, you will always know you can come into God’s presence on His coattails. And you can come boldly to the throne of grace and receive mercy and find grace in your time of need – because your confidence is not in yourself, but in Jesus.

If there’s a greater motivation for prayer, I don’t know what it could be. Many Christians struggle in prayer. And it may be because we rely on our own confidence rather than the confidence with have in Christ. For when we rely on our own confidence, we rarely come. We don’t come because we don’t feel worthy enough to come. But here’s where we forget the gospel. Here’s where we forget what we believed when God saved us. For at that time not one of us were worthy to come to God. But Jesus was the one who made us worthy, who made us right before God. So that now, if you have trusted in Jesus, you are a new person in Christ, and when God sees you, He sees His beloved child in the righteousness of Christ. This is why what you believe matters! For when you hold onto that profession of God’s truth of who you are in Christ and remember that it was Jesus who made you worthy. You can rest on that truth and boldly come to God and receive mercy and find grace to help you in your time of need.

Again, I want to borrow from Richard Phillips to help us grasp this privilege Jesus’ has made possible for us. In speaking of God’s throne, he says, “It is a throne of grace. This means that when you come, your sins are covered with the blood of Christ, and your faults are looked upon with compassion. Your stumbling prayers are not criticized but are received with kindness. Furthermore, because it is a throne of grace to which we come, God is ready to grant our requests. He is glad to provide our needs, to give us strength to persevere through trials. For He says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” 2 Corinthians 12:9.

This is why what you believe matters. God doesn’t want you to face the trials and temptations of life on your own. He knows that if the evil one can get you to do that, you will fail, you will fall, and you’ll be miserable. No, this is why God gave us Jesus as our Great High Priest. God gave you Jesus not simply to save you, but to give you access to His presence whenever you need His help.

You see, if there was ever a great reason to amp up your prayer life, this is it. What a privilege! You can come into God’s presence to receive mercy and find grace whenever you need it, because Jesus opened the way to the Father. That’s the good news of this passage today! Jesus is our Great High Priest. He’s made it possible for you to come to God whenever you need him.

What you believe matters! And it matters more today than ever! So, hold onto your confession of Jesus. Never forget that Jesus is your great high priest who brought His shed blood to the mercy seat of God, so you can be saved.

What you believe matters! Hold onto your belief that Jesus knows exactly what you’re going through. He’s been in your shoes, but He triumphed in the face of the worst trials and temptations. You are not alone. He is with you and ready to help you in your time of need.

What you believe matters! So,Draw near the throne of grace with confidence, for Jesus is your confidence. He’s opened the door to God’s throne of grace, so you can receive mercy and find grace whenever you need God’s help.

And maybe that’s just what you need today. All of us are facing trials and temptations today. At God’s throne of grace there is an immeasurable supply of mercy. At God’s throne of grace, He is able to do for you more than you ask or imagine. So, for whatever you may need today: forgiveness, Christ’s strength, salvation, help, mercy, Jesus has opened the way. So, let’s go to His throne, and ask Him to help us today.