THE HIGH PRIEST OF OUR CONFESSION

THE HIGH PRIEST OF OUR CONFESSION

Hebrews 4: 14 - 16; Hebrews 5: 1 - 10; Hebrews 7: 26 - 28

We have been speaking together of the thought of sonship as the characteristic feature of Christianity according to God’s mind, so that Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and then, when taken by the Lord Jesus on to the holy mount, the Father called Peter’s attention to Christ, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight: hear him,” Matthew 17: 5. He would not allow any suggestion of something less to be put alongside of the thought of sonship. Peter had suggested three tabernacles, one for Christ and one for Moses and one for Elias, but as soon as the suggestion was made, the Father intervened in an adjusting way. Peter was to understand that there was no such thought in God’s mind, He had brought in His best. Sonship, as set out to be learned in Christ, is God’s thought for those whom He calls, and nothing secondary is to be put alongside of it. The Lord sought to establish Peter in the sense of it in saying, “Then are the sons free,” and then telling him to take a piece of money and give to those who demanded it, saying, “take that and give it to them for me and thee,” Matthew 17: 27. It is a most remarkable thing that the Lord should say, “for me and thee”. We are to learn the truth in Christ, “for me”, and then learn to identify ourselves with Him in that which is set forth in Himself.

I want, this evening, in calling attention to these scriptures, to show that on the side of our response our High Priest is the Son of God. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews at the beginning of chapter 3 says, “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus.” The Apostle is the One in whom God sets out His thoughts toward us, so in the first chapter God is speaking now in His Son. We learn what God’s thoughts for us are in sonship in Christ. He has come in in order that they might be set out; He is thus the Apostle of Christianity, the authoritative exponent in Himself of what God’s thoughts of blessing are for those whom He calls. He is also the High Priest of our confession; He is the One who in Himself sets out the answer to the way God is revealed, in perfect consistency with it, and He is equal to sustaining us in answer to the way in which God has come out. There is very little more said about the Apostle of our confession after the beginning of the epistle, but the greater part of it is taken up with the side of the High Priest, the One who represents God’s people in His presence and who sustains them in moving in response to God. So, while in the first chapter Psalm 2 is quoted, “Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee,” it is in connection with the Apostle; God brings in His Son and sets out His thoughts for us that they are nothing less than sonship. In Hebrews 5 the same Psalm is quoted again, not now to bring in the thought of the Apostle, but in order to show that when God said, “Thou art my Son, I have today begotten thee,” He marked Him out for priesthood, “And no one takes the honour to himself but as called by God, even as Aaron also. Thus the Christ has not glorified himself to be made a high priest; but he who had said to him, Thou art my Son, I have today begotten thee,” verses 4, 5. I only bring that in in order to show the immensity of what is in view in this simple statement in Psalm 2, “Thou art my Son; I this day have begotten thee.” All Christianity is wrapped up in it. The Apostle of our confession is involved in it, the One who sets out God’s thoughts in Christianity, and the High Priest of our confession is also involved in it. God takes up no less than His Son to represent the saints in their movements God-ward, to support them and to give character to their response.

Coming to the scripture with which we commenced reading, the writer says, “Having therefore a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” Hebrews is characterised by the constant allusions to Jesus; that is, the writer would fix our attention on the Person of Christ not primarily in any official view of Him, but in His personal attractiveness, the name by which He is known. But then He immediately adds to His personal name Jesus “the Son of God”, and then that He has passed through the heavens, gone right through; however many heavens there are He has gone through them all into the immediate presence of God. Hebrews has often been called the epistle of the opened heavens and that is exactly what it is. The Spirit of God attracts us to the glorious position that Jesus is filling now; He has passed through the heavens; that is, He has gone right into the immediate presence of God and He is there as the Son of God, and as representative of us. The Representative of the saints is not only in the immediate presence of God, but He is there as His Son in all the affection and nearness and suitability that that involves.

This is brought in in order that we should hold fast our confession. The word all through the epistle to the Hebrews rendered profession should be confession. There is a great deal of difference between profession and confession, because profession may be merely profession if a thing is professed but is not real, and that is the case in Christendom; there is a great profession of Christianity without anything vital in it. Confession is a very different matter; it is something that you commit yourself to and are prepared to stand by. It involves that you are in the presence of something adverse that calls it forth, that you take your stand by the Position, that you are a Christian, a partaker of the heavenly calling; your life is not bound up with this world, but by grace you have part in the service of God, not in any system of bondage and distance but in the liberty that sonship contemplates. That is to be held fast. We all know that to go through a world such as this is, is testing to us; we know it is easy for us to be overtaken, and deflected, it may be, from that which is strictly righteous; it is easy for us to become defiled in our spirits and become deadened in our spiritual sensibilities, and Satan would make use of all that to try and get us to give up having to do with God, or perhaps what is even more subtle, going on having to do with God but in a formal way.

There are two things brought in in this chapter intended to save us from that. The first is the word of God. “For the word of God is living and operative, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and penetrating to the division of soul and spirit, both of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” Hebrews 4: 12. That is, the effect of the word of God, not necessarily the Scriptures in a literal way, though the Scriptures will convey to us the mind of God, but the word of God is what God is saying to us, and recognised by us as God’s word; it has this character that it is living and operative and can make the finest divisions and gives us to feel there is nothing unapparent to Him “but all things are naked and laid bare to his eyes, with whom we, have to do.” That is a most important preservative. One is seeking to be practical as conscious of our need, of it as having to do with the greatest and most holy and precious things. There is a great need of being practical and a great need to submit ourselves from day to day to the all-powerful effect of the word of God which is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, which can discern all the intents of the heart and make everything apparent before Him, “with whom we have to do.” It is a sobering consideration, but the more we avail ourselves of it the more we shall welcome it. The one who wrote Psalm 139 knew something of this. How terrible is the searching character of the word of God! He says, “Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.” What a striking thing that is! He could not sit down or get up without being conscious of God taking account of his movements and the motives that lay behind them; he was conscious of being in the presence of God, everything being made apparent in the eyes of Him with whom he had to do. As he proceeds, he takes account of the work of God, and he understands that the searching character of the word of God is intended to help the work of God. It is intended to help him to distinguish between the workings of the flesh and the work of God, so that the work of God might stand out in its own distinction. At the end of the Psalm he says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; prove me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any grievous way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting.” That is, he positively asks to be searched; he has come to learn the great value that is attached to it. He desires to be practically freed from all that would hinder his having part in the service of God. The word of God in this living character, as bringing us into the presence of God, is one of the great preservatives available to us as having been called with this heavenly calling. We are partakers of the heavenly calling.

The other great provision is the High Priest who is in the presence of God. He is always maintaining in Himself the full standard of our position. We are never to be diverted from keeping our minds on Jesus the Son of God. He is there as our representative. That is the idea of the High Priest, and we are to fix our eyes on Him who has passed through the heavens and allow nothing to becloud the position of favour and nearness in which God has set us in Him, but in order that we should be kept morally in accord with that, we have the High Priest who is sympathetic, who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He has been in this scene and has personally experienced the character of the scene, and He has known what it was to be approached by Satan and He has been tempted in all things in like manner, sin apart. So with a knowledge of that we are to come boldly to the throne of grace knowing that the High Priest is on our behalf, “Let us approach therefore with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help.”

In the next chapter the writer of the epistle goes on to enlarge on the priesthood of Christ. As I have said, He is marked out Priest by reason of the fact that God has said, “Thou art my Son, I have today begotten thee.” God intends us to understand that we are represented in His presence by no less than His Son. Another thing comes in in Psalm 110 “Thou art priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec,” verse 4. Melchisedec is a most interesting and mysterious personage. We read of him in Genesis 14 and then there is no more reference to him in Scripture for centuries until David’s day, and then David by the Spirit writes Psalm 110 and says, “Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” Then there is no more reference to Melchisedec for centuries until Christ had come and died and risen again, and gone to the right hand of God and then the Spirit of God in writing the epistle to the Hebrews brings in again the history of Melchisedec and gives us to understand what the import of it is. Melchisedec was brought on the scene in a mysterious way. No mention is made of his birth or his death or his genealogy, in order that he might convey to us the idea of the Son of God. It is intended to convey that sonship and priesthood are now centred in the Person of. One who is divine, and it means that the Priesthood that is now exercised by our Lord Jesus Christ is intransmissible. The old order of priesthood was transmissible; it was handed on from one to another because the priest died, but now the priesthood is established in One who never dies and that means we have now come to finality. The position of sonship which God has brought in in Christianity, and in which we are to respond to Him, is now set forth in Christ; our High Priest, and it will never be relinquished. That is in order to establish us. “Thou art priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec”. Having brought that in, the writer goes on to show in a touching way how completely the Lord has entered into the circumstances and testings of human life here in order that He might become qualified to serve us as High Priest in a sympathetic and intelligent way.

So it brings in “the days of his flesh”. How wonderful that is! What an expression! To think of Him who, as another scripture says, “is over all, God blessed for ever,” to think that there should be a period of which it is said of Him “the days of his flesh”. It shows how wonderfully near He has come, entering into conditions of human life, moving here in perfect faithfulness to God for the express purpose of qualifying as a sympathetic High Priest for God’s people. “Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up both supplications and entreaties to him who was able to save him out of death,” not save Him from death, but out of death. I have no doubt the reference is particularly to Gethsemane and no doubt also to the cross, but the “strong crying and tears” refers especially to Gethsemane. Matthew and Mark and Luke all give us Gethsemane, and all give us different glories as apprehended in connection with it. Matthew says that the Lord prayed and said, “My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; but not as I will, but as thou wilt,” Matthew 26: 39. And then it says, according to Matthew’s account, that He prayed a second time, “My Father, if this cannot pass from me unless I drink it, thy will be done,” verse 42. It is a most wonderful and deep expression to us of the holy feelings which passed through the mind of the Lord Jesus at that crucial moment, for death to Him meant death in a most solemn way as the judgment of God in an unsparing way. He who had walked in unbroken communion with God in a sense of His delight in Him, was now facing the awful reality of being abandoned by God, and as being made sin to face His displeasure, His wrath, and to bear it all. Hence, as feeling it with holy sensibilities, He first of all prays that if it is possible the cup might pass from Him, “but not as I will, but as thou wilt”. Then He says, as though so to speak, He had come to it, “My Father, if this cannot pass from me unless I drink it, thy will be done.” All through there had never been with Him any other will but His Father’s will, but there were holy sensibilities of what that will involved, and when there was no other way of effectuating that will and as recognising that there was not, He says in complete submission, “thy will be done.”

Mark tells us that He said, “Abba, Father,” it is the only time it is recorded that He said it. I have no doubt that He said it on many other occasions, but it brings out the depth of feeling in the double use of the appellation of Father, and gives us the actual words the Lord used, and so we are to develop in ability to take it up as an evidence of the liberty of sonship, of the feelings that go along with sonship. Luke tells us that He knelt down and prayed, and that “his sweat became as great drops of blood, falling down upon the earth,” Luke 22: 44, and also tells us that “he prayed more intently,” a remarkable thing. I doubt if we should have ever dared to say that if Scripture had not recorded it. Although there was perfection in the Lord Jesus, there is in perfection such a thing as greater degrees of intensity of prayer. “He prayed more intently. And his sweat became as great drops of blood, falling down upon the earth.” All this is intended to convey that the Lord has entered into exercises in the most touching way as to what was involved in going through to the end governed by the will of God. Whatever was involved, He would go through, but He has realised in an experimental way what was involved in obedience. It says, “though he were Son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered,” Hebrews 5: 8. He did not learn to be obedient, but He learned obedience; that is, it was a new experience to Him. As in Godhead condition it did not apply to Him to obey; God has no one to obey. Obedience does not apply to God as such, but as become Man He entered into a condition to which obedience applied and a new experience was opened up. He was to tread a path in which obedience to the will of God was called for from beginning to end. He went through it in unqualified obedience proving to the full what obedience was, what it involved, how testing Satan could make it, for he was certain to make it as difficult as he could. Every testing only proved that the Lord Jesus was incorruptible and entirely set for God’s will, but it is very touching that He should have learned obedience by the things He suffered.

Having been made perfect and taken His place on high as our High Priest, He has become to all them that obey him “author of eternal salvation”. You see the moral link, it is those who obey Him who come into the gain of His priesthood. I do not think we ever get the gain of priesthood until our wills are subject and we ourselves are moving in the way of obedience, and then, as we discover the tests which obedience may involve, the Lord can draw near to us and show us that He has been supremely tested in it, but now is able to support us as governed by that principle. He has gone through and has been heard on account of His piety. So we are encouraged to go on in piety. Obedience is one of the first elements of piety, and piety brings God into circumstances here. Those who know God can bring Him in; we know God will be true to those who move on the principle of obedience to His will, and the Lord Jesus was heard on account of His piety, He was heard from the horns of the unicorns. And now He is become “to all them that obey him, author of eternal salvation”. I am sure of this that we do not get the gain of the priesthood of Christ unless we are subject. It is those who are prepared to obey who get the gain and support of the priesthood of Christ; the priesthood of Christ has in view that we should be supported and sustained in view of serving God. The service of God in sonship is not to break down. We were referring to the way the Lord speaks of “my assembly” and the joy it is to the heart of Christ to have that on earth which, in response to God in sonship, can be preserved right through in the presence of hades’ gates. The priesthood of Christ comes in to sustain this.

After having gone through all this, the scripture speaks of Him as addressed by God as “high priest according to the order of Melchisedec.” It is to assure us that the priesthood of Christ is an enduring, intransmissible one, that this character of priesthood set out in Christ as Son is the priesthood that abides. We know how Melchisedec came forth to support Abraham. Abraham is typically a partaker of the heavenly calling and he was concerned about his brother Lot. Lot had been carried away captive by the kings who had overcome the king of Sodom and Abraham moved to deliver his brother. He traversed a vast tract of country, for he went as far as from Hebron to near Damascus, and took with him three hundred and eighteen servants trained in his house. He was effective in delivering his brother, but alas, Lot did not profit by it. Lot’s name means veil; that is, he is someone of whom you could never be sure, he is never distinctive. You cannot see a veiled person very well, you do not quite know what features mark them, and alas there are such among the people of God, they are never very definite but are always somewhat uncertain. The probability is that they have their interest outside the assembly and they are easily taken away captive. In the Song of Songs the speaker in chapter l, says, “For why should I be as one veiled,” verse 7. That is a good exercise for young believers as to whether there is any reason why they should be as veiled, why the saints should have occasion to wonder what it is that is holding them back. We do not want to be like Lot, he had to be dragged out in the end. How much better to be like Abraham who was called the friend of God So Abraham recovers his brother and Melchisedec comes out to meet him with bread and wine and says, “Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heavens and earth. And blessed be the Most High God, who has delivered thine enemies into thy hand,” Genesis 14: 19, 20. Abraham had gained a great victory and the danger was that he might attach it to himself. The king of Sodom said to Abraham, “Give me the souls, and take the property for thyself,” as if Abraham was intended to enrich himself. Abraham was being invited by the king of Sodom to take all the spoil but Melchisedec forestalls the king and says, “Blessed be the Most High God, who has delivered thine enemies into thy hand.” Melchisedec would say, Do not forget that in anything you have achieved it is God who has done it, and you are blessed of the Most High God, and no glory that you might attach to yourself can be compared with the dignity that is yours, “Blessed be Abram of the Most High God.” Abraham gives Melchisedec a tenth of all and is enabled completely to repudiate the suggestion of the king of Sodom. If there has been any gain it is God who is to be regarded as the One to whom the credit is due. How real is the support of Christ to those who are partakers of the heavenly calling in order that we should not become disqualified from serving as sons for the pleasure of God.

In Hebrews 7 the writer of the epistle is not now occupied with the side of the weakness that attaches to us as down here, and the testings of the Christian path, but with the greatness of the saints as sons of God and partakers of the heavenly calling, and so he says, “such a high priest became us,” verse 26. That is, he is emphasising how great the saints are, that they are partakers of a heavenly calling, this calling that involves sonship. What kind of a High Priest becomes such a people so great as that? “For such a high priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens.” He is not now occupying us with Christ in the days of His flesh, but Christ where He is in the presence of God. He would fix our eyes on Christ in the presence of God. The savour of the days of His flesh remains and, in the power of His having learned obedience, He is ready to succour as occasion requires in the path of obedience to God’s will, but now our attention is directed to Jesus as He is and where He is, “holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens.” That is what the writer is calling attention to. Then he goes on to say, “who has not day by day need, as the high priests, first to offer up sacrifices for his own sins, then for those of the people.” The writer is contrasting the weakness and unprofitableness of the old system with the abiding character of Christianity, “For the law constitutes men high priests, having infirmity; but the word of the swearing of the oath which is after the law, a Son perfected for ever.” He brings us back to this great thought, “Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent. Thou art priest forever after the order of Melchisedec,” Psalm 110: 4. Not only has God said it, but He has confirmed it with an oath, so that we may be fully assured that that is the character of Christianity, and that is the One in whom we are represented in the presence of God.

I believe the contemplation of the priesthood of Christ, He Himself being identified as the Son, saluted as such, and marked out as High Priest, and coupled with that the word of the oath, showing that what has come in in Christ is established for evermore, is intended to make us stable in what is proper to Christianity, and to preserve us, as we avail ourselves of the word of God on the one hand and the priesthood of Christ on the other hand, so that we may serve the blessed God for ever in the liberty and intelligence proper to sons.