Easter Sunday

Before we get to Hebrews chapter 7, what I want you to do is actually, I want you to open up your Bibles to Acts 23.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

If you are new to the Bible, Acts is kind of near the back.

So I'm going to have the text up here on the screen, but if you're new to the Bible, it's good to just try to open it up and find Acts 23.

Acts 23 is the story of the church after Jesus ascended up to heaven.

What did the church do once Jesus went back up to heaven?

What did it look like to do church?

And there's one character from chapter 13 on who was the great missionary of spreading the gospel message, the good news, all across Asia Minor.

And so this is a guy named Paul.

And Paul, late in his life, Paul got uh arrested, and he was brought before the Sanhedrin.

And I want you to see this.

I'm going to tie this together for you, but I want you to have this as a context.

This is verse 1.

Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin.

That's the religious gathering, the religious uh government that existed in Jerusalem at the time.

And he said, Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience to this day.

The high priest, Ananias, ordered those who were standing next to him to strike him on the mouth.

Then Paul said to him, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall.

You're sitting there judging me according to the law, and yet you're violating the law, the uh the in violation of the law, you're ordering me to be struck.

Those standing by said, Do you dare revile God's high priest?

I didn't know, brothers, that he was the high priest, replied Paul, for it is written, You must not speak evil of the ruler of your people.

So Paul actually apologized for his rebuke, his public rebuke of Ananias.

Some of you may have a con a conception of God doing this.

As if you were struck on the mouth or slapped in the face, is the idea here.

This high priest came and basically took Paul and ordered that he be slapped across the feast.

And what we're gonna see this morning in our text is that this is not the high priesthood of Jesus.

This was the high priest, this was the high priest at the time that the book of Hebrews was written.

This is the high priest of the Levitical Order, but this is not God's high priest.

Before we go much further with this, what I want to do is how many of you know the uh three circles illustration?

How many of you know?

You know the three circles illustration, and my friend Lee knows the three circles illustration, Scott knows it, and Bryce knows it.

Bryce, would you come up here?

Why don't you show us the three circles?

Bryce, Bryce is one of the youngest people in our um Bible class.

So we have a Bible class.

Go ahead and you can start.

And um I'm gonna ask you questions.

So he's gonna put three circles up there, which is why it's called three circles.

So he's putting up a big circle, and this is gonna say, yeah, you can write in there, this is a circle with a big heart in it.

And what this represents is God's design.

Every one of us, when you wake up in the morning, when you um are get a chance to reflect on life, this is this represents how you want the world to be.

God's design.

You want relationships to be good, you want to feel loved, you want to be successful, you want to be um successful in the endeavors, the things that you put your hand to.

There is this sense of beauty that's in the world.

You want sunsets to never end, right?

That there's just this innate sense within us that there is beauty, that there is love, and that the world should work.

But the actual world that we live in is represented by this circle here.

What's that one about, Bryce?

Brokenness.

That's right.

The actual world that you and I were born into is a world that is deeply broken.

There's pain, there's suffering, there's alienation, right?

There is a sense of just um that the world doesn't work how we long for it to work.

And so the real fact is like when you're in elementary school or you're a kid, you're like, man, life is awesome.

But then as life goes on, it kind of stinks.

And have you ever watched, like, as a kid goes through, you know, from elementary school, middle school, down, you know, older, all of a sudden sometimes the light goes out in their life.

Maybe that was your experience.

Because you realize that, man, some of life is hard and painful.

And maybe you're here this morning and you have a sense of, man, the world that I wish I lived in, the one that is beautiful, is not the world that I live in.

And so here, Bryce, what's this?

Why do you have squiggly lines going off this way?

People are running away, I think, from their brokenness.

What are they doing?

They're running away, maybe drinking, or they're using their job to run away from their brokenness.

What is that one?

What does that say right there?

Oh, even going to church.

Sometimes people run away from their brokenness by going to church or being religious.

There's all kinds of ways that people run away from the pain that they feel in their life.

And how do we get from design over here to brokenness?

What's this guy doing right here?

It's sin.

It's running away.

So we ended up with a broken world because the Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Everyone, every human ever born has rebelled against God's design and ended up in a broken world.

We're all guilty before God.

And we long to be free of our brokenness, but we can't.

But then we have here, this is a third circle.

What is this one?

What's this cross?

He's saving us from our brokenness, right?

He sent Jesus into the world.

That's what this arrow represents, right?

Jesus came into the world, he died on a cross, and he was raised from the dead, right?

That's what we're celebrating today, is that he was raised from the dead.

Jesus paid, Jesus was sent into the world by the Father to pay for our brokenness so that we could be restored back to God's design.

But how do you get it?

What's this guy here doing?

How do you how do you he's repenting, that's right.

When the Bible says that if we repent and we believe, we turn to God, we can have access to what Jesus did.

We're placing our faith in Jesus, and he is in the process of restoring us back to God's design.

What's this whole thing called?

There's three circles, but the other word for it with a G is the gospel, right?

It's the good news.

This is the good news is that Jesus came into the world to pay for your brokenness and my brokenness.

That's perfect.

The gospel.

So on Sunday mornings, what we've been doing is we've been going through and filling in where that's perfect.

Filling in the verses that line up with this.

John 3.16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only begotten Son that whoever would believe in him, right?

Here's repent and believe, would have everlasting life.

You're restored to God's design.

Romans 3.23 says that just a few people have sinned.

No.

How many people have sinned?

Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Romans 6.23 says that the wages of sin is death.

That's right.

So this is the wages of sin right here.

Brokenness is what we earn.

All right, let's give it up for Bryce.

Good job, Bryce.

I want that to be up in front of you because what we're going to talk about this morning as we go through Hebrews is right here on our map, right?

You and I are longing, longing for restored relationships, for forgiveness of our sins.

We want to run away from the brokenness and the pain in our life, and we want to get back to the design that God created us for and that we innately sense should exist.

And we know that the Christian message, the message of Scripture is that it comes through Jesus.

But let's get into some of the guts here of what that looks like.

The book of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews we've been studying on Sunday morning, because as a church, we kind of go just verse by verse through books of the Bible.

The book of Hebrews speaks generally about the resurrection.

In fact, the resurrection, which we celebrate this morning, the resurrection assume, or the book of Hebrews assumes the resurrection.

I want to show you a few of those times.

Hebrews 1:3 through 4 mentions Jesus sitting down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven after providing purification of sins.

Hebrews 1:3–4

We covered that, church, earlier.

Do you remember that?

We went through chapter 1 when we went through that.

This assumes that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Hebrews 2, 14 through 15.

Jesus sharing in our humanity so that by his death he might destroy the one who holds the power of death, meaning the devil, and to free those who were held in slavery by the fear of death.

This could not happen without the resurrection.

A couple more.

In Hebrews chapter 4, 14 through 16, Jesus is our great high priest who passed through the heavens, and it encourages believers to approach the throne of grace.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

None of that's possible without the resurrection.

Hebrews chapter 5, 7 through 10 talks about the idea of Jesus being alive and serving as our high priest.

Hebrews 5 · chapter mention

It implies his resurrection.

The whole book of Hebrews, as it's making its case to these Christians that are wavering in their faith, this whole book assumes the resurrection, that Jesus is a great high priest because of the resurrection.

Now, it just so happens that the greatest allusion to the resurrection we read at the end of last week.

It's Hebrews 7.25, where it says, Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them.

What does he do?

How long does he live?

He always lives.

Can I hear you say that again?

He always lives.

He always lives to intercede for them.

So listen, we're in the we're on week four of chapter seven, right?

We've gone slowly through chapter seven as a church.

And what we've been seeing is that Jesus is a better high priest.

His full-time job is to help you be close to the Father.

Remember, over here we have God's design.

You and I were designed, number one, to have a love relationship with God, but yet we've ran away from God.

We've rebelled against God, and the world we live in is broken, and Jesus is here trying to restore us.

It's not just a one-time thing on the cross, but Jesus' full-time job is to be restoring us back to God's design.

He always lives to intercede for you.

That means that he is praying.

He's standing before the Father because the Father has appointed him.

And he's not there.

He's not there just saying, like, oh, give him a little bit more mercy, right?

If your conception of the Father is that Jesus is there just pleading your case, trying to get you just another ounce of mercy to get through today, that's not how it works.

In God's courtroom, Jesus is standing there interceding on your behalf, saying, I paid entirely for the guilt that this person has.

He's looking at you and me.

The father says, You're guilty, right?

We've all sinned.

We've all ran away.

And there's no Jesus saying, just give him a little ounce of mercy.

He's saying, No, Father, I paid for Joshua's sin on that cross.

And so it is legally, you're legally bound by this new covenant to grant him forgiveness.

It's not, it's, and the the breakdown, I think, is that we oftentimes think of like that there's animosity maybe between the lawyer and the judge.

But this is the good working of God, that God is absolutely just.

There had to be a perfect system.

It's not like, ah, we'll just kind of smooth it over, we'll just kind of forget that you ever sinned.

No, there is a legal system which Jesus adhered to when he went to the cross and paid for our guilt.

So Hebrews 7:25 talks about Jesus, the resurrected Christ, always living, interceding for us.

Hebrews 7:25

Now there happen to be three more verses in chapter 7, which we're going to spend the remainder of our time on.

It says in verse 26, for this is the kind of high priest we need.

Holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens.

He doesn't need to offer sacrifices every day as a high priest, as high priests do, first for their own sins, then for those of the people.

He did this once for all time when he offered himself.

For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak, but the promise of the oath which came after the law appoints a son who has been perfected forever.

Now, listen, if you're jumping into this and you're new with us, this may seem obscure.

But if you're in the fourth week of looking at chapter 7 with us, this is super repetitive material.

This is again tying a bow on and using the same language that has been used throughout this chapter.

This pastor, the pastor who wrote this letter, is he's attempting to jar the readers from their dependence and affection for the high priests that were serving in Jerusalem at the time.

He's trying to get these Christians to stop looking to the Levitical priesthood that was happening in Jerusalem and to look to Jesus as their new and better high priest.

He's saying Jesus is better.

He's used Melchizedek and the reference to Melchizedek from Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 to say that Jesus is not this the newest Levitical priest, but Jesus is from a new order.

And he says in Hebrews 7.26, he says that Jesus is this good high priest.

Now, in 725, it says he's able to save completely.

He's able to save completely those who come to God through him.

Now, you may say, look, Josh, you're talking about a priest.

I don't need a priest.

I I understand, I can relate to this idea of brokenness in my life.

I've got some broken relationships.

I've found that my job is not as fulfilling as I thought it might be.

I'm struggling with this addiction over here.

And man, church just doesn't necessarily cut it.

You may say, no, thank you.

I have my coping mechanism.

But what the writer of Hebrews is saying to you and I is that Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him.

You may say, no, I'm gonna eat my way to salvation.

You may say, I'm going to work out at the gym to save me.

I'm gonna date my girlfriend to save me.

I'm gonna pursue my career to save me.

I'm gonna chase my addiction to save me.

I'm gonna educate myself to save me.

And the Bible comes along and says, listen, that's not your answer to the brokenness that's in your life.

That's not the answer.

The Father sent the Son into the world to put on humanity, to be a good high priest, to pay for our sin.

Jesus, it says, is the kind of high priest that you and I need.

He's the kind of high priest that you and I need.

Do you see how it opens up with that phrase?

This is the kind of high priest we need.

All of verse 26, all of verse 27, and all of verse 28 are just a giant substantiating set of statements to back up verse 25.

It's all there because in 25 it says he ever leaves.

He's like able to save you completely, and he ever lives to intercede for you.

And then verse 26 and 20 is just saying, This is what you need.

Like he gives you Jesus and he says, This is the high priest that you need.

The pushback that the original audience may have given, they might have said, No, no, I'm good.

I've got a Levitical priest at the temple.

I've got Ananias, the one we read about at the beginning.

And he and I go way back.

You know, we lived on the same block, we played ball together in the uh alleyway.

Ananias, he's got me.

And this pastor who wrote this letter, he says, No.

Jesus is the kind of priest that I need and that you need.

And he gives he gives um five reasons in verse 26.

He says that he's holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

These are the qualifications that Jesus has.

As we get into chapter 9, we're gonna come back to these themes.

This is, but what I want you to know is that this stands in stark contrast to Ananias.

This priest, remember the one that just smacked or had commanded that Paul be smacked in the face?

That that's the high priest that these guys would be thinking of.

That guy had even Paul's respect, even Paul felt this twinge of guilt when he rebuked Ananias.

That man, Ananias, was not, could didn't fit this criteria of holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens, but Jesus did.

Let's look at verse 27.

He doesn't need to offer sacrifices every day as high priests do, first for their own sins, then for those of the people.

He did this once for all time when he offered himself.

Do you remember back um when in 1993?

Some of you were in school in 1993, how many of you were in school in 1993?

A few of you, right?

Okay.

Do you remember learning how to write a letter?

And actually probably wrote some letters, right?

I know that when I wrote a letter, like if it didn't have lines, like my lines would just kind of fall down like that.

Did you have that problem, right?

And then you would take your letter that you wrote and you would fold it up, and then you would stick it in an envelope, and then you would lick the envelope.

Remember the taste of that glue on the envelope?

Yeah, and then you would stick the stamp on the front of the envelope, and then you would write out the full address and the return address.

Then you'd have to walk the envelope to the mailbox and stick it in the mail.

Do you remember that?

Okay, yes.

Some of you are old enough to remember back in the day when we did that, right?

But then something happened.

It was just like remember that noise?

The dial-up modem days?

Yeah.

By the way, do you know why I did that?

That was your modem.

That I I had to search, like what was going on when it made that noise?

That was the that was your modem shaking hands with another modem.

It the handshake process allowed the modem to negotiate and agree upon a set parameters for connection.

That has nothing to do with my sermon, but I found that fascinating.

Because so now you know why it made that weird noise, right?

Okay.

But here's the point.

When the internet came along and email became a thing, all of a sudden we didn't have to write those letters anymore.

And that's what 27 here is saying.

Jesus doesn't need to offer sacrifices every day as high priests do.

And then here's how they would do it they would have to offer sacrifices for their Own sins, and then they'd offer sacrifices for the people.

Why?

He did this once for all time when he offered himself.

In other words, the work of the cross unceded the old priesthood, the old method for trying to be perfected and to get close to God.

You see, if we were to take this map here, and you were these Christians that were coming out of Judaism and turning to Jesus, they would have right here, they would have the Levitical priest, right?

We could just say they would have the Levitical priest on our map.

And they were trying to go through the Levitical priest to get back to God's design.

That's what they were depending upon.

And this pastor is trying to say, no, this is outdated.

This is, we're not writing letters anymore.

We've got the age of the internet.

Stop looking to the Levitical priesthood.

You need to understand that Jesus is the one that offered himself once for all time.

In John 1, 29, John saw Jesus.

This was early on in his ministry.

John saw, this is John the Baptist, saw Jesus, and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

From the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, early on, when Jesus himself was baptized, Jesus was identified as the one who would be sacrificed, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Jesus himself in John chapter 10, verse 15, said, Just as the Father knows me, I know the Father, I laid down my life for the sheep.

John 10:15

I lay down my life for the sheep.

Jesus offered himself.

We'll come back to this in chapter 9, but let's look at Hebrews 7, 28.

This is the last verse of that chapter.

It says that the law, this is Moses' law, the old covenant, appoints as high priests men who are weak, but the promise of the oath, which came after the law, appoints a son who has been perfected forever.

Look, again, this is where, if you go through chapter 7, we've covered this a few times, and this is going to sound repetitive for those of you that have been with us for a little while.

But if you're new with us, here's the deal.

And he's saying these guys become the priests by following Moses' law.

The Ten Commandments and Moses' law laid out who could be the priest and what they were supposed to do in order to fulfill their role.

But what it also, what we talked about last week, is that it doesn't perfect anything.

You and I cannot draw close to God through the law.

We can't use Moses' law to restore, to be restored to God's design.

There needed to be a better priesthood.

And what this verse here is saying is that the law of Moses appoints the Levitical priests like Ananias.

But this is the thing, and this is where you and I need you just camp out, is men are weak.

And that's not just men male, but humanity is weak.

We are incapable of restoring ourselves back to God's design.

Whether you're a Levitical priest, or you're working your job, or you're going to church, nothing that we can do is going to make us restored back to God's design.

But, this is one of those beautiful butts of the Bible, but the promise of the oath, which came after the law, appoints a son who has been perfected forever.

It's a contrast, right?

The contrast between the Levitical priest and Jesus, who is, it's a there's a promise and an oath.

It's that's Psalm 110 he's referring to, which came after the law.

That's what appointed Jesus as the Son.

He's been perfected forever.

Our love, our being loved by the Father, is hinges on this work of the Son that was done on our behalf.

In conclusion, I just want to take you back to Acts 23.

The high priest Ananias ordered those who were standing next to him to strike him on the mouth.

Your conception of God the Father may relate to this encounter.

I don't know what religious context you grew up of, but you may think of God as if he's just ready to smack you.

And you may think, man, I haven't gotten smacked yet, but I sure deserve it.

And it's true, we do.

But this is not our high priest.

This high priesthood, this was it still functioned, but this, but Jesus is already in heaven at this point.

When Ananias is doing this, Jesus is up in heaven praying for Paul.

This guy is just kind of a character that's just kind of keeping the old thing going.

Jesus called it the old wineskins, you know, or the old garment that just you can't put a new patch on it.

You need to have something that's new.

I don't know where your um religious experience, what it has been, but I just want you to know that this is not how God wants to treat you.

He sent Jesus into the world to pay for your sin.

In fact, Jesus had this encounter with the high priest.

In John 18, it says that the high priest questioned Jesus about uh his disciples and about his teaching.

And Jesus said, I've spoken openly to the world.

I've always taught in the synagogues and in the temple where all the Jews gather.

I haven't spoken anything in secret.

Why do you question me?

Question those who heard what I told them.

Look, they know what I said.

When he said these things, one of the officials standing by slapped Jesus, saying, Is this the way you answer the high priest?

If I have spoken wrongly, Jesus answered him, give evidence about the wrong.

But if rightly, why do you hit me?

You see, Jesus took these blows on our behalf.

This was this is the day, this is on the path to the cross.

This is Jesus, the true high priest, standing, taking the blows on our behalf.

In Hebrews chapter 4, 15, it says, We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

So on this Easter, 2023, what we get to celebrate is that a good high priest has been appointed thousands of years, right?

It was even spoken through the Psalms, was appointed as the one who would come after a different order from the Levitical order, and he would be beaten on our behalf.

He'd be able to sympathize with our temptations and our afflictions.

He went through the whole human experience so that he so that he could be our great sympathizer.

The love of God, the love of God demonstrated in a person.

I want to just invite you this morning, as we prepare our hearts to take communion together as a church, if you are looking at this picture and you can relate to this brokenness here, this circle, and you're like, look, I can relate to this guy running.

I can run.

He may know I can run really good away from the design of God.

And you know that your life and the pain in your life is marked by your own sin and the sin of others.

I just want you to know, God has a good plan for your life.

He didn't design you to suffer, but he has created a way to be restored back.

And the Bible says really clearly in Acts chapter 2, in Romans chapter 10, in John 3, it talks about turning, repenting, making a life decision that you're going to orient your life back towards God.

Acts 2 · chapter mention Romans 10 · chapter mention

There's going to be a turning, turning away from how you've done life.

That's called repentance.

And there's going to be this place where you in your heart decide, I'm now ready to trust in Jesus Christ as my high priest, as the Messiah, as the one who is able to save me completely.

That's God's plan.

The beautiful thing is that you're given the freedom to choose to accept it or reject it.

But God loves you.

He absolutely loves you and wants for you to be able to enjoy this path, a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness.

Amen.

So I'm going to pray.

If you um have never, if this is like new material, and maybe you've heard like you've gone to church before, or you've you've heard um about Jesus being on the cross, but it's been confusing, but you understand the action that you're called to, then I just want to invite you that as we bow our heads and close our worship service this morning to have a conversation with God.

And it's going to say on something like this, God, I get it.

I kind of get it.

I get how much I've ran away from you.

My life is screwed up.

I'm ready to repent and accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

Please restore me back to the design that you've given me.

If you want to have that conversation with God, I'd encourage you to do it.

As I'm praying, now's a good time to pray because we're going to take communion together.

And I want you to do that having prayed that prayer.

Let's let's go before the Lord.

Father, we thank you.

Thank you for the work of Jesus on the cross.

That you love us, that you want to mediate on our behalf.

I pray, Lord, for anyone that's here that does does not know you, doesn't have a personal relationship with you, that you'd hear their prayer.

As they talk to you right now and just say, God, I surrender my life to you.

I want to repent and turn my back on the things that have basically been rebellion.

Lord, I turn away from those things and I trust in you.

Lord, thank you that you hear that prayer of anyone in this room that prays that prayer.

Thank you for accepting just that simple act of faith and saving us by turning to you.

And pray, Lord, that you would um work in our lives this week and that you would help us to live not as a people dependent or trusting in the weakness of men, even our own weakness, but Lord, that we would trust in you, Jesus, as our good Messiah.

Thank you for the work of your cross.

And thank you for being raised.

Father, thank you for raising your son.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.