Hebrews 7:1-10

Okay, Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 7.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

Now, Hebrews chapter 7 is all about Melchizedek.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

Melchizedek is gonna be we're gonna look at Melchizedek for the next four weeks.

Melchizedek is one of these characters, like you start we start looking at Melchizedek, and it's just so obscure that like let me just kind of illustrate how obscure it is.

Can I have like um our kids?

I need Bryce, I need your help.

Colin, I need your help.

Um Hanaleh, I need your help.

I need like I need a few different people.

Come on up here, come up here, just so just so that we can visually see.

Where's where's Blake?

Oh Blake, you're back there.

Come up, come up over here.

So you're gonna be Melchizedek, okay?

You stand right here.

Yeah, Melchizedek can eat a cookie, that's okay.

And then Blake, you're gonna be Abraham, you stand right here.

And then Hanelei, you're gonna be Psalm 110, okay?

You come here, Psalm 110.

Then you're gonna be, let's see, you'll represent the pastor that read Psalm 110.

We still have more layers in there, okay?

Here's the thing: the story about Melchizedek is like we we've got all of these different things.

We're passing from Melchizedek, then Abraham here, he meets Melchizedek.

You met him, yes, okay.

And then your Psalm 110, which is like David writing about Melchizedek, and then we've got the then we have the whole thing about Jesus, right, who's who is the high priest, and then you've got a guy here who's talking about Jesus as the high priest, looking at Psalm 110 and Abraham and Mo.

It's like we've got to we've got to transit all of these different layering in order for us to be like spiritually enriched.

Thank you, guys.

You can have a seat.

So the the distance, the distance between your life and Melchizedek is like all of these layers.

Like right now, we're going through like a financial crisis.

You have the banking collapse, right?

And they're talking about second and third order implications of the financial crisis, right?

So a bank dies in San Francisco, uh, Silicon Valley Bank, right?

And but that has a rippling effect to other regional banks where people start being afraid they're gonna pull their money out.

But then those banks are holding the money for businesses like an Etsy.

And so you're like a small business and you're selling your little earrings on Etsy, and now when somebody wants to buy your earrings and push the money to Etsy, it has to go through one of these regional banks because that's how they've just set it up.

But now because that bank is shutting down or stressed or had there's a run on the bank, it's impacting you as a business owner.

So it's like second or third, you're very far removed from it, but it has a direct implication for you.

Let's say you are that person that's making those earrings, and yet you feel the second or third order of this thing happening way over at Silicon Valley Bank.

What the writer of Hebrews wants for you from Melchizedek is to feel second or third order, but it's like sixth order.

It's so far removed, like we're so far removed from Melchizedek, and yet this writer, this pastor that's writing the book of Hebrews, is like this is key to your spiritual journey.

Like if you can get your head around some of these concepts embodied in the person of Melchizedek, it's going to, it's gonna help you in your discipleship to Jesus.

Now, a couple of years ago in 2021, there was a movement.

It was called the Free Britney movement.

This was all around Britney Spears because she had been for 13 years under conservativeship, where her dad basically made all the decisions for her life.

And there became this kind of populist movement that supported her in saying, I want to be free.

I want to be liberated from this conservative conservator conservative ship, something like that, right?

I want to be free.

She did no longer want to be dependent upon her dad.

And the reason I want this image up before you is because the right the pastor who writes Hebrews chapter 7, he doesn't just want you free.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

He doesn't want you no longer just re-relying on the Levitical priesthood.

He wants you to be depending upon Jesus, who is your great high priest.

So the Bible comes along, Jesus comes along and liberates you better than any judge could have liberated Britney Spears.

But not only is it about liberation, it's about coming into this relationship with this new high priest, this uh after the order of Melchizedek.

So, just a little bit of context.

The writer, the pastor who's writing to Hebrews, he's deeply concerned about where these Christians are at.

He feels like they've gotten their eyes off of Jesus and they're settling for a spirituality that's very familiar to them as Jews.

And they're reverting back to the kind of their old Jewish practices, but not realizing that it's been made obsolete.

That they they really can't get out of Judaism what maybe they were raised to believe it offered.

And because Jesus has come and fulfilled it.

And so the writer here, this pastor, is trying to disrupt their relationship with old Judaism and to show that Jesus is the fulfillment.

Jesus is better and fulfills every heritage, every piece of their heritage that they grew up on.

Last week we considered this idea of being diligent spiritually, spiritually diligent.

And so we know what it's diligent, what it means to be diligent with our schoolwork or with our chores, right?

It means we're getting it done.

But being spiritually diligent for this guy, it meant being walking by faith and patience and inheriting the promises of God.

That there's a taking care of, there's a tending to our spirituality where we understand that God has made promises to you and I, and we are enduring faithfully.

We're holding on to Jesus so that we can inherit what's been promised to us.

And as you inherit those things, there's this glory that comes about in your life.

You're this beautiful witness to your friends and your family because you're hanging in there.

You're not selling out, you're not giving up, you're not distracted, but you're hanging on to Jesus, and his promises are being fulfilled in your life, and it's this radiant glory of God all around you.

You don't have to muster up strength to go and share the gospel necessarily.

It's just overflowing because you've been so diligent about your spiritual life that it's contagious what's going on in your life.

And so at the end of chapter six, as this pastor is writing, he talks about this idea of how imitating the saints of old that that inherited these promises and faith and patience, by doing it, you are you're tapping into this reality of the of accessing Jesus as your high priest.

But we have these greater promises in Jesus that are secure.

And he gives you the image of your life being like a boat.

You've let the anchor down.

The anchor is caught a hold in the ocean.

It's caught a hold of Jesus.

And so you, you're not being shaken in the midst of the storm.

You're not rocking all over the place, but you're secure.

Your soul is absolutely secure because Jesus is the anchor for your soul.

And he's gone into the holiest place and he's secured for you this beautiful stability.

So he says this, but then in the last verse, he talks about how Jesus is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Let's read verses one through ten.

He says, This Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God most high, met Abraham, blessed him as he returned from defeating the kings.

And Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.

First his name means king of righteousness, then also king of Salem, meaning king of peace.

Without father, mother, or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.

Now consider how great this man was.

Even Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the plunder to him.

The sons of Levi who receive the priestly office have a command according to the law to collect a tenth from the people, that is, from their brothers and sisters, though they have also descended from Abraham.

But one without this lineage collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed the one who had the promises.

Without a doubt, the inferior is blessed by the superior.

In the one case, men who will die receive a tenth, but in the other case, scriptures, the scriptures testify that he lives.

In a sense, Levi himself, who receives a tenth, has paid a tenth through Abraham, for he was still within the ancestor, his ancestor when Melchizedek met him.

Lord, we ask that you would give us understanding into your word.

We just say, Lord, that there's some obscurity about this character, Melchizedek.

And as we go backwards and try to understand him, Lord, we we don't want to get lost in the weeds about trying to understand Melchizedek.

We want to understand it enough, but we really want to come away from these four Sundays with practical life lessons that we can hold on to.

And Lord, I don't I don't know how that's gonna happen without the work of your spirit in us.

So we give you our hearts and our minds, Lord, quicken us to these things.

And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, this is the material that this pastor wanted to present.

And he said, Look, I can't talk to you about this yet because you've been lazy in your understanding.

So he he's he's kind of he's careful, he's slow to explain these things because he just doesn't really trust their capacity to understand.

And we're gonna get into it, and it's gonna be like, yeah, this is some complex stuff.

You really have to be diligent to to track with what he's saying, but even more so to uh apply it to your own life.

And so he brings up this encounter in Genesis 14, 18 through 20.

Some of you read this this week.

Um, I send out emails throughout the week.

If you're not on our mailing list, make sure you get them so you kind of are prepared coming into the um our Sunday mornings.

But this is that passage out of Genesis 14.

Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.

He was a priest to God most high.

He blessed him and said, Abram is blessed by God most high, creator of heaven and earth.

And blessed be God most high, who is handed over your enemies to you.

And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

So this is the story of Melchizedek.

He gets three verses, right?

And then you get to Psalm 110, and he is brought up again, but he is obscure.

Who is he?

What is going on?

The pastor who wrote Hebrews 7 wants to highlight some specific qualities about Melchizedek.

Three things that I want to draw your attention to.

Specific qualities that Melchizedek had, and he's comparing them to Jesus.

The first is that Melchizedek is a king and a priest.

If you're doing your inductive Bible study on these first three verses, you're gonna see that the word king is repeated often about this character, Melchizedek.

He is a king, but he is also a priest.

He is royal and sits on a throne, but he also offers sacrifices at an altar.

He has both of those positions.

We also see the fact that Abraham gave him a tenth of the spoils that he had gotten from this battle he was coming back from.

He gave a tenth of the spoils to Melchizedek.

And then the pastor also points out hey, when we read this passage in Genesis, we see that he has no genealogy.

He doesn't have a reference to who he's born to or when he died.

He just is on the scene and there's no end of life.

The thing that I really want you to key in on is this phrase here.

In verse nine.

No, let's go, let's go this direction.

Sorry, in my slides.

Let's go to verse nine.

Or verse three.

This guy, Melchizedek, do you see this?

He resembles the son of God.

He resembles the son of God.

Now there's a comparison that's being made.

But notice the direction at which this goes.

It's not that Jesus resembles Melchizedek, it's that Melchizedek resembles the Son of God.

Jesus is eternal.

The role that Jesus plays is an eternal role.

And so when Melchizedek comes on the scene, he is an image, bears an image, a likeness to Jesus.

Now, some say this is a theophany, that this is an appearance of God or a Christophany, an appearance of Jesus before he came.

I I don't necessarily think that's the case.

I think this was a real uh man who happened to have these qualities, and the way in which the story is told strategically reflects a Christological concept about Jesus, right?

It is anticipating, it's foreshadowing the work of Christ.

He serves in his function as a man, and he resembles some qualities that are key spiritual qualities.

Now, while Melchizedek is obscure, right?

He's all the way over here, and we're like way over here trying to get to him.

The writer helpfully points out, he guides our understanding of like, hey, you don't here's what I want you to see about Melchizedek.

I want you to see that he's a king and priest.

I want you to see the fact that he is uh receiving from Abraham a tenth.

I want you to see the fact that he doesn't have a genealogy.

Those are the underlying principles that of how Melchizedek is useful as you understand Jesus.

Here's the bottom line.

Like these Christians needed to have a deconstruction occur within their own spiritual life.

They were clinging to the Levitical priesthood in an unhealthy way.

Now, we can deduce that from the content of this letter.

We don't know when this letter was written.

We don't know, it seems like probably there's a guess that this these were Christians not in Jerusalem, but were located probably in uh Asia Minor, maybe modern-day Turkey.

But that's a guess.

They have a love for their Judaism, but it needs to be that there needs to be this work where it's where their heart strings are clipped and they let go of this Levitical order and they turn to Jesus and they let him be their high priest.

How do we do that?

Let's say you're the surgeon, let's say you're the fitness coach, let's say you're the teacher, you see the problem in the person you're working with, you need to get them over here.

How do we take these Jews and get them to let go of the Levitical priesthood?

Well, let's go back into their own story, to their patriarchal figure, their key historic figure that their whole genealogy is based on.

Let's go to him, let's go to Abraham and see his interaction with a priest.

Before the Levitical priesthood came on the scene.

Let's see the priest that Abraham interacted with.

Oh, there happens to be one.

That's fascinating.

What was it like?

Oh, wow, that's interesting.

We see that he's a king and a priest.

Oh, that's useful.

Oh, wow.

Abraham is honoring that priest, even though the Levitical priesthood came from Abraham.

And um, and so he's giving a tithe to them, and there's this eternal nature, this eternal substance.

Do you get what are you tracking with me?

Do you get do you get the the the burden of the pastor?

This pastor wants your good, he wants my good, he wants our hearts to move out of this unhealthy place over to this place of having affections for Christ that line up with the affections that Jesus deserves.

And here's the beautiful thing about Scripture it is capable of moving us from the unhealthy affections to this place of true discipleship to Jesus.

And I don't know what it is in your life that needs to be clipped.

I don't know what they are, but listen, this is why we read the Bible.

This is why the Holy Spirit is in us, so he can do this surgical work on our hearts with obscure passages and weird people like Makizedek to get us to loving Jesus better.

That's the idea.

And don't we need that?

Yeah, because we get tripped up in weird stuff.

Like for me, I think I was talking about this a few weeks ago, but like I decided, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn off, I'm gonna delete Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from my phone.

I still need it to be able to communicate out on.

I have it on my iPad, but I'm just gonna take it off my phone because I wasn't happy with how it made my heart feel.

And I thought, well, this isn't good.

I uh but I didn't really connect the dots.

So I just thought, okay, well, I'm gonna do this.

And amazingly enough, it had this like heart-transforming effect.

Like it made me feel better about life.

I've heard other people do it.

I thought, oh, that's that's good for you.

But I finally decided I think I want to do it, I want to try it.

And it was just this like it was a Holy Spirit guided thing of like change this little thing of your life.

And the ramifications was this like mental clarity, an ability, just a greater sense of connection to the Lord and an ability to be fruitful in life.

So praise the Lord that we have the Holy Spirit given to us.

That's when we take the the cup and we celebrate the new covenant, that's a celebration of that relationship that was inaugurated by the covenant, where the Holy Spirit speaks to us individually about what needs to change.

So this pastor says you need to know about the the order of Melchizedek so that you so that you in your own life can love Jesus more.

So these qualities come up that Jesus is a king and a priest, that he gave a tenth to the spoil of spoils to Melchizedek, he lacked a genealogy.

So this morning, as we go through verses four through ten, this is gonna be the big conversation.

The repeated word is gonna be the tenth.

He gave a tenth, he gave a tenth.

So he's driving home, he's gonna drive home, and we're gonna read it here in a second.

He's driving home for you and I, this idea that um the lesser is giving to the greater, uh, the one of greater significance.

That is how uh culturally this worked.

We're gonna have to jump out of our culture, because like when you give tithes and offerings at church, there's no recognition of superiority.

It's a totally different thing, right?

So this this passage has nothing to do with tithes and offerings at church, just so you know.

Other than the word tenth means tithe.

Maybe there's a connection there, but this has nothing to do with it.

This is a totally different thing.

Let's look at verses 4.

Verse 4.

Just by itself.

We'll look at verse 4.

The order of Melchizedek.

The Lord has sworn an oath and will not take it back.

You are a priest forever according to the pattern or the order of Melchizedek.

Now, this is a different priestly order than what these these guys were used to.

These men and women.

They were used to the Levitical order.

If you're new to the Bible, the Levitical order is you have the tribe, you have the 12 sons of Jacob.

They become the tribes of Jacob.

One of those tribes is designated.

God tells Moses, I want you to take the tribe of Levi.

They are going to serve as priests when you go into the new land.

And then a subset of those of the line of Levi is going to be Aaron's line.

Those who were born of Aaron, they are the ones that can actually serve as high priests and priests in the tabernacle.

The rest of Levi, they attended to the tabernacle, but it's those of the lineage of Aaron that would be the Levitical priest order.

And so from the time of Moses in the wilderness all the way through up until the time of Christ, you have the descendants of Aaron serving as priests in the tabernacle.

The three things, the three things that are key to this priesthood, the Levitical priesthood, the order depended on a geological genealogical line.

You had to be from the tribe of Levi and the subgroup of Aaron's family.

Second, the person serving as the high priest under the Levitical Order was always charging, changing because they would die and a new one would have to take their place.

So there was, if you are, it's like how we have presidents every four to eight years, right?

You're always getting used to a new president, right?

So for them, they're always getting used to a new high priest.

And then the third thing here is the throne and altar were not combined.

The kings who tried to be priests would be punished by God.

One writer says it this way: the Old Testament economy, the throne and the altar were separate.

We have a story of Saul when he tried to offer sacrifices, and Samuel had said, You need to wait for me to get there.

Samuel was a priest, and Saul jumped the gun.

He offered sacrifices because he thought that Samuel was delayed, and Saul got in trouble for that moment.

As the king, he crossed the line from being king to trying to be a priest.

So that is when we have this verse here, the the pastor is saying that the Lord has sworn this oath about in Psalm 110, it's a prophecy.

You are a priest according to the order, to the pattern of Melchizedek.

So here's verse 4.

Now consider how great this man was.

Even Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth of the plunder to him.

So this introduces the idea of this tenth.

The sons of Levi who received the priestly offering have a command according to the law to collect a tenth from the people, that is from their brothers and sisters, though they have also descended from Abraham.

So he's reintroducing the idea of the tithe, but the tithe within the story of Levi, isn't that fascinating?

It's so interesting that there's there happens to just happen to be this tithe interaction between Abraham and Melchizedek, and then you have this tithe interaction going on between the children of Israel and the Levitical priesthood.

But one without this lineage collected a tenth, yeah, collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed the one who had the promise.

So who was without this lineage?

Who is that referring to?

So Melchizedek, right?

Melchizedek did not have the lineage.

He was not from the line of Levi.

He collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed the one who had the promises.

So in verse 7, let me just show you this.

Without a doubt, the inferiors blessed by the superiors.

So there's two things here, two things to see.

The tithing that's going on within the Levitical priesthood, but then he jumps back over to Melchizedek and he's like, do you see what happened after Abraham gave Melchizedek the tenth?

Melchizedek blessed Abraham.

And so he just says, hey, listen, you need to see this.

This is a really important principle.

The inferior is blessed by the superior.

So in this exchange between Abraham and Melchizedek, Melchizedek is superior to Abraham.

Oh, no, no, no, wait a second.

Here's the Jews over here.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We love our heritage.

We love our heritage.

You can't say that about Abraham.

There's a lot of good stories about Abraham.

We all come from the line of Abraham.

You're talking smack against Abraham.

You're reducing our standing, our identity.

No, no, no, that's necessary.

That may be a little painful for you.

It may be painful for you to actually see that Melchizedek was the one blessing Abraham, but you've got to go through that pain because you're holding on to an identity.

You're holding on to religious systems.

You're holding on to the things that make you comfortable.

But I want you over here.

I want you connected with Jesus because that's for your spiritual good.

And so, look, Melchizedek blessed Abraham.

You're not going to get around it.

I'm sorry that may hurt.

Isn't that how it works spiritually as people are working?

Like for our good, sometimes the truth hurts, right?

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Like we're identifying with something.

We have obligations to something, and yet the truth hurts.

Verses 8 through 10.

In the one case, men who die receive a tenth, but in the other case, scripture testifies that he lives.

In the one case, men who will die receive a tenth.

Who are the ones that die?

That's the Levitical priesthood, right?

The priests die off, but in the other case, the scripture testifies that he lives.

Now, this pastor is saying that Melchizedek lives.

Now, this is why some people think that this is a Christophany, that Melchizedek is a Christophany.

I think, I think that's taking it a little bit far.

I think that the pastor is just saying, this guy, Melchizedek, we have no record of his death.

He just keeps going.

He passes out of the scene.

We don't know about the end of his life.

And in a sense, Levi himself, who receives a tenth, has paid a tenth through Abraham.

Why?

For he was still within his ancestors when Melchizedek meant him.

In other words, the biology was going to lead to, reproduction was going to lead to Levi eventually coming onto the scene.

And so somehow this pastor is like, look, Levi's contained within Abraham, kind of like a Russian doll, right?

Layers and layers in.

We've got Levi contained within Abraham.

We may be tempted to rely on self-help philosophies, right?

Again, over here.

Self-help philosophies.

Maybe it's our possessions.

Maybe it's rituals that we have that we're trusting in.

And yet, what this pastor wants for us is to be more and more relying on Jesus as our high priest.

There's a temptation to find security in worldly systems that we would practice rather than relying on Jesus' priesthood.

That is a common struggle.

I have on my phone an app that I love.

It's called Paste.

When I copy and paste something on my iPhone, it copies and pastes it to a cloud clipboard that I can automatically get on my desktop.

You ever copy like something in a text message and you're like, I need it over on my laptop?

It's paste.

It's awesome.

You should check it out.

The thing I hated was that they had a version one, but when they did version two, they released an entirely new app and didn't take version one out of the app store.

So when I go to look for paste on my iPhone, two apps come up.

And the version one icon is actually more graphically appealing to me than version two.

And I'm always confused.

And so I go and I open up version one.

It says this one is outdated.

You need to open it.

And I don't know why I don't delete version one.

I because I'm in the moment and I'm in flowing, you know, in work, and I need version two, and I need whatever was pasted there to get.

It's like I need it to work.

The point is that version one is obsolete, it doesn't work anymore.

And the thing is, is that the Vidical priesthood, it doesn't work anymore.

There's things in your life that don't work anymore.

Not just always changing, but it's brand new and it's everlasting.

It was always changing under the Litical priesthood.

You had these priests that were dying off, and that was the system for thousands of years.

But now it's like we have an app that's never gonna need to be updated again.

It's eternal.

Jesus is the better upgrade.

I almost feel sacrilegious for saying that.

But Jesus, he we've said, I mean, the idea of the high priesthood is difficult for us to wrap our heads around because we don't operate with priests very often, right?

But I've tried to bring it, make it more concrete for us in that it's his full-time job.

He's taken up our spiritual life as his full-time job.

And he is he is employed, he is fully dedicated, fully vested in this idea of you being able to be close to God, to repair the breach that occurred in Genesis 3.

Like Jesus is standing there in Genesis 3, holding us close, taking and covering our sense of nakedness, taking away our shame, bringing and making it so that we can be like running to the Father rather than hiding in the bushes away from the Father.

Like that is what our high priest does for us.

And the Levitical priesthood moved in that direction, but Jesus is our good high priest.

He gives us stability by being trustworthy and eternal.

He makes our enduring faith rewarding.

He makes our prayer life real.

All of those things are a reality of Jesus being our high priest.

I'll just close with this.

You remember the story of Hannah?

Hannah was um one was one of two wives that Elkanah had.

There's a guy named Elkanah, he has two wives.

One of them is Hannah.

Hannah can't have babies.

And that was like the thing you did.

If you were a cool woman in Elkanah's day, you had babies.

That was it, basically.

And she didn't have, couldn't have any kids.

And she was heartbroken.

And she had enough of a husband that was a jerk that said to her, like, Aren't I good enough to you?

And it was like, Aren't I good enough?

Plus my other wife, aren't I good enough to you?

That horrible.

So Hannah would go up to pray.

And Eli was there listening to her praying in the tabernacle one day.

And um Eli thinks she's drunk as she's praying there in the tabernacle.

And he confronts her and says, Lady, what are you doing here drunk?

And she says, This, don't think of me as a wicked woman.

I've been praying from the depth of my anguish and resentment.

Don't you love that?

She's bringing into the tabernacle her anguish and resentment.

And the priest who's there at the time, the Levitical priest at that time, the priest after the Levitical Order, Levi or Eli, says to her, Go in peace.

May the God of Israel grant the request you've made of him.

And what happens?

She gets pregnant.

She has not just a baby, but she has Samuel as a baby.

That God's orchestrated all this story in her life so that she'll pray desperately in the tabernacle.

And she'll make this covenant and offer this baby up to the Lord.

And he will play this significant national role as a priest who prophesies and appoints a royal king.

King David comes from the anointing of Samuel.

Listen, brothers and sisters, this week we can bring our life in close proximity to the Lord because we have a high priest, Jesus, who loves us.

He's fully vested in you being able to pray and pour out your anguish before the Lord.

And our priest, Jesus, can say to us, go in peace, because he, like Melchizedek, is the king of peace.

Remember the beginning of the story?

He's both the king of Salem, which means peace, and he is the king of righteousness.

Jesus is the righteous, and he is the king of peace.

And he can say to you and I, go in peace.

Do you remember the psalm that Marvin read?

Psalm 144?

It almost seems like, wow, are you allowed to read that kind of thing in church?

It's so violent.

You remember it?

It's like, I love God because he's like fighting.

Like that's not just metaphor.

I mean, this is like war language.

That is the God, your God.

That is your king.

The reason we picked it is because it's a royal psalm.

There's like the categories of Psalms.

Some are royal and some are rejoicing and praise.

That's a royal psalm about how God is our King who goes to battle on your behalf and my behalf.

He's going to go with us this week.

Do we need him?

We do.

We do.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you that you can speak into our life by your spirit.

Lord, we would ask that you would deal with our own hearts.

Maybe we are resting and relying upon an old system that has been comfortable, like these Jewish Christians were.

And we may need some obscure verse or maybe some everyday normal Bible verse, but we need something used by the Holy Spirit to cut our hearts free from this wrong thing we're relying on, so that we can trust in you as our high priest.

And Lord, we give you our lives that you would use your spirit and your word to do that correction in our life.

Would you please accomplish that work in us this week?

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.