"Saved To The Uttermost" - Hebrews 7:11-28

All right, if you've got a Bible, we're going to be in Hebrews 7,

and I would encourage you today, definitely have a Bible out.

There's Bibles on the tables for you.

We're going to walk straight down Hebrews 7, because I think the best way to

do this, like always, is to walk verse by verse and let the author make his point.

I want to zoom out real quick, though, before we get started,

as just kind of a reminder, if you haven't been with us all the way through

Hebrews, what's going on here.

And so the writer of Hebrews writes to this church, this group of Hebrews,

and what he's trying to convince them of is that Jesus is greater than.

He's better than everything else. He's better than Moses, and he's better than

Abraham, and he's better than any high priest that we're going to look at today.

But the reason that's so important, and I think we miss it sometimes,

is what's really going on with these Jewish believers is they're being persecuted.

They're starting to be persecuted as Christians. And even though the Romans

oppressed them as Jewish believers, as Jewish men and women,

they didn't go out of their way to hurt them.

They didn't go out of their way to try and squash the movement.

There was an agreement between the Romans and the Jews that the Jews could be the Jews.

They could do what Jewish people did. As long as they were under Roman rule

and didn't break any Roman laws, they were okay with the Jews being the Jews.

What they were not okay with was Christians.

They didn't deal with Christians. They killed Christians.

They would put them, I know I've told you this before, one of the most graphic

scenes we see of what they would do with Christians is they would dip them in

candle wax and then place them at the entrance to Roman temples and light them

on fire like candles, right?

They didn't tolerate Christians because Christians didn't tolerate them.

Christians were not okay saying that Caesar was Lord. They weren't okay with

Rome being told or saying out loud that they were the reason that they were so awesome.

Just like the kings of Babylon of old, that they would say, look what we've done.

Look how great it is. And the Christians come along and say, you're not in charge.

You're not the Lord. You're not in control.

Caesar's not the Lord. He's not in control. And so as you read Hebrews,

I think it's important to remind yourself that what the author is trying to

make a case for is Jesus is worth your life, your family, your kids.

He's worth being dipped in wax for and lit on fire. He's worth being persecuted for.

And we miss that a lot, myself included, because I live in East Texas and to

accept Jesus doesn't cost me anything.

In fact, in East Texas, you're almost looked at as more weird if you don't accept

Jesus. If Jesus isn't part of your life, you kind of get a weird look.

Being a follower of Christ has helped my life a whole lot more than it's hurt it socially.

And the opportunities that I've been able to have, like being a Christian is

a good thing. That's not who the writer is writing to.

He is writing to a persecuted people and trying to get them to see whatever

it is that's going to cost you, whatever torment it might cost you,

whatever it might cost your whole family, whatever it might cost you monetarily,

whatever it might cost you socially,

Jesus is worth whatever that cost is.

And it's good to remember that because I think a lot of times we'll read our

Bibles and kind of get lost in the theology of it, which is great.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't read your Bible to be good theologians.

We've talked about that, but we can get lost in just dissecting things and talking

about things in a way that it's just mere facts and kind of numbers. And here's what I think.

And here's what you think. And oh, that's great. Let's go get Starbucks and

then eat some Mexican food.

That's not how these readers would have read this.

Again, the people hearing this letter or reading this letter would have been

trying to make a decision.

Is Jesus worth dying for? Is he worth losing my kids over? Is Is he worth my

wife and me being separated forever?

That's the decision before them. And the writer of Hebrews gives them a resounding, yes, he is.

And let me tell you why.

So whatever it is in your life that you're saying, man, I don't really know

if Jesus is worth that. I don't really know if he's worth that amount of time or that amount of money.

I've kind of allocated this much time for Jesus and these many things for Jesus.

The writer of Hebrews is saying to you, the same thing he says to them,

listen, he's worth it all.

He's worth all of it. and he gets to Hebrews chapter seven and he's making the

case that Jesus is greater than the high priest they're used to.

We talked last week about Melchizedek.

We kind of introduced him, said who we thought he was.

And it's interesting. There's really only a couple of verses in Genesis 14 that

give us a whole lot about who he was, right?

He was a high priest whose name meant the king of righteousness.

He was also the king of Salem, which we said was Jerusalem. him.

So he's the king of peace.

He had no father or mother, meaning his priesthood doesn't come from his genealogy,

but directly from God. And he's a priest of God most high.

He served as a priest towards Abraham as he served him bread and wine.

He received tithes and offerings from him and he blesses Abraham.

The one who God says, Abraham, I'm going to bless the whole world Well,

through you, Melchizedek blesses him.

But why is Melchizedek so significant for you and me? Well, that's what we're

going to talk about today. That's what we'll talk about today.

So there's one other place in the Old Testament that Melchizedek is mentioned.

Psalm 110, verse 4 says, The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.

Psalms 110:4

You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

So what happens? God, the father swears an oath, not to David,

but to David's greater son, the one that'll come from David, the line of David.

Ultimately, we know him as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth.

He says, I'm making an oath that that son of yours will be a priest forever

in the order of Melchizedek.

As we get into verse 11 of chapter seven, this is the verse that's on the writer's

mind. He's gonna quote it multiple times.

And really what he does here is what you might, if you have or have ever read

or know of what a commentary is, about a biblical commentary,

well, they'll take the scriptures, they'll take a verse and they'll explain it to you.

What's really going on here in Hebrews is he's taking that verse,

Psalm 110, and he's going to expound it.

He's going to commentate on it. He's going to give us exactly what the writer

of Psalms wanted them to know, wanted them to see.

So again, if you have a Bible, we're going to walk right through this.

We're going to start in verse 11 So I actually have it on the screen for you

this morning If you don't have a Bible.

That in a way. If you can't read it, read your Bible. All right, so let's get started.

It says, now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood,

for under it the people received the law, what further need would there have

been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek,

rather than one named after the order of Aaron?

So he says, if perfection through the priesthood was there, what need was there for another one?

So you've got this Levitical order of the priesthood. The Levitical order is simply this.

You had to be from the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron to be a priest.

The firstborn son was the high priest. That's how that worked.

There wasn't a character evaluation. There wasn't a, hey, let's see how things are going.

It wasn't like New Testament qualifications for elders, right?

Where there's all these things they want you to look at.

It was, are you in the tribe of Levi? Are you from the tribe of Aaron?

Are you the firstborn son? You're the guy.

He says the law is established alongside this priesthood.

The Old Testament law is established alongside the priesthood because the priest

is the mediator of that law.

He is the one who decides how that law is going to be mediated out.

Now, again, we aren't down on the law here. You'll hear that a lot.

You're no longer under the law. You don't need to know what the law says.

It's not that big of a deal.

I've heard it said this way, we're New Testament Christians around here.

The nicest thing I can say is that's really dangerous. That's the nicest thing I can say.

The second thing I would say about that is if you hear someone say that,

there's probably some heresy around the corner.

If somebody is trying to get you to say like, hey, just don't worry about the Old Testament.

It's kind of like when somebody says, don't look in that door.

Immediately you should know whatever's in that door is really important.

They don't want me to know what's back there.

But we're pro the law, right? David says the law is like honey on his lip,

that he thinks about it night and day.

Psalm 1 begins, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers, nor stands in the way of sinners,

but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And he meditates on it day and night.

He is like a tree planted by a stream who blooms in due time. We're fans of the law.

The problem is not that the law wasn't good. It was good.

The problem is the law was not sufficient to accomplish what God was ultimately trying to accomplish.

It was good. It just wasn't sufficient. So he goes on in verse 13, sorry, verse 12.

For when there was a change in the priesthood, there was necessarily a change in the law as well.

Verse 13, for when the one whom these things are spoken belong to another tribe

from which no one has ever served at the altar.

For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah.

And in connection with the tribe, Moses said nothing about the priest.

So again, he's helping us here to see the importance of this new priesthood.

And he's helping us to see how Jesus could be a high priest.

I don't know that that's a burning question for you and me. I don't really sit

around and think about the high priest in the city.

I'm sure we have a Jewish synagogue somewhere with a priest in it,

and I'm sure I could go talk to him about this, but it just doesn't come up

for me much. I don't think about those kinds of things.

But for, again, the people that he's writing to, as he's saying like,

well, Jesus is a high priest for you, their first thought is going to be,

well, that can't be true.

That can't be true because Jesus is from the tribe of Judah, not the tribe of Levi.

And he's of David's lineage, not Aaron's lineage.

He's trying to get out ahead of this question. So again, he goes to Psalm 110.

He's making them think about this and saying, Jesus is a new high priest in

the order of this Melchizedek who has no father or mother.

It doesn't matter what tribe he's from. It doesn't matter what family he's from.

That's not the order of high priest that he's in.

Again, just pause for a second and think about what he's doing.

He's taking in their objections.

The writer's trying to think, what would be their objections to Jesus as a high priest?

Again, we probably don't have those objections to him as a high priest,

but I'm sure we do have objections.

I'm sure you do have questions. It is amazing to me when I got into church work, you want to call it that,

how many people who've been in church for years still have a lot of questions

that go unanswered, a lot of objections that go unanswered, right?

That when you have questions, when you have objections, they're met with,

well, just go to church and pray and do your best and we'll just figure that out in the end.

The writer of Hebrews doesn't think like that. He's okay with objections.

He's okay with questions.

One of the reasons that we have

this table set up over here called church questions is for that reason.

We want you to ask questions. We want you to get your objections answered.

Do not walk through your Christian life trying to just grit and bear all these things that go on.

Now, does every question have the answer you want? Probably not.

Probably not. But plenty of them do.

I would just encourage you to take on the role, maybe, of this Hebrew writer.

If you're in here and you have some answers to questions, seek those people out.

Answer those questions. Walk through something with them. Help them understand

why it matters that Jesus is a high priest or why it matters that he's the greater Abraham or David.

All right. Again, he's trying to help them see, hey, Jesus is worth your whole

life. And so let's answer these questions.

One of the reasons we don't have this burning desire is because Jesus doesn't

cost us a whole lot. He doesn't seem to cost us a whole lot.

When you begin to see that Jesus is asking for your entire life,

every single thing about you, every single thought, every single action,

every single cent you make, every single amount of time you have,

Jesus is asking for all of those things.

Then all of a sudden you're gonna start going, okay, if that's true,

then I need to figure out what all this means.

I'm going to give my life to this thing. I need to figure this out.

All right, verse 15, keep going. He says, this becomes even more evident when

another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest,

not on the basis of legal requirement concerning bodily descent,

but by the power of an indestructible life.

Verse 17, for it is witnessed of him.

And again, he quotes Psalm 110 here. you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

So he says, Jesus's priesthood is legitimate, right? It doesn't come from a

family. It's legitimate.

Not only is it legitimate, it's better.

Why is it better? He says, because Jesus's priesthood is not based on a fleshly commandment.

It's not based again on genealogy. It's not based on simply a set of rules and principles.

The writer says, you know what's better than that? God's decree.

God's decree is better than that.

God decrees it, number one. Number two, it's built on an indestructible life.

Think about the priesthood as they would have known it.

They die and you get a new one. They die and you get a new one.

Maybe it's a good one. Maybe it's a bad one.

Maybe it starts as a good one and turns into a bad one.

If you've read your Old Testament very much at all, you understand there's not a lot of great examples.

There's a lot of high priests that really kind of become everything that God asked them not to do.

And you're bringing your sacrifices to them. You're coming to them at the temple.

You're entrusting them to be the mediator between you and God.

And you really have no way of knowing whether or not that's really going to

someone that deserves that level of respect.

Number one. Number two, you don't know your high priest very well.

You aren't close to him. You don't know his family.

You don't know what he's like, right? There were probably some times that you

didn't really like the high priest, but you knew his firstborn son.

You thought, listen, this guy's bad, but we don't want him to die because I

know his son. We've all had those moments, right?

I don't know. This is not good, but this may be worse.

So again, not so of Jesus. His calling is decreed by the father and sealed by his perfect life.

In fact, I think one of the clearest ways that you see this clash of priesthood is at the cross.

The chief priests and scribes and Pharisees are plotting to kill Jesus.

You can go read this at the end of Matthew if you want. I think it's very clear

in Matthew what's going on.

They're plotting to kill him. And they had become so corrupt that they would

do their very best to lord over the people of God and to kill God's only begotten son.

That's what the high priest, that's what the priesthood had become.

Remember, Jesus comes and clears out the temple during Holy Week because of

what the priests have allowed the temple to become, a place for buying and selling.

Yet Jesus, the greater high priest, is introduced to them. And not only do they

want to kill him, they want to squash everyone that might be following him.

What does Jesus do? He defeats them not by raising his sword,

but by laying down his life for his people.

Exactly what the high priest was supposed to be doing. A high priest was supposed

to be living in light of God's people, to do everything he could to help God's

people, to be the mediator between God and his people.

And yet the high priestlyhood had become so corrupt that they wanted to kill Jesus, but Jesus wins.

His priesthood wins.

He does exactly again what a high priest is supposed to be doing.

Verse 18, for on one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its

weakness and uselessness for the law.

Listen, this is really important. For the law made nothing perfect.

But on the other hand, a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God.

It's a pretty incredible thing to say. It says a former commandment is set aside

because of its weakness and uselessness.

It's uselessness. The law sets God's standard.

The law shows us his heart. The law shows us his holiness. How can you say that that's useless?

Again, let me remind you, it's not that it's useless, it's that it's incomplete.

The law can show you everything that's wrong with you.

I'm sure you've done the exercise of walking through the Ten Commandments and

saying, have you ever lied? Have you ever cheated?

Have you ever wanted something someone else has for yourself?

We've all failed in those ways. And the law can show you all those things.

And it's a great thing. The problem is the law is like a mirror.

When you stand in front of a mirror, it can certainly show you every single

thing that is wrong with you.

And the longer you stand in front of the mirror, the longer you stood under

the law, you would find out more and more where you fell short and more and

more where you didn't live up.

The more laws you would break and the worse you would feel until you would try

and go to the high priest and offer a sacrifice and get atonement for that year

until you went back and guess what?

You stood in front of the mirror again and you found out, I am dirty again. I've got problems.

You can stand under the law all day long. The problem is the law offers you

no power to change anything you see in the mirror, none.

The law simply reveals that you are a sinner.

The law reveals to you that no matter how hard you try, you will never make

it to God on your own. It's a mirror.

Again, the law can tell me what not to do, not to steal, not to lust,

but the law gives me no power to accomplish anything. You need someone to come

and fix those problems you can't fix.

You need a perfect high priest to come and save you from the sins that you have

no power to cleanse yourself of.

Again, this is the danger we find ourselves in so much today.

I just mentioned it earlier, but because you live in East Texas,

we don't see the need for this a lot. We're pretty moral people, right?

We look around the world and we go, man, can you believe how crazy these people are?

Now, granted, they look at us and say the same things, but for different reasons,

all right? We're like redneck crazy. It's like we're morally crazy.

But we look around and we go, man, can you believe what's happening over there

in those states? Can you believe that they're putting up with that?

Can you believe that that's going on?

Not here. not us. We would never do that.

This is what the Hebrews would do. The Hebrews would walk around and they would look at the Romans.

They would look at the Greeks and they would go, I mean, we're not great,

but have you seen what they're doing?

They're worshiping this pantheon of gods. They're sacrificing babies.

They've got brothels at their temples.

I mean, like, sure, we've got our problems, but we're not them.

And again, the writer of Hebrews is trying to get to see, yeah,

you are like them. You are like them.

You're a sinner just like they are. You're separated from God just like they are.

You need a high priest, a perfect high priest just like they do.

So many people walk around believing that the most important thing about being

a Christian is what they do for God, their service to him, what they accomplished

for him, what they've done for him, how good they can be.

The writer of Hebrews wants to make it clear, you know, what's most important

about you and your relationship with God is what God has done for you,

what God has accomplished on your behalf, what God has done on your behalf.

Is what verse 19 points out so clearly. He says, but on the other hand,

a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God.

How do you draw near to God?

By trusting in the better hope that is Jesus Christ, not the job,

relationship, car, or whatever you're putting your hope in, that you trust and hope in Jesus Christ.

What is that hope guarantee? What is the guarantee you have when you hope in

Jesus Christ, that you can draw near to God.

Consider the temple that they're so used to.

Consider how crazy a statement it is for this writer to tell them,

you personally, you as a person can draw near to God.

The temple that they knew had a wall around it, a gate, a temple building that

was only for a priest, and a veil that says, if you come through this veil,

you will die because you're a sinner.

And yet the writer of Hebrews says, because of our greater hope,

Jesus Christ, we can draw near to God.

No walls, no gates, no priestly qualifications.

It doesn't matter what family you're from, what tribe you're from,

and the veil has been torn into that you can access God. You can go into the

holy of holies with no fear of dying because of what Christ has done for you.

The greater hope, Jesus Christ, has made a way for you to draw near to God.

That is an incredibly scandalous thing to say to a Jewish person.

And it should be an incredibly scandalous thing for us to hear that we,

in our weakness, in our sins, in our struggles, could just draw near to God

because of what Jesus Christ did.

That is what he's trying to get them to see. It's worth it. Jesus is worth it.

And the writer is going to give us some things here that we'll go through pretty

quickly, that again, make it clear why Jesus is a better high priest.

Verse 20 and 21 says, it is not without an oath for those who formerly became

priests were made such without an oath.

But this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him,

again, he quotes Psalm 110, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.

You are a priest forever.

So it's better than the regular priesthood, than the Levitical priesthood.

Why? Because it's based on God's oath, not on Jesus' family,

that God will bless his future son from Psalm 110 and he will make him a priest forever.

22, this makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

Why is this priesthood better? Because he guarantees your access into the new

covenant that God has made with you.

This may seem like a weird example, but this word guarantor is really a financial word.

It's a word that is like being a cosigner.

It's as if you bring your spiritual application before God.

As you try and draw near to God, you bring your spiritual loan application,

right? Like I'm trying to get accepted here.

I'm trying for God to let me into his family, to let me into heaven,

to let me into where Jesus is.

Here's my loan application and you give it to him. And it's like, well, this is a mess.

Your credit score is like 128. I don't even know if that's possible.

Is that possible? You file bankruptcy by then? I don't know.

My mom's a CPA. I should know these things, but I don't.

That's the problem with your mom being a CPA. You don't have to know,

neither here nor there, But you bring that loan application in and let's just

take Ephesians 2 as a loan application, if you will.

Ephesians 2 says this, that you're dead in your trespasses and sins.

Not a good start. That you're following the prince of the power of the air. That's Satan.

Not a good middle ground here.

Maybe it'll get better. Maybe there's some saving grace. And Ephesians finishes

by saying that you are walking around gratifying the desires of your flesh,

following the world around you. That's a heck of an application.

Yet that's what we bring into the presence of God in and of our own selves.

And listen, that's not just you. That's what Abraham brought.

That's what Moses brought. That's what Paul brought. That's what John brought.

Every single person in human history brings this loan application,

this application before God to say, God, this is what I have.

And again, in a way, Jesus becomes the co-signer of your application.

Jesus says, knowing exactly who you are, knowing exactly how sinful you are,

knowing that you are dead and following the prince of the power of the air and

gratifying the desires of your flesh, caring nothing about what God wants from

you, nothing about what God would have from you.

Jesus looked at that and he says, I'll take this one on.

I'll sign for this one. This one belongs to me now.

He's a part of my family. He has access to my wealth. He has access to my righteousness.

He has access to my father, not because of what they've done,

but because I love them and will sign for them on their behalf.

And I will sign their application in my own blood.

That God will make them alive, that he will adopt them into the family,

that he will give them a new heart and new desires, that is the guarantee,

Jesus is the guarantor of that.

That when you go to God, when you draw near to God now, what he looks at and

what he sees is not you, your application, what your life looks like.

He sees the signer of your life, Jesus Christ.

Lastly, he saves to the uttermost. 23 through 25, says the former priests were

many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.

Sometimes you read something in the Bible and you're like, yeah,

that makes complete sense.

Why were there a lot of high priests? Well, because they kept dying.

That's what people do. They kept dying.

Verse 24, but he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever.

Consequently, or because of that, he is able to save to the uttermost those

who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

So what's the problem? What's one of the problems? Why is this priesthood better?

Well, because priests die and Jesus doesn't. He lives forever.

Again, you may get to know your high priest. You may really like him.

You may really trust him, but he's going to die.

But Jesus' priesthood continues forever. He's an eternal high priest.

He's the perfect high priest. When you bring your sins to him,

he doesn't ask you for a sacrifice. He is the sacrifice.

When you bring your sins to him, he doesn't look for you to do penance. He does all the work.

And when you bring your sins to him, he's not looking for you to reach some

moral standard that you'll never reach.

He lives the perfect life and applies it to you on your behalf.

Because of all that, he is able to, as the word says here, save to the uttermost.

That word uttermost there in the Greek is pentelos.

It means entirely and forever. It's only used two places in the whole New Testament.

It's used in the gospel once, but only once in an epistle.

It means entirely and forever, meaning entirely, that you are saved entirely.

Every crevice of your life, every sin that you committed that you've forgotten,

every sin that you commit that you don't even remember, every evil thought, every lustful look,

every angry word, Jesus saves it entirely and completely.

And it means he does that forever.

That the same love that drove him to the cross for his people is the same love

he has for them as he prays for them at the Father's right hand.

His love for you has not waned.

He has not gotten tired of you.

He has not gotten to heaven and forgotten how much he loved you.

He's not lost patience with you in your sins and your struggles.

He is living forever to make amends and to save you to the uttermost entirely

and forever, pleading your case before the Father with the wounds from the cross still in his hands.

Some people just need to hear that. Some Christians need to hear that sometimes.

Jesus is not tired of you.

He's not looking for a way out of what he's done for you.

Whatever you've done, whatever sin you've committed, if you've trusted in Jesus

Christ, if you truly believe that he is who he says he is, if you've placed

your faith in the greater hope of Jesus Christ,

he loves you today as much as he did in eternity past and will love you into

eternity future. church.

He saves to the uttermost.

Again, the writer of Hebrews is trying to clear this up for his readers and for us this morning.

If you are to be saved fully and forever, it is not found in anyone but the

perfect high priest, Jesus Christ, which means you've got to get Jesus right.

You got to know who Jesus is.

Oftentimes when people talk to me, especially when I meet guys on job sites,

they find out I'm a pastor. Number one, all of a sudden they stop cussing, which is always crazy.

But number two, when we start talking about church and religion and Jesus,

the first thing they always bring up is things like, well, you know,

I'm just trying. I'm doing my best.

And I love the look on their face where I'm like, that doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Go and try other religions. People go and try other ways to God.

They try and, again, do penance. They try and give a lot of money,

or they try and spend a lot of time at church, or they try and make sure their

kids are doing the right thing.

Listen, no other religion, no good works, no amount of time,

money, or effort will save you to the uttermost. Only Jesus Christ will do that.

So he continues to make his case to the Hebrews. He's worth it.

Whatever it's going to cost you, Jesus is worth it. And Satan's greatest ploy

against you is to try and convince you that Jesus isn't worth it.

I don't think Satan spends a whole lot of time really trying to convince people

that Jesus didn't exist or maybe they spent some time, maybe he wasn't God.

Usually when I meet someone that's like, well, I used to be a believer,

but I just don't think Jesus was actually God. It's like, what sin did you commit?

What lifestyle did you start wanting to go after I think Satan spends a lot

of time just trying to get people to think of Jesus as a good guy,

a good teacher, that he's just like the Muslims would say, they love Muhammad, well, we love Jesus.

The Buddhists would say they love Buddha, well, we love Jesus.

Just another prophet, priest, person to believe in, place for people to take their problems.

The writer of Hebrews is trying to say he is wholly different than that.

He is the only begotten Son of God, made flesh, living a perfect life to die

a perfect death on the cross for the sins of his people and elect,

that he might bring them to God, that he might give them access to the Father,

that he might co-sign their spiritual application to say, they are mine, they belong to me,

I have paid their debt, they are in.

If you have trusted in Christ, you can hear the words that Jesus says to Peter

at the Last Supper when he looks at Peter and says, Peter, Satan would have

you and sift you like wheat.

Looks at every single one of us and can say that, that the devil and his minions

would have you and sift you like wheat, and he would win.

He would win. Do you ever hear people say like, with my feet of the ground,

I want the devil to be scared of you? He's not scared of you.

He's been around longer than you. He's smarter than you. He's toppled kingdoms.

He's toppled nations. And you think that you're going to go up against him?

No. What the devil is scared of is that you might find your hope in Jesus Christ,

that he might live inside of you.

That's what the devil fears.

Not strong-willed people, not people that just know their Bible,

not people that go to church. He is terrified of people that would say, I know Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ lives for me. He makes intercession for me.

And you may try and sift me like wheat, but Jesus looks at me just like he looked

at Peter and says, but Peter, I have prayed for you that your faith will not

fail, that your faith will not fail.

Let me just close by reading these last few verses, get through the whole chapter here.

Verse 26, for it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest.

Listen to this description of Jesus, holy and innocent and unstained and separated

from sinners and exalted above the heavens.

He has no need like those high priests of old to offer sacrifices daily,

first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once

for all when he what? Offered up himself.

Verse 28, for the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests,

but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who

has been made perfect forever.

However, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens.

What does that high priest deserve? It doesn't matter what he deserved.

What he did was offer himself up.

This is his closing argument to the Hebrews about Jesus and the order of Melchizedek.

The point of the discussion is not to give them things to talk about,

not to argue over the nuances of what's going on here and what could this really

mean? And what about these words and that words?

The point of this conversation is simply to say, Jesus is a better high priest

for you than any human high priest could ever be.

Because his priesthood never changes. Because he offers you a better hope.

Because he guarantees the covenant on your behalf.

Because he is able to save you to the uttermost.

Because he has laid down his life for his people.

Of Hebrews wants his listeners and readers to know, just like he would want

you and me to know, Jesus is worth it. He is worth it.

Whatever you think it's going to cost you, whatever it will cost you to admit

that you're a sinner, whatever it will cost you to give your life to him in every single way,

whatever it will cost, whatever relationship it costs you, whatever money it cost you.

Whatever it might cost you, Jesus is worth that.

Just like he would look at them in the eye. Think about looking someone in the

eye and them saying, well, you know,

writer of Hebrews, whoever that is, if I believe in that, you realize that they

may come take me away from my family and kids and they may kill my wife and my kids.

I may not know whatever happens to them, that that writer of Hebrews would look

that person right in the eye and say, yes,

yes, yes, it matters that much that you trust in Jesus that way,

that your kids would look at you and say, I don't know a whole lot about my dad,

but I know that he valued Jesus over every single thing else in his life.

I don't know a ton about maybe my mom, maybe it's like John Owen,

his mom died when he was seven years old.

But when he thinks about his mom, he says, listen, I know she loved the Lord

more than she loved anything else, more than she loved me, more than she loved dad.

She valued Jesus Christ. And that's what the writer of Hebrews is trying to do.

That's what he's trying to do for his readers. That's what he's trying to do

for us, that we would know Jesus, that he would be the way that we enter into

the Holy of Holies to know who God is, that he's offered himself up for us. Let's pray.

Father, thank you as always again for this morning. Thank you for every single person in this room.

God, again, we give a special thank you to moms, both physical and spiritual this morning.

I pray that we would take the writer of Hebrews seriously when he's trying to

get us to understand what Jesus is worth, what kind of devotion he deserves.

There's nothing on this planet that is worth more than him.

There's nothing of more value. There's nothing that gives us more purpose.

There's nothing that offers us more hope than the person and work of your son, Jesus Christ.

God, that if we are struggling, if we're Christians, If we have put our hope

in you, but we're struggling, we're not sure what's going on. Life is a little crazy.

We're doing things we know we shouldn't be doing.

Maybe we just need to be reminded this morning that Jesus ever lives to make

intercession for us, to pray for us before the Father, that he's not tired of us.

He doesn't regret his decision to save us, but that he loves us as a high priest

should, that he makes intercession, that he gave his life up for us.

God, more than anything, that we are saved to the uttermost.

We are saved entirely, and we are saved forever because of the work of our great

high priest and king, Jesus Christ. In your name I pray, amen.