Hebrews: Jesus, the Priest-King | Guest Speaker: Sam Rapp

My name is Sam.

I am the student pastor here, and I'm just overjoyed to be here with you worshiping this morning and to be a part of this family.

My wife and I are yeah, just so grateful and blessed to be here.

And as Russ said, I am a preacher this morning, and in the words of Brad O'Kelly, you very much have the JVB team up in the pulpit today, so I hope that y'all are okay with that.

But if you do know me, you probably know that I love sneakers, especially of the Jordan brand.

And one way that I made money in college and even made enough money to ultimately buy my wife's engagement ring was by selling these sneakers.

So what I would do is I would set up reminders on my phone to let me know when these really hyped up sneakers would be releasing.

And they're hyped up because they have a lot of value behind them.

A lot of people recognize that these are really valuable sneakers.

And so everybody would line up online and get ready to buy these sneakers right when they release.

And then these sneakers would sell out in like five, six seconds and then resell for like 600% of retail value.

And again, the reason they sell for so much is because of how limited in number they are.

So a couple weeks ago, uh, it was a Thursday, uh, we had a staff meeting, and uh it was recently that we started having these like all staff meetings all together on Thursdays, and uh again, I I'm pretty new here.

I'm still kind of learning the ropes and proving that I'm like not as stupid as I may think I am at 23.

Uh but we're having these all-staff meetings, and so kind of insecure still, kind of trying to find my way in here.

Uh, and we have a staff meeting, and it starts at the same exact time as these shoes release at 10 a.m.

on the nose.

And so we have this staff meeting kind of in our little like general office area where my corner is.

But Russ doesn't like when I call it my corner, so it's where my office is.

But it's where my desk and my chair is, and I call it my corner, but Russ doesn't like that.

So they all shuffle out into the room, Annie, Sam, Russ, and they come out and sit in this meeting area, and I have my laptop open, but it's open to the Nike website.

Not to my meeting stuff I need to go over, but it's open to the Nike website with this pair of Jordans flashing the screen.

So again, I'm in I'm kind of insecure, and I was anxious Russ was gonna walk out and be like, dude, we have a staff meeting like now.

Why why are you on the Nike website?

Um long story short, I taught Russ all there is to know about reselling Jordans.

Um, and if that's my legacy here, then you know, so be it.

But I got the shoes somehow and ended up getting lucky with that.

But the thing is, Jordan sneakers like this are so valuable because of the thing or person that they represent.

These shoes, in a sense, are a shadow of Michael Jordan himself, who is probably the best basketball player of all time and the most influential basketball player of all time.

And when you see a pair of Jordans, you see this very famous logo.

And when you see that logo, hopefully you will recognize that it's pointing to this guy named Michael Jordan.

And all of this being said, the Old Testament is full of types or shadows or logos, you could say, of Jesus of Nazareth who was to come.

In fact, about a third of the verses in the New Testament are references or quotes to the Old Testament.

So let's think of a few figures in the Old Testament that point to Jesus.

So we'll start with kind of a big one.

So Moses.

He was the messenger between God and Israel, the mediator.

He was the guy that God called with a burning bush to come lead his people out of Egypt and into the promised land, crossing the Red Sea.

Jesus is the better Moses.

Next, Job.

Though God counted him as a righteous man, God at the hand of Satan allowed him to suffer, kind of like Jesus.

Jesus is the better Job.

King David, who was Israel's greatest king in the Old Testament.

This was a reigning servant who, again, was Israel's greatest king, who was a man after God's own heart, and we see that Jesus is the better David.

And then lastly, we have a man named Elijah who was called by God to announce to the people of Israel that they needed to turn from their sin and walk in righteousness, and he was rejected by those people because of that.

Jesus is the better Elijah.

And I could keep going.

The Old Testament is chalked full of these men and women who ultimately point us to Jesus of Nazareth, but I think that we get the picture.

But in our text today, which is Hebrews 7, we get one of the clearest types of Jesus in the entire Bible in the Old Testament.

And see, Russ talked about this guy named Melchizedek a couple weeks ago, and I'm sure a lot of you before I just said that word, had never heard that name before.

So you might be wondering why this guy named Melchizedek is one of the most important figures, not only in the Old Testament, but in the Bible, I would argue.

But before we go any further, let's hear God's word together.

This is Hebrews 7, verses 15 through 22.

Hebrews 7:15–22

It says this.

For it is witness of him, you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.

For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside, because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law made nothing perfect.

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

And it was 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, The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.

You are a priest forever.

This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

This is God's word, and before we go into it any further, would y'all pray with me?

Lord Jesus, you are King forever and you are also priest forever.

Please, Lord, come and show us your grace and your mercy.

Show us your call to repentance, but also show us that we are not righteous because of whatever we do or do not do.

Lord, we are righteous only by your grace alone.

So I pray, Jesus, that you would come show us that today, that you would show us how rich the grace of Jesus is, that there is so much life that you are calling us to.

Please come, Lord Jesus, and show us yourself.

And it's in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we've been going through this book of Hebrews the past few weeks, and I want to remind us that this book is written to Jewish Christians, once people who were Jews, but then converted to Christianity.

And the Old Testament references in this book make up for 70% of its content.

So seven out of every ten verses you see in this book of Hebrews have some reference or quote or citation to the Old Testament.

And I think the writer of Hebrews had that in mind with his audience.

He knew that they knew the Old Testament, they knew it well, but he wanted to say, hey, yes, this law is good, but let me show you how much better Jesus of Nazareth is.

And if there's one theme that this entire book sums up is this Jesus is supreme over all.

If the whole book of Hebrews could be summed up into one sentence, is that Jesus Christ is supreme over all.

And that brings me to my first point.

Point one.

Jesus has power and authority over all earthly rulers.

Jesus has power and authority over all earthly rulers.

I want to jump back into verse 15 and 16 really quick.

Verse 15.

This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.

See, in the Bible, in the Old Testament especially, someone would become a king because their dad and grandfather were kings.

Kind of like Downton Abbey or the crown, right?

You become a king or a queen because you were born into it.

It's in your blood.

However, this is not the case for Jesus, as we see here.

Jesus is king in his nature forever because he has it in himself as king.

The only reason I'm standing here talking to you, or I have breath in my lungs, or a mouth to communicate, is because Jesus has given these things to me.

Jesus is king and priest by no man's decision, no orderly advice from the king, but by his only true nature as king of the universe.

And he's the only person who has that.

And see, we're in a very divisive time right now in American history.

American history is filled with division, but we aren't especially in one right now.

My mom even said that in her lifetime, this is the most divided she's seen our country.

I believe that this divisiveness is, of course, first and foremost, because of our broken and fallen nature.

I mean, what happens when a bunch of broken presidents run a country is brokenness.

However, I want to encourage us and remind us of something so beautiful this morning.

We're almost exactly a month away from the election.

And it's so important to vote and to use your voice.

However, I want to encourage us from what we see in this text that Donald Trump and Joe Biden or Kanye West cannot be the king for us forever.

They will not fix this country.

This country does not rest on the decisions they make in that Oval Office, and that's good news.

There is only one king, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth, and he is the only one who upholds this country by his power.

And this king is perfect and full of grace and truth and love and generosity to us.

But again, we have one king ultimately.

And that brings me to my second point.

Point number two Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

See, we see consistently in this passage that the priesthood of Jesus is one that lasts forever.

In the Old Testament, priests would come, priests would go, there were good priests, bad priests, mean priests, funny priests, etc.

However, our priest, Jesus of Nazareth, is here to stay.

And we have hope in this knowledge that Jesus is the same.

That he always looks at us the same, he always feels the same about us every day.

He cares for us, he loves us the same every waking minute.

We will never approach this God and wonder if he's frustrated at us or sad about us or mad at us.

Even if we have the worst, most sinful day in history, we know that our Father in heaven is not looking at us scoffing.

The other day, uh Grace, my wife, who by the way is way out of my league, but she, regardless, she was uh not having a very good day.

We were playing tennis to try to you know get our minds off of it, went for a walk, tried to exercise, whatever.

Uh we go play tennis, and Grace just is yeah, not having a great day.

And you know, I could tell she was off, but you know, we started rallying back and forth.

We're not very good anyways, but we were rallying back and forth.

Um and sure enough, like she could kind of tell that I was getting frustrated because we weren't really playing that well, and when she saw that I was getting frustrated, she kind of just wasn't really feeling it anymore, and so she was done playing, and so we were done playing.

Um and I was discouraged and frustrated in that moment because of the way that I failed, because of the ways that when my beautiful sweet wife was having a hard day, I did not come to the rescue like I could have.

The thing about living in this broken world is that our physical examples of love and grace are parents, relatives, spouses, all broken people.

And a lot of these, a lot of the time, the good news is that these people are very sweet, they're helpful, they're generous, they're gentle, they're loving.

But then this person who we love so deeply, who we look to, responds with anger or frustration, or you catch them having an off day or a moody day, and they respond and they snap at you, and then this image that we had of them of love and grace is tainted.

But the thing about Jesus that we see in this passage is that he never has bad days.

He never has an off day, we'll never catch him in a bad mood, we'll never catch him frustrated or stressed.

We can trust through what we see in his word that Jesus will always respond like the father in the prodigal son story.

Or remind us, that story is met with this young man who takes his father's inheritance early and goes off and spends it all on who knows what, comes back basically crawling to the house, and instead of the father being upset and frustrated at him, he runs to the end of the driveway to meet him with grace.

Or, like in Luke 15, we see the parable of the lost sheep.

And when this one sheep out of the hundred leaves, the shepherd isn't angry to go find the sheep and rebuke it, but he goes and finds the sheep and holds it and holds it dear and hugs it.

Jesus is happy to forgive us and free us of our sin.

He's happy to come find us as the lost dead sheep.

And that brings me to my last point for us this morning.

Point number three.

There is more grace in Jesus than there is sin in you.

There is more grace in Jesus than there is sin in you.

I want to read verses 23 through 25 of chapter 7.

So y'all read this with me.

It says this the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.

But he holds the priesthood permanently because he continues forever.

Consequently, 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.

Did you catch that in verse 25?

He says, He is able to save to the other the uttermost.

And in Greek, this word could be translated as completely, totally, utterly, entirely.

But as I look through my life, I think through it and I wonder how often do I try or do we try to climb this mountain of discipline, of morality, of just trying to be as good as we possibly can, of just doing, doing, doing?

How often do we think that by doing these things, God will look at us and be a little extra pleased with us that week?

Right?

He'll smile at us a little bit more that week.

Or on days where we were kind of the opposite and a little bit more rebellious, talked back to our children or our parents a little bit more harshly that week, or responded in bad ways.

Do we think that God is a little less pleased in those moments?

But I can rejoice this morning with you all that my faith is not built on what Sam Rap does or does not do.

My salvation, my justification before Jesus does not depend on what Sam does.

If that was true, then I don't doubt that I would have lost it a long time ago.

But the truth about sin is that it's not just some mud that we wash our hands and get rid of at the end of a bad day.

It's not just something on the surface we can wipe off and then we're all good.

One thing we see is that sin permeates every facet of our lives, all of our bloodstreams, all of our decisions, our thoughts, our motivations.

But see, Jesus in this picture saying he doesn't just save our addiction problems or our pornography addiction on the outside, he saves the deep sin issues that are rooted in our hearts and the inside.

He goes deep into our bloodstream and washes it white as snow.

It's not just the exterior sins that he gets rid of.

He goes into our hearts and fixes the core issue.

All of our sin, our guilt, our worst misbehaviors to the worst extreme are lovingly and freely forgiven by Jesus if we put our faith in him.

And therefore we can rejoice with Paul and confess that we count everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing this Jesus, the better Melchizedek, the priest king who brings us to God by nothing that we have done, but by his grace and mediation alone.

He is priest in that he has offered himself to be our replacement, our sacrifice, but he is our king and that he has authority and he sits on the throne forever, through the thick and the thin.

Jesus is the better Melchizedek, the perfect priest king.

I want to close this with a quote from my personal faith hero, Charles Spurgeon.

He says, This O my hearer, though your hand were even red with murder, yet the blood of Christ could wash it clean.

All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.

Yes, let the silver trumpet sound it out.

You chief of sinners, hear the news.

The Savior lives that to the uttermost he may save such as you.

Come then to your living Lord, you that groan under the load of deadly guilt, for he can take it all away.

Would y'all pray with me?

King Jesus, you sit on the throne forever.

And Lord, we confess that so often we just run to the things of this world to find our satisfaction, our identity, our salvation in.

We look to the affection of other peoples from friends, from relationships.

We look to the success of our children or our career or our money.

We look to our own perfection and getting rid of that addiction or getting rid of that sin issue.

But Lord, the reality is that we cannot, in our own power and our own strength, get ourselves up that mountain of the King Jesus in heaven.

Lord, you had to come down to the bottom of the mountain to give us that freedom.

And so, Lord, I pray that today, if there's anyone in this room that feels like they're trying but can't just do enough, Lord, I ask that you would show them to you would show yourself to them.

Lord, that the person who feels like they might have not lived right on Friday or Saturday, but came in this morning feeling guilty, Lord, I pray that you would show them that there's no more guilt to be found.

That all guilt and shame has been washed clean by the blood of Jesus, and we thank you for that, Lord.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you that it's existed for thousands of years to our hands today.

Please bless it.

It's in Jesus' name.

Amen.