Wirksworth | 27/09/26 | Jesus - Priest And King | Peter Williams

I have spoken once before, so he's a great teacher, so very excited to hear what you're sharing with us.

So shall I pray for the other thing?

Father God.

Yeah.

Just need your holy presence, Lord.

Just come and rest on Peter this morning.

May He bring everything that your heart desires, Lord Jesus, for us this morning.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Yeah, last time I was here, I think was about um 10, 11 weeks ago, and um I couldn't stand upright, and uh I was very generously prayed for by quite a few people that day, and uh I can't believe the difference.

I know the surgeons have had their way with me in the meantime, but um when I saw the physio a few weeks later, they were like, no one's as good as this at this point post-surger, and um, and uh yeah, I've just been unbelievably blessed.

So um thank you for all of your prayers.

Um for a number of you, you were at School of Theology yesterday, and um, if you were, some of the things that I'm gonna bring up today will really strike a resonance with the things that we spoke about yesterday.

Um, if you weren't, it's really great, and I think you can still join.

Um, the topic I've got this morning is kind of a tricky topic, and uh I um sometimes get given the tricky topics by the other elders.

Um, and I don't know what I did wrong, uh, but they kind of say, Okay, you can do this one, and uh but this one, although it's tricky, I chose it because actually I think it's a really exciting topic.

And this morning we're gonna go on a bit of a tour of the Bible, and uh I'm hopefully gonna open up some bits that perhaps you hadn't seen before.

So, uh, if you've got your Bibles, I want you to follow along today and go through things in the Bible.

It's fine if you're using a phone, I'm not offended if you've got your phone out to look at the Bible on your phone.

Um, so um, we're gonna be talking about Jesus, uh the high priest and the king.

And uh it's we're gonna talk about a strange guy from the Bible called Melchizedek.

More of him in a bit.

But we're gonna start in Hebrews 5.

There's gonna be a few different bits from Hebrews, and uh, if you've ever read your Bible, you'll know that Hebrews is just a little bit complicated because um it was written to the Hebrew people, and there was all this kind of background knowledge that they had from all of the Old Testament and uh from all their practices, and because of that, it explains some stuff to the Hebrew people, which some of us, when we read it, think that doesn't really relate to where I'm at in my kind of life in the UK in the 21st century.

It seems a bit kind of archaic at times, but I'm hoping that as we go through this today, you're gonna kind of have your eyes opened and you'll see a bit more about what it's really all about.

So, Hebrews 5, we're gonna start verse 1.

Every high priest is a man chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God.

And he presents their gifts to God and offers sacrifices for their sins.

And he is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses.

That is why he must offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as theirs.

So the writer to the Hebrews is talking about what happens in a Jewish temple.

So, no one can become a high priest simply because he wants such an honour.

He must be called by God for this work, just as Aaron was.

That is why Christ did not honor himself by assuming that he could become a high priest.

No, he was chosen by God, who said to him, You are my son.

Today I have become your father.

And in another passage, God said to him, You are a priest for ever in the order of Melchizedek.

I told you it was a wee bit complicated.

Now, while Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings with a loud cry and tears to the one who could rescue him from death.

And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.

Even though Jesus was God's son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered, and in this way God qualified him as a perfect high priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.

And God designated him to be a high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

So big question: who on earth was Melchizedek?

Well, verse 6 in this passage is actually a quote from Psalms, and uh it's Psalm 110.

And uh in that psalm, King David prophesies that the Messiah who will come, who we know is Jesus, will be a king and a priest over Israel in the order of Melchizedek.

So it's a quote from Psalms.

But where's Melchizedek from?

Well, actually, Melchizedek's right from the beginning of the Bible.

So you need to flick right back to the start of your Bibles to Genesis 14.

And um, so if you know your Bible, Genesis is kind of the beginning of the story of God's people.

And it says this.

Uh, verse 18.

Melchizedek, the king of Salem and a great priest of God most high, brought Abram, that's Abraham, um, it was that's what he was called earlier, some bread and some wine.

Melchizedek blessed Abram with this blessing.

Blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God most high, who has defeated your enemies for you.

And then Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of all the goods that he'd recovered.

Now this had happened.

Abraham had gone and won a battle, um, and he'd rescued his nephew Lot.

You remember Lot who looks back, gets turned to salt later on in Genesis, and uh Melchizedek comes out to meet him and gives this uh he gives Melchizedek this gift.

Um so there's a fellowship meal of bread and wine for all the weary men that have gone to war, and then Melchizedek blesses Abraham in the name of El Elion, who is God most high.

And in response, Abraham gives him a tenth of all the spoils of war that they've brought back.

Now Melchizedek holds this office of king and priest, but this is really weird because actually there weren't any kings at this point in the Old Testament.

So how could he be a king?

He also holds the office of priest, and uh Abraham treats him as a priest, but there were no priests yet at this point.

God hadn't kind of talked to his people about having priests.

So this verse, these couple of verses in Genesis are a wee bit kind of, huh?

Well, where does he come from?

And Melchizedek isn't mentioned before this in the Bible, and he's only mentioned in this bit of the Psalms and in the New Testament.

So we don't we don't know anything about this guy.

We don't know where he's come from, we don't know what happens to him afterwards, but Abraham treats him as a king and a priest.

Now, there are some theories around, and there always is, if you get into Old Testament stuff, there's always theories to try and explain some of these things.

So some people say that uh he was Shem, who was Noah's son.

Um, it says uh in Genesis that he lived 503 years, and if that was true, he'd have overlapped with Abraham, so that could be an option.

Some say this was an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament, and Christ appears a number of times in the Old Testament, and maybe this was Christ appearing to Abraham, and actually Abraham having reverence for him.

Perhaps.

Perhaps he's just a mysterious figure that we actually don't fully know the background of.

What we do know is that Abraham treated him as his king and as his priest, and it honored him.

So who does that remind you of?

Jesus.

So the other question that I know I had when I read that first passage is well, what's a high priest then?

Because actually, I think we might understand who a priest is, but who is a high priest?

Well, there were twelve tribes of Israel, and the Levi tribe, the Levites, they were the ones chosen by God to be the priests in the temple.

And actually, God then anointed one of the Levite tribe to be the high priest.

And what did the high priest do that the other priests didn't do?

Well, once a year the high priest had to go into the temple, and in the temple there was the most enormous curtain, and the priest had to go behind the curtain, which is where the presence of God was.

Now I don't know if you can imagine what that would have been like.

When when I think about it, I go back to primary school.

So when I was in the infant school, I'd read all of the books that there were to read.

I'd like read every one, and when I'd finished them all, they said, you need to go into the junior school.

And I remember going through the curtain into the junior school, and it was a really big thing to go the other side.

There was all these big kids there, and there was all these books.

I was very excited because I was a bookie nerd as a young child, and uh I read everything I could get my hands on, and um, and so for me as I picture it, it's that kind of excitement of going the other side of the curtain.

But I don't know how you'd have felt if you were the high priest.

So there's this curtain in the temple, and it's not like a flimsy curtain, it's like a foot thick material curtain separating where God was in the inner place from all the people who would have been in the temple.

And once a year, yeah, the high priest had to go in and offer a sacrifice.

And when he went behind the curtain, unfortunately, the enormity of going into the presence of God, these high priests sometimes they died.

So they would tie a rope around their ankle so that when they went behind through the curtain into the inner place, if they died, they could, like, if they didn't respond, they'd get pulled out on this rope.

And uh the high priest would get pulled out if actually the enormity of being in the presence of God, they died.

So that's what the high priest does.

He he offers the sacrifice, like the ultimate once-a-year sacrifice, but he gets to go into the inner place where the presence of God is.

Says this in Hebrews 4.

There's going to be a couple more Hebrews passages, so you might want to flip right back to Hebrews.

And in Hebrews 4, 14, it says, So then, since we have a great high priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.

This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings that we do, and yet he did not sin.

So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.

There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it the most.

Jesus didn't stay dead, he was raised from the dead, and so he went through into heaven with God.

And so it was like the curtain.

And what we know is that when Jesus was on the cross, as he died, that curtain in the temple was torn in two, which always makes me think of trying to tear a telephone directory in half.

We don't have telephone directories anymore, but I'm sure you all remember them, big thick things, and you'd see strong men on TV like ripping them in half.

I tried once, I didn't get anywhere at all.

I'm not a strong man.

And um and uh but it just my imagination goes to that kind of thing when I think about this foot-thick curtain just being ripped in half, and it was ripped in half because God wasn't contained any longer in the inner place of the temple, God became accessible to all of us.

Because as Jesus died on the cross, he broke that division that there is between us and God in heaven.

And uh Hebrews 10 shows us once and for all there was a sacrifice, the fact that we become holy because of what Christ did on the cross, and we get full access to God the Father.

So let's read from Hebrews 10.

It's a chunky bit this, but I think actually it really explains these other passages.

The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves.

The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship.

If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshippers would have been purified once and for all.

But their feelings of guilt would have disappeared.

But instead, those sacrifices actually reminded them that of their sins year after year.

For it's not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

That is why when Jesus came into the world, he said to God, You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings, but you have given me a body to offer.

You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sins.

And then I said, Look, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written about me in the scriptures.

First Christ said, You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings or burnt offerings or other offerings for sin, nor were you pleased with them, though they were required by the law of Moses.

And then he said, Look, I have come to do your will.

And he cancels the first covenant in order to put the second into effect.

The covenant, that's the agreement between God and his people.

So the first one is that God said, If you make these sacrifices, he said this to Moses, if you make these sacrifices, if you do all these things, if you keep all of these rules, you can have access to me, you can have access to heaven.

But actually, no one was good enough, and no one could actually do that.

The second covenant is the covenant of Jesus, and actually, he does away with all that law, he does away with all the sacrifices, and suddenly we get free access to God.

But our high priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time.

And then he sat down in the place of honour at God's right hand, and there he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet.

For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.

That's us.

And the Holy Spirit also testifies that this is so.

For he says, This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord.

I will put my laws in their hearts.

I think we heard that somewhere earlier, didn't we?

And I will write them on their minds.

And he says, I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.

And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.

So the position of high priest in the temple is gone.

There's no need for that anymore because Jesus has done it once and for all.

And that's why he is the great high priest, the ultimate mediator who bridges the gap between humanity and God.

His priesthood fulfills and surpasses all of that stuff in the Old Testament, the Levitical system, by offering a single, perfect, and eternal sacrifice for sin.

And he was the perfect sacrifice.

Perfect.

There was no need for anything anymore.

In the Old Testament, they were told to bring their perfect lamb or their perfect goat or a perfect pigeon or whatever it was to come and be sacrificed at the altar.

But actually, they were just animals.

And Jesus said, That's not what God the Father really wants.

He wants your heart.

He wants your love.

And actually, as we give that to God, as we give our heart to God, he says, What Jesus has done on the cross makes it finished.

It is over and done with.

Jesus brought empathy and compassion.

Having lived as a human, Jesus experienced temptation and suffering.

He was there in the desert, wasn't he?

Got tempted.

But he didn't give in to the temptation.

He also suffered.

He understood what it was like to be human like we are.

He understood the trauma of family gatherings.

He understood the difficult things that go on.

He understood the arguments between people.

He understood what it was to be physically hurt.

And yet, despite all of that, he didn't sin.

But because of it, he understands our weaknesses and he has compassion for us.

Says in Romans 5, God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

So before you knew him, before you understood about him, he'd already said, I will take your sin.

So that we can have access to God.

And we get direct access to God.

And the Old Testament, they had to have a priest who came in between.

And you'd give your sacrifice to the priest, and the priest would go and then sacrifice it on the altar for you, effectively going, I'm in between you and God.

But actually, we don't need any of that.

Jesus has torn the curtain in two.

And we get full access to God.

So that when we pray, he hears us.

So that when we walk about, he's with us by his Holy Spirit, who is seals in us.

So because of Jesus' finished work, we are encouraged to approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and find help in times of need.

And we can have confidence.

So what difference does all of this make?

Well, because we're free of guilt and shame, the price is paid.

So you don't need to go visit the temple to offer sacrifices.

You don't need to earn salvation.

You don't have to do stuff to make God like you.

He loves you already, just as you are.

We don't need another mediator.

We don't need someone who's gonna go and speak for us on our behalf to God.

Because Jesus is there, the ultimate mediator, the ultimate high priest.

And we don't need to plead anymore for God not to remember our sins.

And there's so much of that.

If you read your Old Testament, so many people come and they say, God, I'm a worm.

If you read that in Ezekiel, you know, it's just like, ah, I'm so bad.

Yes, we we recognize that we are sinful, but more we recognize the grace of God.

That actually Jesus has once and for all done it for us.

He is our great high priest.

I wonder Steve, that last song.

I was very apt to this.

I don't know whether you chose it because you knew I was speaking on this, but I think it was excellent.

Um so I think it would just be good for us to uh, as we mull on these things, just come back to that song if that's okay.