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October 18, 2009
“Our Great High Priest”
Hebrews 4: 14 – 5: 10
Sunday, October 18, 2009
In my home I have a Currier & Ives Lithograph that was a gift to me from an old family friend. The lithograph is of a Minister marrying a young couple. The minister is obviously of the Reformed tradition because he is wearing the Geneva Tabs. When this was pointed out to the previous owner of the picture he said that since I was at that time a recently ordained Presbyterian Minister, he would give it to me. Ironically, I have never in my 34 years in the Ministry worn the Geneva tabs or any of those peculiar shirts that seem to be relegated to Clergy. I have never worn them for three reasons.
First of all, My father never wore one and I have always had the feeling that he might disown me if I ever wore one.
I have also never worn them because I do not know how I would handle being called “Father” by people who are not my children. A Presbyterian Pastor I heard of who wore such collars supposedly felt OK at being called Father because as He said, “after all, I have a wife and three children to prove it.”
But most of all I do not wear such collars because I am not a priest in the formal sense and I do not want people to think I am. This Sunday and next Sunday I am going to be talking about various aspects of the priesthood in the Christian Era and I hope to help you understand more about the term Priest and its place in the Christian Church.
This morning we are starting our look at the priesthood at the top with the High Priest. The priesthood of Israel was instituted by God through Moses in the wilderness at about 1600 BC.
At that same time God ordered the Jews to build the Tabernacle. The word Tabernacle means tent, unless it is preceded by the word “The”, then it refers to the portable building that the Jews used to Worship God. That building had a fenced in courtyard that surrounded it. The ordinary folks, who came to worship God (non-priests or non-Levites) were not permitted inside the tabernacle. They worshipped from the courtyard.
The interior of the tabernacle was divided into two rooms. The front room, which comprised two thirds of the interior space of the temple was called the Holy Place. In that place were the seven branched lampstand, a table holding 12 loaves of bread, and a small altar for burning incense. Just outside the door or curtain that led outside, in the courtyard was the big altar where animals were sacrificed and burnt as offerings to God.
Those who worked within the tabernacle fell into two categories, Priests and Levites. All were born in the tribe of Levi, but the priests were descended from a particular family in that tribe, the family of Aaron, the brother of Moses.
The Levites did their work within the tabernacle, preparing wood for the fires, preparing bread for the table, repairing the tabernacle, and cleaning it.
The priests were appointed by God to preside over the worship and especially to serve as a mediator between God and his people. The priest offered the prayers of the people to God in his prayers and through the smoke of the incense he burned on the altar in the Holy Place. After the prayers were offered and the incense burned and the sacrifices killed and burned, the priest would pronounce that God had received their prayers and offerings and would consider them to be payment for their sins. The priest announced that the fellowship between the holy God and his unholy people could be resumed.
There was one person responsible for making sure that all Levites and Priests carried out their duties properly and that all prayers and sacrifices were offered in ways that would please God. That man was the High Priest. He was ordinarily one of the sons of the previous High Priest. In Addition to his ordinary duties of making certain that all acts in the temple were in accord with the law and offering some of the prayers and sacrifices himself, he had specific duties.
He was the only priest allowed into the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies comprised the rear third of the interior of the tabernacle building. There was only one piece of furniture in it. The Ark of the Covenant. It looked like a blanket chest with rings on the side and statues of angels on the top. The ark served as God’s throne among his people. On top of the ark was an area called the Mercy Seat. For a while at least, God’s presence above the ark was marked by a ball of fire called the shekinah or the glory of God.
Each year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would offer a sacrifice for his own sins, then a much larger sacrifice for the sins of the people, then he would take some of the blood of that second sacrifice into the holy of holies and pour it out on the mercy seat on top of the Ark
It was then his duty to go back out through the Holy place and into the court yard and announce that God had received their sacrifices as an atonement for all their sins.
When the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, the Tabernacle was long gone, but the Priests and the High Priest were still observing the same rituals in the Temple, which was a permanent building built on the same general plan as the tabernacle.
This Epistle was written to Jewish Christians who were under pressure to give up their Christian faith and return completely to Judiasm. The author is writing to tell them that in Christ they have something much better than Judiasm. The most important of those superior things is their New High Priest. In earlier chapters he has already stated that Jesus the Son of God is our new high priest.
Here he mentions that Jesus is the “great High priest who has passed through the heavens.” In order to atone for our sins, Jesus did not pass through the curtains in the temple and through the Holy Place in the temple, he passed through the heavens, through the distance or dimensions that separate us from God. He passed not into some earthly space representing God’s throne, but into the very real presence of God, to offer our prayers and confessions to God and to present himself as the sacrifice for our sins. And, since his ascension, Jesus is in that Holy place praying for us not just for a few minutes each year, but He lives there permanently as our High Priest.
The Author finished the 14th verse by writing, “let us hold fast to our confession.” He was imploring his audience to not give up their superior High priest and depend on the merely human and therefore inferior Hi Priest in the Temple in Jerusalem.
In later verses in this passage he deals with other qualities of Jesus as High Priest. Jesus is human so, like the other high priests he is able to understand the temptations we are influenced by. But he has not sinned so he does not have to atone for his own sins before he can atone for ours.
And, like other legitimate priests, he did not seize the office for himself, he was appointed to it by God. The Author sees that appointment as having been prophecied by the Psalmist in Psalm 110: 4.
Which brings us to the interesting and elusive character of Melchizadek. Superior as Jesus might be, to be a High priest of Jews, he lacked one thing, He was not of the priestly family of Aaron nor of the tribe of Levi.
But there was a priest in the biblical narrative who came before Aaron. He was a contemporary of Abraham and his name was Melchizedek. He is identified as a “Priest of God most High” and as a king of Salem. At one point Abe gave a tithe to God through Melchizadek. 1000 years later the Psalmist proclaimed that the Messiah would be a “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”
Later, in chapter 7 the author of this epistle will argue that The order of Melchizedek is superior to the order of the Levitical priesthood because Abraham, the ancestor of the Levites, recognized the legitimacy of his order.
But in the rest of our passage the author makes other comments. He points out that in the performance of offering himself as the sacrifice for our sins he was submissive and obedient to the will of God, and “having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
Now, most of us have never had to argue the superiority of Christianity to Judiasm, but what the author says about Christianity’s superiority is applicable to other religions. It is being argued in our day that all religions and some philosophies offer alternate routes to the same God. I disagree with that, but even if it were true, it is a doctrine of our faith that the sacrifice of Jesus and the High Priesthood of Jesus is vastly superior to all other approaches to God. Only Jesus has become “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.”
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at October 18, 2009 04:26 PM