Hebrews 7:20-28
If you drive through a major
boulevard in a town, pick Church Street in our instance here. As you drive down that major
road, you will see all kinds of places of business, all kinds
of professional buildings and offices that will offer all kinds
of solutions to your great problems. Maybe your outward appearance
needs some help, and so you stop at the nail shop or the hair
salon or the beauty supply or the drugstore. Or maybe your
automobile is in need of some attention. Maybe it’s in need
of replacement, so we go to the parts store, the repair shop,
or even the dealership. Another shop or office you may
stop in would be something related to your home. It needs repair,
it needs maintenance, it has a honey-do list, or maybe we
just need a new home and transition from one to the other. There
are medical offices, there are entertainment stores. You see,
we have all kinds of problems in life, and a simple drive down
Church Street will solve them all. And aren’t these our problems,
right? We’re bored and so we need entertainment.
We’re out of style and so we need a new wardrobe. Our hair
needs fixing. Our nails need repair. We need medical attention. We need a new car to make us
feel better. Something of that nature. You
see, these fix us, right? They make us pretty. They make
us healthy. They help us cruise down the
street in a happier and more dignified way. These procedures,
these places, these professionals, they help us fix our problems.
Well, it’s interesting to note that tucked in behind these places
of business, obscured by these storefronts are our places of
worship. They’re not as prominent as they
used to be. They’re less obvious. In fact,
they’re not as central to our lives. Maybe as they used to
be. We have our nail appointments,
our hair appointments, our medical appointments, our dental appointments,
our oil change and transmission fluid flushing appointments. All these sorts of things. They
fill our calendars. And have you noticed how the
architecture of a main drag in a town changes? It used to be
the steeple was the highest spire and now it’s the shopping mall.
It used to be that the most central part of our week was worship. But now it’s going to the medical
plaza and seeking yet another option for life. Yes, these things
are important. Movies are wonderful. Cars are
great. Medicine is a wonderful blessing
from God to us. But friends, the only place,
the only place on the main boulevard of our town that contains a solution
to our greatest need is the church. the church of the living God,
the place of worship, the house of God. It is the only place
that will speak into our sin problem. It is the only place
that will tell us what our young brother in the faith professed
this morning, that you are a sinner. You have transgressed God’s law.
You have ignored His holy will. And you are a sinner in His sight,
deserving His wrath and His justice and His mercy. Yet he offers
grace in Jesus. This is the only place in town,
these are the only places in our cities, the house of God,
where these sorts of solutions are offered. We have a sin problem,
a misery problem, we are alienated from God, but in the house of
God we hear the message of forgiveness and mercy. And we hear the wonderful
and joyful message that in Christ Jesus, we who are far off, have
been brought near to the holy God of the universe. And so it
is in the church, it is in the household of faith, it is in
the place where the pulpit and word of God are that we hear
of Jesus, our high priest who meets our greatest need. You
know, you may ride down Church Street and you may engage in
the services of various professionals. But friends, those are temporary
fixes. They are short-term fixes. You know, every week I make it
down Church Street to the man that cuts my hair. But somehow
I’m still losing it. I go to the dentist and He works
His magic. He scrapes and whatever, but
my teeth are still decaying. You go to the doctor’s office
and he says to you, you’re not getting any younger. But you
come to the house of God. You come to the place of faith.
You come to the pulpit. You come to the Word. You come
to where God speaks. And he says to you, all that
is passing away. But you are an eternal being
made for my glory, made to worship, made to love and serve me. And
I give you not just white teeth. Not just a new hairstyle or pretty
nails or or a shiny car, I give you life anew. And he even goes
a step further, he says, I am going to make all things new.
Your knees won’t ache when I’m finished with the new heavens
and new earth. Those bald spots on your head will be gone. The
wrinkles on your skin, the freckles, the sunspots, the cancers, all
of that will be gone. Friends, only in the church,
only in the outpost of heaven that is here, only in the place
where the pulpit and the Word and the worship of God takes
place, do we find the answers to life’s ultimate issues. And
so let me encourage you today in this way. We who have fled
for refuge, we who have fled for refuge will find strong encouragement
to hold fast to the hope set before us when we fix our eyes
on Jesus. Yes, our hopes may be in some
things in this life. They’re fun and joyful and God
has given us all things to be a blessing to us. But friends,
your ultimate hope, your eternal hope will only come in Jesus. And our author, as he finishes
the flourish, as he puts the finishing touches on this portrait
of Jesus as the great high priest, speaks to us today in some very
significant ways about our Savior. And so we who have fled for refuge
have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before
us with Jesus as our High Priest, who is now entered into the Holy
of Holies. He is a better and superior priest
of a new order, not Levitical, but one of Melchizedek. He is
an eternal priest who lives forever, and we have perfect access to
Him, not once a year, like in the Old Covenant, but we have
perfect, everyday, 24-hour access to our Savior. We no longer serve
with a weak priesthood, a useless one, but with a strong one. And
so as our author tells us today, we have a better hope in Jesus,
and it comes to us by God’s promise, by His oath. I promise a Savior.
I promise one who is a better priest. I promise one who is
a priest forever. He has an indestructible life
and he is a guarantor of a better covenant. He says all that to
us, but today he gets very specific in speaking of Jesus as our priest. And so let me encourage you today,
lest you think the professionals along Church Street Or the super
professionals maybe in another town or city can do you some
good. Let me point you to Jesus who
can do you the greatest good. Do not look elsewhere. Do not
look for Jesus plus something. Do not look for things of this
world. Look for Jesus only, our great
High Priest. And let’s pause for a few moments
and look at verses 26 through 28 where it speaks very specifically
of who Jesus is over and against the high priesthood of the Levites. First of all, he tells us in
verse 26, our needs are met in Jesus’ character. Notice how
he puts it. He says, it was indeed fitting
that we should have such a priest who was holy, innocent, unstained
and separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. That is our priest in Jesus.
You will never find a resume for a pastor with those qualifications. If you do, guess what? He’s a
big fat liar. Because those are not possible.
They are only possible in Jesus. But he says he’s holy. He’s without
blemish. He is a devout follower of God
the Father. And not only is he holy, he is
blameless. He is innocent. He is not defiled. He is sinless. How do we sing
of Jesus? Spotless. Lamb of God was He. And it goes on to say He is pure
and He is unstained. Do you remember all the painstaking
process of the Old Covenant for finding a lamb suitable for a
sacrifice? It had to be a certain age, a
certain gender. It had to be from a certain this, that and
the other. But one of the things that it
had to be was perfect. It had to be spotless. It could
not be blemished. And notice Jesus, the great Lamb,
slain before the foundation of the world, spotless, innocent,
holy, pure, and unstained. You know, when we get to heaven,
one of the things we will see is the Lamb of God. We’ll see
all kinds of things, but at the center of heaven, we will see
the Lamb Slain before the foundation of the world, bearing those five
bleeding wounds, the scars of redemption, the scars of His
work of salvation are there. And guess what we will day and
night sing? Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. And this is the
one we speak of. He is holy and blameless and
spotless, pure and unstained. And then it goes on to say even
more, He is set apart from sinners and exalted. And so it speaks
here maybe in two ways of him. One is how he offered himself.
He was a lamb without blemish, spotless, unstained, not defiled,
suitable in God’s sight to be received and accepted as a sacrifice,
but now set apart from sinners and exalted. Guess where Jesus
is now? He’s not still strapped to the
altar. His charred remains from sacrifice are not outside the
camp in an ash heap. He has been raised from the dead
and He is exalted at the right hand of God the Father. He has
gone before us, as Hebrews says, as a forerunner to human beings
into heaven. And He has gone into the Holy
of Holies where He sits and He prays and He cheers us on that
we might complete the Christian life faithfully. We read just
a few moments ago of priests who were not holy. They were
not blameless. They were not spotless. They
were not without blemish, but they were fools. They didn’t
follow God’s word, they they offered strange fire, unauthorized
fire before the Lord. And guess what God did? The sudden
execution of these two men must have shocked, must have shocked
the world. It shocked Aaron. And so God, my brothers and sisters,
wants faithful priests. And for generation after generation,
he found none. You remember Samuel’s worthless
sons, Hophni and Phineas. They were useless. They were
worthless. They were unfaithful. And you go on through the history
of the Old Covenant. And what do we find God constantly
saying? My priest. follow their own counsel. My priests, they sell my sheep
for gain. They are worthless priests. They
are crooked priests. And so God says, if I’m going
to get the job done right, I’ll send my son. And he will be holy and blameless
and pure and unstained and undefiled. He’ll be a suitable priest, but
also a suitable offering. And we go on through the history
of the church. We see the scribes and the Pharisees. And we see
preachers throughout history, unfaithful, unholy. Unblemished. And we read of the scandals of
the Swaggart’s and the Baker’s and and all the preachers that
we’ve heard about throughout the history of the church who
have been unfaithful to God, but not Jesus. Faithful, perfectly
so, and on our behalf. And so let me encourage you as
a practical. A practical thing from this,
pray for your pastor, pray for the pastor of your church. that
he might follow the Lord and be holy and blameless and pure
and unstained and by faith live a life pleasing to God, because
you see, it affects you. But we ultimately look to Jesus,
the great priest of the church. So there was moral failure in
the old covenant priest, but there was ritual failure as well. The people of God, they made
up their religion sometimes. They did it their way and God
would have to say, no, that’s not it. That’s not what I told
you. Get it straight. Get it right or I’ll take away
your ministry. And friends, that’s a challenge
for us as well. We need to make sure. that we
worship God the way he wants to be worshiped. We need to make
sure that we live the Christian life the way he says. And so
we always go to the word. We trust the spirit. We seek
his help and his guidance. And we find ourselves faithful
when we do that. You know, the priest of the old
covenant could only point to Jesus. And there were many of
them, the pastors you’ve had over your lifetime, even in this
congregation, there were many of them. But all they can do
is point you to Jesus. And so I point you now to the
priest Jesus and his character, holy and blameless and pure and
undefiled. And our needs are met in a priest
with that character. But secondly, friends, our our
needs are met in Jesus once and for all sacrifice. Notice what
he says there in verse 27. He has no need, like those high
priests, to offer sacrifices daily for his own sins and then
for those of the people, since he did this once and for all
when he offered up himself. Can you imagine, can you calculate
how many sheep were killed throughout the centuries of the Old Covenant?
How many bulls and goats and birds and whatever’s were offered
before the throne of God. It would make our animal loving
societies these days angry if they began to calculate century
after century of old covenant sacrifice. But friends, it was
a bloody religion. It was a deadly religion. It
was a religion of blood. And of sacrifice until Jesus. And once and for all, once and
for all, when he offered himself up on the cross, sins were paid
for. Satisfaction with God was made.
Wrath was put back. And there was peace with Almighty
God. You see, Jesus was a spotless
lamb. Jesus was an effective atonement. Jesus’ sacrifice was once and
for all. Since the cross, no other sacrifice
has been made. or needed to be made, because
it was done. It was finished. You see, with
Jesus, there are no repeated sacrifices. We do not celebrate
a mass. We do not bring our livestock
here and offer them to God that He might put away His wrath against
us. It’s been done. It has been finished. It has
been completed. It has been effective and efficient
for our salvation. And so, friends of the Lord Jesus,
our needs are met in His character. Our needs are met in His once
and for all sacrifice. But finally, our needs are met
in His eternity or His eternality. Look at verse 28 and we’ll see
what is meant by this. It says, For the law appoints
men in their weakness as high priest. But the word of the oath
which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made
perfect forever. You think about the processes
we go through in this life, the things we depend on. We rely
on banking systems. We rely on economies. We rely
on work and pay and grocery stores and supply chains. We rely on
electricity. We rely on all sorts of things
to give us that which we need. And you can imagine how the people
of the Old Covenant relied on the Old Covenant sacrificial
system. I’ve sinned. I need my guilt covered over.
I need. I need forgiveness, I need peace
of conscience, I need all these things. And what is he saying
here? Those were weak. Those were useless. Those were placeholders. Those
were only pointing to Jesus Christ. Those were weak. And now you
have a perfect system. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if.
The next time we had an ice storm, we were guaranteed the power
would never go out. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that
our cars didn’t last 150,000 miles, but they could go forever?
Wouldn’t it be nice to know that our bodies would stop falling
apart? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the things we depend
on didn’t have an end, or an expiration date, or some sort
of point of uselessness? Well, friends, in Jesus we have
a priest Who is not weak, but perfect. And who is not mortal,
but immortal. And so, brothers and sisters,
what is he saying to us? We have a priest whose character
we can depend on. We have a priest whose sacrifice
is final. But now we have a priest who
could perform the task perfectly and eternally so. You see, the men of the old covenant
would die. But Jesus, Jesus never dies. And he can perform the task to
its perfection. And God has promised that to
us. At night, Patrick and I are reading Robinson Crusoe. We’re reading it, I think, now
for the third time. In the beginning of that book,
Robinson Crusoe’s father pulls him into the room and he tells
the 18-year-old boy, you can do what you want, but I’m going
to tell you what I think is true. Stay home. Get a trade. Make a living. Have the security
and protection of mom and dad and church. But if you want,
if you’re bent on doing it, get on a ship. Go see the world. And he says, but son, I guarantee
you this, you will be miserable. You will be miserable and your
life will be awful. And all of that came true. But
in the first weeks of Robinson Crusoe’s life, He gets on a ship
and he endures a storm. And he figures out what life
on the sea is like. It’s miserable. I mean, yes,
there’s sunny days. There’s beautiful sunrises and
sunsets. There’s calm water. But when
the sea rages, it is awful. It is terrible. And he goes on
to tell the story of being at sea for a particular period of
time where the anchors could not hold, where the mast were
either snapped off or cut away so that the ships would stay
afloat. And he speaks of a ship floundering.
And he and his companions at one point are in a lifeboat,
floating away from their ship. They watch that boat sink into
the water. And he says, at that moment,
I figured out what it meant for a ship to flounder. It means
to sink, to go down, to go to the bottom. And there his life
was spared. Now you would think that somebody
in his position would say, wow, I dodged that bullet. How amazing
that was that by God’s grace I was spared death. But no, he
goes and continues on in life. But the imagery which that author
speaks of, of a ship at sea being tossed and going up and down
with the waves, losing its tackle and its ability to maneuver,
but the anchors holding at the bottom, it’s a reminder of what
the writer of Hebrews has said to us before. We have an anchor.
that is anchored in heaven. It is wrapped around the leg
of the throne of God. Our hope is in heaven in Jesus. And we can put our hope in Church
Street. We can put our hope in our financial advisors or our
medical professionals or others. But those chains will snap. Those
anchors will come loose. And those people can only buy
us a little more time, a little more time, a little more time.
But friends, Jesus can buy us forever. if we put our faith
and our hope and our trust in him. And we’ve just had a picture
painted of Jesus. He’s a man of character. He’s
a man of great sacrifice. And he’s a man whose work is
efficient and effective forever. And you think about the audience
of Hebrews. tempted to go back to Judaism,
tempted to go back to the old covenant, tempted to say this
following Jesus business is difficult. And he’s saying to them, you
don’t want to go back to those sacrifices. They’re weak. They’re
useless. They’re ineffective. Their priest
died. But no, here you have Jesus.
holy, blameless, unstained, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted
into heaven, working on your behalf, his once and for all
sacrifice saves you from sin, and his work lasts forever. Which
would you choose? The professionals of Church Street?
The Old Covenant priest? Or Jesus? May it be true of every
one of us that by faith we receive and rest in him alone for our
salvation and that our anchor, our hope is securely wrapped
around the leg of the throne in heaven where Jesus is and
where he ever lives above, making intercession for us and can’t
wait to call us home. Pray with me.