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If you would turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 4.
We’ll be looking at the last few verses of Chapter 4 and the first couple of Chapter 5.
You can find that on page 1189 in your Pew Bibles.
Hebrews, Chapter 4, starting in verse 14.
Let’s pray.
Amen. Let’s pray.
We ask that you would do this for your glory and honor.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You may be seated.
I’ve titled the message this morning, Making the Most of Our Mediator.
I mean that in two senses.
Of course, to make the most of something is to make use of it fully.
And also, to make much of someone is to see their wonderfulness.
And of course, we want to see Christ’s wonderfulness.
Do you generally expect others to help you or not?
Callie and I discovered a difference between us shortly after we got married
in terms of counting on others, even strangers, for help.
Callie has always possessed an irrepressible expectation
that others would be only too happy to offer assistance
if and when she encountered any difficulty.
I, on the other hand, always expected to have to rely on myself.
Although Callie does not always get the help that she needs when she asks for it,
it doesn’t stop her from asking.
And she gets helped far more often than I do for not asking.
While I would be stressed that I didn’t possess all the resources
that I needed to solve a problem,
Callie would be happily finding a stranger or family member or friend
to get us the help that we needed.
I’m thankful to have married her.
Over the years, I’ve attempted to adopt her expectant attitude
of asking others for help,
but I would say it’s still a work in progress.
But I mention this because this is something of the way
that our passage wants us to come to God in prayer.
They say that confidence is key,
and in terms of prayer, it’s more than key, it’s essential.
James 1, 6-7 has strong words to say about confidence in prayer.
James 1 says,
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting,
for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea,
driven and tossed by the wind.
For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
So this drawing near to the throne of grace with confidence
is essential to prayer.
But Hebrews doesn’t give us a bare command to be confident in prayer.
He prefaces it with three reasons
why we can and should have confidence when we come to God in prayer.
We might ask, what if we’re not?
Have you ever been afraid to pray?
Are you ever timid in your requests?
Perhaps you stay away from prayer
because you’re not sure that what you say will even make it all the way into heaven.
Because you’re not very sure that God cares about what’s bothering you.
Or maybe you feel that you aren’t good enough to pray.
Well, it turns out these three concerns are exactly
what the writer of Hebrews wants to allay for you in this passage.
These will be our three main points this morning.
We ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence
because we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens.
We have a high priest who is sympathetic.
And we have a high priest who is sinless.
So first, we ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence
because we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens.
Now in order to understand why it’s significant
that we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens,
we need to recall a little bit about priests in general.
The purpose of a priest. Why do we need one?
Well, priests are mediators between God and man.
Look at chapter five, verse one.
For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act
on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
Priests serve as mediators. They come between two parties.
Even pagan religions recognize the need for priests.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
There’s something within us that understands that we don’t have access to God.
We need someone who can talk to God on our behalf.
There’s a God consciousness within humans who are made in his image.
And regardless of how distorted or wrong that image is at any given time,
there’s a desire to be in touch with the greater being than ourselves.
While at the same time, a recognition that we don’t have access,
and we need someone who does.
Priests come to offer sacrifices to purchase peace.
Verse one says the main role of this mediator, a priest,
is to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
Despite the variety of religious conceptions about God and humanity,
there’s a common sense among us that something is wrong.
Our distance from God is due at least partly to something being wrong.
Atonement in some form or another must be offered.
And this atonement takes many forms across various religions,
from dietary restrictions, acts of service, animals of sacrifice,
inflictions of pain, pledging of vows,
all in the hope of rectifying a broken relationship
and putting us back in the good graces of a higher being.
Priests are appointed to be those that transact,
that purchase that peace that we desire between us and our creator.
Now from various religions, the price varies from religion to religion.
But all of them leave the worshiper, the purchaser,
with a nagging doubt as to its efficacy.
So pagan worshippers purchase more and more sacrifices,
constantly questioning whether lasting peace between God and man
has truly been achieved.
But in the Old Testament, God himself instituted priests
and instituted the price for peace.
He gave us sacrifices of bulls and goats, sheep and pigeons,
and commissioned priests descended from Aaron himself
to be the appointed proprietors of peace with God.
The priests mediated between God and the people.
They were the appointed go-betweens,
the ones who could offer acceptable sacrifices.
They represented the people to God.
The Israelites were forbidden from entering any further
than the outer courts of the tabernacle or temple.
Even the king himself was forbidden from entering.
Only the priests.
Yet God dwelt in the inner sanctuary.
It was the priest alone who was authorized to get close to God
by entering that tabernacle.
And the high priest alone had access only once a year
to the most holy place in the temple.
And despite its glory, it was a far cry from God’s actual dwelling place, in heaven.
Solomon, upon completion of the glorious temple, declared,
heaven and earth cannot contain you, O Lord,
much less this house that I have built.
And sometimes you don’t know how far something falls short
until you see the alternative.
The priests of Aaron’s line that God had appointed
surely instilled great comfort and confidence in the people of Israel
who knew they were being represented before God in the tabernacle.
But those priests, utterly pale in comparison
with a high priest who goes beyond anything available on earth,
who actually ascends through the heavens.
What if you had a high priest who wasn’t stuck on earth
trying to convey your request to a God who is in heaven,
but one who actually ascended?
And in Jesus, we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens.
He stands in the very presence, the throne room of God.
If you want to get in touch with the president,
would you choose someone who’s on the fringes,
who used to know him in another life, an outer circle,
or someone who goes with him everywhere, who’s regularly in the Oval Office?
I think the answer is obvious.
So when Jesus, our high priest, has passed through the heavens,
speaks of his ascension, Jesus ascended.
Jesus’ ascension is not always talked about,
but it was the climax of his work of salvation.
It was not until after he ascended that he poured out the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
And this was no coincidence.
His ascension meant the completion of his work,
which is receiving all power and authority and his intimacy with God.
So knowing that you have a high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God, into the very presence of God,
means that you can have confidence that God hears you.
Your prayers won’t get garbled in translation
by a priest who doesn’t have intimate access.
Your prayers won’t get dismissed or overlooked,
because they’re hand-delivered by the one with the most intimate access to God himself.
All the more reason to hold fast to your confession, as verse 14 says.
Don’t be ashamed of Jesus. Be proud to associate with him.
Of course, this is easy when he’s respected by those around us,
but for many around the world throughout history,
and even for the original audience of this letter,
such an association could cost reputation, freedom, property, and life.
For many of us, the risk is no greater than reputation or livelihood at most,
yet we still face the temptation to downplay our association with our Lord.
We ought to be willing to be open about our association with Christ.
After all, he’s the high priest who passed through the heavens into the very presence of God.
Who could be ashamed of a priest like that?
But secondly, we ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence,
because we have a high priest who is sympathetic.
High priest Jesus can sympathize with us.
All this talk about Jesus as exalted, as passing through the heavens into the very presence of God,
might give us the impression that while our high priest has the ear of God,
perhaps he’s not as sensitive to our requests and our needs.
So this is exactly where the writer goes next.
Look at verse 15 of chapter 4.
But one who in every respect has been tempted, as we are.
Jesus can sympathize because he was tempted.
Jesus’ role of high priest included him taking on a completely human nature.
It was not his unnatural appearance that drove people to revere and worship him as God.
He looked like a normal man.
He was prophesied to be unremarkable, almost ugly in Isaiah 53.
The Jews who grew up with him were offended at his assertion that he was divine.
Christ’s divinity was seen in his power over demons, nature, and sickness,
as well as his astounding teachings and his own assertions about himself, that he was God.
But as a human, he experienced the full range of human emotions.
Human desires, human needs, disappointments, and temptations.
One of the reasons we read Luke 4 earlier this morning is to remember Jesus’ temptations.
You and I face temptations every day, even from evil spirits.
We speak of Satan being behind temptations sometimes, which is true.
However, Satan himself is a finite being, and he cannot be in all places at all times.
And it is highly unlikely that you or I have been a direct target of the prince of demons himself.
Not so with Jesus.
Jesus was the number one target of Satan himself.
He was public enemy number one for Satan and his horde.
Those three big temptations by Satan in the wilderness at the start of Jesus’ ministry
were actually only the beginning of Satan’s efforts.
In fact, arguably, you could see that he tried to use Herod to kill him before he was born.
But in Luke 4, 13, at the end of that narrative, it says,
Because the devil left, not for good, but until he could find a more opportune time.
That means he was dogging Christ every step, attempting to bring him down.
Jesus observed Satan’s infiltration of his own inner circle of twelve apostles.
One he knew would betray him from the beginning.
At one point, Jesus rebuked Peter, who was attempting to dissuade him from going to the cross,
saying, Get behind me, Satan, who was even infiltrating his disciple Peter.
Later, on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus told Peter plainly,
Satan had requested to personally sift Peter with the hope of removing Peter’s faith.
Leading up to his death, in the days leading up, it says about Judas Iscariot that Satan entered into him.
Jesus clearly experienced the full extent of temptation, being the number one target of Satan.
But the main point in Hebrews 4 is not that this makes him extra tough,
but that it makes him sympathetic to us and to our condition.
Jesus understands us.
In our passage at the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5, we see two different high priests contrasted.
Chapter 4 is talking about Jesus, but chapter 5 is talking about the mere human high priest.
Now there’s a popular discussion in culture today among psychology about sympathy versus empathy.
Chapter 4 verse 15 says Jesus is sympathetic,
while chapter 5 verse 2 says the previous high priest would be what we now call empathetic.
Sympathy versus empathy.
Well, sympathy is an old English word that comes from the Greek,
which sounds almost exactly the same in our passage.
Supathasi.
It refers to the act of sincere care for someone who’s suffering.
For centuries, this was considered the appropriate and caring response to the suffering of others.
However, in the 20th century, empathy has come on the scene
and is now considered the preferred response to pain.
Empathy finds its roots in German philosophical writings, conveying this idea of feeling into.
Now the common distinction laid out in our culture today is that sympathy feels sorry for someone hurting,
but empathy actually feels the pain of that person that’s suffering.
Today it’s common for empathy to be touted as the superior response.
You might even be told that you aren’t allowed to say anything to a suffering person
unless you’ve experienced the exact same thing.
We’re told sympathy is inferior because it keeps its distance.
It doesn’t fully get into another person’s skin and feel the pain.
But is that correct biblically?
We often say that misery loves company,
but does that mean that it’s truly the best thing to just feel the pain of the suffering person beside them?
Before we even ask whether empathy is ultimately the better response,
we might ask whether it’s even possible.
The fact is, truly feeling identical suffering with another person is impossible.
The myriad of differences between you and another person in terms of background, experience, circumstances,
physical and psychological makeup make it impossible for you to feel exactly the same as someone else,
which means that to earnestly attempt it will result in projecting your own feelings onto someone else,
which is exactly the opposite of what we would like to think we’re doing, but is true.
You can do no more than imagine how a person might be feeling based on some similar experiences of your own.
Empathy is actually a reading of feelings onto others,
assuming your own feelings are being felt by the one hurting.
Not only this, but entering deeply into emotions can distort judgment.
While others are hurting, they’re better served by a friend who’s clear-headed than one who’s as muddled as they are.
Sympathy, on the other hand, is arguably the more honest and realistic approach to the suffering of others.
You can’t fully enter another person’s pain, but you can still hurt for them.
Instead of assuming it can fully enter into another person’s pain,
Sympathy acknowledges that each experience of suffering is unique to the person suffering,
yet it doesn’t walk away coldly. It inquires compassionately in order to understand.
It feels compassion for the one suffering without attempting to fully enter into all that they are feeling.
Sympathy acknowledges the reality of the distance,
but instead of seeing that as a problem, it uses the distance to offer comfort, wisdom, consolation that the hurting person might need.
And our passage describes Jesus as a sympathetic high priest.
While the contrasting term of empathy was not yet coined in English when our passage was written, and it never existed in Greek,
I think that we have that contrast here with the priests that actually are suffering themselves from temptation.
Jesus is sympathetic because he was tempted. He understands us and our struggles,
but he’s not beset with the experience of falling into sin.
In chapter 5, we see priests who are tempted as we are and fell to that temptation.
They have compassion for others based on empathy, but it comes with drawbacks.
They are empathetic sinners who are distant from God themselves.
They have to start out offering sacrifices first for their own sins.
They can’t even think about offerings for other sins before addressing their own needs.
This means that their own mediation is impeded. There’s a greater distance between them and God.
They can’t make it up. They can’t pass through the heavens.
And they also don’t know what it’s like to fully pass the test of temptation.
There’s a false idea floating around these days that unless you have fully entered into another person’s experience,
you have no knowledge of them or what they’re going through.
And additionally, you can have nothing to say to them.
We don’t fundamentally need someone to identify with us. We need someone who understands us.
Jesus is fully human, but he didn’t go through every possibility of human identity and experience.
He wasn’t a woman. He wasn’t physically or mentally disabled or challenged.
He didn’t go through the pains of old age.
He didn’t go through marriage or parenting, just to name a few.
This was because he came on a mission. He came to die for sins as a complete human.
But he didn’t have to go through every human experience to understand us.
He didn’t have to be a woman to understand women.
God didn’t need to become human to understand humanity or the human experience.
His knowledge transcends all contexts. He knows objective and subjective realities.
He knows what’s going on the outside. He knows what we’re thinking and what we’re feeling.
But it is especially comforting and emboldening to remember that Jesus is a person who was tempted, a human who was tempted like us.
The reason we want people to identify with us is because we think that that means they can truly understand us.
But our craving is not ultimately to be commiserated with, but to be known, to be understood and cared for.
And this is what Jesus does. He knows what we’re going through, and he cares about all of it.
This passage is encouraging us to go to the high priest who can sympathize with us, rather than the ones who are only able to empathize from their own pain.
We have a high priest who fully understands what we’re going through, but is never overwhelmed with it like we are,
and doesn’t have his own issues that get in the way of understanding us and powerfully helping us.
Which brings us to our third observation, that we ought to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence because we have a high priest who is sinless.
High priest Jesus never sinned. As comforting as it can be to find commonality and shared weaknesses with your hero,
it’s actually not that comforting when the person you were relying on lets you down because they have their own issues to deal with.
It’s important to remember that Jesus was sinless for a number of reasons, but here we’re reminded of how that is meant to bolster our confidence in prayer.
He wasn’t just tempted like us. He was tempted in our place, and he succeeded where we failed.
Jesus’ test in the wilderness with the devil was completing Israel’s test, his previous test in the wilderness.
In chapters three and four of Hebrews, the writer has been focusing on how the Israelites failed in the wilderness when they were tested.
Jesus’ own temptation in the wilderness was meant to echo the Israelites’ temptation.
The 40 days that Jesus fasted in the wilderness was no coincidence. It was meant to represent the 40 years that Israel spent wandering.
If you’ve ever looked at the quotations that Jesus used to refute Satan in that passage, they all come from Deuteronomy, which was the context of those wilderness wanderings.
Jesus could have quoted many other places to refute Satan, but he confined himself to Deuteronomy in order to overcome the temptations of Satan with the same resources that Israel had access to.
The writer of Hebrews has been urging his readers in chapters three and four to be careful not to fall to the same temptation that threatens us as it did the first Israelites in the wilderness.
In our passage now, he is calling on us to look up at the only one who perfectly passed the test.
We don’t merely need a compassionate Savior, we need a victorious Savior.
There’s undeniable solace to be found in a compassionate Savior who can sympathize with us, but sympathy without victory doesn’t go very far.
We need more than someone to feel sorry for us. We need more than a companion who feels our pain. We need victory.
Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.
But this is more than inspiration, while it is undoubtedly inspiring that Jesus was able to succeed where Israel failed.
Looking at Jesus is very inspiring. It reminds us that success over temptation is possible.
But the truth is we need more than pep talk or inspiration. We need transformative power from the inside out.
And this is what Jesus alone can give.
Christians aren’t just those who are inspired by Jesus, who was able to do great things.
Our path to victory is to become united to Christ.
His victory can become ours so that we’re not only cleansed from sin, but empowered to resist temptation ourselves.
The key is continually relying on his power rather than foolishly attempting to do things in our own strength.
This is the heart of the exhortation in verse 16.
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Maybe, unlike me, you always remember to pray whenever you feel tempted.
Or maybe you’re like me and one of your big struggles is to even remember your need for prayer.
Sometimes prayer can feel like something else to do on our to-do list, which is sitting there usually failing to get checked off very often.
We sometimes talk about how it’s our duty to pray. We really ought to pray more.
God commands prayer. We ask people for prayer.
Sometimes, though, it’s just a way of talking about things that concern us.
It’s not bad to let other people know what’s going on in our lives to alert them to it.
But prayer is far more powerful than a way to get things off our chests.
Notice what Hebrews, our passage, calls the very throne of the king of kings and the lord of all lords, the throne of grace.
Remember, as we saw a few weeks ago, that grace means favor and power.
The throne of the almighty ruler, because of what Christ has done, has become a throne of grace for those who come in the name of Christ.
Our main two reasons for lack of prayer boil down to a conviction that either we don’t need God’s help or that he’s not eager to give it.
We tend to think that we can handle most things on our own.
The reality is you won’t take another breath unless God gives it to you.
But God doesn’t want us living in terror of not receiving our next breath and constantly groveling in a desperate effort to ensure we’re sustained for another moment.
In fact, Jesus told us in Matthew 6, he doesn’t want us to even worry about whether we’ll have enough to eat or clothes to wear since our father knows what we need.
Instead, he told us to shift our focus to seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness.
We’ve got far more important things to concern ourselves with than simply getting enough to eat or staying clothed.
But the alternative to worry is not to simply try not to think about our needs, but to take them to God without hesitation.
Jesus says, don’t worry about what you’re going to eat, but do pray.
When you’re approaching the throne of grace, you know that it is imbued with the favor and the power that you need.
Hebrews 4.16 says that you’ll receive mercy and find grace in the perfect time.
The ESV translates it here in time of need.
That makes smoother English.
In the Greek, it’s one word, eukyron, which is just the word for time, kyron, and the U in front of it, which means good at the front.
So eukyron means good time, or perfectly timed, or exactly when you need it, help.
Perfectly timed help, distributed on an as-needed basis.
What more could you ask for?
Good timing help.
It’s important to remember that God is delighted to respond to our prayers.
Despite what it might feel like in the moment, He’s got the perfect timing in His mind.
God’s word says, come near with confidence.
One reason is that we see from James earlier, we can’t expect answers to prayers that are without faith.
At the same time, Jesus sets the threshold for the amount of faith as incredibly small, the size of a mustard seed.
I’m not sure how you would compare something like faith with a grain of mustard in your cabinet,
but the point is that even the teensiest amount of genuine faith will receive help from the throne of grace.
Don’t stay away from the throne of grace hoping to improve your faith.
Approaching the throne is the only way to increase it.
How bold are your prayers?
When’s the last time you prayed for something that seemed too big?
We can easily get stuck in the rut with our heads down only thinking about the next few weeks or months
and not considering the bigger picture of God’s kingdom in the world.
Make 2025 the year that you challenge yourself to pray bigger, bolder prayers.
Great men are honored by great requests, especially a great God.
You might recall the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life in which George Bailey,
his youngest child, is following him all over the house while he’s stressed about different things.
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
He finally stops to acknowledge the child in frustration.
Excuse you for what?
I burped as a response.
The humor arises from the expectation that had been building that the request must be significant,
yet instead it is a most inconsequential ask.
How many times are we like that with God?
I’m not saying don’t bring your small requests to God.
I’m asking if you’ve been limiting your request to exclusively small potatoes
when you could be asking for kingdoms.
Let us then draw near to the throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.
The throne of grace is the place where we find both compassion, mercy, and power, grace,
exactly when we need it.
Our sympathetic, sinless high priest has passed through the heavens,
having been tempted like us, but powerfully triumphing over the temptations that often take us out.
So as we continue to face those temptations,
we can be confident that we have a kind and powerful, friendly face
encouraging us to approach the throne of grace, excited to hear our prayers and to answer them.
Dear saints, brothers and sisters, let’s make 2025 the year that we approach the throne of grace
with greater boldness than ever before,
knowing that we’ll get everything we need from God in His perfect timing.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we would come boldly to your throne of grace
with expectation that you both hear us and are eager to answer our prayers.
We would ask that you would increase our faith,
that you would open our eyes, that we would expect greater things.
As William Carey once said, that missionary to India,
expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.
So Lord, we would ask that you would increase our faith,
you would give us greater boldness,
that we would come to your throne of grace and find all the resources that we need,
ready to help us.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, let’s respond by singing Hymn 522.
Behold the throne of grace in your red psalter hymnals,
and let’s stand as we sing Hymn 522.