Well, it is an honor to be with you this morning.
If I sound like I am trying to get your attention by speaking more quietly than normal, actually all I'm trying to do is make sure that my voice gets through the entire sermon.
Last, two weekends ago, this is a 35-day road trip that I am on, and two weekends ago I was in Houston, and I debated a Roman Catholic apologist on the subject of purgatory.
Did anyone already catch that?
Anyone?
One person.
Okay, two, three.
Okay, all right, good.
It is going to be a big hit, that one I can tell.
We will have to make sure YouTube monetizes that one.
But I was saying to Jeff just a few minutes ago before the service started that after this past weekend at GBTS and trying to teach Baptist Church history with bronchitis, I had to go to, we used to call them ERs, now they are urgent care, whatever they are, but I was starting to wonder about my position on purgatory.
I'm not sure that I might have experienced it this past weekend and earned many years off going through what we did.
I feel sorry for the students that they had to listen to this voice and deal with someone who was running on about 20% energy, but it is still an honor to be with you.
And if you would turn back to the book of Hebrews chapter 7, what I would like to do this morning is open the word to you and address a, I think, for me anyways, exciting topic.
I remember once I was speaking at a very old chapel in Wandsworth, London.
Fascinating, Trinity Chapel, a friend of mine was pastoring the church, we did some debates there with Muslims and things like that, but one of the fascinating, I'm a World War II guy, I think it's just amazing what happened during those few years.
And in that chapel there is a particular pew.
This sort of gives you an idea of the difference between England and the United States.
They have such ancient history and things like that, and they have these old wooden pews and you can go to this one pew in that chapel and there is a indentation, I actually have a picture of it, an indentation, a strange looking indentation in the wood of the pew on this seat itself.
And they showed it to me and they told me the story.
It is the indentation made by a German incendiary bomb during the bombing of London that came through the roof and hit that seat there and they were timed so that they wouldn't go off necessarily right then.
They would go off later so that they would cause more damage that way and the fire brigades couldn't get to one area or they'd leave one area and then stuff starts going off.
And so there it is, indented, and you can, I wonder how many people have sat on it, had no idea.
It didn't go off because someone saw it go through the roof, was riding by on a bicycle, ran inside the church and threw it outside before it exploded and that's why the chapel still exists.
So that's just a fascinating story about that particular place and I was preaching there, I was speaking there and this lady comes up to me in the back, there's sort of a little fellowship area in the back and there's these narrow little tunnels, not tunnels but hallways.
It's old, it's London, it's just the way things are.
And she came up to me and she said, "I just have to ask you in light of the debate you just did, you don't believe in particular redemption, do you?" And I remember just looking at her and going, "Well of course, don't you?" And the shock on her face when I said that because she didn't expect anyone to just openly say yes, I believe that there is perfect harmony between the Father in His electing grace, the Son in His redeeming work, and the Spirit in His saving application.
And that's not normally how we think about the gospel.
American Christians very often will separate things out.
So you have your doctrine of God over here and your doctrine of the church over here and then you've got your eschatology over there and that's where all the warfare takes place and your doctrine of the Bible over here and we just separate them out.
And as a result, I would suggest to you that when it comes to the subject of the cross, many of us have an emotional theology much more than a biblical theology.
And I think for a lot of American Christians, our theology of the cross has been much more influenced by our hymns than by the text of Scripture.
And that's a dangerous thing.
By the way, I just have to say, we sang one of my favorite hymns a little while ago and I noticed it has been modified and I'm a little upset about that because I love explaining the line that is no longer in your hymnal.
So what am I supposed to do?
The line is, "Here I raise my..." Now we have some Hebrew teachers here and so the Hebrew teachers would tell you that is a Hebrew phrase, "Evanator," it means stone of help.
And I love that line.
I love to get to explain it until the modern hymnals just decided, "You know, we're not even going to bother.
Nobody knows who Ebenezer is anyways and so it's out of there." So it was gone.
I was really disappointed.
I was looking for it and I wanted to sing it but it wasn't there so I'm sort of sad but we'll let that one slide by.
But if you ever sing it in the old style, now you know, "Here I raise my Ebenezer, my stone of help." It's the monuments, the patriarchs, you know, they pile up those stones and it was a way of saying, "God intervened in my life at this place and I'm going to be reminded of this by this pile of stones on down the road." That's what is being referred to there but it's not there anymore so maybe you all could put it back in next time you sing it.
That would be great.
So back to our text here.
In looking at the theology of the cross over the years, I didn't design this.
I didn't come up with something like this.
You should always be afraid of anybody who comes up with something they think is brand new and no one's ever thought of before.
But I have found it absolutely necessary to try to emphasize to people the fact the work of redemption according to the book of Ephesians is absolutely central to God's self-glorification.
That means it's central to the whole purpose of creation itself and it is necessary in our secular age.
We don't have a neat device that we can put back on the door there that rips out all the secular thinking of people who walk into this room so we can just think biblically.
We so focus upon ourselves.
We so focus upon mankind rather than focusing upon God that it's easy for us to create a sort of synergistic God-man methodology of salvation rather than recognizing the God-centeredness of everything that the Father, Son, and Spirit have done in bringing about redemption.
And I think especially when it comes to the controversial subject of the atonement.
What could be controversial about it?
Well let me give you an example.
As Dr. Johnson mentioned, I teach church history and apologetics and down through history, a lot of people are shocked by this.
Take a wild guess, no don't call out any answers, but take a wild guess.
When do you think the first full-length treatise on the subject of the atonement appeared in church history?
When someone finally got around to writing an entire work on the subject of the atonement in church history?
Now I know, I know.
Those early centuries you have persecution, you've got Roman soldiers chasing you, or you don't want to be eaten by lions and things like this.
So there's other things going on, I get that.
But how long did it take before someone wrote a book on the entirety of the subject of the atonement?
Well I'll tell you, it was in the middle of the fourth century, the fourth century.
And there had been a lot of theological debates that took place before that.
And when we read in the early church, we discover that they had some very interesting theories about the subject of the atonement.
Now I hope that doesn't throw anyone off.
If you have the idea, there are people that have the idea that from the time of the founding of the church until today, you've always had Baptist churches with potlucks and things like that, and they were all singing out of the same hymnal and all the way down to today.
That's not how church history has gone actually.
And that there have been, I mean think about it, there was about the same amount of time, about three centuries past from the time of the birth of Christ to when you have a final recognition and collation and bringing together of the entirety of the Scriptures, specifically in the New Testament.
So there were men who lived and ministered, I think of someone like Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century.
He didn't even have most of Paul.
What would your theology look like without Romans or Galatians?
What would your theology look like with maybe only three of the four Gospels, just something like that?
And so we need to recognize there was a period of development and there were other controversies going on.
The first controversies the church struggled with were, "Who is Jesus Christ?
What is his relationship to the Father?" And so you have the Aryan controversy and you had people who were teaching that Jesus was the Father.
It's a whole other controversy that had erupted in the second century.
And so there was, it was a challenging time.
I mean we stand on the shoulders of giants.
I was in one of the pastor's offices just now and you walk in any pastor's office and you'll have all these rows of commentaries.
They had nothing like that.
They had nothing that they could go to in that way to lay foundations and things like that.
It was a challenging time.
And the issue of the atonement was not the key issue.
And as a result, there were some interesting views.
And our tendency is to look at people who had different views than we have today and then dismiss them.
Be careful not to do that.
We don't know where they would have come down had they had the same amount of information that we have.
I think we need to extend a tremendous amount of grace.
And of course I always go, once I'm dead, I'm going to need a tremendous amount of grace from the generations to come for everything that I've written and said as well.
But for example, at the end of the second century, there was a very well-known man by the name Irenaeus, Irenaeus of Lyon.
And for hundreds and hundreds of years, almost everything we knew about the early church's struggle against what's called Gnosticism.
And that was one of their major struggles.
It was a massive, massive battle.
Almost everything we knew about the Gnostics came from Irenaeus and his writings as he was refuting them.
And then in the last century, discoveries were made in the deserts of Egypt where we found a lot of the Gnostics' original books and we've got to give Irenaeus credit.
He was pretty much spot on in his description of what they believed.
And you know why that's important?
Because we have to be accurate in representing even the people we disagree with.
And Irenaeus was.
But that doesn't mean that he had a perfect theology.
So for example, he held what's called the recapitulation theory.
The recapitulation theory.
What in the world does that mean?
Well, it's the idea that Jesus lived through all the ages of life that man lives through and therefore is able to redeem all people of those different ages.
And so Irenaeus thought Jesus lived to be like 60 years of age.
He had to live to be an older man to be able to redeem older men.
So you have the recapitulation theory and then he had the ransom to Satan theory that Jesus' death was a ransom paid to Satan to free mankind from Satan's power.
And then there are all sorts of mixtures of these things that in fact all the way into the medieval period, even after times like Augustine and others, you had very differing views, the moral government theory and all these different views of the atonement.
And even today when we talk about specifically identifying our understanding of the atonement as penal substitutionary atonement, that the Lord Jesus bears in his body upon the tree the just wrath of the father and his broken law so that our sins are imputed to him, his righteousness is imputed to us.
God's law is completely fulfilled.
His holiness is completely fulfilled.
There is no injustice.
Everyone either gets justice in punishment in hell or mercy and grace in Jesus Christ.
There's no injustice.
That concept is still, to be honest with you, loathed by many people in our world today.
There are entire movements today, the briefly flourishing and now pretty much dead emergent church movement and all the stuff that it spawned.
Those types of folks really did not believe in penal substitutionary atonement.
In fact, there was a man in England that gained some notoriety for himself, a former evangelical by the name of Chalk who identified penal substitutionary atonement as cosmic child abuse, cosmic child abuse, that the father would abuse his child in such a fashion as if the son did not voluntarily go to the cross.
I don't understand why people won't accurately represent these things, but that's the kind of thing that you have out there.
You need to realize if you believe in penal substitutionary atonement, that doesn't necessarily make you in the majority even in our day amongst evangelicals, obviously.
You just look at our hymnology and it's all through it.
But penal substitutionary atonement, substitutionary atonement as a whole is a reformed concept and it has a foundation and that foundation needs to be understood.
When it's rejected, honestly, it helps us to understand why so many people, when they start ... What's the popular phrase today?
Deconstructing?
That's the big thing today, deconstruction.
When they start doing that, this is one of the first things to go because when you think about what it is we're saying, we are saying when you use the term propitiation, propitiation means a sacrifice of atonement that takes away the wrath that is due to sin.
There was a theologian in England years ago, C.H. Dodd, that detested the concept of propitiation.
He suggested a different term, expiation.
What's the difference between propitiation and expiation?
Well, expiation makes no reference to wrath and so many people simply reject the idea that there is biblically anything to ground the idea of God's wrath against sin.
Now, obviously, they have a different view of the relationship of Old and New Testament and things like that.
It's rather obvious that that's there, but so strong was his detestation that he really pushed for translations of the Bible and things like that to use a different term.
To get rid of the idea of wrath, I personally find this exceptionally important because of the amount of work I've done dealing with Muslims.
Muslims believe that Allah can simply forgive sin without any payment being given.
They don't understand.
In fact, I had the opportunity, a tremendous opportunity, I think it was 2018, somewhere around there as I recall, to do a dialogue with a Muslim scholar in Mississippi.
The first night we were in a Christian church and the second night we were in a mosque and it was a mixed audience and the first night I was mainly asking him questions, the second night he was mainly asking me questions.
And so in the mosque, in front of his own people, and of course they weren't sitting in chairs, they're sitting on the carpet on the ground, that's how they do things in the mosque, they can sit on a flat carpeted surface for hours on end.
We all would be having to visit our chiropractor very shortly after that.
But the first question he asked me, "Why did a part of God have to die?" That's an interesting way of putting it, isn't it?
But if you're a Muslim and don't really understand the doctrine of the Trinity, and I was just given free reign to answer these questions and to proclaim these truths to these groups.
It was an incredible evening, it truly, truly was.
But they truly struggle with the necessity of atonement on the part of the Muslims.
And in 2013 I was in the Abu Bakr-Siddiq mosque in Erasmuya, South Africa and I was debating a Muslim scholar by the name of Shabir Ali, we've debated seven or eight times as I recall around the world.
And I had the opportunity of explaining to the Muslims there, I'm standing right in front of the kibla, which is where the imam leads the prayers.
That's what points to Mecca.
And so I'm facing the people and have the opportunity to explain to them the necessity of having the righteousness of Christ, of having Him take my sins and have His righteousness imputed to me.
It's the only way I can stand before a holy God because of His, He's the thrice holy God.
And I said, "You know your own hearts, you don't know your own minds.
You know the thoughts that you have had.
Nothing impure can enter into the presence of God." That's not how they understand Allah.
They believe God can just simply forgive a sin, whether there has been any payment made for it or not.
His law does not matter.
And that was the key element of that debate was to emphasize if Allah's law can simply be dismissed, then this represents a fundamental flaw in His nature.
They had never heard anything like that before.
And you have to have a consistent biblical theology to be able to make that kind of argument in that particular context.
And by the way, that debate is available online if you want to sort of follow up with that and see how that ended up working out in application.
So over the years, I have strongly emphasized that we, especially we who are reformed in our understanding of Scripture and its theology, we need to take advantage of the consistency of our application of interpretation and theology to text or Scripture.
What do I mean to them?
I am a biblical Trinitarian.
I believe in the doctrine of Trinity because the Bible teaches there's one true God.
There are three divine persons, the equality of those persons.
And so the doctrine of the Trinity is not something that just exists out there someplace.
It is centrally important to what we believe about soteriology, salvation, and hence what we believe about atonement, God's purposes in sending the Son, sending the Spirit.
All of these things are related to one another.
They are enriched when we allow them to be related to one another, when we don't keep them separate from one another.
And so when you think about the debate that has taken place over the years on the issue of the atonement, especially since the Reformation, the issue really is there are those who will say, "Well, the death of Christ is meant to give us an example.
It's meant to show God's love." Well, almost every theory that is presented has some element of truth to it.
Of course the death of Christ shows God's love.
And of course it gives us an example.
Others use what's called the Christus Victor model, that Christ is victorious over death.
Well, of course that's true too.
There is elements of truth in all of these things, but the question is if it's only a part of the truth, then we need the rest of what Scripture says.
So we don't reject it.
Yes, Christ is victorious over the opposition and His enemies, and they are made a footstool for His feet by His victory, and all those things are true.
But is it enough to stop there?
And so when we look to the New Testament and we ask ourselves a question, where do we find the longest continuous discussion of God's purposes in the atoning work of Christ?
If you were to ask most evangelicals that question, how would they answer?
How would we answer?
It's interesting to me that the book of Hebrews very rarely appears on people's lists of favorite books, and there's a reason for that.
You can't really make heads or tails out of the book of Hebrews if you do not have at least some basic understanding of what the Old Testament teaches, and especially what took place in the temple, in the tabernacle, what the relationship between the tabernacle and temple is, and especially the role of the priesthood.
And let's be honest.
It's February now.
No, March.
See, I'm behind a little bit.
We just got into it.
Give me a second there.
A lot of people started their reading through the Bible in a Year program in January, right?
They did real well right up to when you run into Leviticus.
And then you run into leprosy and all this stuff, and, "Yeah, let's go read John.
Let's go find something a little more exciting," right?
And it's because of that that Hebrews is sometimes difficult for people because there's so much discussion of the day of purification.
We hear it called Yom Kippur, the day of atoma, but actually when you read Leviticus 16, there were multiple atomas being made.
Yom Kippurim, plural.
And it talks about where the veil was and what's on one side of the veil and then what's on the other side of the veil and talks about priesthoods and Aaron and Melchizedek.
And we're just not...
If we're just really honest, we're just not exactly sure why this argumentation is being made and the way it's being made.
The reality is this book, from my perspective, gives us the longest extended discussion of the atonement and what its purpose and what its means was in all of the New Testament.
And because it's not all that popular, that's why we have so many sub-biblical views of the atoning work of Christ.
We find that in Hebrews.
Now just briefly, I will say, and we can have debates about this, but my theory is that the book of Hebrews was preached by the Apostle Paul in Hebrew and written down in Greek by Luke.
Now, you may know it's...
There's no name at the beginning if you have the King James Version.
I think a lot of them do say the title will have the Apostle Paul up there, but the manuscripts don't have that.
So there's been a lot of debate about it and some people say it was Apollos that wrote to the book of Hebrews and things like that.
We'll find out in heaven someday.
But what makes the most sense to me is it's the theology of Paul in the language of Luke.
So if you read Greek, you'll read Acts, you'll read Luke, you'll read Acts, you go read Hebrews, and it's like you're just reading the same thing.
The syntax is the same, the vocabulary is the same, the cadence is the same.
It just really reads like Luke to me.
But the theology is Paul's.
And the whole point of the book is it's written to Hebrew Christians who are under tremendous pressure to go back to the old ways.
This Jesus guy is gone.
This strange movement, it's a cult.
Come back, you've been deceived.
Look at the beauty of the temple.
Look at the beauty of the worship.
Come back, curse Christ, offer sacrifice, and come back into the fellowship.
And there were people that were doing that.
I think that's the sin and the death that John talks about.
claiming the name of Christ, cursing him, it's mentioned in Hebrews in chapter 10.
And there were people that were doing it.
And so here is a sermon, and the whole thrust of the letter is there's nothing to go back to.
There's nothing to go back to.
From the first chapter onward, what's being demonstrated?
The supremacy of Christ.
Next Saturday evening, prayer is appreciated, please.
I need to have at least this much voice this coming Thursday and this coming Saturday.
I have the last two of five debates on this trip.
On Thursday, I'll be debating a Baptist by the name of Layton Flowers on the subject of John 6.
And on Saturday, I'll be debating Dr. Dale Tuggie, a Unitarian philosopher on the identity of Jesus.
And one of the texts that will be the central text, one of the central texts I'll be presenting against Dr. Tuggie will be from Hebrews chapter 1.
That first chapter, identifying who Jesus truly is, and especially verses 10 through 12, which are quoted from Psalm 102, identifying Jesus as Yahweh, as the unchanging creator of all things.
And so from the very start, you can't curse the one who created you, and yet this is who Jesus is.
And then Jesus has entered into human flesh, and He calls us brothers.
And then we get into chapter 6.
And one of the sad things, I don't know about you, but when I grew up, if someone had asked me just maybe as a senior in high school, "What's Hebrews chapter 6 about?" My response would have been, "Oh, that's where you have the arguments about falling away." Right?
When we think about Hebrews chapter 6, we think about the first nine verses.
It's a shame because I think one of the most beautiful texts in the New Testament for Christians is found at the end of chapter 6, and people don't think about it.
Notice verse 18, "So that by two unchangeable things, which is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.
This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and confirmed and one which enters within the veil where a forerunner has entered for us, Jesus, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." What a picture.
What a picture.
Even when you think of what the veil was and what it represented, that thick woven veil that separated the presence of God from the people, and only the high priest would go through that veil once a year with blood not his own.
Carrying that bowl where the blood of the sacrificial animal had just been poured, that bowl would be warm.
It would not be cold.
The lifeblood in that bowl, he would feel the heat in his hands as he entered into that place and he would sprinkle that blood upon the mercy seat.
And here we have a forerunner, an anchor for the soul, a forerunner who has entered within the veil.
Think about how encouraging that would be to Christians in that day because I believe Hebrews is written prior to the destruction of the temple.
It assumes it's still there.
It assumes that the sacrifice is still being made.
And so come back, come back, but they can only go so far in the temple.
They have to be represented by the high priest.
They can't enter into the holy place, but we as Christians, we have one who has entered in through the veil.
He is seated at the right hand of the Father.
There is an anchor for the soul that cannot be offered to you by Judaism.
Jesus having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, and that then triggers the discussion of the supremacy of Christ's priesthood to that of the Aaronic line which still existed in that day.
It's a beautiful image.
It's one that is well worth our meditation upon, especially in a day where things are constantly changing.
Every morning you wake up in these days and you wonder what on earth insanity is going to be expressed in the world today that I could never have imagined even when I went to bed last night.
And in that kind of a world, it is good to have an anchor for the soul that does not change and is not capable of being impacted by any power in this world.
I am very thankful for that.
But that then leads us to Melchizedek.
We don't have time.
It's fascinating the argument that is presented.
Melchizedek, the prince, the king of Salem, the king of peace, there's all sorts of connections that are being made and can be made there and the blessing of Abraham and all these things that come through it.
But what I want us to focus upon today is the capacity of the Melchizedek priest, the power of the Melchizedek priest.
Now I will just say in passing that if you should hear a knock on your door sometime this week and you look outside and there are two well-dressed young men in white shirts and dark pants and dark tie, they're actually letting them wear more colorful ties now.
I think it's the end of Mormonism, but they used to just wear dark ties and there's a couple of ten speeds parked out next to your fence or something like that.
Those two young men think they hold the Melchizedek priesthood.
They do.
And if you want to have an effective way of reaching those young men, I hesitate to say this, but I think our tract on this subject is on our website.
You can download it, print it out if you want, something like that.
But years and years ago I wrote a tract for Mormons on the subject of the priesthood because I can guarantee you it's the one subject.
No one at anyone's door has ever talked to them about.
People just don't know.
And the Mormons don't know.
They've just been told, well, there's the Aaronic priesthood, the Melchizedek priesthood, they claim to hold both of them.
The reality is the biblical teaching on this subject is very, very clear and they have no idea what it is.
And I remember very clearly many years ago when we first debuted that tract up at the Eastern ... I'm sorry, at the general conference, the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, I came up with a brilliant idea.
When you pass out tracts to people and they're in a line, if the people at the front reject your tract and the people behind see them reject the tract, it makes them less likely to take the tract as well.
So we got smart.
At the end of the day of the general conference, they have a priesthood meeting.
And so there's this huge line of young men in white shirts, dark ties, black pants, wrapping around Temple Square.
So we started at the back of the line.
So we came at them backwards.
And so we started at the back.
We wiped out our entire supply of those tracts.
And as we drove away that day, we drove around Temple Square, here's thousands of young Mormon missionaries standing outside the general conference.
And what are they all doing?
They're all reading our tract on how they do not hold the Melchizedek priesthood and that they should not take this priesthood unto themselves.
It was a story of the sons of Korah and how the earth opened up and swallowed them for taking the priesthood unto themselves and what the Bible actually teaches on the priesthood.
It is an effective way to open a door of discussion when the missionaries come walking by.
So just mark that down as we look at this section.
But see, notice, speaking of Christ, beginning like verse 17, "For it is witnessed about him, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
For on the one hand there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law made nothing perfect.
On the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God, a better hope through which we draw near to God.
And inasmuch as it was not without an oath, for they indeed became priests without an oath, but he with an oath through the one who said to him, 'The Lord has sworn will not change his mind, you are a priest forever,' so much more Jesus also has become the guarantee of a better covenant." Now most of us Reformed Baptists, we have studied this text because it's the chapter before chapter 8 and the subject of the new covenant and the nature of the new covenant and at least for me when I'm talking with my dear Peyto Baptist brethren, this is the battleground.
This is the issue in regards to the definition of baptism and the covenant and the nature of all these things.
So we're familiar with it and we're familiar with the language of a better covenant.
Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.
So verse 23, "And the former priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing.
But Jesus on the other hand because he continues forever holds his priesthood, operabaton." Operabaton is a haphoxalogamana, that means it occurs only one time in the New Testament and it can be translated either as he holds his priesthood permanently or without a successor.
You see the old priests could only function in that office for a limited period of time because they would die.
And even though there was only supposed to be one high priest at the time during Jesus' ministry, we see more than one high priest because the Romans had come in and messed things up.
"But the high priest likewise who represented the people who entered into the holy place, he could not continuously be in that office.
He would only be high priest for a certain period of time before he likewise would die.
But Jesus on the other hand because he continues forever, he has defeated death.
He is not subject to death.
He has been raised from the dead having conquered it.
He holds his priesthood permanently." Now that's one of the things, that's one of the applications to make to the missionary.
Jesus doesn't need you in his priesthood.
He's not passing it on to somebody else and besides that his priesthood elsewhere is described as having no father, no mother, no genealogy.
Well we all know you got a mommy and a daddy and a genealogy so you're not a Melchizedek priest.
Sadly, I would say 99% of Mormon missionaries have never read the book of Hebrews.
So they didn't even know this is there.
Just be aware of that if you...
They're carrying it.
It's in their King James version of the Bible but they just don't read it.
So he holds his priesthood permanently.
"Therefore, for that reason, he is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them." That is one of the richest half sentences in all the New Testament.
"Therefore, because he holds his priesthood permanently, he is able to save forever or to the uttermost completely." The term can be translated either way.
"Prostively, he has an ability because of his eternal nature, his resurrected status, his priesthood does not have to be passed on to anyone else.
He is able to save." Don't rush past that because really when you think about it, so much of the disputation we have is between those who say that what God does is he makes salvation possible and those who say God actually saves.
There is a difference between merely making it a possibility and actually accomplishing salvation.
Jesus is able to save completely, not partially, not 99%, completely a specific people.
A specific people.
They are described as those who draw near to God through him.
The picture again to the Hebrews was obvious.
It's not so obvious to us today.
You see the people then, they would have known what Leviticus 16 was about.
They would have recognized the picture.
It's the day of atonement, the high day, and the people have gathered and they're observing the sacrifice and they see the high priest going in.
And he's representing us.
It's those people who are looking and are desirous.
It's not for the Egyptians.
It's not for the Babylonians.
It's not for the unbelieving Jews that aren't even there and don't care.
There's a specific people, a specific audience.
And you see, it also showed the picture of the fact that that high priest didn't get to stay in the presence of God.
There was no place to sit down in the holy place.
There was no place to rest.
There was no place where the high priest could have communion with God.
"You know, God, this is ... I'm done sprinkling the blood on the mercy seat.
Can we ... There's a lot of questions I've had for you for a long time." No.
There's no place to do that because his work's not finished.
His work has not perfected anyone.
It's pointing away from him.
It's pointing to a greater fulfillment.
And so once he's done, he has to leave.
He can't stay.
That's not Jesus' position.
He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him.
Why?
He always lives to make intercession for them.
One of the chief weaknesses of modern evangelical theology on the atonement is it doesn't recognize Jesus' role as high priest and the fact that the high priest not only had to offer the sacrifice, kill the animal, bring the blood, sprinkle the blood.
That act of intercession of going before the mercy seat is part of the same action.
And so few Christians today understand the centrality of the intercessory work of Christ, let alone do we rejoice each and every day that we have one who has entered into the holy place.
In our place, our forerunner, our representative is already in the presence of the Father.
How can the world touch us?
This is what Paul's talking about when he says, "You have died and your life is hidden together with Christ in God." How can the world touch us?
Has no power over us.
What an incredible thing.
And so he is able to save, why? Because he always lives to make intercession for them.
For who?
A specific people.
It's not some general thing.
I mentioned, and this is obviously isn't a biblical argument, but so many of our hymns reflect this before the throne of God above.
Remember the line, "My name is graven on his hands." That's personal.
That's personal.
He's interceding for a specific people and his intercessory work accomplishes their salvation because he has done everything necessary for the Father to say, "Not guilty, just righteous." What a tremendous encouragement to those early Christians who are being told, "You've been deceived.
You're in a cult.
Come back." And here the apostle lays out, "You actually have a forerunner who goes into the presence of God and stays there." He doesn't have to go in and out and in and out.
That's the whole point in Hebrews chapter 10.
Hebrews chapter 10 says, "In that yearly sacrifice there's a what? Reminder of sins.
If you were truly cleansed, why would you have to come back next year and the year after and the year after and the year after?" It was pointing to something else.
We don't have that kind of reminder.
We have a reminder of a sin bearer, not of our sins.
That's the difference.
And so the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are in perfect harmony with one another.
Can we imagine just for a moment what it would be like if the Father has elected a certain people, but Jesus then substitutionary dies for all people, appears before the Father and pleads the salvation of those the Father has not chosen to save?
And the Spirit goes out and tries to save everybody too.
You cannot have disharmony in the Godhead if there is a decree of election, if Ephesians 1 is there and it is.
And in Romans chapter 8, we have the same picture and the Son is interceding for a specific people in Romans chapter 8.
Then the Son's work is going to be in perfect harmony with the Father.
The Father has set His love upon these specific people.
He gives His Son, He gives them to the Son.
John chapter 9 says that's the will of the Father.
I've come to do not my will, but the will of one who sent me and the will of one who sent me is I lose none of all that He's given me.
Raise them up on the last day.
So the Father gives the specific people to the Son.
The Son dies in their place, provides for them perfect righteousness, not just the remission of sin, but His perfect righteousness, that positive righteousness.
He loves the Father perfectly.
We've never done that.
So we have perfect righteousness and then the Spirit comes at the time of God's ordination, praises us to spiritual life, reveals the glory of Christ to us, becomes the arabone, the down payment, Ephesians 1.14, of the redemption of God's people.
Father, Son, and Spirit working perfectly in harmony with one another to bring about first and foremost their own triune glorification and in the process our redemption.
How different that is than God setting up a system where we have to work the levers and feverishly try and hope by the time we get done that we've gotten enough grace and all these other things that you have in man's religions.
What a different message.
I don't know about you, but when I think about that phrase, He always lives to make intercession for them.
In the darkest hours, in the hardest times, my Savior is representing me in the presence of the Father.
How often I fall, how often I fail, it's not me that is there in the holy place.
It's my forerunner in my place.
If you've ever wondered, "How can I have peace with God long term?" Because I sometimes feel like I'm doing good for a while and then I trip and stumble and fall and there's periods of apathy and how could the Holy Spirit even be in me with all my uncleanness?
You need to understand the gospel.
You need to understand the imputation of your sin to Christ, His righteousness to you, His high priestly stance there in heaven in our place and the fact that we are seen in Him.
That's the only place you're going to have eternal life and that's the only place you can have peace.
There's so much more we can say about this, but I hope that we as believers, we rejoice.
We rejoice in having a representative there before the Father in our place.
This is why just a couple weeks ago when I debated Roman Catholic on purgatory, which I joked about beforehand, but what was interesting was it really came out with clarity and every time I've done a debate on purgatory with Roman Catholics, it has come out with clarity.
The grounds of our relationship to God is fundamentally different than what is taught by Roman Catholicism.
They have no non-imputation of sin.
They do not have any imputation of the righteousness of Christ and therefore the only peace they can offer is a temporary cease fire.
You and I can have true and lasting peace because we're not looking at what we've done but what Christ has done in our place.
That should encourage all of us to present that gospel to anyone who's been given a false gospel, but it should also cause us to bow in worship and thanks to God for what He has done for us.
Let's pray together.
Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, our representative is there in your presence now.
Making our prayers acceptable to you, our worship acceptable to you.
You are pleased with Him and as long as we are in Him, you are pleased with us and we thank you for the throne of grace.
We thank you for this time you have given to us, this place to be able to in peace consider your truth.
We know these are blessings from your hand.
We ask that you would continue to give us these blessings.
The Lord we pray that as your people in this place this day, our hearts would be filled with thanksgiving for all you have done for us in Christ Jesus.
May His name be glorified.
May we live this week in light of His truth to His honor and glory.
We pray in Christ's name.
Amen.
[BLANK_AUDIO]