In the 5th chapter of the book of
Hebrews, 1st, 10 verses, For every high priest
taken from among men is ordained for men
in things pertaining to God, that he may
offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins, who
can have compassion on the ignorant and on
them that are out of the way, for
that he himself also is encompassed with infirmity.
And by reason hereof he ought as for
the people, so also for himself to offer
for sins.
No man taketh this honour unto himself, but
he that is called of God, as was
Aaron.
So also Christ glorified not himself to be
made an high priest.
But he that said unto him, Thou art
my son, to-day have I begotten thee,
saith also in another place, Thou art a
priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek,
who in the days of his flesh, when
he offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears unto him that was able
to save him from death, and was heard
in that he feared, though he were a
son, yet learned he obedience by the things
which he suffered.
And being made perfect, he became the author
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey
him, called of God and high priest for
ever, after the order of Melchizedek.
Now, one of the major doctrines set forth
in the book of Hebrews is the high
priesthood of the Eternal Son.
It was introduced in chapter 2.17, and
we are told in chapter 3.1 to
consider the apostle and high priest of our
faith.
And again it is mentioned in 4.14,
and now in chapters 5, 6 and 7,
particularly 5 and 7, it is fully developed.
What it means is high priesthood as God
ordained it, and the fulfillment of that priesthood
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I should talk a little bit about
the ideal of a priesthood, because there are
a few things in the whole circle of
religion that gets more abuse and has suffered
more abuse and has been a source of
more abuse than the priesthood.
Every base, unworthy religion to be found throughout
the world has the idea of a priesthood
attached to it, and there are various priestly
rites throughout the various religions of the world
that have offended and shocked mankind.
And the priests themselves have often been corrupt
and cruel and hypocritical.
If you want to get the shock of
your life, you ought to read the story
of the religions of Mexico, held by the
Aztecs and the Toltecs.
Twenty thousand human beings, for instance, were offered
in sacrifice at the dedication of one temple.
Twenty thousand human beings were stretched out on
a slab, alive, and their hearts cut out
with stone axes, and offered in sacrifice to
the deaf God of the Toltecs and the
Aztecs in the olden days in Mexico.
And it is unspeakable what they did, the
evil that they did.
And when you consider that you don't have
to go back very far to find priests
who habitually lie around drunk, you will know
how many abuses have attached themselves to the
idea of the priesthood.
Some have been self-righteous and arrogant, and
many intimidate and exploit their poor people.
And yet the idea of a priesthood was
not thought of first by man, but by
God.
And it is dimly seen in the praying
father of the family who assumes responsibility for
his family, who teaches his family by example
and precept, and who prays for them.
Job was a good example of this.
Job went before God after a party that
his children had had and offered sacrifice, or
at least he prayed and asked God to
forgive them and cleanse them because he was
afraid they might have sinned.
He was a priest to his family.
But it is more clearly set forth in
the Levitical priesthood as shown in Exodus and
Leviticus, and in Numbers and the Old Testament.
And it is set forth in perfection in
Jesus Christ our Lord.
I have said that the idea of the
priesthood, or a priesthood, is ordained by God,
and it must therefore have a need.
And the need for a priesthood arises from
man's alienation from God.
It assumes that man is away from God.
This is an intrigant part of truth, as
hydrogen is a part of water and you
can't have water without hydrogen, so you can't
have Bible truth without the doctrine that man
has broken with God in what the Bible
calls alienation, in the great fall.
And any religion that ignores that man has
fallen and that he is away from God,
that he is like a little island that
is pulled loose from the continent and is
drifted out to sea and is lost from
the attraction of the continent, so man has
morally pulled away from God and has pulled
himself completely away in fellowship so that he
is said to be alienated from God and
without hope and without God in the world.
And somebody has to make reconciliation between God
and man to bring them back together again.
And there is where the idea of the
priesthood lies.
Now, even granted that man would return, man
can't return to God because there is that
which is in the way, there is sin
in the way, there has been a moral
breach, there has been a violation of the
laws of God, man is a moral criminal
before the power of God.
And until there is satisfaction made, until this
breach is healed, until justice is satisfied, man
can't return to God even if he wanted
to come.
Now, this is Bible doctrine, and anything else
is less than Bible doctrine.
If I did not believe this, I would
close my Bible and I would preach from
William Wordsworth or from Shakespeare or Milton.
And you couldn't preach from Milton because he
believed the Bible and wove the Bible into
much of his poetry.
But you know there is a fatal error
among people, religious people, and that is Christless
mysticism, a kind of nature mysticism.
And the fall of the year comes around
and we imagine a little man with a
paintbrush outpainting the leaves, and we get very,
very watery-eyed about that time.
And again in the spring when the frogs
begin to make their music in the little
ponds, and man's thoughts turn to love and
all this kind of thing the poet tells
us about.
Well, that's very dangerous because if it's crossless
and without redemption and without Christ and without
a proper reconciliation, it can be deadly.
And yet there are churches and they spend
millions building those churches and they never hear
a thing year in and year out.
I stopped in Chicago on my way through
here from Toronto, St. Paul.
I had to wait three hours in the
airport to catch the plane here.
And one of my boys came out to
have a chat, brought his girlfriend out, and
we had a nice chat together.
And he is the only single one of
them all.
And he told me this.
He said that a year ago, during Keswick
in Chicago, that there was an agnostic friend
of his, he's a member and active in
the Presbyterian Church there, that is my son
is, and he said a friend of his
who was an agnostic and a scientist decided
that to please my son he'd come out
to hear me preach at Moody Church, and
he did.
I preached and then I was followed by
the pastor of Calvary Church, Stephen Oldford, so
I don't know which of the two or
both, but anyway.
This scientist sat there, this agnostic who didn't
believe anything and believed that you couldn't know
anything, he sat and he heard those two
sermons.
And then he said to my son, You
know, I'm bowled over, I'm astonished.
I said, Why?
He said, I didn't think preachers ever said
anything.
He said, I never heard a preacher say
anything before.
He said, These two men said something.
And he was greatly moved by the fact
that we'd had something to say.
Well, the upshot of that is, he said,
Now that agnostic scientist has become the Tom
Hare of the Presbyterian Church.
Can you imagine that?
In just a year's time he's now praying
warrior, leading the rest of them in his
fellowship with God.
That's the difference, and it isn't good preaching,
it's preaching about something good.
There's the difference.
I never have claimed, never in my life
have I claimed to be a good preacher.
But I have taken second to nobody in
my desire to preach about good things.
And if you preach about good things, a
man came down to the front, a fine
-looking middle-aged man, after I had preached
on the Lord Jesus, high and lifted up,
and they were asking me to autograph books.
And he came to me and said, I
have no book for you to autograph, you've
written your autograph in my heart.
And I was rather moved by that, because
I hadn't preached good at all, I know.
I hear myself on tape.
But I know I'm preaching about something good,
and that's all the difference in the world.
You see, if a cook is a good
cook, and the cook knows how to cook
good food and wholesome, delicious food and serve
it well, she doesn't have to be a
bathing beauty.
She can just be anything, but you don't
say you're a beautiful bathing beauty, you say
you're a good cook.
And all I claim to be in the
wide world, I serve up good food, and
I talk about God, and that's what's good.
And that's what every preacher ought to do.
He doesn't have to have a voice like
Billy Graham, and very few people do.
That gentle Southern accent of his that charms
people, I don't have it, and very few
people do around the world.
But if they set up good food, they
don't have to look like a Greek God.
And if they provide good truth, they don't
have to preach like Spurgeon.
Anything will be all right.
I remember that a man came up to
Mr. Spurgeon, I believe it was, and said,
I can't preach as well as you, but
I preach about the same Lord you do,
and that's all that's necessary.
So there's danger in the churches of a
crossless Christianity.
And the preacher gets up and talks about
the great All-Father.
I used to hear them over the radio,
preach about this we ask in the spirit
of Jesus.
He didn't ask it in the name of
Jesus, but in the spirit of Jesus.
He was a nice fellow.
Well, this is false, and we've got to
get back to this idea of a priesthood,
this idea of God here and man here,
and the two of them alienated from each
other, not by the fault of God, but
by the fault of man, getting back together
by a sacrifice, and a priest who could
come between God who is holy and man
who is unholy and bring the two of
them together.
That's priesthood, and that's what is here.
Now, the scripture tells us that a priest
could do this.
A priest had to have several qualifications.
A priest had to be ordained of God.
No man taketh this honor upon himself.
He had to be ordained of God.
Nobody could come out of the bush and
say, I'm a priest, rub his face with
some kind of paint and say, I'm a
priest.
God had to ordain the man, or else
he's a false priest.
And all the false priests around the world
are self-ordained men.
But there had to be a priest in
the Old Testament times whom God ordained, and
then he had to be ordained for men,
it says here in the text.
God appointed him to help men.
God needs no help, and there is no
priest that can give God any help, but
man needs help.
And the work of the priest was to
atone for sins.
Now, the formula is given over in the
book of Leviticus, the fifth chapter, where it
says, And the priest shall sprinkle of the
blood of the sin offering upon the side
of the altar, and the rest of the
blood shall be wrung out at the bottom
of the altar.
It is a sin offering.
And he shall offer the second for a
burnt offering, according to the manner, and the
priest shall make an atonement for him for
his sin which he hath sinned, and it
shall be forgiven him.
There is the idea of the priesthood.
An offering was made for man, to God,
by the priest.
And the priest had this to do yet.
He was to represent God to man and
man to God.
Before God, he pleads for the man he
represents, he instructs, he exhorts.
And with complete sympathy and understanding, he goes
to God for the man.
And this he can do because he is
himself a man.
But the breakdown, the scripture says in the
Old Testament, was that the priest, when he
went before God to stand in between a
holy God and fallen man, the priest was
embarrassed.
Always he was embarrassed because he had to
atone not only for the sins of the
people that he was reconciling, but he had
to atone for his own sins as well.
This was where the breakdown was.
That's why Isaac Watts could say, Not all
the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain
would give the guilty conscience peace nor take
away the stain, but Christ the heavenly Lamb
takes all our sins away, the sacrifice of
pure blood and richer blood than they.
Showing that the priest couldn't, by the blood
of the sacrifice he made, take it away
completely.
He partly took it away.
God forgave it and covered it until the
time that the great priest came.
So when Christ came, he qualified completely.
He was ordained of God.
That was qualification number one.
Thou art my son, thou art a priest
forever.
God said that.
He reconciled.
That's 2.17. He made reconciliation for the
people.
He had compassion, 5, 7 and 8.
That teaches us that Christ qualified as the
priest and he became the author of eternal
salvation.
The author, the source, the giver of eternal
salvation.
You can talk, as I've said before, too
much about almost anything.
You can preach too much about doctrine.
You go to some churches and all you'll
hear from the time you arrive until the
time you leave is the second work of
grace.
I remember one fellow I heard was teaching.
He taught the three psalms that our brother
Gray has talked so much about, those three
psalms, psalms 22, 23 and 24.
Here was his exposition.
He said, In Psalm 22, My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?
He said, That's the sinner at the altar.
And he said, The bones of Bashan have
stared upon me.
He said, That's the people looking curiously on
while the man prays at the altar.
And he said where it says, My bones
are out of joint and my strength dried
up.
He said he would get helpless there at
the altar.
Then he said, I will sing among the
brethren.
He got through.
And he said, In Psalm 23, The Lord
is my shepherd.
And the man in the 22nd psalm said,
I am a worm and no man.
He said, In the 22nd psalm he was
a worm, and in the 23rd psalm he
was a sheep.
He had been converted.
Then he went through the valley of the
shadow of death.
That was sanctification.
And he came out into the 24th chapter
and said, The earth is the Lord's and
the fulness thereof, and he was a man.
That was exposition.
I heard that myself by a college president
of a little holiness college.
They see too much of grace everywhere.
I think that the Bible teaches that there
is a baptism and anointing of the Holy
Ghost after conversion, and I teach it.
But I don't claim to see it everywhere.
I heard a man preach on the text
when Jesus touched a man's eyes and he
saw men in the streets walking.
Then he touched him again and he saw
everybody clearly.
He said, There you have it.
The first time he was converted, the second
time he was sanctified.
If you have to prove your case by
that kind of exegesis, you have no case
at all.
If you can't go to Romans and Colossians
and Hebrews and Galatians and find it, if
you have to go and worm around like
that, go teach it.
I believe you can.
I believe in the New Testament we are
specifically and clearly taught that there is such
a thing as being filled with the Holy
Spirit after conversion, and I've experienced it.
But you can preach that too much.
You can preach water baptism too much.
You can preach anything too much.
But there is one thing you can never
overdo.
You never can preach the glory of Jesus
Christ too much.
You never can overdo the glory of the
Son of God.
Never, never.
I preached some sermons down in St. Paul
on the man Christ Jesus high and lifted
up, a series of sermons.
I've never preached them here, some day I
may.
But the people were moved, and I know
they were not moved by good preaching, but
they were moved by the fact that I
was talking about something that God had ordained
that they should hear about and weren't hearing
about.
Not that that pastor isn't preaching, and he
is, but I happened to strike a note
that moved the audiences because I talked about
the Lord Jesus, and you can't overdo that.
Dr. Simpson was not a great exegete.
The old fellow in his church, as I
told you, said, Brother Simpson only has one
sermon.
Do you know what his sermon was?
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.
Jesus Christ, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
Jesus Christ, prophet, priest and king.
Jesus Christ, resurrection and life, the truth and
the way.
Jesus Christ, everything.
You can't overdo that.
You can preach Christ continually and nobody will
ever get tired because he is new every
morning, and he never gets stale.
He became the author, the source, the fountain,
the giver of eternal salvation.
After my article, I can't give you the
Latin or the Greek.
But salvation, you know where it comes from.
It comes from selus.
It means health and welfare and well-being.
He became the author of man's eternal health
and man's eternal well-being and man's eternal
welfare.
Salvation means more than getting your sins forgiven.
Conversion means more than giving up smoking.
I'm sure it will mean that, too, if
you get converted.
But salvation means that God brings to you
in Jesus Christ eternal salvation, which is the
health of the soul, the welfare of the
spirit forever, and the well-being of your
total life, worlds without end.
The word is eternal here.
Eternal forever and ever and ever and ever.
You can keep on saying ever and ever
and ever.
Somebody wrote me a letter and said, King
James Version of the Bible is all wrong
because it translates certain words of Greek and
Hebrew by the word forever.
There is no such meaning in the Bible.
The word forever isn't there at all.
No such thing as endless existence.
How silly can you get?
Of course it's there.
The eternal God, the everlasting God.
You think that God is going to get
old and die?
The everlasting God?
As long as God lasts, the life of
his people will last.
And as long as God lasts, the salvation
and welfare of his people will last.
And since God is not wearing out, and
since the eternal God is self-existent and
self-sufficient, lives with time in his bosom,
and knows no abrasion from the passing of
time, but remains forever the eternal God, when
I hear the word eternal salvation to them,
I believe that salvation will outlast the sun
and the moon and the stars and the
galaxies and all the worlds.
And the day will be when God will
take the stars of the heaven above and
throw them over his shoulder as a woman
might throw a garment with sequins on it,
shining and flashing.
Throw them over his shoulder, and they shall
be chained, says the scripture, like a garment.
But thou remainest and thy years fail not.
Sure there is eternity in the Bible, and
it's the devil that tells us there isn't.
And I don't care who he uses to
say so.
It's the devil that says that one of
these days God is going to reach over
as a woman reaches over after a dinner
and snuffs a candle and says, That's the
end of him.
There will be no end to me, there
will be no end to you.
That's just why we ought to be right
with God.
That's why we ought to live, not for
now, not for today, but forever, because there
will be no end to us, thank God.
Salvation forever and ever unto all them that
obey him.
Now how's that?
Unto all them that obey him.
I thought you got salvation by believing him.
You'll find in the scriptures there's very little
difference between believing and obeying.
You'll find in the scriptures that the man
who isn't obeying isn't believing either.
And the fellow who says he has faith
but doesn't obey God is fooling himself.
There's a little song that's been sung to
death and all that, and it's not a
high-class song, but it says something very
fundamental, and that is the simple song, Trust
and Obey.
I believe that trust and obey are two
wings of a bird.
As the old writer said, two wings of
a dove don't weigh her down.
They don't weigh her down.
She rises by means of them.
And trust and obey are the two wings
of the Christian.
We trust and we obey, and we obey
because we trust, and we trust in order
that we might obey.
And if we try to obey without faith,
we get nowhere.
If we try to have faith without obedience,
it ends in nothing.
So he's given eternal salvation to them that
obey him and them that believe him, for
obviously the two are synonymous, if not identical,
synonymous.
And they're like two sides of a coin.
Here I have a coin.
On one side there's an elk, I think,
or a deer or something.
The other side's a cameo of the queen,
quarter, it says, or whatever it says, I
don't know.
But there it is.
Now, I can't split that thing edgewise with
a fine saw and go down and buy
anything with it.
The fellow would see one side of it
and think it's all right, but when he
took it in his hand, he'd say, What
did you do?
What's the matter here?
That's only half a coin.
He'd toss it back.
You can't pass one side of a coin,
it takes two.
Trust is on one side and obey is
on the other.
But the church has taken a fine saw
and split them.
We put trust over here and obey over
here, and they say, You don't have to
obey, it's believe.
Everything's believe.
You can't divide that coin, you can't separate
it, and if you do, it's no good.
Trust and obey, my friends.
Believe God and then go get obedience.
You'll find it will work, and it will
become in your heart eternal salvation.
Jesus Christ will become your all in all.
Well, that's all for this morning.
I want to continue in this, talking about
that passage, that difficult passage about it's impossible
for those who were once enlightened ever to
be restored again.
I know there are all kinds of opinions,
but as we get to it, I want
to preach on this.
God help us.
It's necessary.