Our Father, we would come into Thy presence
and give Thee thanks that Thou art eternally
faithful and the promises that Thou hast made
will come into effect and we can look
forward with a confident anticipation of a day
of perfection and glory in Thy presence and
of the victory of Thy kingdom in this
world where there is so much indifference and
apathy toward Thy name today.
We would entrust ourselves to Thee this evening
and pray that our meditation together in Thy
Word might be beneficial and might be strengthening
to each one of our hearts.
We commit ourselves to Thee and seek Thy
blessing in our Savior's name.
Amen.
Let's turn again to the Hebrews and we'll
pick up on the last verse of chapter
4.
Hebrews 4 and 16 says, Let us therefore
come boldly unto the throne of grace that
we may obtain mercy and find grace to
help in time of need.
And then there's a description of the necessity
and calling of high priests and then this
reference to Christ's priesthood and verse 9, chapter
5 says, And being made perfect, he became
the author of eternal salvation unto all them
that obey him, called of God the high
priest after the order of Melchizedek, of whom
we have many things to say and hard
to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of
hearing.
For when for the time you ought to
be teachers, you have need that one teach
you again which be the first principles of
the oracles of God.
And are become such as have need of
milk and not of strong meat or solid
food.
For everyone that useth milk is unskillful in
the word of righteousness, for he is a
babe.
But strong meat or solid food belongeth to
them that are of full age, even those
who by reason of use have their senses
exercised to discern both good and evil.
Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of
Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead
works and of faith towards God, of the
doctrine of baptisms or washings and of laying
on of hands and of resurrection of the
dead and of eternal judgment.
And this will we do if God permit.
And then there's a section relating to those
who have departed or fallen away, as the
expression is.
And then a contrast in verse 9.
But beloved, we are persuaded better things of
you or concerning you and things that accompany
salvation though we speak.
For God is not unrighteous to forget your
work and labor of love which you have
showed toward his name, in that you have
ministered to the saints and do minister.
And we desire that every one of you
to show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope unto the end, that you
be not slothful but followers of them who
through faith and patience inherit the promises.
For when God made promise to Abraham because
he could swear by no greater, he swore
by himself saying, surely blessing I will bless
thee and multiplying I will multiply thee.
And so after he had patiently endured, he
obtained the promise.
For men verily swear by the greater and
an oath for confirmation is to them an
end of all strife.
We're in God willing more abundantly to show
under the airs of promise the immutability of
his counsel, confirmed it by an oath.
That by two immutable things in which it
was impossible for God to lie, we might
have a strong consolation who have fled for
refuge to lay hold upon the hope set
before us.
Which hope we have as an anchor of
the soul, both sure and steadfast and which
entereth into that within the veil.
Whether the forerunner is for us entered, even
Jesus made a high priest forever after the
order of Melchizedek.
Now chapter 7 begins the explanation of what
he means by this expression, a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.
And he says, for this Melchizedek, king of
Salem, priest of the most high God, who
met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the
kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham
gave a tenth part of all, first being
by interpretation king of righteousness and after that
also king of Salem, which is king of
peace.
Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life, but
made like unto the Son of God, abideth
a priest continually or to perpetuity.
Now if you look at that section verses
1 to 3, that's all one extended sentence
and really the main clause of the sentence
is simply the first phrase and the last
phrase, for this Melchizedek abides a priest continually
or to perpetuity.
Now I want to connect what we have
at the end of chapter 4 and think
a little bit about the Lord Jesus as
our high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
And really the story that we have in
Genesis chapter 14 really is an example of
what it means at the end of verse
16 of chapter 4 to find grace to
help in time of need.
That is an intervention by the high priest
to secure the faith, the stability of the
believer of the pilgrim who is about to
be tempted to find grace to help.
And I remember seeing it translated or interpreted
as to help in the nick of time.
So maybe we should just read the story
in Genesis 14 even though it's already referred
to in our book, but there's a few
details that are left out.
So Genesis chapter 14 and there's
been a battle and Sodom and Gomorrah and
some of the other kings have been overtaken
and Lot is carried away and all the
goods of Sodom and Abraham goes after them
and pursues and he is successful and brings
back all the goods and all the people.
And it says in verse 16 and he
brought back all the goods and also brought
again his brother Lot and his goods and
the women also and the people.
And the king of Sodom went out to
meet him after his return from the slaughter
of Shadr Laomer and of the kings that
were with him at the valley of Sheba
which is the king's dale and Melchizedek, king
of Salem, brought forth bread and wine and
he was the priest of the Most High
God.
And he blessed him and said, blessed be
Abram of the Most High God, possessor of
heaven and earth and blessed be the Most
High God which hath delivered thine enemies into
thine hand.
And he, that is Abraham, gave him, Melchizedek,
tithes of all.
The king of Sodom said unto Abram, give
me the persons and take the goods to
thyself.
And Abram said to the king of Sodom,
I have left up mine hand unto the
Lord, the Most High God, the possessor of
heaven and earth that I will not take
from a thread even to a shoelatchet and
that I will not take anything that is
thine, lest thou should say I have made
Abram rich.
Save only that which the young men have
eaten and the portion of the men which
went with me, Enoch, Eshcol and Mamre, let
them take their portion.
And after these things the word of the
Lord came unto Abram in a vision saying,
fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and
thy exceeding great reward.
Now this is a very interesting story from
the book of Genesis and I'm just going
to draw attention to a few of the
details that are given to us in Genesis
14 and show how it links with the
substance of what I want to think about
tonight.
Melchizedek intervened as the king of Sodom is
coming out to meet Abram coming from the
slaughter of these other kings and it seems
that however close they may have been, Melchizedek
just comes in between and the first thing
he does is he feeds him.
He provides for his immediate needs and so
Abram is refreshed and strengthened and that in
itself is one important facet of our preservation
and strengthening as we go through life.
When we've become worn down and we're hungry
and tired and thirsty, we sometimes don't make
the best decisions and so he takes care
of his physical needs first and so he's
refreshed and encouraged but then he brings this
revelation of God to him.
This is the first time that the expression
the Most High God is used in our
Bible and you notice how he connects his
own relationship to God with Abram.
He's called the priest of the Most High
God.
Now that expression, the Most High, refers to
God as sovereign.
It emphasizes that God is above all and
has power and sovereignty over everything on earth
and basically you can say that the Most
High God is the one who determines who
gets what and when they get it.
And Abram had been given promise that all
of that land, in fact it was really
just back in chapter 13 after Lot separated
from him, all of that land was to
be his.
Everything was going to be his inheritance but
not yet.
God hadn't given it to him yet.
Now the king of Sodom is really offering
to him, you might say the richness of
this land, in the immediate instead of waiting
for God's provision that was still to come.
However we would relate that to our present
life.
I know you can think of different facets
of life and what it would mean to
trust in God in contrast to getting our
needs met or our riches, our wealth from
the world.
One of these ways of being instantly wealthy
and they could say I have made that
man rich.
And we have been given tremendous promises and
that's what we're going to be trying to
look at a little bit tonight.
And Abraham, as the one who is the
heir of the promises, through the intervention of
Melchizedek, he's enabled to withstand the temptation to
make any kind of alliance or agreement or
to be under obligation to the king of
Sodom and he's able to be kept in
separation from the world in its wickedness in
that sense.
But the revelation of God is the most
high God, possessor of heaven and earth.
And then God is praised in verse 20
as the one who accomplished this deliverance.
So again he's reminding Abram, Abram it's God
who has granted you this deliverance today.
And in recognition of this relationship with Melchizedek
and the most high God, Abram gives him
tithes, which is really a worship towards God
himself.
And Abram as he responds then to the
king of Sodom's offer, he says I have
lifted up my hand unto the Lord, the
most high God, the possessor of heaven and
earth, that I will not take from a
thread even to a shoelatch.
It's interesting that this expression, this title of
God becomes prominent again in the book of
Daniel in a very significant context where the
nation of Israel has lost their inheritance.
They've been dispossessed and God does not call
himself the God of Israel during the captivity.
But he does make himself known as the
most high God.
And he has this, you might say, conflict
with the emperor of Babylon, the king of
Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, and the most powerful man on
earth is brought down to his knees.
And to eat grass, to have everything taken
from him until he acknowledged that the most
high God rules in the kingdoms of men.
And he gives the kingdom to whomever he
will.
So this is the recognition of God as
the sovereign God who has made promises, but
there is the endurance of faith to wait
for the promises to be fulfilled.
So there is a parallel, I believe, that
is being drawn here in Hebrews in that
the Lord Jesus has been called of God
a high priest according to the order of
Melchizedek and really I'm just drawing from the
illustration of Genesis to show that even the
character of his ministry to us has a
certain parallel with what Melchizedek did for Abram.
But the expression after the order of Melchizedek
is really teaching the idea of an unchangeable
priesthood, of an eternal priest who never will
be replaced, never be superseded, and therefore God's
final purposes, God's ultimate promises are going to
be fulfilled through his ministry.
So in Hebrews 5 and 9, speaking about
the Lord Jesus and being made perfect, he
became the author of eternal salvation unto all
them that obey him.
So he's become the cause of eternal salvation.
Now the author of eternal salvation to all
that obey him called of God and high
priest after the order of Melchizedek.
So this is where we begin to get
some of the description of what the writer
wants to be able to convey of the
riches of the inheritance, of the greatness of
this priest, his great ability to bring us
into God's final purposes and yet he's acknowledging
a hindrance in it and that hindrance is
that the saints were becoming hard of hearing.
And the term hard to be uttered is
really difficult to be explained because you have
become dull of hearing.
Now I'll just point out that that expression
dull of hearing is actually the same, I
think the word dull is the same as
what we have done in chapter 6 and
verse 12, that you be not slothful.
And so it's really talking about the fact
that we can become slow and sluggish and
unresponsive to teaching.
And I suppose that happens to all of
us.
Sometimes when I think back to younger days
when every conference was a wonderful experience and
I was like a sponge to absorb the
teaching and the ministry that was given.
And sometimes now I get to go to
7 or 8 or 9 conferences in a
fall season and as I think back I
have to ask myself not only what do
people remember or absorb from what I have
taught but how much have I absorbed, retained
and benefited from all the ministry that I've
been exposed to over a 3 or 4
month span in the fall conferences.
And I know we all have our limitations
on how much we can absorb and the
fact as we do gain in knowledge we're
only sort of picking up smaller bits of
new teaching so it's not quite the same
as when we're young.
But at the same time I know there's
also another problem and that is that we
do become, we flatten out in our zeal,
we flatten out in our interest in God
and his things and we plateau.
And that same kind of challenge is brought
to us in Philippians chapter 3 and it's
not always the same kind of reason for
that happening.
But in the context of the passage here
it is that the believers have become disheartened
and there was lots to discourage them.
There were the persecutions that were ongoing, the
losses that they had suffered as chapter 10
teaches us, the fact that others were departing
and the defections were really robbing them of
their joy and stability.
As they would see this relative and that
one that they had counted as among them
turning away and as we have in the
first part of chapter 6 those who actually
return to Judaism and spurn Christ and actually,
it says, crucifying to themselves the son of
God afresh.
Those are very sobering things that are told
us in that passage.
And in one sense I realize that to
its fullest extent this could only be in
the first century, in that first generation after
the Lord was presented to the Jewish nation.
Because here were a people who had been
the covenant people of God but the covenant
itself was being replaced.
A new way was being introduced and if
they didn't come forward and move into the
new covenant relationship they couldn't go back and
just keep where they were and retain a
relationship with God.
They were going to lose everything and actually
become enemies of God which is what some
of them are said to have done in
the book of Hebrews.
And so that effect upon the true believers
who continued into the fullness of Christianity would
have been very, very significant.
And so all of that combination of things
had made these believers unable to really enter
into the fullness that was theirs in Christ.
And he says that you need somebody to
teach you again the first principles of the
oracles of God.
Now coming down into verse 9 of chapter
6, in contrast to the defections, the departure,
the turning away, he says in verse 9,
But beloved, we are persuaded better things concerning
you and things that accompany salvation though we
thus speak.
So I want to notice with you the
grounds of assurance that is given to us
here.
And the first ground of assurance is in
verse 10 where we have a righteous God.
God is not unrighteous to forget your work
and labor of love which you have showed
toward his name.
It's a wonderful thing to be in relationship
with someone who will never forget anything good
you have done.
Any expression of love that you have shown,
any care, any kindness.
We have the tendency to become forgetful of
what other people do for us but we
sure remember things that they do against us.
And we find this beautiful combination of God
in that he will never forget or disregard
our love, our faith, our service.
And yet in chapter 8 and in chapter
10 he makes this wonderful promise, Their sins
and their iniquities I will remember no more.
So God in taking up this eternal relationship
with us has so dealt with the issue
of sin that he can handle every failure,
every weakness, every faltering and not let it
change his attitude of love for us and
his faithfulness to us.
And so you have a righteous God who
will not be forgetful of the love and
goodness that has been done.
And so the second ground of assurance that
is conveyed in this little section is your
work, the evidence of salvation.
And I think there is a conscious contrast
between verse 4 down to verse 6 where
you have all of these spectacular supernatural manifestations.
The pouring out of the power of the
Holy Spirit, the coming of the Lord Jesus
into the world, those who were enlightened to
the truth of who Christ is, the good
word of God, the powers of the age
to come.
I would suggest that's the miracles that they
saw that were evidences of the kingdom of
God having come.
And yet after having seen and experienced and
not just being witness of it but like
Judas would have been, someone who actually would
have healed people, who would have shared in
the powers of the Holy Spirit being poured
out.
And I think that's a sense that is
intended of made partakers of the Holy Spirit.
People who had experienced all of that and
yet turned away from Christ.
Verse 11, no verse 10, the last part
of verse 10.
For God is not unrighteous to forget your
work and labor of love which you have
showed toward his name in that you have
ministered to the saints and do minister.
That sounds pretty ordinary doesn't it?
Something that we can do today.
And so our work, our labor, our love
as shown in our care for one another
is understood as evidence of our true relationship
to him.
So verse 11 then is the encouragement, the
desire that each one of us would show
the same diligence.
And of course the word diligence is really
the opposite of the word slothful.
That you do show the same diligence to
the full assurance of hope unto the end
and that you become not slothful but followers
of them who through faith and patience inherit
the promises.
I remember reading in a book on counseling
a number of years ago that the two
things that every individual needs is hope and
responsibility.
Every one of us need a sense of
hope.
We need to have a hopefulness towards the
future.
There has to be something that motivates us
and we also need to have a sense
of responsibility.
And people who lose their hope or lose
their sense of responsibility are people who don't
end up functioning very well and end up
in this condition of slothfulness.
So if we lose sight of our hope
we lose our zeal and our diligence.
But followers of them who through faith and
patience inherit the promises.
So again in the context of the book
of Hebrews, faith and patience is linked together.
And so it's not just a matter of
yes we believe certain truths but that we
in believing them endure through the present in
all that the present may involve as we
wait for the promises of God to be
brought to fulfillment.
And those promises in the book of Hebrews
emphasize eternal things.
And there's a stamp of finality and perfection
that is given throughout the epistle.
And we get expressions like eternal salvation that
we read in chapter 5.
We have eternal redemption, eternal inheritance.
And so we are talking about the things
that are everlasting, enduring, eternal things that we
have been brought into.
And then the example of God and Abraham
is given for our encouragement.
And the importance I think of the promise
being connected here is that that promise was
concerning the promise of redemption.
Surely blessing I will bless thee, multiplying I
will multiply thee.
And the promise made to Abraham was in
connection to God's will to bless all of
humanity.
Now this lawfulness that is mentioned in verse
12 will cause us to give up or
give in to the pressures of life, to
the influences that are around us.
And we will become kind of stalemated.
And we will let the enmity of the
world or the apathy and indifference of the
world become our condition as well.
Now I remember a very extreme case of
this back in the Timmins area a number
of years ago.
And there was one sister in particular who
had a lot of natural ability.
She was really quite intelligent, quite capable, but
she was also unfortunately lacking in ambition and
incentive.
And she had gotten to the place where
she was living by herself and she had
no responsibilities.
She was on some kind of a disability
pension of some kind even though she was
just a young person.
And she had these different anxieties and phobias
and she couldn't hardly go out among people.
And she was just almost becoming a prisoner
in her own little world.
And she would often be, you know, in
bed middle of the day and all of
that kind of thing.
Just a totally disorganized, useless life.
And she'd had a Sunday school class and
she was, I think she had said she
was going to give it up.
And so my wife and another sister went
to see her.
And they thought maybe they would have to
try some shock therapy on her.
And figured they had nothing to lose and
so just basically told her where she was
headed.
And told her that she had lots of
potential.
And that she had to make a choice.
And Becky offered to take her, go to
the doctor with her and ask the doctor
if she needed to be on the medication
she was on.
Which was making her all the more dull
and apathetic and unable to function.
And so she surprisingly agreed.
I think she had gotten to the point
of being pretty sick of her life.
She was depressed and everything like that.
Went to the doctor and the doctor was
not the most personable kind of fellow.
And after the case was presented to him,
he says, no, you don't need to be
on it.
But if it keeps you from crying all
day, well, that's what it's for.
And so basically she realized it's up to
me.
I'm going to either live the rest of
my life this way.
And I think one thing that had triggered
her just prior to that was that her
sister, who had gotten married and had two
little children.
Her sister had told her that I wanted
to have you as my, whatever, the alternate
caregiver if something ever happened to us.
That the children would be taken care of
by you.
But she says, I can't do that because
you're not responsible.
And that was one thing that had at
least twigged in her conscience.
But happily, she made the choice.
And it was pretty slow progress at first.
Becky would go with her to get on
the bus to go to the mall.
That was an achievement to be able to
go out and make a trip on the
bus to the mall.
And eventually she got her, you know, so
that she would take responsibility to do more
and more.
She finally went back to school, went to
college, got her nursing training, graduated top of
the class, became a nurse.
And she's gotten married since and moved away
from Timmins.
And then finally they moved back to Timmins.
And now they're a help.
And so there's just such a vast difference
in one life of the choice that we
can make.
Whether we're going to just let our circumstances
and conditions that affect us control us.
Or whether we're going to hold on to
what can be ours.
And so this is part of at least
the message of this chapter.
That through faith in God and his promises,
we can endure through what is very unfavorable
and experience the power of God for us.
When you think of the promises of God,
I want to just draw attention to a
little bit to what we have here told
us about God.
First of all, we see God's willingness.
Verse 17 mentions, wherein God willing more abundantly
to show unto the heirs of promise the
immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an
oath.
So God is very, very willing.
In fact, he's determined to bless.
And I always find the confrontation of Balaam
and Balak with God over Israel in Numbers
22-24 a very thrilling section.
They go to meet with God to try
to bring a curse upon God's people.
And over and over again, Balaam brings back
the wrong message.
And finally, Balak says, well, just don't bless
them at all and don't curse them at
all.
Just shut up and be quiet.
And Balaam says, he has blessed and I
cannot reverse it.
There's a number of amazing statements that Balaam
is forced to say.
God has blessed.
God has made his will known.
And so you have God's determination.
And what guarantees it?
Well, his greatness.
He is supreme.
He's supreme in authority.
There is no one else who can ever
come to him and say, you can't do
that.
That's not up to you to make that
kind of a promise.
And you're not allowed to make that kind
of a commitment.
There's no one who can override his authority.
There is no one who can resist his
power to achieve his promise.
And there's certainly no one who can outwit
him and prevent it.
He is supreme in wisdom.
He's also supreme in goodness.
And he is so generous in his love
and his promise to us that he's really
promising us the world.
He's promising us everything that can be shared
with us apart from his own deity.
So when he says to Abraham, surely blessing,
I will bless thee.
Multiplying, I will multiply thee.
He's really telling Abraham, Abraham, you're in the
middle of my plans.
Whatever blessing that I give, I'm going to
bless you.
Whatever multiplying I'm going to do, you're going
to be multiplied.
And so Abraham had this great promise bestowed
upon him.
But God let him wait.
And wait.
You think of Abraham's life, most of it
was spent waiting.
Most of us would seem to have been
spent for nothing.
And he just lived to see the very,
very beginnings of this purpose of God in
fulfillment.
Of Isaac being born and then Isaac getting
married.
Abraham just saw the inkling of the beginning
of God's purposes.
But it says, so after he had patiently
endured, he obtained the promise.
So you have God's will, you have his
greatness, you have his oath.
And if there's one thing that is redundant,
it is that God should ever need to
swear an oath.
There is nothing more sure than God speaking
and uttering his will.
But it says here that God, because it
is among men common that an oath is
made to confirm or establish a promise.
God condescends to our low level of confidence
and he binds himself to make an oath.
And because there isn't anyone greater that he
could swear by, he swears by himself, by
his own life and his own immutability.
And so we have this wonderful reality that
by two immutable things, in which it was
impossible for God to lie, we might have
a strong consolation or strong encouragement who have
fled for refuge to lay hold upon the
hope set before us.
So we have a strong consolation that is
a fortress of strength.
And my mind at least always goes to
the cities of refuge as possibly the analogy
that is being drawn from here.
And it's interesting if you remember the cities
of refuge that were appointed and a person
could flee to that city of refuge for
safety, it was always related to the length
of the life of the high priest, until
the death of the high priest.
So again we have a hope that is
associated with a high priest, but this is
in a very different connection really, to lay
hold upon the hope set before us, which
hope we have as an anchor of the
soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters
into that within the veil.
Now thinking about the Lord Jesus as being
this one who has entered into the veil,
within the veil, we're really approaching here where
the new covenant truth completely goes beyond anything
that the old covenant could ever picture for
us.
And just thinking about the high priest in
the Day of Atonement, the only time in
the year that he was allowed to come
into the Holy of Holies, and he was
only there just a few brief moments.
There was no chair there for him to
sit.
There was no expectation that he could sit
and commune with God for a period of
time, let alone live there and let that
be his place of residence.
And there certainly was no anticipation that he
could ever lead the rest of the priests
in, let alone lead all the people into
this Holy of Holies to dwell in God's
presence.
But here we have the tremendous truth taught,
that there's both a present and a future
outcome intended from this.
For the Lord Jesus to go in as
the forerunner means he's going in ahead to
prepare the way, to secure the way for
us also to be able to enter.
And when it says, even Jesus, made an
high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,
we are being shown that this is God's
final plan for his people.
And the Lord Jesus in his presence, in
resurrection, in heaven itself, guarantees that you and
I can come to God at any time,
at all times, without any hindrance or restriction.
The way is open for us by means
of the Lord Jesus, having entered by his
own blood as chapter 9 teaches, and having
made the way into that presence of God
within the veil.
So that is, for the present time, while
we're here on earth, we have access to
that divine presence.
And so even though we are, in a
sense, just like everyone else on earth, we're
living our life here, yet we are bonded
to heaven, and we have that open access.
But it also means that in the future,
that's home, that's where we belong, that's our
portion in the very presence of God itself.
And so then this teaching of the significance
of Melchizedek and his priesthood is emphasized at
the beginning of chapter 7, where we read,
and it's interesting that the description of Melchizedek,
you know, every detail that is given to
us is made use of to present the
foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus.
Now, I remember some years ago, when I
guess I must have been speaking somewhat on
this subject, and a brother came to me
and asked me, who do you think Melchizedek
really is?
Well, I was kind of thrown off by
that question because as far as I know,
Melchizedek is Melchizedek.
But it is true that Melchizedek is a
title, and it could be a name and
a title, but this brother, who is a
very, very intelligent student of the word and
quite a thinker, he had a very interesting
suggestion, and I have no idea whether there's
any validity to it or not, but he
traced out the genealogies and the time periods,
and he actually believed that I think it
was Shem, one of the sons of Noah,
who was still living contemporary with Abraham in
those years.
At least he had it figured out that
way.
So is that possible?
I have no idea.
It would at least explain how he could
be priest of the Most High God, and
not just someone out of the blue that
had no connection to Abraham whatsoever.
But again, as far as I'm concerned, that's
completely speculation.
But here's a man who simply appears on
the scene.
He's in this unique relationship to God, priest
of the Most High God.
There's no record of any parents, no children,
no birth, no death, and all of these
details are carefully left on the record so
that he could be a perfect picture of
the Lord Jesus as high priest in resurrection.
I think we have to see that it
not only is a type of the Lord
Jesus as the eternal Son of God, and
I think we could claim that from this
little section, when it says, having neither beginning
of days nor end of life, but made
like unto the Son of God, abides a
priest continually.
You could not say that of the natural
history of Jesus on earth.
Obviously, we have record of his birth.
We have record of his death.
So when it's talking as made like unto
the Son of God, it must be in
reference to him in a different sense.
And I think this could be going right
back to chapter 1 and that great declaration
of his sonship.
And in contrast to all of creation, he
is eternally God's Son.
But it also, I think, has to relate
to his priesthood being taken up in resurrection.
Because that is the emphasis of the book
of Hebrews, that having been made perfect, having
been brought through all the experiences of life,
and then by means of the death of
the cross, he has accomplished the work and
now he is fulfilling his function as high
priest to us.
And he abides a priest to perpetuity.
That is, with no interruption to the ages
upon ages to come.
And really, the rest of chapter 7 is
drawing out that great contrast between the Aaronic
priesthood and this kind of priesthood that is
an eternal priesthood.
An uninterruptible priesthood.
And I'm just going to draw attention to
the contrast.
In, I guess, verse 12 to 22, the
emphasis is upon the inherent weakness of the
law, which made men priests who had infirmities.
In other words, the law could not make
these men fitted or qualified to be an
eternal priest.
It didn't have the power.
But Christ has been made high priest according
to the power of an endless life.
In verse 16, it gives this.
Not according to the law of a carnal
commandment, but according to the power of an
endless, that is, an indestructible life.
And so there's such a vast contrast.
Men who are appointed according to a law,
but that law could not make those men
fitted to be God's final priest.
But he has the power of an indissoluble
life.
And also, the second aspect of the weakness
of the law, as it says, for the
law made nothing perfect.
But we have an oath, an unrevocable, irrevocable
oath that the Lord swear and will not
repent.
Thou art a priest forever after the order
of Melchizedek.
And then from verse 23 to 28, we
really have the inherent weakness of the men
themselves who were appointed in contrast to the
perfection of him as the son of God.
Verse 23, they truly were many priests because
they were not allowed to continue because of
death.
But this man, because he continues ever, has
an unchangeable or untransferable priesthood.
So verse 25 then brings us to the
outcome of this.
Wherefore, he is able also to save them
to the uttermost that come unto God by
him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession
for them.
So we have a complete provision that can
take us right into eternity.
There is no restriction.
There is no end to his capability.
And then finally, the rest of the book
of Hebrews up to the middle part of
chapter 10, really 8 through 10, basically would
teach us the inherent insufficiency of the Old
Testament sacrifices in contrast to the eternal sufficiency
of his sacrifice.
And so there's encouragement for us that the
Lord Jesus, who has accomplished perfectly his work
on the cross, is still at work ministering
to us, sustaining us, stabilizing us.
And as the one who has gone into
the eternal presence of God as the forerunner,
he's leading us into that presence.
He has provided the way and our access
now is guaranteed and our full home in
heaven is guaranteed through that great work.
Shall we pray?
Our Father, we are conscious that thy promises
are greater than we really lay hold of.
As we think of the promises made to
Abraham, how little he could see into the
future of what thou did intend to come
about by the promises made.
We know that thou did give him a
glimpse when thou did lead him up to
the mountain and cause him to hand over
his son to be sacrificed.
And we believe that thou did reveal to
Abraham then that thou would bring a redeemer
into the world who would be an only
son, one whom thou did love.
And we remember that the Lord Jesus said
that Abraham rejoiced to see my day.
And yet there was so much that was
still waiting in the future.
And our Father, even as we now have
the confirmation of thy purposes in that the
Lord Jesus has come, he has fulfilled all
the Old Testament types.
He has fulfilled that final necessary sacrifice.
And now that he has gone into the
heavens and is invisible to our sight, we
are called upon to count by word true
and faithful and to wait for his coming,
to anticipate a fulfillment of all that thou
has promised, help us to lay hold of
this and to rejoice day by day in
the reality of an eternal inheritance, an eternal
redemption, an eternal salvation.
Our Father, we look to thee this evening
and commit our ways to thee.
Help us as we consider our lives that
they might be with diligence and power to
endure according to the need of each day
that we might serve thee with strength and
willingness.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
amen.