DM 620436

I'm going to take a break from the Sabbath, no pun intended there, and just kind of do a one-off week on another verse and give me some time to prepare the next sermon on the Sabbath. but Hebrews 7 verse 25 is the text that I've chosen to preach from today. I'm kind of doing a, I guess a Spurgeon-like sort of sermon here where I just pick one verse and I'm just going to launch from there. But in Hebrews 7 verse 25 it says, As consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him because he always lives to make intercession for them.

So we have a bit of a complex sentence here. I have bifocals and the bottoms of them are very dirty, so I didn't notice until I started reading. But to break down this verse into a few component parts, we can start to pull some meaning out of it. this verse should be something that you've at least read before. And it shouldn't be a list of words you don't know in your Christianity.

This isn't some secret hidden verse from some minor prophet that we hardly know much about and all this secret meaning. And so ultimately my goal is to just give you an appreciation for all that's packed into this verse and I really just want to preach the gospel. I want to use this verse as a launching point to explain to everyone in the hearing what the gospel is, and in particular our need for an intercessor, which is what this verse speaks of.

So Hebrews 7.25 begins with consequently. So that single word is now enough for us to say, okay, what was the antecedent to the consequence that we now are dealing with. So if consequently he is able to save to the uttermost, we have to find out who is he and what were the things that we were told before we got to the word consequently that now translate to basically therefore.

As a consequence of what I just told you, he's able to save to the uttermost. Because of what I just told you, he's able to save to the uttermost. so let's try to understand a little bit about what happened before now the book of Hebrews is a book that was written to people in the first century who were adhering to the old covenant law of Moses the ceremonial law in particular is what we're concerned about and they became Christians and now there's a bit of a divide where people who were gentiles like most of you here and half of my ancestors i guess technically gentiles are hearing the gospel and they're being told there's a free grace of god available and now because jesus christ lived a perfect life and rose from the grave you can be saved and forgiven of all your sins and so you have all these Gentile churches, you know, at Colossae and Ephesus. If you look on a map, Philippi, the church at Corinth, Rome, none of those are cities in Israel.

Most of the New Testament is written to how the gospel is spreading to all these Gentile lands, where there certainly were some Jews at times. But this wasn't a predominantly Jewish religion, this religion of Christianity that had just started. yet at the same time they were believing Jews there were Jews who recognized their Messiah Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip you just name the apostles all but Judas these guys were Jews and they believed in the Messiah and the Messiah of course is the Messiah of the Jews he's the anointed one promised in the Old Testament that's what the word Christ means Christ is not Jesus' last name It's his title. It actually means the anointed one.

It's the Greek word for Messiah or anointed one. And so when we say Jesus Christ in Greek, it's the Jesus Christos. I don't know if I said it right. It's one of the reasons why I have no problem writing Xmas. A lot of people say, put the Christ back in Christmas. And, well, the first letter, what's the first letter in Christos?

Chi, right? It's not a C. You know, we say C in English and an H. The first letter in Greek, it looks like an X to us. And so that's why I have no problem. That was how people abbreviated his name, was with the X.

So when we say X-mas, that doesn't bother me. I'm more bothered by the mass part than the X, actually. You know, being a Protestant, but you guys understand that. So, the book of Hebrews is trying to communicate to Hebrews, to Jews of the first century who have professed Jesus Christ as Savior, in a nutshell, hey, look guys, all that stuff you did that was part of the old covenant, it was good and right that you did it, but it was always a shadow of what was to come, and the thing that was to come has come now in the person of Jesus Christ.

And so you don't need those things anymore. And the best analogy I think I ever heard of this is if you had a girlfriend and you had her picture because she lived far away and you held on to your girlfriend picture or I guess if you had your boyfriend's picture, or your husband's picture while he's gone, and every day you could look at it, and it was a picture. And then if one day he showed up, you'd stop looking at the picture, and you'd start looking at the boyfriend or the girlfriend, you know?

You wouldn't hold on to a picture. You wouldn't hold on to a shadow, if you had the real thing available. And so what was prefigured by all the Old Testament sacrifices, by all the Old Testament elements of worship in the tabernacle, by all of the feast days, we called them the Sabbaths, what was prefigured was Jesus Christ coming and fulfilling all righteousness and doing all these things.

And so these people in the first century that were the Hebrews, they needed to be forgive this term they needed to be unhitched from the Old Covenant, not the Old Testament they needed to understand the Old Testament properly, they needed to understand that all of these good things that God gave the Jews to do in the ceremonial law were in fact fulfilled now in Jesus Christ and so if you look at the beginning of chapter 7 we can read for this Melchizedek king of Salem priest of the most high God met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him so what we're going to do is we're going to be introduced to a character that we're introduced to back in I think it's Genesis 15 who Abraham encountered after he basically beat up this guy named like Cheddero Lamer or something. I love that guy's name. But it's this guy who Abraham encounters.

And he's a really interesting guy. Because his name is Melchizedek. And in verse 2 of chapter 7 it says, And to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. And it says, He is first by translation of his name King of Righteousness. That's what Melchizedek means. and then he is also king of Salem, which means king of peace. So Jerusalem, the Salem part is peace.

And so he is without father or mother or genealogy. So now it starts to get a little interesting. So Abraham takes the spoils of a battle, runs into some guy named Melchizedek, who's the king of some place named Salem, and he gives him a tenth of everything. Gives him a tithe. And this man Melchizedek is described as without father or mother or genealogy.

Who does that sound like? You can say it. Jesus. Yeah. The eternal son of God. Right? so it's an interesting idea here to think that this Melchizedek guy is actually a Christophany he is actually a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament I've also heard people who believe he was just a real man which I have trouble when they want to say well it's it's literal he's a real man like but then we have to take literally that he didn't have a father or mother.

So that gets a little weird in my mind. I tend to think this is pre-incarnate Christ. An appearance of Christ. But it says he's without father or mother or genealogy having neither beginning of days nor end of life. Sounds a lot like God. I know there's people that argue otherwise but I'm not an Occam's razor guy.

You guys know what Occam's razor is? That's the philosophical theory that the simplest explanation of something is the best one. I don't think that's necessarily true, but wow, sometimes when you're reading scripture, it's sure easier than jumping through a lot of hoops to try to explain your weird doctrines that you come up with. Sounds like God. Then it says, but resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest forever.

Well, now we're introduced to this term priest. Now, this term would have been utterly understandable to Hebrews in the first century. Now, to us, the word priest, except the fact that most of the people in this room are pretty educated in Christianity, the word priest might conjure some different images than what first century Hebrews would have understood.

I see the word priest, and my first thought is a Roman Catholic guy with the collar and the full black outfit and everything Roman Catholic about it, because I was Roman Catholic. Yeah, that's what pops in my mind. Well, a priest of God in the Old Testament, those were the men who were appointed by God as descendants of Levi, one of Jacob's children, to administer all of the temple rituals.

They were the ones who you brought your sacrifice to. The high priest was one of the priests of this order. These were the guys who the Israelites paid their tithes to. So the rest of the Israelites, so 12 tribes of Israel, 11 of them basically had to work for a living, and they had to keep sheep and the different things they did. And then the one tribe, the Levitical priests, the Levites, they were paid by the other people, and they did all of the rituals in the temple.

They sacrificed all the different animals, they took care of the altar and the showbread, and they did all the things that were to be done in the temple. And so you could get into all that. And you can actually, the author of Hebrews actually helps us understand the purpose of all these things if you keep reading But so we have this guy who continues a priest forever and in verse 4 we told see how great this man was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the spoils.

So the author of Hebrews is trying to draw the attention to the first century Jews who were completely tied to the Levitical priesthood. he's trying to draw their attention to the fact that there's a different priesthood I'm spoiling it a little for you so that I'm doing the thing where I tell you what I'm going to tell you and then I tell you there's a new priesthood that's going to come and so everything that they were used to all the temple sacrifices, all of the rituals all of the things that you read through the Leviticus and all the things they were supposed to do, the priests performed. And what we're about to find out is that this guy Melchizedek was actually a greater priest than all of the Levitical priests. And he's going to prove why here.

And then that's going to start to give us an indicator of the fact that there is a major change. Remember, we're Baptist covenant theologians here, which means we believe there's an old covenant and a new covenant. And the word old and new are utterly significant. in the fact that they're like total opposites. They can't live together. If you can't make the distinction that there was an old covenant that's utterly different with a new priesthood, you're going to become Presbyterian one day.

And then all the Presbyterians on Facebook just can't wait to gloat over that when it happens. So we're trying to educate people, right? That there are two different covenants. So let's read verse 5. And those descendants of Levi who received the priestly office have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people that is from their brothers, though these are also descended from Abraham.

So basically all the descendants of Abraham somehow pay tithes to some other descendant of Abraham. So they pay it to the Levitical ones, Abraham's brother Aaron. and so it says but this man who does not have his descent from them okay so now they're talking about this Melchizedek guy he's outside of Abraham which gets really interesting since Abraham is basically the first guy right he's kind of the start of everything this guy that was not born of Abraham He wasn't a receiver of the promises that came through Abraham. This guy...

Well, let me reread it now, because I kind of twisted it in my mind. But this man who does not have his descent from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. So somehow, the argument then, is this guy superior? It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. so now what we have is we have this entire religion of Abraham really all the major religions of the world that are meaningful were religions of Abraham right I mean all the Islam descendants of Abraham Abraham is the guy and this is saying that it's beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior therefore what he's saying is whatever Melchizedek was is superior to Abraham listen to verse 8 in one case the tithes are received by mortal men but in the other case by one of whom it is testified that he lives one might even say that Levi himself who receives tithes paid tithes through Abraham for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him so what they're saying is basically Melchizedek is greater than the entire Levitical priesthood.

This whole book has been about the fact that Jesus is better than everything. The New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant. Jesus was greater than the angels. He's greater than Moses. He's a good steward in the house of God. He's the high priest.

And now what we're seeing is that the priesthood that we're about to see Jesus was actually a part of, he was like an ordained priest of Melchizedek, basically is a greater priesthood than the entire priesthood of the Levites. And there's reasons for that. And this is a good thing. As shocking as it actually is, it's a really, really good thing. And it's wonderful that we have this understanding.

So if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the law, what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? verse 12 for when there is a change in the priesthood there is necessarily a change in the law as well for the one of whom these things are spoken belong to another tribe from which no one has ever served at the altar so what he's trying to tell us is if the levitical priesthood had been able to produce the righteousness necessary to actually forgive sins and wash away iniquity and cause people to be acceptable to God in reality, there wouldn't have needed to ever be another priesthood. But Jesus is a priest of another priesthood. Listen to verse 14.

It's evident that our Lord was descended from Judah. And in connection with that tribe, Moses said nothing about priests. So the Hebrews are kind of trapped now. If they want to hold themselves to the Levitical priesthood, which is what they're doing essentially they sorta have to admit like yeah I guess this Jesus guy is really not too exciting because he's not even qualified to be a priest of the order that we actually trying to follow but they also know and I say certainly know in their heart if they haven understood it all yet that He their Lord and He their High Priest They understand this because they been born again So sometimes when you're born again, you know things that you don't know how you know them, and you can't explain them.

And praise the Lord for that. Right? Praise the Lord that there was a time that you knew that Jesus was your Savior, and that He was never going to let you go, even before you could explain all the doctrines that prove that. But so these people are kind of caught in a quandary. Either Jesus is the greatest, or the Levitical priesthood is useful. But they both can't be true.

Because if the Levitical priesthood had been able to help people and make them perfect in the sight of God, then Jesus probably would have had to be a Levite. That's totally hypothetical, because that's not how it works. So, it's just not the case. so now verse 15 this becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of melchizedek who has become a priest listen not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent so jesus became a priest after the order of melchizedek not because he was born of flesh in such a way that he automatically inherits it okay levitical priests were Levitical priests because they were born Levites.

Now they certainly had to meet some qualifications, but they were just kind of born into it, right? And so he says, it wasn't on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. You want to believe that you have security of salvation? Do you want to believe that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus?

That nothing can change what God has decreed about you in your eternity? Remember, his life is indestructible. And it's obviously talking about his eternality, since his life at one point technically was snuffed out. But of course, he laid down his own life. No one could take it from him. but this is amazing security this is the antidote to your depression when you fall into sin again because the moment that you realize I've sinned again and I hate it and I'm repentant for it you can fall back on the indestructible life of Jesus Christ God will sooner destroy Jesus or begin hating Jesus than he would ever let you go.

It's just that simple. You're as secure with God as Jesus Christ is. That's what union with Christ means. So listen, he says, for on the one hand, well, 17, for it is witnessed of him, Psalm 110, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, right? One of the reasons I asked Bert to do that psalm for us to sing was it's one of my favorite psalms because it's so packed with great theology.

If you go home tonight and you want to sing one psalm at home to practicing that one over and over. Because it's probably one of the hardest ones to understand too. It's not clear. You have to think it through. You have to look up the verses and how they're used other places and try to understand what it's saying. In a couple cases with that psalm you actually have to kind of dig into a little bit of the different translations and see maybe the ESV isn't the best translation of that one I'll say also.

But you can blame me for that. I'm the one that told Bert to do ESV. But the law made nothing perfect, verse 19. This is talking, I think, mostly about the ceremonial law. But on the other hand, a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God. So now you have, we draw near to God.

Who drew near to God in the Old Testament? Everyone? Just the priests. And even then, it was just the high priests that really got to get close. God is so far from people. And human priests made a way that there could be a little bit of reconciliation, I'll call it, temporarily.

But Jesus Christ introduces a better hope. And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath. these guys just like I said they were born into it right and they just had to do a few of the things right and they had to turn 30 years old which interestingly enough Jesus began his ministry at age 30 fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law for priests he wasn't a Levitical priest so but it says but this one was made a priest Jesus with an oath by the one who said to him the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.

That's Psalm 110 again, right? You are a priest forever. Of course we know that's you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So keep in mind that this Melchizedekian priesthood is indicated long before Jesus arrives. The people who ask Jesus, who's David talking about in Psalm 110? they would have understood some concept of this now we're getting it explicitly told to us he says the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind so again next time you're a little uncomfortable with things think about Jesus' indestructible life and then think the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind I am I'm in pain for Christians who go to churches that teach that you can lose your salvation.

That it hurts me. Because I know that every Christian is going to suffer. And that when you sin enough, sin will separate you from God in your mind. And that's when you start to lose your assurance. And in fact, you're supposed to lose assurance when you sin enough without repenting. You're supposed to start to wonder, maybe I need to work on this.

It's supposed to be a little scary. But there's people that live in constant fear. That at any moment, they might just step off of the narrow path. and it usually causes a form of pharisaical legalism in their life where they create rules that they don't violate so they can always feel like they're on the path so they lose the entire freedom of the conscience that God gives us and they lose all the assurance that he promises us because he's sworn and will not change his mind and now here we are verse 22 as far as I'm concerned the stake in the heart of Presbyterian covenant theology this makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant it's different, it's a different covenant the old covenant included everyone in national Israel basically, it included sojourners that showed up it included all of the children interestingly enough, they only circumcised boys of course Presbyterians baptized girls and Catholics baptized girls and when I say baptizing I mean sprinkle in this case.

Thank you for reading the confession today where it says the only proper way is immersion. Now, Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant. The new covenant is not like the old covenant because the new covenant is made up of only those who have been regenerated and bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. I guess eternally speaking the new covenant is made up of all the elect.

But the ones we actually understand to be in the new covenant are those who profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and then exhibit that through their life. And we actually have methods for removing people from the visible new covenant, which is the local church. We have methods in the scripture of removing people who show themselves to be one that doesn't seem to be regenerated.

It's not something we hope to do. Certainly, I would hope everyone that would join Covenant Bible Church, we would believe their confession of faith, and we'd never see a reason to say, yeah, now we don't believe it. That, of course, is our hope. But the whole point is, is there were methods to purge this, to purge that out. And the purpose of it is actually not to get rid of people.

The purpose is that we actually believe if a person confesses Christ and joins the local church, if they live in a manner that is unworthy of the gospel, that the best thing for them is to separate them from the fellowship of the new covenant, so that they might miss it and run back. That's the purpose, remember, of excommunication. It's not necessarily to clean up the room so we can have a holy time together.

The purpose of excommunication is that when the person is outside of the covenant community, they miss that fellowship, they miss communion. I like to believe if you have communion with us every single week, we do that for a lot of reasons, I like to believe that if we had to tell you you can't take communion anymore, it would cause you some serious soul-searching. and a real believer would be repentant real quick. That's our hope.

But in the old covenant, everybody was in it. And that's how the Presbyterian church is. You may not understand this. In the Presbyterian church, everybody is in what they call the new covenant. Everybody's in the covenant community. They're children.

And they've got some good verses that defend this. It's not like they just made it up because they were former Catholics. They have a robust theology. It's just different hermeneutic than we use. But we believe there's a better covenant. And there's a guarantor of it.

Jesus Christ. And all those that are in the covenant will follow him wherever he takes them. And there's not going to be any that were in the covenant that he loses. and there's not going to be any that he didn't include in his covenant that will be able to jump in. So there's the federal headship of Adam which caused every single one of us to fall and be declared a sinner and be known as unrighteous before God.

And in some way, we all had a choice in Adam but in some way, you didn't really have the choice. You were conceived in sin. you're represented by Adam. Now God sovereign and so Adam the best representative you could have had Okay so we trust that If any one of you like Jeremy if you were in the garden the only difference would have been you to sin quicker than Adam You know, same with you, Bert, same with me.

Same with Elijah. Elijah might have lasted the longest of all of us, though he's a strong guy. The point is, Adam was the best representative we could have had. The greatest man ever created that God made fell in the garden. And he took everyone with him. We're all in that covenant of works with him.

But Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant. And the whole point is, is just like you were in Adam, read Romans 5, just like we were in Adam, and we're pretty much following Adam wherever he was going to take us. Now we follow Christ wherever he's going to take us if you're in the new covenant. So the former priests were many in number, verse 23, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office. maybe I'm reading it, it's almost like he's mocking them now right? you guys are clinging to this system where guys die and you have an ever living risen savior now it comes to a point where in a few years when God destroys the Jewish religion when he destroys the temple that now anyone that's like a true Jew in the sense that they're not a Christian, but a Jew, has become an idolater.

They're not worshipping the one true God anymore. And if in any way they technically are, they're not worshipping Him the way that He has commanded that we do. So one way or another, they're an idolater at this point. But He holds His priesthood permanently because he continues forever. So he's saying, abandon the old priesthood. It was good for its purpose.

It was given by God. We're not mocking what it was. We're saying, it's not even the thing now. Because Jesus continues forever. And there we go. Now we get to the, so that was the introduction.

Now we get to the meat of the sermon. consequently right because jesus christ is the guarantor of a better covenant because he has an indestructible life because the former priests were prevented by death from continuing in office but jesus continues forever and he holds his priesthood permanently because he is a permanent intercessor intercessor for his people to be able to come to god through him he's the one mediator between God and man. Because of that, consequently, because of that, He is able. Jesus Christ is able.

He's powerful. He has all power and authority in heaven and on earth given to Him. He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him. So in the old covenant, you couldn't really draw near to God at all. The best you could do is try to bring your measly little sacrifice that God frankly didn't need anyway. It was a ritual.

Right? When God liked the pleasing aroma of the sacrifices, it's not like God literally smells things and oh, well that one smelled good. He made all the sheep in the world. All the rams, all the oxen. The pleasingness of the aroma of the sacrifice was the faith of the person bringing it. It was the fact that the person brought it by faith that pleased God.

If you had a hundred little lambs in your flock, and there was one you knew was the best one, and then there was the second best one, and you brought the second best lamb instead of your best lamb, and it was still the nicest lamb of all the lambs that pre-sacrificed that day. God hated your sacrifice because you didn't bring your best. Because God requires the best.

He gave his best, didn't he? In Jesus Christ. So consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him. Since he always lives to make intercession for them. He's able to save to the uttermost. I think this is a reference back to the fact that the former priests had to continuously bring sacrifices There was a temporary pleasure of God by your faith where he could be pleased with the works And the Roman Catholics have refactored this now.

So each week you go to a Roman Catholic Mass. We'll give you a little lesson on Roman Catholics. You girls should listen in case you have some little Catholic friends. You'll understand this. you know each week roman catholics go to the mass they call it and at the mass they re-sacrifice jesus christ with a bloodless sacrifice and they've got some different words they use to try to be tricky about and they'll say we're not doing that but they have their bloodless sacrifice that they present to god each week and and at the moment you actually eat the bread at a roman catholic church in theory okay so i don't believe this but in their theory you're now cleansed.

Like you're now made right to be with God. Regardless of whether you had any faith at the time in Jesus Christ or any repentance whatsoever for your sins. And then you could do the other sacraments they have. The confession of your sins with the priest and he offers you absolution. And then as soon as you walk out, as soon as you commit another sin, which we do somewhat regularly in our fallen state, you've now fallen away. now you have to do more works to make up for that and you have to go back and do more of the things that the Roman Catholic Church professes would help you but performing the rituals at a Roman Catholic Church is what's the word ex opere operato it's the operation of the thing that actually works on you so whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not whether you actually are repentant for your sin whether you actually think he's been transubstantiated into the bread just participating in it actually is granting you grace This is all your works.

It's all about what you're doing. Whereas when you come up to take communion here, we actually believe that very supernatural things can happen in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit working through your faith. Not because you have faith that I can do something magical with bread or wine, but because you actually believe that you're doing by faith something God's commanded you to do, and God will bless you for that. and so he's able to save to the uttermost.

You don't need to continuously re-sacrifice Jesus Christ for you, because he lives forever to make intercession for you. This is why nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, neither height, nor depth, nor length, nor present, nor things to come, nor anything else in all creation. this is why your suffering as a Christian is actually granted to you by God and gives you hope that you're really one of his elect because your suffering is not an indicator of divine justice upon you or hatred or punishment your suffering is actually just an indicator that he loves you and he's trying to make you like his son he can save you to the uttermost that means no matter how bad of a sinner you are that means no matter how many years you remain a Christian and continuously as you grow in holiness realize how far short you're falling of even loving God with any part of your heart, soul, mind and strength like you wish you could you're saved to the uttermost there's no end to it the uttermost it's just this idea that salvation's been accomplished. It's not like Jesus went so far for you, and you can still out-sin him.

You're saved to the uttermost. And then he tells us in verse 26, For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, Now he describes him holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. Why? He has no need, this high priest, Jesus. He has no need, like the other high priests, the Levitical ones, even the first century ones, to offer sacrifices daily.

He doesn't have to keep offering a new Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world for his own sins and then for those of the people since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. And I hope I don't need to tell you that when it says for all, it means all of his people. This doesn't mean that everyone's going to go to heaven. We not universalists For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests but the word of the oath the oath of God not just the law the positive law, the ceremonial law that was given to cause Levitical priests to be considered priests it was the word of the oath which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made perfect forever Jesus Christ is the perfect Son of God.

That phrase, made perfect, is a really interesting phrase. It appears in Hebrews 5 and Hebrews 2. And I think it can be a little confusing because Jesus Christ, of course, we consider to be perfect and morally perfect already. This is why he didn't need to sacrifice for his own sins, so he was able to make the once-for-all payment for all those in the covenant with him.

But I believe that Jesus Christ was made perfect through suffering. And we see in Hebrews 2 that because he suffered as we do, he is able to be a sympathetic high priest for us. So rather than showing up at the high priest's door and you've got this holy man, and you're just like, you feel so unholy, you can't even approach the priest. I remember being a kid, I was kind of scared to go to the priest because they were supposed to be holy men, you know, and I felt like they were dirty to be around me.

Jesus Christ is holy, but he was made perfect in his life by the fact that he fulfilled all of the ceremonial law perfectly so that no one could say he was somehow unqualified. I think that's part of the significance of him starting at 30. But also Jesus Christ became a compassionate, sympathetic high priest because he suffered as we do and yet without sin.

So consequently, he is able to save to the othermost those who draw near to God through him. So draw near to him today. Today, you draw near to God. Girls, you draw near to God today. Today's the day of salvation. You don't know if you'll die tonight.

Today's the day that you draw near to God and you do it believing that God is the one who by an oath made Jesus Christ a perfect high priest for all those who would come to him. and then those of you who have done this already continuously draw near he's still your high priest today, you realize that? when you sin today when you sin tomorrow if you don't think you sin ask your spouse, they'll help you they may even have a list ready for you already you know when you sin tomorrow you go to that high priest and you remind yourself that he swore with an oath that Jesus is that high priest forever with an indestructible life and that he is able to make intercession even for you. And he will do that. He's promised.

So trust, trust, trust by faith in the promises of God and enjoy the fruit of knowing that you're secure with Christ. Father in heaven, we thank you that opening your word is always edifying. we thank you that there is nothing that can prohibit the power of your Holy Spirit from piercing our hearts from any text and we thank you that Jesus Christ the center of all things the maker of all things by him and through him and to him all things were created and all things consist and persist all things are held together by the word of his power we thank you that Jesus Christ, the subject of, I'll dare say, every text of Scripture, we thank you that he lives forever. That although our bodies are dying, we have hope to be raised to new life one day.

We pray for those who do not know you, that you would do the work that only your spirit can do, Lord. and that even while we wait Lord you would grant us patience I know there are collectively in this church over a dozen children who have not yet claimed the name of Christ who don't live lives in accordance with the gospel and I know there's parents that would love to see that so I ask you to give us patience and help us to be faithful as we wait on you but we do pray Lord that you would do that work and do it soon in Christ's name I pray Amen