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And so at this time of year, when there is even a stronger focus on the role of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, I'd like to go through a refresher. The place I'd like to take you to for that refresher is the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is famous in many different ways. I find that book absolutely delightful in the number of really profound subjects that it discusses.
Subjects that we're familiar with, we go there for faith chapter, we go there to define the unpardonable sin, we go there for a number of other things. But among the things, among really the highlights, if you stand back and look at Hebrews holistically, the entire book, one of its greatest contributions is to share with all the world the superiority of Jesus Christ. It's good to know as we begin, looking at the superiority of Jesus Christ, why Hebrews was written.
It appears by the way it was written and the language in which it was written, it was written for Jews who lived outside of the Judean Galilean area. It was written in the highest form of Greek of any book in the New Testament. Which would indicate that it was written for Jews who were not in the Palestinian area. We wouldn't know it by reading it ourselves, but the numerous, and there are many, scriptural quotations in the book of Hebrews.
All of the quotations in the book of Hebrews come out of Septuagint, which was the Greek Old Testament. Something that you wouldn't do to a Jewish audience in Judea. And so, just the superficial evidence seems to indicate that this was a book that was written to Jews who were living somewhere in all of the Roman world outside of the area of Judah and Galilee. Its focus was persecution.
Persecution of Jewish members of the Church of God. By fellow Jews. Hebrews, if you stand back and ask, what is Hebrews? In other words, what is it as a book? Obviously, it serves more than one purpose, but one of its primary purposes is it is a most elegant sales pitch. It is written in the high form of Greek reasoning, the Greek form of logic, the Greek form of persuasive debate.
But it is written as a most elegant sales pitch. And what is it selling? It is selling the superiority of Jesus Christ to everything that makes up the Jewish faith. The author has no quibble with Judaism. He simply is telling his audience, as we will see as we go through it, that you have something far superior. Why would you ever be persuaded to turn around and to go back to something that good as it is, is nowhere near as good as what God has called you to? Now, as we begin, I simply will make the following statement.
Because of its elegance and because of the detail of the Greek argument in the book of Hebrews, there is only so much you can cover in a 50-minute message. And as a result, I'm going to cherry-pick two to three maximum for instances to illustrate each point of superiority. If you have the time and you have the inclination, this would make an absolutely beautiful personal Bible study to take the rest of what is written about each of these points by the author of Hebrews and see how he adds that much more detail and nuance to each of these points as he goes through them in the book of Hebrews.
The beginning place for the author of Hebrews to talk to his audience of Jewish Church of God members is to remind them of the superiority of Jesus Christ to all previous messengers. Now, in the Jewish faith, their messengers were not a whole lot different than messengers throughout history. They came with their messages, they were killed by their contemporaries, and they were immortalized in history. So, as the sad story of history goes in so many ways, the prophet is never honored at the time, and the prophets of God, least of all, most of them martyred, but then later on in time, immortalized and reverenced by later generations.
The Jews also were aware with considerable awe at those few times in history where God even sent a spirit being to be a messenger, to where a Gabriel or a Michael actually spoke by God's command to a human being. These were their messengers. And the author of Hebrews said, I need to remind you of the fact that Jesus Christ is superior to all the messengers that have ever been sent to you in your history. Let's now, if you haven't already done so, go back and let's walk through the book of Hebrews.
The book of Hebrews begins immediately and abruptly making the point that I just made to you by saying God who at various times and in different ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets. So he said God has chosen to talk to our ancestors at various times at his choosing to our ancestors by the prophets. But he has in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he has appointed heir of all three things through whom also he made the worlds. Now, he doesn't poke it straight in their chest and tap. He allows a certain subtlety of insinuation to make the point that throughout the generations I have sent messengers to the fathers, but I have sent my son now. And oh, by the way, my son is the heir, appointed as heir of all things through whom also he made the worlds.
Sort of puts him on a different status, doesn't it?
He goes on in verse 6 because these prophets were men. They were the Elijahs. They were the Elishas. They were the Isaiahs and the Jeremiahs and the Ezekiels. They were the 12. They were these individuals. But he goes on from there and he says of him when he talks about inheriting the whole of the world, he says, verse 4, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by an inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. And he says, to which of them? To which of the angels? Michael? Gabriel? To which of these angels did he ever say? You are my son. Today I have begotten you. And again, by implication, to whom did he say, I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. Well, they all knew their religion well enough. They knew the answer to that immediately. None. None. He never said to any of them, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. He went on to say in verses 13 and 14, but to which of the angels has he ever said? Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Again, they knew the answer. The answer is none. Never. And he ended it by saying, are not they, speaking of the angels, are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who will inherit salvation? And so he began immediately in the first chapter to make the point to these Jewish members of the Church of God who were wavering. Families and friends and social circles had put enough pressure on them that they were beginning to tilt. They were beginning to lean. And he's doing everything he can to remind them that you're in the best possible place you can be because you worship Jesus Christ and he is superior to any and everything. Bring up anything from your past, any of the good from your past, any of the noble from your past, and Jesus Christ will trump it. He went on from there. In a very methodical way, he picked those things most cherished by the Jews throughout Jewish history.
Among the Jews, the greatest of their of their greats in history was Moses. As the giver of the law, as the one selected by God to lead Israel out of Egypt, by the one who brought them all the way up to the doorstep of the Promised Land, there was no one equal to Moses. He was the national hero, the lawgiver, and he had that special status that was given him by God where God had said in the wilderness, to whom of you have I spoken to, I speak to Moses face to face. Is anyone else who can raise their hand and say, God does that to me? And the answer was no. He had a very special status. And so the writer of Hebrews began to remind these Jewish members of the Church of God that though Moses was a great man, an honorable man, an absolutely tremendous individual, he's not Jesus Christ, nor does he measure up to Jesus Christ. And he made that point to them in this fashion, Hebrews chapter 3 and verse 1. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him, who appointed him as Moses also was faithful in all his house. So he now pulls Moses in to stand beside Christ so that he can have them look at the two of them side by side, and so they can do a comparison, a side by side comparison. He goes on in verse 5, but he made a point, and we will come back and we will focus on that point. You'll notice what he said in verse 2, who was faithful to him, who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. Now, he uses that term of faithfulness in his house as the connector so they can be compared.
So he says in verse 5, And Moses was indeed faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterwards. But Christ as a son over his own house.
Notice the comparison. Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant. Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.
What was Israel called? The House of Israel. Moses was a steward. If you lived in a great British estate and you looked at all the ranks of servants, at the top of those would be the butler. He was responsible for people who have watched Downton Abbey or something of that caliber. You understand the hierarchy among those who serve. And the butler is the overseer, the one to whom all the rest are accountable. Moses was the equivalent of God's butler over the House of Israel. He entrusted to Moses their guidance, their direction. He spoke to Moses who then spoke to them. He was his servant.
But you and I were baptized into the body of Christ, the house over which the Son is Lord. So he said, Moses was a phenomenal man, and he was a tremendous butler, responsible to me over the House of Israel. But, brethren, Jesus Christ has as the Son his own house.
And you are that house.
No matter how great a butler is, a butler will never be the Son. The butler will never be the heir when there is a living Son to be the heir of the estate.
And so he spoke to his fellow Jews and reminded them that despite all the honor and all the respect that is due to Moses, Moses was a servant. And Jesus Christ actually has his own house of which you are part, that he owns. He is superior to Moses.
We all know that Moses was the chief legislator, the one who was responsible for the passing from God to Israel of the law. But when it came to the sanctuary, and when it came to the ordinances, and when it came to the sacrifices, God said, Moses, this belongs to your brother, and to his children. I have given to you the oversight of all of Israel when I called you from the burning bush in Egypt. But when it comes to the sanctuary, and when it comes to the ordinances and the statutes that relate to it, I have appointed your brother Aaron to be over that. And it will continue in his bloodline being passed from father to son to son to son to son to son, all the way down through the ages, and remain by birth right the property of the sons of Aaron.
Even in the days of Christ, when the Pharisees had ascended to the place of prominence in the governance of Judea, they still respected and honored the fact that no one, but those who were of the line of Aaron, had the right to administer in the sanctuary. Jesus Christ, the writer of the book of Hebrews, now reminds his fellow members of the Church, who are being pressured to leave the Church and revert back to Judaism, that all of your ceremonies, all of your rituals, all of your holy days, all of your Sabbath rituals, all center around the administration of the sons of Aaron. And he said, I want to remind you of something, brethren, and that is you have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who is superior to the sons of Aaron. Hebrews 4, we only need to move one more chapter down the line.
Hebrews 4, and we pick a couple of illustrations.
Beginning in verse 14, he reminds the members of the Church of God that Jesus Christ carries legitimately the title High Priest. No one, no one physically, no flesh and blood human being ever carried the title High Priest by right, unless he was the son of Aaron.
But he says to them, seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Now, when you understand the religion, and many of you do, so it's not a matter I'm speaking to an audience and I have to educate, I'm speaking to an educated audience. But among the Jewish people, I would expect that their understanding of the nuances of phrases was probably even greater than ours. Because in this particular case, all of them knew that no matter who the High Priest was at a particular time from Aaron onward, when it came to critical junctures within the assigned religious year, those High Priests had to make a sacrifice for their own personal sins. They basically were administering over the nation, over the house of Israel. But there were those times in the year where God said to the High Priest, Among the things I require is that you also make a sacrifice for your personal sins. We're not grouping you in with everyone else. You have a sacrifice for them. This sacrifice is for you personally.
Now, they understood when the writer of Hebrews and these two verses says that Jesus Christ passed through the heavens.
And it says that He was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin.
They understood exactly what was written between those lines. Christ is superior to everyone that ever came from Aaron because Christ never had to give a sacrifice for His sins. Every one of Aaron's family have. Every one of them were required. Christ never.
There were some priests who were very, very badly brutalized in various times in history, murdered in the worst of ways. And so their life as you go from Aaron to the time of Jesus Christ, there are those spots and times where priests paid very highly for their dedication.
But of Jesus Christ, it was said, there isn't anything you've experienced. There is nothing that you have suffered. There's no experience that has worked through your mind, tormented you, challenged you, that He hadn't been there first.
And most of them were aware of the fact that generally speaking in the life of a priest, a priest was never going to even remotely come close to the beating that Jesus Christ took even before being crucified, let alone adding the ultimate upon it of death by crucifixion.
And so in these two verses, the author packed a great deal to people who were knowledgeable about the differences. And he said, you need to remember that we have one who now rightfully carries the name High Priest by right. You need to understand that he never sinned, something you can't say about any of Aaron's family, including Aaron. It went on from there. Chapter 5 verses 4 through 6.
He said, and no man takes this honor, that is the honor of the high priesthood, no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God just as Aaron was. So he said, it wasn't just anybody that could say, well, you know what? I want to be high priest. It's not like running for the President of the United States. You didn't run for high priest. Things got perverted enough during the period following Ezra and Nehemiah. You had some very perverse situations, but it was understood by everyone, regardless of how reprobate the system had become, this was something you didn't run for. It was an honor that was given to you by birth, right? And so he said, no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God just as Aaron was. So also, Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest, but it was he who said to him, and the writer quotes Psalm 2.7, you are my son, today I have begotten you, and then he adds on top of that, Psalm 110 verse 4, you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.
Aaron was a priest until he died of old age, as was his son, and his son, and his son, and his son. Jesus Christ carries the title of high priest for all eternity. And so as the author was comparing the two, he wanted them to understand that Aaron and his sons, despite the noble office that they were given and the responsibilities they had, would never measure up to Jesus Christ, a permanent and eternal high priest, and one who had suffered and one who had never had to make a sacrifice for his own sins because he had never committed a sin.
So he is marching down through everything sacred and everything important to the Jewish mind.
And he's looking at Church of God members, and he is giving the best possible sales pitch he can for why they ought to stay within the Church of God, and not allow their family or their friends to wear them down and take them back to where they had previously been.
He then went to the beginning.
He said, I've covered all the prophets, I've covered all the angels, I have covered Moses, I have covered Moses and his brother Aaron and his lineage. Now, all of you can trace your roots back to only one place. You trace everything that is dear to you, every promise that has been made to you, every privilege that has been made to you, you trace every single solitary bit of that back to Abraham, the father of the country, the father of the race, the father of the nation. And he now, beginning in Hebrews chapter 7, wants them to understand that despite the greatness of Abraham, Christ is superior here also.
Hebrews chapter 7, in verse 1, He says, For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings, blessed him. To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, meaning king of peace, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually. He says, Now consider how great this man was. Now, keep in your mind, keep in your mind, Psalm 110 verse 4, which we read a moment ago, speaking to Christ, that you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. You're a part of an order, with all that implies, its rights, its privileges, its status. Here in chapter 7, he is already making the point that Abraham tithed to Melchizedek.
You don't give tithes to an inferior. You look for something that has greater status, something that you believe that God has placed as a point above you to whom tithes are owed. And he says to the Jewish people, Did you notice who Abraham tithed to? He went on from there in verse 4. He said, Now consider how great this man was to whom even the patriarch, Abraham, gave a tenth of the spoils. So again, he says, when Abraham looked around and said, Who do I tithe to? He said, I tithe to Melchizedek. And indeed, those who are the sons of Levi who receive the priesthood have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham. Now the beauty, and this is why I said, if you have the time and inclination to flesh out the rest of this is a very profitable study, because as I said, the fact that this man wrote in the highest Greek of any book in the New Testament also says he thought in a more sophisticated manner. And he's exposing that right now. He's making the point, and it's one of those you have to take two to three steps sideways to see the point, but he says, now consider this. Abraham tithed to Melchizedek. Now Abraham, if you take his bloodline far enough, it gets to Aaron. And when Moses was passing on the laws, the laws were that all tithes were to be paid to the sons of Aaron. There was no one else to tithe to. According to God, if you have tithes, they go to Aaron's house. And he is the one who administers that for me. And the author here is saying, my fellow church members, consider something. If Abraham, as you go down the line far enough, is the father of Aaron, and by assignment, Aaron is the only one authorized to receive tithes. If Abraham tithed to Melchizedek, it means the sons of Aaron were tithing to Melchizedek.
Now, like I said, he does some sophisticated reasoning, but he wants them to muddle over, scratch their chins, and realize we got somebody superior, even to the family that got assigned to physically collect tithes. And he says in verse 6, but he whose genealogy is not derived from them, Christ was a Jew. Jews were never, were never assigned to collect tithes. So he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. He says, now beyond all contradiction, the lesser is blessed by the greater. Do you see what's going on? Lessers do not bless graders. Graders bless lessers. And so as we look at Abraham, Abraham was not forced. Nobody put his arm behind his back and did a half Nelson on him. Abraham, by voluntary choice, acknowledged the superiority of Melchizedek. And God said to his son, you are a priest of that order forever.
So he marched from one to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. He took all of the high-profile individuals, either as individuals or as bodies, the body of prophets, the select number of angels, the person of Moses, the family of Aaron, and the person of Abraham. And he said, I'm going to walk you through the scriptures in the Old Testament, and I'm going to show to you that God is designed that his son, Jesus Christ, is superior to them all.
So Hebrews was selling to wavering Jewish church members the fact that Jesus Christ was superior to every one of their national heroes and dignitaries, prophets, angels, Moses, high priests, and Abraham. But he didn't stop there. He went on to show Christ was superior to all their religious practices, systems, and standards. Now, as we enter that particular realm, you will see very obviously that there have to be crossovers because you can't separate some of these personalities from the functions that they were involved in. And so as he deals with their functions, you will also see the people named. He went on to focus a little more sharply on priesthood qualifications. He'd already touched it, but now he goes on to elaborate a little more deeply, and he does so in Hebrews chapter 7 beginning in verse 15. We already mentioned this, but here he deals with it explicitly. Verses 15 and 16. And it is yet far more evident if in the likeness of Melchizedek there arises another priest who has come not according to the law of fleshly commandments. The law of fleshly commandments assigned the priesthood to Aaron. He came apart from the law of fleshly commandments, but he came according to the power of an endless life. For he testifies, you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. So he comes back and he hits that same point again. You are a priest eternally. Not even the family of Aaron. The whole lineage will ever be a priesthood forever. But Christ, singularly, just as one individual, will be a priest forever. I want you now to go to verse 20, chapter 7. When God wants to make something so rock-solid that there's absolutely no ability for variance or variability, there are places in the scripture that tell how he does it. And there are a couple that are very emphatic that God swore by an oath. And when God swears by an oath, there's absolutely, positively, no way in the universe to break that. God's highest form of promise is to swear to us by an oath. So in verse 20, we see the following. And inasmuch as he was not made priest without an oath, for they have become priests without an oath, but he with an oath, by him who said to him, the Lord has sworn and will not relent. So he now puts the phrase in front of the one we've cited twice, the all-significant phrase, the Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.
You know there was no oath involved in taking the priesthood from the time of Aaron onward. It was an automatic birthright. When a priest died, the firstborn son became the high priest. Required no ceremony, required no ritual. It was an automatic.
It's just like when Queen Elizabeth died, Prince Charles became king.
Now they had all their ceremony, physically, and all the rest went with it. But it wasn't a question when Elizabeth died of people standing around scratching their heads and said, well, now who's going to take her place? And Charles, as ill as he is, it is in the tabloids and it's even in the respected press that they know if cancer takes his life, they know automatically who will take his place. And so all the sons of Aaron continued down their lineage by birthright. He said Jesus Christ is superior to all of that because he took his office by an oath from God himself.
And there's not one of the sons of Aaron that can point in scripture to the fact that they had to take office by means of an oath. And with God, an oath is profoundly serious.
Verses 26 through 28, say, For such a high priest was fitting for us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens, who does not need daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the peoples, for this he did once for all when he offered up himself, for the law appointed as high priest men who had weaknesses. But the word of the oath which came after the law appoints the Son who has been perfect forever.
So he said there's nothing in the system. There's nothing in the whole extended system that will ever come close to matching Jesus Christ.
Everything you want to name relevant to the priesthood, he is superior to it. He then went on to the covenant. And since Moses was the one who was the messenger of the covenant, the one who, when Israel said, you know, we don't want God speaking to us, you go up to the mountain, have God speak to you, and you bring it back down. Jesus Christ is now compared to the mechanics of all of that in Hebrew. It is best covered with just two scriptures. Hebrews chapter 8 and verse 6. It says, But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry in as much as he is also mediator of a better covenant which was established on better promises. Better promises.
You know, God has never poo-pooed the old covenant, but he said, I have a better one for you. I have a better covenant and I have better promises. And so why would you go back to something that isn't as good and the promises are inferior?
He also said in verse 10, And for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, said the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
What was Moses' assessment of the product of the old covenant? It was a little man that said, oh, that there were such a heart in them.
And there wasn't. When God looks at the flaws of the old covenant, he says the flaws was with the people. The flaws were with their hearts. He said, I have a better covenant with better promises that are going to be brought in by Jesus Christ because they will be written upon the heart, and there will no longer be the need to say, oh, that there were such a heart in them, because in this new heart will be my laws written, and not only in their hearts, but also in their minds.
Israel was built first upon a tabernacle when Solomon was given permission upon an absolutely mind-blowingly expensive and wondrous temple. And it had all of its assigned services, had all of its assigned rituals. In Hebrews 9, the author says this. Verse 24, For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true.
Moses, when he built the tabernacle, he was building a model. And when the temple was built, it simply moved the model from transportable to stationary. But it was all built upon a model. And he says, Christ is not one who is entering the model, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Not that he should offer himself often, as the high priest enters the most holy every year, with blood of another. But he then would have to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the end of the age, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. So Christ also offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. He said, I want you to know something. As glorious, and at this particular time, those who do the assessment of Hebrews say there's nothing in the book of Hebrews that indicates, there's not a single peep that indicates that the temple in Jerusalem had now been destroyed. So the presumption is that this is written prior to the destruction of Herod's temple, which was an awesome structure. His reconstruction was not of the caliber of Solomon's, but it was nothing shabby in any way, shape, or form. And he said, this is the slums compared to where my son is. This is nothing but a model. He's at the real place.
He ended it with saying, or showing, that Christ was superior to the law as a perfector, as a perfector of men. Hebrews 10 and verse 1. For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. He said the law can't make a man perfect. Verses 11 and 12.
Every priest stands ministering daily, and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, capital M, Jesus Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, and from that time, waiting till his enemies are made his footstool. And finally, verse 14. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
God has made you capable of being perfect. He has made it possible through his Holy Spirit for you to make those changes throughout the time of your calling, to move you ever closer toward perfection. He said the old system, the law, he said despite all that was involved in the law, the law was incapable of making man perfect. So he made his case.
I remember some years ago when a survey came into the Council of Elders that one of the things that was mentioned was the need in sermons to have not just description but prescription. The writer of Hebrews spent a tremendous amount of time in description, but he also spent some very powerful time with prescription. I'm going to read to you six verses. It may not appear unless you think very carefully what all is contained in the way of prescription in these six verses, but I'll read them to you first and then I'll tell you what's jam-packed into these six verses. And they're verses 19 through 25 of the chapter we're reading. Chapter 10. Chapter 10 verse 19. Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast a confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful, and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see that day approaching. Packed into those verses are four admonitions of what to do after you've academically seen and accepted the sails pitch that indeed Jesus Christ is superior. In those six verses, the author said this, Let's approach God as converted people who know that their sins have been blotted out. When we come to God, come to God knowing that the blood of Jesus Christ has blotted out our sins. Let's stand unmovable in the doctrines that we have been taught. Let's make each other responsible, encourage and lift up one another when we falter and challenge one another to improve. And lastly, meet regularly and encourage each other in those meetings to hold on to the greatest Lord calling, blessing, and future in the universe.