Clough Hebrews Lesson 18

Christ the Experienced Human – Hebrews 2:16-18

In Hebrews 2 we have seen in verses 14 and 15 how Jesus Christ in His ministry was to do two things: the first thing He was to do was to neutralize Satan’s use of his chief weapon, and the second result of Christ’s ministry was to deliver them who were victims of this particular weapon. Now this is interesting because in most cases you will hear it said that Jesus Christ came to die, His deity can’t die, therefore He had to become humanity in order to die and that’s correct but in this passage of the New Testament notice carefully that that is not the chief reason for Jesus Christ’s in carnation. The chief reason of Christ’s incarnation, according to the author of Hebrews for his particular group of believers is something else; it is not what we call phase one, the time you become a Christian, the problem of salvation and justification. To the author of Hebrews Christ became a man in order to help you in phase two, from the time that you become a Christian till the time you die, during that period of time.

Now those two points are brought out in verses 14-15 and we said last time that Satan’s chief weapon that is being used in these two verses is the weapon of guilt. Guilt which is expressed in the book of Hebrews in a different vocabulary than the word itself, guilt, it’s expressed in verse 15 as “fear of death.” Fear of death means fear of judgment, as we saw in Hebrews 9:27. And therefore if you’re afraid of judgment it means you have a sense of guilt. So therefore what we’re dealing with is the subjective side of guilt. Now there are two sides or two ways you can be guilty. We’ll call one the objective and the other the subjective. In an objective way you can be guilty because you are –R, you are breaking God’s standards. In other words, the Bible calls it sin or transgression. This means that you are objectively guilty whether you sense this guilt or not is totally a different story; it is objective legal guilt before a holy God. And that is a very key point because that’s the point that is not being clarified in present day evangelism. It’s how you feel, whether you feel guilty, or if you feel bad, if you feel depressed, then Jesus Christ is the great psychological aspirin that can change your life. Now that is not the gospel. Those are true but they are by-products of the gospel. The central issue of the gospel is the person’s objective legal, moral guilt before the holy God, whether they feel it or not.

Then there’s the subjective side of guilt and of all the guilt that’s objectively there, you may sense about that much, by God’s grace; you’d go nuts, all of us would go nuts if we really saw how guilty we are before a holy God, and you can thank His grace for not revealing more of the pollution that exists in your soul. Now it turns out that this subjective sense guilt is dependent directly on the objective. In other words, if you weren’t objectively guilty you wouldn’t sense your guilt. Adam and Eve, before they fell, had no sense of guilt while they were naked in the Garden. And the Bible very clearly points out their need for clothes is nothing more than an overt manifestation of guilt because sin, as we have studied in the Proverbs series primarily is expressed in the Genesis story in its most potent form, which is in the area of sex. So guilt, then, shows up as sin, rather objective guilt shows up as subjective guilt in the soul.

Now the issue in the book of Hebrews is the subjective side more than the objective side; very interesting. And here’s why: because Satan can tube you out with a sense of guilt and you either will fall for it or you won’t even know it’s being used against you . Let’s credit Satan with a few brains for once. Satan is a very skillful warrior, in fact he’s the genius of all time as far as creatures go. Now when Satan works he is going to work on the subjective side of making you feel guilty. Now to spot this in your own soul, a sense of guilt, let’s see if we can think of some adjectives or some nouns that are synonyms for this thing and maybe pin it down to something that we can spot easily. One word that I think of alienation from God; that’s a fancy way of saying you feel out of it. And this is sneaky because it doesn’t come to you in as vivid form as you’d like to, and therefore you may be right now sitting there completely tubed out, through just exactly what I’m talking about never have the foggiest notion what’s happening to you. But you can actually sit in a pew and hear this and still, you are so out of it that you won’t even realize that you’re out of it.

Now let’s see what this alienation from God is like and how it’s sensed. One way or one result of this we can sense it by the results it has in our life, is defeatism. Now that happened to be exactly the problem of the readers of this epistle, they were believers under pressure and they were folding, they were panicking, they were giving up because they had experienced the beginning of a series of very vicious persecutions. Not so vicious that they were lethal but vicious in the economic area, vicious in the physical area. And they had not seen Christ in the flesh, eye to eye as Paul and the apostles had and these people had their faith, so to speak, second hand. They had derived it from other believers, the apostles who had seen Christ personally. Because of this they tended to fold.

Now the reason they fold, and this is very interesting, how the author of this epistle works, this guy was a genius because he saw the defeatism, and instead of going around banging the sheep over the head as to why they were defeated, the author meditated, for days, hours, weeks, months probably, what is the problem with these believers. Why is it that they… they started out real well, they took in the Word of God, they were taking in on a systematic basis and then all of a sudden the heat turns on and they fold.

Now why have these believers just completely dropped the ball. What has happened? And the author analyzes it as a case of Satan inspired defeatism that comes about by an exaggerated guilt. It comes about because Satan amplifies the sensation, which is legitimate, the legitimate guilt is amplified, or what Satan simply does is he lets the Holy Spirit show you true guilt but then Satan, being the god who does what to the minds of the men of the earth? Blinds minds of the men of the earth. What he will do is he shows you subjective guilt and then he makes very sure that you never take a look as to why objectively you have this sensation and since you don’t see that, you don’t see the solution of the cross, and you don’t see that either so all you have is this subjective guilt sensation. Now the way this effects a believer is to propel him into defeatism.

Under pressure, let’s face it, under the kind of oppression that the readers of Hebrews were going, what were they doing? They were thinking something like this: well look, we haven’t seen this Jesus, we pray, we’ve been faithful taking in the Word of God, we studied the Old Testament, good night, look at this epistle, it shows you these people were good students of the Old Testament. If the people who read this epistle weren’t good students of the Old Testament they wouldn’t get any more out of it than we’re getting out of it. These people knew the Old Testament. And since they knew the Old Testament we can only conclude that they were at one time very astute students of the Word. Now something’s happened to them.

What has happened to them is what has happened to many, many believers down through history and that is you get this idea well, gee, I prayed, God doesn’t answer right away, delay in answered prayer. Pray for deliverance, it doesn’t come. Pray for solution to problems, the solution to the problem doesn’t come. God has abandoned us, and so gradually an attitude of defeatism sets in and finally it just shows up overtly when pfft, just throw the whole thing away.

Now the author sees very clearly that that is, in his terms, “the fear of death” is happening. Why? Because in the consciences of these believers they see only a subjective guilt before God that doesn’t show itself in big tears of repentance. See, this is why many of us don’t understand this guilt problem. That’s why I’m stopping at the beginning tonight to run this by again. If you think that guilt comes about only in the form of great tears of repentance type thing you’re wrong. Guilt can come about simply as a sensation that though God is able to save you from some situation He won’t. In other words, though He is willing to help other believers out of jams He’s not willing to help you out of a jam. That is a sense of guilt. And usually when you think of guilt you don’t think of that, you think of something more spectacular. But what I’m trying to get across to you is that the wide spectrum of form in which guilt shows up… it just doesn’t show up in one form of contriteness or repentance, guilt will show up in a sense of the abandonment of God. God has abandoned me, God doesn’t care. That’s included under the big, big topic of guilt. So this is one way Satan wields this weapon, this subjective sense of guilt, to inspire defeat, finally the believer says what’s the use, what’s the use of trying, you never get anywhere.

Then another way that’s closely allied to the defeatism is just frankly an anger and resentment at God Himself. Now this is fit under the large topic of guilt according to the usage of the word in this epistle. See the usage of the word is much, much, much, much, much bigger than what you’re used to hearing, what you’re used to thinking of; you’re used to thinking of just one little tiny form of guilt and this author shows you 25 other ways in which there’s guilt and as you see this thing you begin to realize there’s not one person sitting right in this room tonight that doesn’t have the problem these believers had. We all have it to a degree; you have a sensation that God doesn’t really love you with an infinite amount of love. Very few people have that. And it’s because we’ve allowed ourselves to be infiltrated with human viewpoint.

Then another tactic that he uses that we covered last time is that he inspires certain forms of asceticism to try to gain God’s approbation and this is when, for example, he inspires do good stuff, do-goodism, see people that are always running around doing good works, often times are very guilty people. This is what’s wrong with politics today; we have a lot of people in public office are doing this piece of legislation, that piece of legislation, we have this group of students, and that group of students that are all worried about the birds at Santa Barbara that got covered with the oil spoil and students that are gathering together to do this job and that job and so on. They are nothing but guilty students who want to try to salve their own conscience and it’s a heroic way to do it in the name of some cause. But ultimately the author of Hebrews is saying they’re not heroes at all, they’re just trying to assuage a guilty conscience of their own.

All right, these are forms of guilt. Now the pathetic thing about this and the reasons why verses 14-15 are cast into the mold of chapter 1 is how did chapter 2 begin? Verse 5, with the nobility of man; man was never made to be ruled by angels. It’s abnormal for man to be ruled by angels; angels were made to be man’s ministers, not be their lord. And when men come under bondage to Satan through fear of guilt, man is a very puny and pathetic example compared to his ordained destiny, which was to subdue the earth including all things, as verse 8, “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.” “All things” include angels. Verse 5, “For unto the angels has he not put in subjection the world to come.” So when we yield to Satan in this area we are becoming subhuman in a very real way. Man was never made… never made to be in bondage like he is. So Verses 14-15 express the power of the cross work of Christ, not at phase one but at phase two, constantly getting rid of this guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.

Now Hebrews 2:16, we’ll work on the last three verses of this chapter tonight, verses 16-18. “For,” for is another one of those particles, gar, that we’ve seen so often. Those of you taking Greek notice these particles, they are keys to understanding the New Testament text. When you see these particles it should be a signal to you, a flag, that says watch it, a sequence, a progress of thought is being made. “For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham.” gar is going to explain the mechanics of Christ’s high priesthood and how that high priesthood [can’t understand word]. You see, he’s just announced something in verse 14 and 15, Christ delivers believers from bondage of guilt. Now in verses 16 and following he is going to explain how Christ delivers believers from the bondage of guilt. “For verily,” the word “verily” means we know for sure. It’s a word that expresses extreme confidence; we are extremely sure and some scholars have seen in the use of the word “verily” in verse 16 a slap in the face to some of the heresies that were floating around in the early church, that Jesus was nothing more than an angel; the same kind of heresy that appears in our time as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is an angel, the archangel Michael. So obviously here it denies that point, it says that Christ did not take on Him, and we know this for sure, the form of angels.

Now why did Jesus Christ not take upon Him the form of angels? Two reasons: one is Jesus Christ had to become mortal to die. That’s the cross. Deity can’t die, deity is immutable. Since deity can’t die, deity is immutable, deity is eternal, therefore you need humanity, you need something mortal to die, and you can’t die if you’re not living. And angels don’t have life in the technical way the Bible uses the word life. Angels have pneuma, that is spirit; man has pneuma plus soma, body, which equals in the Greek, psuche; pneuma plus soma equals psuche. Now psuche, here is what the angels don’t have. They do not have life, therefore they cannot lose their life. So Jesus Christ could not be an angel and truly die, and that should alert you right now to why Satan has always, thru 20 centuries of history, tried to promote the heresy that Jesus is an angel, because if Satan can show that Jesus was an angel then Satan can undercut the whole work of the cross. A spirit can’t make atonement for sin and that’s exactly what Satan wants to cover up about Christ’s ministry. So it is a very, very vicious, vicious heresy.

Now some of you have been brain-washed by your teachers to think it bad for excommunicating heretics. And some of you have grown up getting this view of history that the bigots of the Protestant church and so on, and how Christian down through the years of history have always been those people who would throw people out of the colonies and so on, and when we had the early colonists they had just as much bigotry as they had in Europe and all the rest of it. Now all bigotry is not wrong. There’s a right way of being a bigot and this is one of those areas where you are called by God to be a bigot and that is that any concept, any theology that teaches that Jesus Christ does not have psuche, or pneuma, or soul is a heresy straight from the mouth of hell. And it ought to be viciously and vigorously attacked. That is a heresy and the reason we are concerned about those kinds of heresies is because those kinds of heresies undo Christ’s gift to men. It masks out what He has given His life for and covers it all up. To say that you’re not interested in hunting out heresy is to say you’re not concerned with what Christ has done for you.

Now this neo-neutralism of certain evangelicals falls right in line with what Satan wants and don’t you buy it. You may be in some Christian group or something and you have this attitude—well, all you have to do is be positive. Huh-un, you have to be positive and at times very vigorously negative. How many of the Ten Commandments were positive? See, God didn’t buy this behavior mod that are taught by certain teachers, positive reinforcement. Where’s the positive reinforcement in the Ten Commandments? There’s ten negatives and not one positive. Isn’t that interesting. We’ll have to tell God how to run the universe.

All right, that’s one way and that is Christ had to become mortal in order to die. The second reason, and here’s the reason, the big reason for Hebrews. Jesus Christ has to become mortal to experience our experience. And that’s the big thing right here in this passage; Jesus Christ gets His feet dirty. And he wallows in it and He experiences every conceivable area of suffering you experience and I experience. This is part of his ministry as a mortal Savior because in doing so then He can apply the results of His cross subjectively. The first reason we had here, Jesus Christ became mortal to die is the objective job that He had to do. He had to secure salvation by a finished work on the cross. That’s the objective side, but that alone, as the grammar in this particular set of verses indicates, that alone could not be made worthwhile until the second reason occurred; that is, Christ experiences what you experience in order to help you apply the objective work to you individually. Now that’s the area where a tremendous amount of help exists through the person of Christ as priest. He existed not only to die, but to experience, you might say, your experience and understand it as another human. And therefore understanding it now taking it and applying it to this point of your life, this point of your life, that point of your life. He could only do that if as a human he experienced the same thing. This is going to be the argument that returns over and over here.

So “verily He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham.” Obviously this is to be…the seed of Abraham falls on the Abrahamic Covenant, it’s just not just any mortal nature He took but Abrahamic mortal nature. Why? Because God’s plan to redeem humanity centers in the person of Abraham and his descendants, that’s the Abrahamic Covenant, Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17.

Now the important verb of verse 16, epilambano, those of you who have studied the present tense and you are not looking at your Greek text are noticing a very peculiar thing. This verb here is present tense. Now since you haven’t had the other tenses but you’ve been here enough you should know the present tense in the Bible indicates something about continuous action. The tendency is to drag the action out. Now does it look to you when you just read verse 16 that that should be a kind of present tense? Doesn’t it rather strike you that what is described in verse 16 should not be something dragged out but something done in a point in time? Doesn’t it strike you that verse 16 should be aorist, that verse 16 should refer to the point of the virgin birth, the incarnation, that’s when He took upon Him the seed of Abraham.

Now here’s where your Greek can help you, very much, because this should cause you to question something in the text. And if you don’t see this you’ll miss a whole big thing on Christ’s priesthood. Now just as a guess, since I just dumped this on you tonight, I’ve had the advantage spending hours and hours thinking about it and you haven’t, but what do you think he’s saying, anybody have an idea, why the action here is continuous and not point? For all the world this verse looks like it should be a point action. [someone says something] All right, the humanity of Christ still exists, that’s part of the answer. However, the problem and why that answer is not all the answer is that the verb itself speaks of Him taking on, putting on something. [someone says something]

All right, Christ’s program has historical results. It goes on and on and on and the present tense here indicates a very particular and very highly comforting fact about Jesus Christ’s humanity. What this verse is pointing you to is not His incarnation, that point event. What this verse is talking about, because epilambano, lambano… a shortcut to learning Greek is to just master a few of the verb tense stems, learn them, that means receive, and then you’ll notice the prepositions are prefixes to them and that just adjusts the meaning a little bit. To receive on, to take on something and what epilambano really means here is that Jesus Christ over and over and over and over and over and over again exercises His humanity. Now you think of this for a moment. You think of Christ at the Father’s right hand just exercising His deity. You think of Him, well you know, His humanity is kind of finished up, you know, He died on the cross and that’s great and that solves that problem and now we can get back to deity. Huh-un!

In history, and this is the bombshell Hebrews drops on your head, is that Christ right now, is exercising His humanity toward you as well as His deity toward you. Jesus Christ is one person, not two people, like Nestorius thought, one person with the nature of deity and the nature of man and you can’t divide Christ up in half. He’s one person. Since He is now one person He has been permanently rendered the God-man. After He died and he rose and He went to heaven He didn’t stop becoming man. Tonight He is just as much a man as He was when He walked through the dusty streets of Galilee, just as much a man. And what this is talking about, it should be translated, verse 16, “For,” remember “for” was the gar, what does that tell you, verse 16 is going to explain how verse 15 is a reality in your life.

So the truth of verse 16 is that Jesus Christ conquers Satan’s weapon in your soul by exercising His humanity over and over and over and over and over toward you and toward me. He is putting on, should read verse 15, “For verily He does not put on the nature of angels but He puts on over and over and over and over again the seed of Abraham.” Even Arab Christians have a Jewish Savior and they come to Him through the seed of Abraham.

Now verse 17, that is ultimately going to be expanded now, but you have to catch what’s happened; verse 16, something very critical has happened in verse 16, just run it by again till you’re sure of it. Jesus Christ is one person with two natures. Since He is one person but has two natures it means both those natures are being tonight deployed for you, not just one, both of them. Christ has a continuing work in history. His human work wasn’t done at the cross; His human work is constantly being done over and over and over and over and over and over and over again toward you daily in your life. Now Hebrews is going to tell you a lot about what’s been happening and that’s why this book is so very, very critical.

Verse 17, “Wherefore, in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” “…it behooved Him,” in the Greek there are three verbs that are used for fitting, or be necessary. One of these we have seen in Hebrews 2:1, it was the Greek dei, dei means it is logically necessary to do something. We saw another one in Hebrews 2:10 and that was prepo, in prepo in verse 10, “it became him” is a metaphysical necessity; in other words, because of the way God’s nature is then this necessarily follows. But it’s interesting, at this verse neither of those two are used, so right away you can come to an interesting conclusion.

Remember we said as we began tonight there were two reasons for Christ becoming man. One was to die. Now when you talk of Christ becoming a man in order to die, that would fall into one of these two, it’d probably be expressed by the Greek dei, it was necessary that Christ become a man in order to die, that’s logically necessary and there would have been that Greek word used for it; prepo would be another word and this would have a very similar meaning, Christ, it was necessary for Him to die. But now we come to a new one and this transliterated, opheilo, this word means, and this is used here, 2:17, it is morally fitting for Him to do this; it is morally fitting.

Now let’s see what this means. Again, two reasons for His becoming a man: one, to die; all right, it was logically necessary for Him to become a man to die. You see that, it’s just logically necessary, no ifs, ands or buts, it just has to be that way. But now when we come to this one, it is morally fitting for Him to become a man, in order to express priesthood means that whatever this priesthood function is it could have been done without Him becoming a man, but it is morally fitting, in other words it is spiritually more efficacious for Christ to become a man to function as a priest. He didn’t have to, this is a second reason for His becoming, it’s not a logical reason for Him being a man, but it is a morally fitting reason for Him becoming a man. And that is it makes His priesthood function; it makes His priesthood function.

All right, “Wherefore, in all things it was morally fitting for Him to be made like,” that is an aorist, it refers to the whole period of His incarnation, from the time of His virgin birth on down until the time of His session, He “became like His brethren, that He might be,” now again if you have some Greek you’ll be helped immeasurably here because there are two words for to be in Greek; one is eimi, when you get into conjugating your verbs you just love those “mi” endings. The other word is ginomai. Now when you use eimi, that means to be as a state of existence. When you use ginomai it means to come into a state of existence, to become. So it’s far better to translate eimi as “be” and the other one as “become.” That’s why there’s a play on the words in John 8, when Christ is teaching His eternality He says “Before Abraham became, I AM,” a very powerful statement. “Before Abraham ginomai, I eimi,” “I AM.”

Now here at this point guess which one is used in verse 17, without knowing the Greek, what verb would you expect to be used here in verse 17, “that He might be a merciful and high priest?” What would you just expect just so far what we’ve said. [someone answers] Become, all right, it’s ginomai, it’s become, “He was made like unto His brethren that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest. Now that is interesting because that is parallel to verse 10. Remember in verse 10 it said “to make the captain” or the pioneer “of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Now what does that mean? Christ came like His brethren at the virgin birth, didn’t He. He had Jewish genes, He was a human being, He was now God-man at that point, but He wasn’t a high priest at that point. When did Christ become a high priest? He became a high priest when He sat down at the Father’s right hand, not until. See what that means is that Christ’s entire historic experience of obedience, obedience, obedience, obedience, obedience, obedience, under pressure was the experience necessary to Him to become a high priest. Christ had to become, He wasn’t automatically made into a high priest.

Again, looking at Christ, one person, two natures: deity, deity is immutable, divine attribute, never changes, but in His humanity, His humanity is sanctifiable; His humanity is improved and can be made fit for God’s presence. Christ, when He was born as a baby, was not a priest. He had no qualifications then to be a priest. He could not do the work that He is now doing for you while He was a baby in the manger. And looking at Christ as a baby in the manger is not looking at the finished product. Christ should be looked at only as He is now at the Father’s right hand. [someone says something] We don’t know, the only hint we have in Scripture is that the priesthood might have been exercised by a person such as Melchizedek who was not totally identified as the ironic priesthood was. Melchizedek was not genetecially and necessarily related to the people over whom he was a priest. The Aaronic priesthood yes, and so the Aaronic priesthood in that sense was better than the Melchizedekian in the sense that it was an identification in the unity and experience. In fact, when the Aaronic priesthood is discussed in this book of Hebrews it’s brought out in that sense, its identity. All we can say is qualitatively it makes him a better priest.

“That He might become a merciful and faithful high priest,” probably that’s your answer, is that He could have been a high priest but not a merciful and faithful one. See “merciful and faithful” those are the adjectives that describe Christ’s present character and those adjectives, you ought to look long and hard because those are the adjectives that describe your savior on His human side and those adjectives describe why He does what He does in your personal life. He is merciful and He has learned to be merciful through experience. “Faithful” is a word to be reliable, Christ is reliable and that is only a characteristic produced in your soul as a basis of experience. See, those two qualities, being merciful and faithful are qualities that no human being possesses at birth. Children are not merciful, nor are they faithful. Most adults in the world at large are not merciful nor faithful. Some Christians who are mature pick up the qualities of being merciful and faithful; they do it not from their birth nor even from their new birth; they do it as a result of sanctifying years of experience.

Now let’s look briefly in the Old Testament to pick up the duties of a priest; we’re coming on this word for priest and so it is fitting that we should look to Numbers 16:5, in a capsule this verse describes the function of a priest. Remember Hebrews is written to Jews, Jews already knew what a priest does, we don’t so we’d better get some background on what priests do, then we’ll understand Hebrews. “And he spoke unto Korah and unto all his company, saying, Even tomorrow the LORD will show who are His, and who is holy, and will cause him to come near unto Him; and even him whom He has chosen will He cause to come near unto Him.” Now think of our definition of the end result of sanctification. Remember our definition of sanctification, not getting rid of your sins, that’s a means, that’s an intermediate goal. The end result of sanctification is to be fit for God’s presence.

All right, now look at what the priest was supposed to do; the priest was the one who came near to God. Out of all the people he’s the one chosen to come forward. In other words, the priest is in the position of being the most fit for God’s presence. Here is where you start to develop the link between priesthood and sanctification. The priests are the sanctified leaders; the priest are the pioneers, the forerunners, of the process of sanctification. You see this several times in the Bible. First you have the nation Israel, out of the nation Israel comes a high priest. The high priest approaches the ark of God, so the high priest in this position is more sanctified than the nation is. The high priest being sanctified goes into God’s presence. When he goes into God’s presence he leads the nation toward God’s presence. So the true function of a priest is to lead in sanctification. That’s what he’s there for, he is to precipitate the process, to aid the process, to help believers come close to God. So you might say that the priest is the pioneer of all sanctifying.

Now what were some of the things that a priest did? He taught the Word of God; obviously that was a necessity. He made intercession for people, he prayed, another ministry. But if you’ll turn to Leviticus 24:5, here’s one of the things that the priest did. “And you shall take fine flour, and make twelve cakes thereof: two tenth parts shall be in one cake. [6] And you shall set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the LORD.” And then it goes on in verse 7, “And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire unto the LORD. [8] Every Sabbath he,” who’s “he?” The priest, “Every Sabbath the priest shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. [9] And it shall be Aaron’s and his son’s; and they shall eat it in the holy place,” so the priests were the custodians of the holy place.

Now what is the holy place? The place where God’s presence is. So a priest is taking care of the throne room of God in the typology of the Old Testament. So does it strike you that Jesus Christ is now at the right hand at the throne room of God; what’s He doing there? Same thing the priests did in the Old Testament in the Tabernacle, He’s caretaking for the presence area of God, with the people outside that He’s one day going to bring to that presence.

Let’s look at something else the priest did, Leviticus 6:9. There are gobs of things they did but just maybe some of these things will show us how they did. Here’s another thing they did. Not only did they take care of the holy place, here’s the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, the holy place and out in front of the Tabernacle was an altar, and in Leviticus 6:9 it says, “Command Aaron and his sons,” those are the priests, “This is the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it. [10] And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he put upon his flesh, and take up the ashes which the fire has consumed with the burnt offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar. [11] And he shall put off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry forth the ashes outside the camp unto a clean place. [12] And the fire upon the altar shall be burning in it; it shall not be put out: and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order upon it; and he shall burn thereon the fat of the peace offerings.” In other words, the priest was to maintain atonement for sins. The place where sacrifice was offered, it was up to the priest, not the prophets, not Moses, not somebody else, the priest, his job was to maintain the efficacy of the sacrificial system. Why this? How else would the people get into God’s presence except through the sacrifice.

Another thing, let’s turn to Numbers 5:15, this is one instance of about 25 where the priest pronounces somebody clean. Now you remember this one because this is going to have typological interest in the book of Hebrews. “Then shall a man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense thereon; for it is an offering of jealous, an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance. [16] And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the LORD.” This is a case of suspected adultery. [17] “And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water. [18] And the priest shall set the woman before the LORD, and uncover the woman’s head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering; and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causes the curse.

[19] And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man has lain with you, and if you have not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of your husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causes the curse. [20] But if you have gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if you be defiled, and some man has lain with you beside your husband, [21] Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD does make your thigh to rot, and your belly to swell; [22] And this water that causes the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell and thy thigh to rot. And the woman shall say, Amen, amen. [23] And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water. [24] And he shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water that causes the curse; and water that causes the curse shall enter into her and become bitter. [25] Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering out of the woman’s hand, and shall wave the offering before the LORD, and offer it upon the altar. [26] And the priest shall take an handful of the offering and burn it…”

And verse 27, “And when he has made her drink the water, then it shall come to pass, if she be defiled and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causes the curse shall enter into, and become bitter…. Verse 28, “And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean, then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed.” Now who made the decision? The priest. In other words, said another way, the priest was the one who pronounced someone clean. That was another one of his functions. He had to pronounce one clean.

Now let’s come back and see if we can now capture the order of the words in Hebrews 2. Now look at these words. If you look carefully at verse 17 and look at the whole thing, think grammatically in terms of subject and predicate, you will notice there are two purposes clauses in verse 17, one right after the other. The first purpose clause is introduced by hina, the other one is introduced by eis po, the first purpose clause is the immediate purpose; the second purpose clause is the final purpose. Now, again, if you’re alert and if you’re sharp this verse should go down hard because there’s something that looks wrong about this verse and the sequence of these purpose clauses. You would think, if you’re all thinking wrongly, the way this author doesn’t want us to think, you would think that what would happen is that Jesus Christ would die on the cross to make propitiation for sin in order that He could then, as the high priest, make it subjectively true in our life. But it’s interesting in verse 17, which purpose clause comes first? “To become a merciful and faithful high priest,” or “to perform the work of propitiation?” Obviously it’s to become a qualified priest. So it seems to be reverse here.

Here Christ is the priest and then He does the work of the priest. Now when I write it this way, of course it looks right. It looks exactly what you would say, that’s because I worded it that way. But if you look at it the way it’s worded in verse 17 it doesn’t look that right, it looks wrong, “that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest that He might make reconciliation for sin.” Well what are we to do with this word order? Those of you who know a little Greek, verse 17, the word to make reconciliation, if you identify the tense, hilasko, it’s kind of an odd ending, maybe you haven’t had deponent verbs yet but it’s a present tense. Now look at something here. We’re up to one of those present tense things again, where you’d expect an aorist, where you’d expect a point. Christ makes propitiation, you’d think propitiation would mean the point act of the cross, but we’re thwarted again because the author is talking about something that goes on and on and on, a continual propitiation.

So the “merciful and faithful high priest is making over and over and over and over and over reconciliation for the sins of the people.” Now what does propitiate mean? There are three words that you want to know in relationship to the gospel; three words that describe the gospel. One is propitiation, another word is redemption and another word is reconciliation. All three words talk about the same thing but just a little differently. Anybody know what the slant of the word propitiation is; it has a peculiar slant to it. [someone answers] All right, propitiation has to do with rendering something inoffensive to God. In other words, they all speak of the same thing, they just use a little shift, nuances in the word. The word propitiate means that you calm God down; that’s what it means. Now do you see why he uses the word “propitiate” here, in the context what’s he talking about? What’s Satan’s weapon? To emphasize God’s anger and what is Christ’s ministry? To propitiate God’s anger. You see it puts the ministry of Christ as priest and the weapon of Satan in total head-on collision. Christ is trying to propitiate, Satan is trying to separate and agitate. Satan was the original agitator. Propitiation means to satisfy God, calm Him down, appease Him, not in the bad sense either.

Redemption has to do with the same thing except redemption stresses a payment, that Christ paid the price. When we talk in communion service, Christ paid the price, you take the cup and you sip the grape juice out of the cup, that’s emphasizing redemption, a price was paid. So redemption emphasizes price. You can preach the gospel with any of these three words or all three of them but they’re just three ways of coming at the cross from different angles.

Reconciliation has to do with our animosity toward God… our animosity, it’s not God’s being reconciled to us. Remember 2 Corinthians 5:19, “but be ye reconciled to God,” it never says God is reconciled to us. In other words, our hostility, this recognizes our animosity or our hostility. One emphasizes Christ and one emphasizes God’s righteousness and justice. So the three words talking the same thing but approaching it from a little different perspective. Now of the three words the word shouldn’t be reconciliation as the King James translators in verse 17, it should be propitiation, it’s wrong. It misses the point completely, it gives you the completely wrong slant, bad translation here. It means propitiation. So, the high priest, “merciful and faithful in things pertaining to God is constantly appeasing God’s wrath for our sins.”

Turn to 1 John 2:1-2, here the same ministry is brought forward. “My little children, these things write I unto you, that you sin not. And if any man does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; [2] And He is the” what? “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our s only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” So Jesus Christ is the propitiation and in this verse and Hebrews He is making the propitiation.

Now let’s see finally in verse 18 how it comes all comes out. Catch the whole thing, verse 16, He constantly over and over takes on Him the seed of Abraham, and for this reason that’s why He became a merciful and faithful high priest, to make constant propitiation for sins of the people. Hebrews 2:18, here’s the application verse that links everything with you as a believer, “For in that” that means in the area of His humanity, some definite historic experience, “in that He Himself has suffered being tempted,” being tempted is peirazo, there are two Greek words for testing. This is the word that is often used for Satan testing with the intention of making you to trip; dokimazo is testing to make you to elevate, and peirazo, though not always, often has a bad sense, in other words, it’s Satan trying to trip you up.

So, “For in that He Himself being” tripped up, in other words, Satan tried to trip Christ up several times noted in the Gospels, apparently it was almost a continuous battle with him, peirazo, “In that He himself being attacked, suffered,” and the verb tense of “suffer” is perfect tense; the perfect tense is action finished with the result that continue and you can see why this is perfect. The results of Christ’s suffering continue to the present moment, that’s what makes Him merciful and faithful. The present tense on the verb “suffer” in verse 18 connects with the adjectives “merciful and faithful.” In other words, here’s suffering, all the sufferings of Christ, point after point after point after point after point after point after point in his life, those sufferings all combined in one package contributed these qualities to Christ in His human nature. He is merciful and He is faithful and Christ would not be merciful and faithful in His humanity, even though He was without sin, Christ still, even sinless, would not be mercifully sinless and faithfully a sinless person unless He had suffered in history.

And so in that He Himself being constantly attacked by Satan, suffered, “He is able,” and the verb “able” is present tense, which means continually, from the time that He became high priest, at His session, forever, Jesus Christ is able, constantly able “to succour them,” now here’s the verb succour and this is a verb that is used in several places in the New Testament. Turn to Mark 9:22, let me just show you how succour is used. I want you to see the context of this, Mark 9:22 and Mark 9:24. In Mark 9:22 a believer has a trial who was demon indwelt, “And often times the demon has cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him;” the child we would say, in the 20^th century we would try to explain this away and say oh, he’s epileptic or something, not that epilepsy isn’t real, we perfectly accept epilepsy, but some things called epilepsy aren’t epilepsy but some things called epilepsy aren’t epilepsy and this is one of them. This boy, every time he’d get around the fire he’d trip on his own shadow, it would only be around the fire and the father knew there was something wrong with his kid because he’s stable at all other times and only when that boy is around danger, then he trips. That shouldn’t be, if he’s really got a physical problem he’d trip any place, but he only seems to trip when there’s danger around. Now who was causing that? Who wants to destroy this child. And so he diagnosed him as demonic. “And often times it cast him into the fire, and into the waters to destroy him; but if You can do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.” And the word “help” is the word to succour.

In verse 23, “Jesus said unto him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes. [24] And immediately the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” That’s the word, “help,” to succour. Now in those two verses, verse 22 and 24, you have the two ministries of Christ in succoring; He is able to physically change things and He is able to spiritually change things, both…both! He is able to give you faith, that’s part of His succoring ministry, that when you’re crushed, here is a father crying out, Lord, I believe but I know I don’t believe like I should, help me. Christ said I will.

Now turn back to Hebrews 2 and we’ll finish. “For in that He Himself being tempted has suffered, He is able,” why is Christ able, go back to His character, Christ is one person, He is two-fold in nature, deity and humanity, but I want you to notice Hebrews is stressing the fact that in His humanity Jesus Christ helps you. He can help you, He can succour us. In what kinds of situations can Christ help us, “them that are tempted,” peirazo, same verb as used for Christ in verse 18, peirazo, those who are being, present tense, passive voice, “those who are being over and over and over and over and over and over tempted for the sake of destruction.

Now look at this, how is Jesus Christ as the high priest, what does the priest do. Let’s see if we can pull this together. What does the priest do? The priest is the leader in sanctifying a group. That’s the job; the priest is always the one that leads the other believers behind him. And so Christ is at the vanguard of the marching army; He’s miles ahead of His column in this case because Christ is in heaven, as humanity Christ leads the other believers behind him toward the same sanctification He has. How does He do it? Because He is a person who has suffered, therefore He is a merciful and reliable leader. Now how’s that differ from being God? What does this add to the picture? It adds to the picture; that the tendency always is to think that the Savior, as God, is perfect, He’s eternal, He’s omniscient, He knows everything. The tendency in your pressure, in your times of pressure, in the times of maximum discourage in your life is to think of God as totally different than yourself, and Satan wants you to think that way, and to add it he’ll just throw up a little guilt to do this, that makes you think there’s alienation, but what Hebrews is doing, he says look, in that time of pressure, just remember something; you have a priest who shares with you humanity and because He shares with you humanity it means that He experientially understands. He knows what it is to, for example, experience alienation from God. How do we know Christ, even though not guilty, here’s something, look at this.

Look at two things, the objective and the subjective. Maybe this will illustrate it for you. The subjective alienation that we have is due to our objective guilt before God. We have the sense of guilt because we are guilty. Christ had an alienation from God and it wasn’t due because He was guilty, it was due by identification at the cross, that was Psalm 22, remember the Psalm was quoted here just up a few verses. Now that’s what’s happening, Christ on the cross in Psalm 22 experienced separation from God in the same way that we experience separation from God, though it was objectively due to a different cause the subjective experience is the same. Christ felt on the cross as you feel and as I feel when we have that doubt that God is really is for us. It’s clearly expressed in Psalm 22, clearly expressed. That means Jesus Christ, in His human experience, did experience everything you and I experience, because if you take all of your little experiences and all of your bad things that you can think of, and you pile them up, do you know what they all have in common? You can make pile after pile after pile category after category after category after category and they all have something in common; a sense of alienation from God, that God is able to save me but He won’t, that God doesn’t truly love me in a powerful vital way. Every problem, every testing that we have involves this one element; that’s the element, precisely the element, that Christ encountered on the cross. That’s why now “He is able to succour them being tempted.”

I’d like to conclude by listing just a few ways which Christ makes this; I suggest there are two main ways that Christ succours in these situation; thousands of variations but two main ways. Then you can look for this in your experience, understand He should be doing this in our lives. So if you don’t get the sensation that He’s doing this obviously either you’re looking in the wrong place or this Bible is wrong.

I say the first way Christ succours a believer is that the more you go in times of pressure, or the greater the pressure becomes the greater your sense of the atonement is going to be. Under times of pressure the most precious thing that should you to the depths of your soul is the resounding refrain I am forgiven, I am not separated from God. Men I may be at odds with but I’m not at odds with God because Christ has totally paid the price. Now we say that in theory all the time, I know, but then I’m talking about as a subjective appreciation of that. That is one way, through illumination, I believe Christ succours the believer, in times of the greatest stresses in your life a sensation of forgiveness will come into your soul.

And then the second thing that I say that He uses here is that like the woman at her specific sin of possible adultery, that we read in that passage, Christ will pronounce you clean. This is what the priest did in the Old Testament, and there’ll be a sensation, not just of general forgiveness but a sensation that this particular sin is dealt with. Of course if we have other things that we’re not confessing then that’s something else but when it’s dealt with it’s going to be dealt with and we’re going to have the assurance like they did in the Old Testament, I am clean.

Now isn’t it interesting that all the physical adversities and the pressures in this book of Hebrews, cut all down to size it amounts to one problem, the problem of guilt, dealt with in Christ.

Father, we thank You…..