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Hebrews 7- ‘A Perfect Priest’
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As I said to you last week, the Book of Hebrews is basically a story about 2 journeys:
• 1st, there is God’s journey to us (what we call the Incarnation).
• 2nd, there is also our journey with God.
But, of course, both journeys are about perfection. In Hebrews 5, we read that God, in the Incarnate Jesus Christ, was ‘made perfect’ (or completed/ mature/ whole). Then, in Hebrews 6, we are encouraged to grow and be ‘made perfect’ (complete/ mature/whole) by journeying with Jesus.
Indeed, God has always wanted these two journeys (His and ours) to overlap and intertwine…that we would all be ‘perfected’ together as we shared this journey of life…a road containing both joy and suffering.
Even from the beginning…from the days of Adam and Eve, this was God’s plan. I mean, did you know that Adam and Eve were not created ‘perfect’? By that I mean, when God crafted Adam from the dust or took Eve from Adam’s side, they were not ‘perfectly complete’ or ‘perfectly mature’. According to Eastern Orthodox theology, Adam and Eve were like little children; innocently ‘immature’ yet ready to grow and be perfected in God’s wisdom. In other words, God deliberately fashioned them as ‘immature beings’ so that they (like the rest of us) would have to grow and ‘be perfected’ over time.
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Full Text
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Hebrews: ‘The Journey of Becoming’
Sermon 5- ‘A Perfect Priest’
Passages: Hebrews 7: 11- 28
Mark 11:15-19
Today, we come to Hebrews, chapter 7…a chapter in which Jesus is described as nothing less than ‘the Perfect Priest’, or ‘the Perfect High Priest’. But what does this mean? More precisely, how do the ideas of ‘perfection’ and ‘priesthood’ go together?
Let’s pray.
What does it mean to call Jesus ‘the Perfect Priest’?
As I said to you last week, the Book of Hebrews is basically a story about 2 journeys:
• 1st, there is God’s journey to us (what we call the Incarnation).
• 2nd, there is also our journey with God.
But, of course, both journeys are about perfection. In Hebrews 5, we read that God, in the Incarnate Jesus Christ, was ‘made perfect’ (or completed/ mature/ whole). Then, in Hebrews 6, we were encouraged to grow and be ‘made perfect’ (complete/ mature/whole) by journeying with Jesus.
Indeed, God has always wanted these two journeys (His and ours) to overlap and intertwine…that we would all be ‘perfected’ together as we shared this journey of life…a road containing both joy and suffering.
Even from the beginning…from the days of Adam and Eve, this was God’s plan. I mean, did you know that Adam and Eve were not created ‘perfect’? By that I mean, when God crafted Adam from the dust or took Eve from Adam’s side, they were not ‘perfectly complete’ or ‘perfectly mature’. According to Eastern Orthodox theology, Adam and Eve were like little children; innocently ‘immature’ yet ready to grow and be perfected in God’s wisdom. In other words, God deliberately fashioned them as ‘immature beings’ so that they (like the rest of us) would have to grow and ‘be perfected’ over time. Hence, the life that was laid out before Adam and Eve was one of fun and exploration, a life in which they would have to experiment and experience the world, gradually learning…gradually growing in wisdom… as time went on. Indeed, their entire life was geared to ‘becoming perfect’ through life by learning how to trust and rest in God’s love …through the good times and the bad (…even in times of suffering)!
Now, I’m putting a great deal of emphasis on this idea of ‘perfection’ because here is where the ideas of ‘perfection’ and ‘priesthood’ come together. You see, basically a ‘priest’ is a mediator between God and humankind. The idea was that, as Adam and Eve were gradually ‘perfected’ over time… as they journeyed with God and grew in maturity and wisdom, they would naturally become priests (or mediators) of that maturity and wisdom to others— to their children and grandchildren. In other words, this acquired wisdom and maturity would be passed down to successive generations, as the basis for others to also grow in that same wisdom and maturity. In this way, Adam and Eve would act as priests, mediating God’s wisdom down the family line, from parent to children. Over time, everyone who allowed God to mature them would be a priest to the less mature! ‘Perfection’ and ‘priesthood’ naturally flowed, one into the other. (Isn’t this is why God called Israel out of Egypt- to become a “Kingdom of priests” to the rest of the world? Ex 19:6)
So the question is, “Why did Israel ever need to establish a formalised priesthood? The answer actually goes back to the Fall. As thorns and thistles increasingly infected the ground and consumed the energies of Adam and Eve’s descendents…and as illness and disease increased on the planet… these things meant that the basic grind of life was increasingly difficult and time-consuming. No longer were human beings living in Paradise, but in barren and difficult land. Peole felt pressured. People felt stressed. No one had enough time to hang out with God. Life was merely a matter of ‘holding on’. (People feel exactly the same today!) Who had time to be perfected in God’s presence?
And here’s why God initiated a priesthood in Israel—He ‘set aside’ one group of people, Aaron and his sons, to live and work inside the area of the Tabernacle…God’s “new Garden of Eden”. These families, descended from Aaron, would be the new Adam and Eve. They would not know what it meant to til unproductive soil, or labour with their hands, or shepherd the flocks, since everyone else in Israel would support, feed and clothe them! In this way, they would have no other task in life to distract them, and their whole life could be dedicated to one thing alone—namely, to “walking with God in the cool of the evening”…hanging out with God, allowing Him to take them on the journey of perfection. Interestingly, no one else in Israel was given this luxury of both time and resources. This was the priest’s sole preoccupation- to draw close to God and walk with Him in perfecting power of His wisdom, love and grace.
Of course, there was one requirement laid upon the priests: Their task was to mediate the wisdom coming from their relationship with God to the rest of Israel…to be (if you like) Israel’s spiritual parents…teaching the rest of the nation the perfection of their wisdom. As God’s mediatorial agents, their maturity was meant to rub off on the rest of Israel, gradually spreading out to the common people, eventually drawing them all into the beautiful orbit of their walk with God.
Something, however, went terribly wrong! Sadly, Israel’s priesthood lost sight of this perfecting journey. Instead of personally pursuing growth in maturity and wisdom, and sharing that with the nation, the role of priesthood became just another job…9 to 5…clock in, clock out…do what you have to do and go home to the wife and kids. Sure, the Mosaic Law-code given by God on Mt Sinai may have slowed down the decay in the Aaronic priesthood, but it could never bring life out of the death that was increasingly found there. And so, the God-ordained process of maturation and perfection through the priesthood died. In fact, by the time that Jesus came on the scene, the Temple of Jerusalem (the very place where the process of maturation and perfection was to be most advanced) was the place where the greatest corruption was now found! It’s no wonder why Jesus came to destroy both priesthood and Temple, in order that it might be rebuild it in and upon Himself!
Now, it’s at this point that we can talk (with greater precision) about the Perfect Priesthood of Jesus!
Turn with me to Hebrews 7:11.
Even if Israel’s priesthood (based in Aaron’s lineage) failed to mediate God’s perfecting presence to the world, do you really think that God would be left without an alternative? Would God put all His eggs in one basket, relying entirely on this one nation whose ways had often been rebellious and corrupt? Don’t you think that God would have another plan…another lineage…through which He could establish a more permanent and tangible expression of His perfection on earth?
Listen to verses 11-19. (read)
It seems that God’s plans for a perfect priesthood were never totally dependent on Israel…at least not through the lineage of Aaron. No, the lineage that God was carefully monitoring, it turns out, was the lineage of Judah (v 14)…although, “in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests”. This was the lineage, of course, from which Jesus’ ancestry could be traced.
At the same time, there was another priesthood … centred on a non-Israelite man, the “Priest of God Most High”, Melchizedek… that would replace the failed Aaronic priesthood and become the new channel through which God would mediate His perfection to the world. In other words, God was still going to use ‘priests’ (people ‘set apart’ to mediate His perfection to the world), but He would find a new priesthood untainted by the corruption of Aaron’s lineage.
Now, amazingly, all this was foretold in Psalm 110! For in that Psalm, God declared that this new line of non-Israelite priests (in the order of Melchizedek) would become God’s “eternal priesthood”! God, foreseeing the ruin of the Aaronic priesthood, established another priesthood outside of Israel that would eventually step in to redeem and resurrect Israel’s wayward path to perfection. Israel’s salvation would be found in the intervention of this new priesthood from outside of Israel…a priesthood that never lost touch with the perfecting influences of God.
Of course, according to the author of this letter to the Hebrews, Jesus was inducted into this line of priests (says verse 16) “…not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.”
So, what is going on here? As I said back at the beginning of my sermon, the Book of Hebrews is the story of two journeys: (1) God’s journey to us and (2) our journey with God as He perfects us in His own perfection.
Well, guess what? Jesus is the fulfilment of both of these journeys! Last week, we saw that Jesus was the God from heaven, who came to earth and allowed Himself to be perfected through the things He suffered. Jesus grew in wisdom as He submitted Himself in every way to the perfecting influences of the Father. (Heb 5:8-9) “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him…”
But, today, we see that Jesus is also the High Priest chosen from among men, who can sympathise with our weaknesses because He is fully man. Indeed, he is the direct successor to Melchizedek, the King of Salem! Jesus, therefore, is able to be our mediator because, as a man, He has been ‘perfected’ in maturity and wisdom, and He is now able to bring that wisdom and maturity to bear on our sins and failures.
Listen as I read Hebrews 7:23-29 again…
What is probably the most important thing to remember in all this is that, through the spread of His maturity and wisdom, this High Priest has begun a process which reverses the effects of the Fall! How? Well, why did the Fall of humankind happen? It happened because Adam and Eve wanted to take a shortcut to becoming mature and wise. As they gazed on the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it says in Genesis 3 that they thought that the fruit “was desirable for gaining wisdom” so they took it and ate it. Clearly, they wanted a quick fix…they wanted to be immediately filled with wisdom and knowledge and thus result in them not having to learn these things over the course of a lifetime of faith and trust in God. But the shortcut backfired!
But Jesus, the 2nd Adam, never took a shortcut, even though Satan offered Him plenty of opportunities! Instead, Jesus learned both maturity and wisdom the hard way- through suffering! And now, in His wisdom and maturity, we can grow in wisdom and maturity as we walk the road of life together! He is the one who can mediate the wisdom and maturity of God to us and perfect us in the journey of life. He is our Perfect Priest!
But that’s not all! As we grow in His wisdom and maturity, we are enabled, once again, to take up our role as priests (or mediators) …for we can now offer His maturity and wisdom to others…who, through Christ, become our spiritual children and grandchildren.
What a delight! That, in and through Jesus, we might take our place again as priests in this world, encouraging the growth in wisdom and maturity of successive generations,… through Him who is our Great High Priest, Jesus Christ.
In Him, the two roads have met and become permanently intertwined…God (in Christ) has forever come down and become one with us… and we (in the man who is our great High Priest) forever walk with God!
Thanks be to God!
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