Our great High Priest passed into the heavens.
I. THE COMPARISON IMPLIED, Hebrews 9:1-28. helps us here. There the writer speaks of two tabernacles—the first outside the veil, the second within. Into the second the high priest went alone once a year. There, away from the sight of the people, before the ark of the covenant containing the tables of our Law, he transacted solemn business with God on behalf of his fellow-Israelites. And not only so, this high priest was acknowledged by the whole people. They believed, or professed to believe, that he was a necessary medium of communication between God and them. And so he was for the time, and long continued so. The bulk of the Hebrew people at the time this Epistle was written had a profound regard, though also a superstitious and servile one, for the person of the high priest. There might be in the regard very little of intelligence, and very doubtful advantage; but still, there it was, a real acknowledgment, quite enough out of which to make a striking illustration of him who is the real great High Priest—Jesus, the Son of God. He also has passed through and gone behind a veil, the veil that separates the seen from the unseen. What a thought of the unseen, that it is God's true holy of holies! Doubtless there is a special reference here to the day of ascension, when Jesus rose from the midst of his disciples, and a cloud received him out of their sight.
II. HOW WE ARE TO PROFIT BY THIS COMPARISON. The comparison—the parallel—was easy enough to these Hebrew Christians. It referred them to traditions and a ritual with which they were familiar from childhood. They saw high priests continually. But we know nothing of a priest, an altar, a sacrifice. We do not hear the lowing of oxen and the bleating of sheep whose lives are to be taken away in the acceptable worship of God. We could not bring ourselves to think that such things could be of any use. Not at all doubting that they once served a purpose, we know that the purpose exists no longer. Believing that they were once somehow necessary, that is all we can say. Our experience gives us nothing whereby we may understand the necessity. Thus the question comes—How are we, who have never had anything to do with such a priest as Aaron, or any of his posterity, to get good out of this exhortation? What sort of notion are we to represent to our minds when we are told to hold fast our profession in a great High Priest passed into the heavens, when, as a matter of experience, we have never had anything to do with priests at all? It would be a great mistake to say that we are to trouble ourselves no more about the priestly idea. Though we cannot make the forms of the old Jewish priesthood a living thing to us, still we can surely do something to get at the idea which lies behind all priesthood. We are often misled by co-founding priesthood with priestcraft. The indignation of every honest heart cannot be too strong against the abomination, priestcraft. But why an abomination? Just because it is the degradation of a good thing. Priesthood is simply the office and function of the man who is set apart to act on behalf of his fellow-men in their relations to God. And looking at what is to be found in the Old Testament with respect to the priestly office, we find there was no chance for priestcraft. The true priest had to be an honest, patient man, faithful in little things, exact in minute observances, full of self-denial, and constantly attentive to the requests of all the people. The very Scriptures which exalt priesthood denounce priestcraft. Priesthood is the means whereby men are governed and blessed spiritually; priestcraft the means whereby they are spiritually crushed, and their consciences made slaves to another man's will. Priestcraft is only to be got rid of by giving the true priesthood its full force. Allowing ourselves to drift into the idea that priesthood is obsolete, we shall never get rid of priestcraft; since error only dies out as truth is planted by its side, drawing away from the roots of error all that nourished them. The priesthood in ancient Israel, with all its mere outward rites, with all its defects and lapses, did a great service. It prepared the way for the great High Priest of our acknowledgment. And, after all, priesthood is only the name; it is the thing we have to look at. Jesus is he who answers the questions no one on earth can answer; renders the services no one on earth can render; we therefore call him great High Priest. Pretenders may come in, and by their doings make the name of priest hateful; but the work of the true Priest is none the less real. And the exhortation is that we should avail ourselves of that work to the very fullest extent. Then all the good things coming to us by nature will be crowned by this best thing coming through grace. Men have helped us according to their opportunity—loving, self-denying parents, skilful instructors, watchful and wise-hearted friends, great men who have revealed themselves in books, making us feel what a noble thing it is to be partakers of human nature; and then Jesus of Nazareth comes in at last, Priest of the most high God, abiding for ever, and undertaking to satisfy our deepest wants out of the immeasurable fullness of God.—Y.
The helpful nearness to man of the true High Priest.
I. THE IMPLICATION WITH REGARD TO OTHER PRIESTS. Other priests are lacking in proper sympathy with human weakness. They are lacking in a sense of the almost omnipotence of tempting influence. They themselves, in all important respects, are no better than those for whom they act. Not that they are to blame for this; other things were not expected from them. They were only to be part of an instructive and impressive ceremonial by which might be set forth, by the best means attainable at the time, something as to what a priest, an offering and an approach to God, ought to be. The very defects of the priest taken from among men emphasize the need of something immeasurably better. Sinful men should be able to sympathize with sinful men; but, as a matter of fact, they very frequently are unable to do this even in the most qualified way. They can sympathize in a measure with sickness, with temporal calamity; but too often for sin, for crime, for vice, they have nothing but denunciation with respect to men. There is a hint to us how we should recollect that the greater sinner a man is, the greater is his need for human sympathy.
II. THE PERFECTION OF PRIESTLY QUALITIES FOUND IN CHRIST. In him there is all the true priest needs. He is attracted, not by the strong side of human nature, but by the weak. Easy is it to be drawn to men in the hours of their full life, in their prime, when they are strong for action either of body or of mind; and it is pleasant to look at the results of all their effort. But it is much better, difficult though it be, to look at man in his hours of weakness and need; for it is out, of the midst of his weakness that his highest strength is to be attained. And so Jesus was drawn to men in their weakness. He came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to minister to those who really needed ministry. We do not serve rightly when we serve those who are quite able to do things for themselves. This is only to increase the indolence of the world. Christ comes to give the help that but for his coming could not be given. He sympathizes with us in all weakness, in poverty, in sickness, in feebleness of body and harassing circumstances. But his sympathy is specially with us in temptation. He was tempted in all points like as we are, i.e. his temptation was a real thing; and the temptation he had to suffer was one suited to the peculiarities of his position and his work. We are to think here, not so much of his experiences in the wilderness, as of Gethsemane (Hebrews 5:7). The temptations of the wilderness he saw through at once; they must have been very clumsy artifices in his eye. But Gethsemane tried him. The pure gold went into the furnace there that its purity might be made manifest. And thus it was shown that he was without a sin. The more we are made to feel our own sin, the more our hearts are revealed, the closer we are drawn to him who has no sin, and who shows us that sin is no essential part of human nature.
III. THE PRACTICAL RESULT OF THESE CONSIDERATIONS. We are to make full use of the Priest thus provided—a Priest not of our finding or our making. He has not come by some process of selection and training employed by men, but is of Divine appoint-merit; an Apostle from the throne of grace, beseeching us to accept him as the sufficient Interpreter of human needs and human penitence. Our attitude is to be one of approach to the throne of grace, thinking of it as such; thinking of the severities of God and the penal aspects of law as only grace in disguise. Chastisement, punishment, pain, are but grace not understood. We must have boldness, freeness, a strong sense of the right given us to approach the throne of grace. We must have a sense of how God will treat us. He will not only put us into a better state, but do it in a most compassionate and tender way. It is conceivable that a physician might perfectly cure a sick person, yet do it all like a machine, without any manifestation of heart, without a single kind or cheering word.—Y.
Hebrews 3
Hebrews
Hebrews 5
Hebrews 4 - hebrews-4 - worlddic.com