Draw Near to the Throne of Grace

Good morning, again. So this morning we'll be in Hebrews chapter four, and before we get into it, I do just want to say that, one, I am very thankful to Clear Note and to the elders of the church and to Pastor Dave, and I am thankful for the privilege to be able to practice and exercise my gifts, so thank you. It is a great privilege to come and preach the word. as I said, will be in Hebrews 4, verses 14-16. And before we read the passage, I'll just give you a brief introduction and kind of my hope for this morning. And my hope is that as we go through this passage, that we would see who our great high priest is and how he is great, and that we would then take hold of these exhortations that the author gives us and that we would hold fast to our confession in him.

and that we would draw near to Him. So, please stand for the reading of God's Word. Hebrews 4, verse 14. Therefore, since 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 one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. So, when we get to this passage, and we start to really look at it, what the author starts with is the reasoning for the exhortation. So we're going to get to the exhortations of holding fast our confession.

and drawing near but he gives us a reason for holding fast he gives us a reason for drawing near and the reason he gives is that we have a great high priest and for the original audience at the time the jewish christians they would have immediately had an idea of what he was talking about when he said priest and so we need to ask the question what is a priest and so the the The Israelites had the practice of, they had the Levitical priesthood, okay? So the Levites were a tribe that God picked out when he delivered Israel from Exodus. He picked the tribe of the Levites out and he said, these are my priests. They will serve me. And what they did was they were in charge of setting up, tearing down, overseeing, maintaining, and transporting the tabernacle.

which was the dwelling place of God amongst his people. That meant that they carried the Ark of the Covenant, and they set it up, and they tore it all down, and they moved it. And this was the job of the whole tribe of Levi. Now, at the same time, God also established a person to oversee all of that, and that was Aaron. Aaron, Moses' brother, was assigned to be the high priest. And the difference between just the Levites who served and maintained and the high priest was that the high priest was in charge of the sacrifices, particularly the sacrifices that were performed on the Day of Atonement. And the Day of Atonement was a day that the Lord had set apart. It happened one day per year, and the Lord commanded that the high priest take a sacrifice, and make a sacrifice for his own sins, and then go into the Holy of Holies and make a sacrifice for the sins of the people. So in the tabernacle, you had the tabernacle, and then there was a veil that covered the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant and where the mercy seat was. That's God's throne room. You want to think about it that way. That's God's throne room. And so the high priest would take the blood from the sacrifice for the people, and he would go into the Holy of Holies.

He only did this once per year. No one was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies. If you did, you died. And so the high priest went into the Holy of Holies and he sprinkled the blood in the Holy of Holies. And this was to make atonement for God's people. This was to cover their sins and remove their sins. Okay? And so I cover all of that because... The people that would have heard this originally, that's immediately where their mind would have gone to. They would have thought about atonement. They would have thought about God's mercy and grace in providing a way for their sins to be atoned. And so now, we have a great high priest. Not just a high priest, but one that is great. One that is better than those high priests. And the author of Hebrews tells us how and why He was better. So right here, He says, so since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, we'll get to that. Then He says, Jesus, the Son of God. And so He says that we have a great high priest, and your immediate thought would be, well, who is He? Who is our high priest? It's Jesus, the Son of God. And so this is God's perfect Son. This is God's Son who He sent into the world to take on your sin,

To live a perfect, obedient life. He obeyed God's law at every point. He took on your sin. And not only is he the high priest who makes the sacrifice, he himself is the sacrifice. He himself laid his life down for his sheep. For his people. This wasn't just an Israelite born from the tribe of Levi. This is God's own son. Our great High Priest is Jesus, the Son of God, perfect in obedience, providing a perfect sacrifice, performing a perfect atoning work. He did what only the Son of God could do in His sacrifice and His intercession. His atonement is perfect. And I think about what He says in John 6, where He says, I have lost none that the Father has given to Me. This atoning work, our High Priest, He's accomplished it once for all. He doesn't go into the tabernacle year after year to make sacrifices. His sacrifice was perfect for all time. Another thing that the author here tells us about our high priest is that he has passed through the heavens. And if you're like me, when I read that, I was like, what does that mean? What does that actually mean? This is a passage that I think is really familiar to all of us.

You probably know this passage. You probably recite it from memory. But it's one of those things that I wonder if we actually think about what's being said. Oh, yeah, we have a high priest. Yeah, he's Jesus, Son of God. Oh, yeah, he's passed through the heavens. What does that mean, that he's passed through the heavens? And the author of Hebrews actually gives us an answer later in the book. In chapter 10, in verse 12, he said, But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, so this is Jesus. our great high priest, he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God. And so what does it mean that our high priest has passed through the heavens? But that he has gone to the very throne room of God. He has gone to the heavenly tabernacle where he sits perpetually, continuously, before the very presence of the Father. Colossians tells us that we're to set our minds on things that are above where Christ is.

seated at the right hand of God. And so our high priest has passed through the heavens and is with the Father in the heavenly Holy of Holies. So if you think that the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies within the tabernacle could be frightening, which was just a shadow and an image of the real thing, Jesus himself has offered the perfect sacrifice that he can go in to the actual Holy of Holies and dwell there forever. And what does he do there? Well, if he's a high priest, if he does the work that the high priest did, he makes intercession for us. That's what our high priest does. He sits in the Holy of Holies and he intercedes for us. Your sins are atoned for by a sacrifice. And perpetually, continuously, he sits before the Father and intercedes on your behalf for you.

1 John 2 tells us that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the Son of God. He is our advocate. He is our high priest. So our great high priest is better than the Levitical high priests and even better than Aaron and his sons because he is, one, Jesus, the Son of God, perfect in obedience, and because he has passed through the heavens and is in the presence of God, in the presence of the Father. And there's one last thing here that the author in Hebrews tells us about our high priest, and it's verse 15. And he says, For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Okay, so the first part of this in chapter 14, he says he's Jesus, the Son of God. He's passed through the heavens. And you might wonder, okay, He's significantly better than we are, which is true. But you might be tempted to wonder, how can our high priest sympathize with us? How does he know us? How does he care for us? How does he have compassion on us? Even in chapter 5, the author of Hebrews says about priests, for every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God.

in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. And then it says, he can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided, since he himself also is beset with weakness. And so we want, we need, a high priest who can sympathize with us. Because if he doesn't sympathize with us, well, let me say this. Would you want a high priest who despised you? Would you want someone that was interceding for you who didn't... have any clue what you're dealing with or what you're going through. You think about the men and women that you talk to when you're dealing with something at home or when you're struggling with sin. And who do you normally pick to talk to? Or who should you pick to talk to? Someone older and wiser. Someone who's done it. Someone who has been there. And someone who has victory. Right? You pick someone to talk about your shortcomings.

who can sympathize with you. And so we have a high priest who can sympathize with you. But how? He's Jesus, the Son of God. He's passed through the heavens. How can he sympathize with me, with us? So again, going back to chapter 5, verse 2, he says he can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided since he himself also is beset with weakness. Okay, so that's talking about the high priest in general. In two months, we're going to start celebrating Advent. What happens in Advent? What are we celebrating? What are we meditating on? Someone said it. The coming of Jesus, the incarnation. What does that mean that he was incarnated? It means that he became man, that God came down from his throne and was born, was born of a woman and became a man. And so what that means is that our Lord Jesus took on all of our weakness as humans, okay?

So he doesn't take on our sin nature, but he takes on our weakness. And you can see this throughout the Gospels. When you look at even Matthew chapter 3, this got brought up in Sunday school, but Jesus going out to the wilderness to be tempted. What does it say in verse 2 of chapter 4? It says that he became hungry. And the first temptation that the devil brings to him is, well, if you're the son of God, why don't you just turn these stones to bread? That's weakness. He was hungry. And what about in... In John chapter 4, when he's going into Samaria and he goes by the well and he has the woman at the well comes to him. And the scriptures tell us that he was weary and he was tired. And what does he do? He asks her to draw water for him. Why? Because he was thirsty. Because he needed water. And even on the cross, before he says it is finished in John 19, he says, I am thirsty.

And so just like us, he needed food. He needed water. He got tired. You think about the story when they finally get away from the multitudes and they get on the ship or the boat and there's a storm and all the disciples are freaking out and they come down to the hull. And what is Jesus doing? He's asleep. He's asleep. I wouldn't know this, but I suppose teaching and performing miracles and healing people wears you out. And so what was our Lord doing? He was sleeping. And so we see, so here's how we tie this in with our weaknesses, okay? So these are ways that we're weak, but what are the temptations that come from these? That's probably what you're wondering. Okay, yeah, okay, he was hungry, but he was perfect. He didn't sin, and that's exactly right. That's what the author of Hebrews says.

So how can he sympathize with us, though, when we're tempted? So let's look at hunger for just a second. How many of us are tempted to get snippy and frustrated with our spouses or our children or our friends when we're hungry? What do we call that? Hangry, that's right. We make jokes about it and we laugh about it. But it's sin. It's actually wrong. Now, is being hungry wrong? No. But using your hunger, And the weakness that that causes in you to get frustrated and then lashing that out on people, that is sin. Did our Lord Jesus ever do that? No. Does that become a very real temptation? Yes. Or what about when you're sleeping? Especially in my and Paige's first year of marriage, I am not a morning person. I do not like to get up in the morning. And how many of us, we get up, And we're going to work. We're dragging. And we got this look on our face. It's like, I really want to be in bed. I really don't want to be here. And if you're like me and my wife, she wakes up and she's happy. And she's asking me about my plans. It's a Saturday. And what do you got planned? What are you doing? And I'm just like, I'm trying to get a cup of coffee. And we laugh about that. But what I realized early on was just how selfish I was.

Just how selfish that is to be a grump in the morning or to be a grump when you get woke up from your nap. Okay, so I don't have kids, but I imagine if you take naps, there are probably times where your kids wake you up from your nap. Does that happen? Okay. And how often do you get tempted to just get frustrated and to just lash out? Like, I'm trying to sleep. Let me sleep. And so what does Jesus say when they come to him and they wake him up in the hull of the boat? He doesn't get frustrated at them. I don't imagine when he says, oh ye of little faith, that it's like, oh ye of little faith, and it's all grumpy. I actually imagine that he's like, he just laughs. Oh ye of little faith. It's compassion. And then what does he do? He calms the storm. And he helps them in their weakness. And so, lest we grow fearful that the son of the living God, who's passed through the heavens, despises us for our sins and our weaknesses.

The Spirit of God here tells us that our Lord can sympathize with us. Not only is He the perfect Son of God, but He can sympathize with you in your weaknesses. And yet He never sinned. He was perfectly obedient even to the point of death. There are some, by the way, who have made this argument that actually the fact that Jesus overcame the temptation makes Him the best sympathizer. And I was kind of alluding to that earlier when I talked about who do you go to when you're having problems and you need help. with your weaknesses. You go to someone who's been through it, someone who has victory over it, right? You want help. If someone is dealing with the same things as you, can they help you? How much can they help you, really? And so, that's right, not much. And so we go to people who have victory. We go to people who we know can help because they've either been through it or they've dealt with it or they've overcome it. And so our Lord Jesus is the great sympathizer because he overcame all of the temptations.

He didn't sin like we do. He was perfect. Now, why is it important that we have a great high priest who can sympathize with us? And again, this kind of was mentioned earlier, but it's incredibly important because we need someone who knows our frame, who knows that we are but dust, who knows that we're weak. He's not cold towards us. Our high priest isn't... doesn't despise our weaknesses. He's not cold. He's not frustrated at us. He loves us. Our high priest loves his people. And so when you come to him, which you're exhorted to do here in this passage, he welcomes you to come to him. He actually beckons you to come to him. And he intercedes on your behalf. And he does that perfectly because he is the son of God. He's...

in the Father's presence, and he can sympathize with you in a way that no one else actually can. Now, he does not despise us for our weaknesses. I've said that a couple times. I want to kind of draw this out with us. How often do we despise others' weaknesses? And I think that's a very real temptation for us, that when others display their weaknesses, that we might be frustrated with them. Or we might, I don't want to use the word judge, but we might judge them. And how amazing is it that we have a great high priest who doesn't do that? He's not like us like that. He's tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. He's our great high priest who can intercede on our behalf because he never sinned and yet can sympathize with us in our weaknesses. So what are we to do? So we have a great high priest. We understand what the high priest does. He intercedes for us. He makes atonement for us. He pleads our case before the Father.

We know who he is. He's Jesus, the Son of God. He sits on the throne, enthroned forever, and he is also fully man, able to sympathize with our weaknesses. So now what do we do? Because that's the whole point of this. The whole point of this is to back up what the author of Hebrews is about to say. So let's look back at verse 14. He says, let us hold fast our confession. So that's the first thing we're to do. Because we have a great high priest, hold fast our confession. Also, just as a side note, I love that the book of Hebrews, over and over, if you read the book of Hebrews, the exhortations, which are like commands, they all start with let us. They are all, I think of them like brotherly. Like not commands, like you need to do this, but like, come on guys, let's do this. Come on, let's do this together. Let us do this.

Let us hold fast our confession. What's our confession? It's the gospel. It's the gospel. It is what Christ has done for us. Our confession is that Jesus, the Son of God, came down, became man, was born of a virgin, lived the perfect holy life, suffered in our place, died, was buried, and rose again. And then he ascended into heaven. Right? This is our confession. We say this in the Apostles' Creed. We used to say it every Sunday, but now we're doing the Westminster Confession. But we still say the Apostles' Creed every so often. This is our faith. This is what we confess. This is our confession. It's God's Word. That's our confession. So what does it mean for us to hold fast to this confession? What does that look like? Well, first, I think it looks like us living it out. Living out your confession.

Okay? And that means being obedient to what the Word of God says. That means that we obey God's law. We obey it because we know that we have a great high priest. We hold fast to this confession, and we obey because we know Jesus is there interceding for us. It's holding fast even when the world around us wants us to cave, wants us to capitulate on what we believe. Okay? So we're getting into holiday season. and we're going to have Thanksgivings, and we're going to have Christmas, and you're going to be around your family and your extended family, most of you anyway, and if you're like most families, you're going to have people who aren't believers in your family. You probably have people who aren't believers in your family, or they at least don't hold the same interpretation of Scripture that you do, okay?

Some of us have family members who are engaged in all kinds of sin, who live their lives as just sinners. They are homosexual, they're adulterers, they're liars, they're all kinds of things. And part of living out our confession is knowing and being willing. to be hated even by our own family members for what we believe. You think about the Jews and why this letter is written. The context of this letter is so that the Jews wouldn't go back to the Mosaic law. The whole point is actually Jesus is better than the prophets. He's better than the angels. He's better than Moses. He's better than the priests. Jesus is better. Don't go back to what you know. And you wonder how many families We're torn apart by this very thing because you have the Jews who hated Christians, but a lot of the early church was made up of Jewish Christians. And so there had to have been family split. There had to have been trouble. Jesus said that we would be hated. Jesus said that there would be families divided. And this is part of what holding fast our confession looks like, even when it's uncomfortable.

It looks like saying what sin is and when and confronting it. And it looks like not being okay with it, not accepting it. And it also looks like, at the same time, loving your family. That at the same time that you hold fast your confession and you say, well, no, that's actually sin and you shouldn't do that. That you do it with love. You don't do it out of belligerating or frustration. that you do it with compassion and sympathy, and that you don't go looking for these fights either. We do not go looking for these fights. But if they come, hold fast. Don't be ashamed. Don't be ashamed of what God's Word says. Another way I think that we do this, that we hold fast our confession, and this may seem strange, but apologizing when we mess up.

You think about all the people that you come in contact with, your family, your coworkers, especially if you work in an environment with coworkers that aren't all believers. Do you know how strange it is to apologize when you sin against them? They like recoil. They don't like it. They're like, you're fine, don't worry about it. And that is a way that you are holding fast your confession. Because you're saying, no, no, no, what I did was wrong. I actually sinned. I broke God's law and I sinned against you and I need your forgiveness. I'm coming to you to apologize and ask for your forgiveness. And that will be the strangest thing to an unbeliever because that's just not what they do. And so this is another way that we can hold fast our confession is that when we mess up, when we sin, that we apologize for it and we ask forgiveness. So let us hold fast our confession in Christ.

And in his work that he's done for us, to atone for us, he's our great high priest. And this passage tells us that if we, we're going to talk about drawing near, but this passage tells us that he'll give us grace to help us in time of need. That when you are at your wit's end and you need to hold fast the confession, he will give you grace to do it. So hold fast. The second thing that we're exhorted here is draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. So what kind of throne is it? It's a throne of grace. It's not a throne of condemnation or judgment. It's a throne of grace for you. If you are in Christ, God's throne is a throne of grace for you. There is mercy. This is a true mercy seat. And our great high priest sits on this throne, and he tells us, the Spirit of God here tells us to draw near to him.

When we see our weaknesses, when we're tempted by our weaknesses, when we're tempted to let go of our confession, to capitulate or to hide it, when we're tempted to sin, the Spirit of God says, draw near to the throne of grace. You will not be despised. Your high priest will sympathize with you. He will love you. He will have compassion on you. I think about Psalm 73. And so Psalm 73 is really a psalm about... how the psalmist sees all the wicked and all the, it looks like they just live the life, man. Their life is just great. And he comes towards the end, about midway through, he's like, and then I realized that that just wasn't right. I went to the house of God and I knew what their end was. But one of the things he says in the same passage towards the end is, the nearness of God is my good. The nearness of God is.

my good. And so we should draw near for our own good. It is for our good that he's our great high priest. It is for our good that he calls us to hold fast our confession. It is for our good that he sympathizes with us. It is for our good that we draw near to the throne. And so how should we draw near? Do we draw near fearfully, worried that we'll be despised and rejected, abandoned, hated? No. And in fact, the Spirit here says that we come with confidence. Could you imagine one of the Levitical priests, one of the high priests going into the Holy of Holies like, no. It was fearful. It was terrifying. Not so for us. Because if you're in Christ and you have a great high priest, you can draw near with confidence. Not in yourself. If you're trying to come to God with confidence in yourself, then you should probably be afraid just like the Levites and the high priest was. But if you draw near with your confidence in what Christ has done for you, then draw near with confidence. He is our advocate with the Father. And so we come to the throne of our Father and of the Son. We are His, and He is ours. We don't come as strangers. We don't come as enemies. We come as children. There's no fear of wrath when we draw near.

Christ is our mediator. He has already taken on the wrath of God for us. So what do we receive when we come to this throne of grace? Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy. And so we receive mercy. Why do we need mercy? Because we're weak. Because we sin. Because we break God's law. Because there are times that we don't hold fast our confession. Because our sins are the very reason Christ had to go to the cross to begin with. Those don't just go away. We're justified, but we're not fully sanctified. We just confess that, right? And so we're weak. We need mercy. And we receive it. We get it. When you draw near to God, you get it. And we find grace to help in our time of need. Grace to overcome our weaknesses and our temptations. Grace to fight our sins. To grow in our sanctification.

Grace to help us hold fast our confession. We are, in fact, a needy people. We talked about this in Sunday school, but you cannot do this on your own. You do not just come out of the womb and ready to obey God's law. You need a high priest. You need a mediator. You need someone who can sympathize. You need mercy and you need grace. We need grace. And we receive these things by coming to our great high priest. If you're in Christ, if you're a believer, don't hide from the Lord when you sin and when you fall short. I think there are some of us here who, when we sin, our natural temptation is to cover it up or hide it or we flee. You think about Adam and Eve in the garden, and we see this from the very beginning. When Adam and Eve broke God's law and they took of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, what did they do? They hid themselves. They hid themselves away from God.

God comes in the cool of the day calling out to Adam, and Adam is terrified. Some of us feel the need to beat ourselves up before we can draw near. We're like, it's kind of almost Catholic to do that. You're trying to pay for your sin before you actually go to the one who's paid for your sin. And so you make yourself feel bad, and you beat yourself up. You say all these things about yourself or think all these things about yourself when really all we are called to do is come to the throne of grace. I didn't see in here where it said after you have gone to confession and thoroughly made yourself feel terrible for your sin that you can draw near to the throne of grace. I didn't see that. It's not there. We draw near with confidence to the throne of grace even if, without having to beat ourselves up.

And if that's your temptation, if your temptation is to think that I just, I'm just, I just, and you just obsess over your failures and over your weaknesses, this is for you. Come to the Lord. Come to him without that. You leave that at the door. You go to the throne. And he will draw you near. Don't hide from the Lord. Don't hide your sin. Confess it. And if you come to him and you ask him for mercy, he will not reject you. Let's pray.