Pastor David Parsons Midweek Lent 2 – Feb 21, 2018 Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, If you were to put together a list of the top five most influential people in the world today, who would be on your list? Would you put celebrities, professional athletes, politicians, maybe leaders in industry and science? But if you were asked to put together a list of the best of the best when it comes to people who were morally upright and upstanding citizens, would your lists match up? Likely, many of the people you listed as the most influential movers and shakers in our world today aren’t necessarily noted for their morality and aren’t exactly role models you’d want your kids or grandchildren to aspire to me more like. They certainly can’t claim morals and influence that is beyond reproach as we’ve seen time and time again. So often our heroes, our role models have had their stars tarnished by scandal or over time that star has faded. Clearly, even if we broadened our perspective and attempted to make a top ten list of the most influential and moral people that have ever lived, you might be hard pressed to come up with even a couple. But there is one that could make the list. One who’s influence and morals are beyond reproach, the one we are gathered here today to remember. The one who came to be our perfect high priest. But is Jesus too perfect to be the high priest the world needed? After all, the high priests that came before him were all just human beings, all were sinners through and through, they were all just like you and me. How could Jesus sympathize with us in our weakness when he was God almighty? These were all questions in the mind of the people to whom the letter of Hebrews was written to in the first place. So how do we reconcile this? The answer comes next as we read that Jesus is not only the great high priest, but he is the perfect and ultimate high priest that the world needed then and still to this day. Hebrews 5: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” From a historical perspective, the people were used to having a high priest among them. Someone who had been selected from their community, from their people. Earlier we read in the letter to the Hebrews, “Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.” And there was great responsibility placed on the shoulders of this man. He was supposed to represent the people before God, to be their intercessor in prayer and ceremony before God. It was the high priests solemn duty to perform the sacrifices and rituals on behalf of the people. The high priest had the special honor of making the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement and was able to go behind the curtain in the temple into the most holy of holies to pour the blood of the sacrifice over the ark of the covenant. What’s more the high priest was in some ways head of the supreme court of theological opinions. The high priest was entrusted with dealing with and punishing those going astray. But the high priest for all his power and his influence was still just a man like everyone else. He had his own sins, he had his own family problems, he had his own weaknesses. Just a quick review of some of the priests that served God proved they were far from perfect. Look at Eli in the Old Testament whose sons were less than moral superstars, to the high priests in Jesus day who at times were nothing more than puppets serving under a convoluted chain of command of Pharisees, Sadducees, Kings, and Caesars. But with Jesus we find a very different sort of priest. Jesus didn’t grow up serving in the temple. Jesus wasn’t from the line of Levitical priests. He hadn’t even gone to a Rabbinical training school to learn how to teach and preach in his local synagogue. Jesus wasn’t about to enter into the Holy of Holies at the temple or make his own sacrifices on the fires outside the temple. For all intensive purposes, Jesus was about the furthest thing from being a priest that you could find among the Jewish people. And yet... Jesus was exactly the type of high priest that the people needed. On one hand Jesus was just like the people he came to serve. He was true man in every way. His humanity was on full display in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed in all earnestness that the cup of death he was about to drink would be taken away from him. But even in this moment where on face value it might appear as a moment of weakness, Jesus never wavered from the mission his Father had given him. Jesus wasn’t going to back out of the promise God had made to bring salvation to the world through the
sacrificial death of his Son. Humbly Jesus, accepted the task his Father had committed to him. Jesus knew that his perfect life and death was the only way that the curse of death would be destroyed. With this in mind, Jesus could pray, your will be done and mean it without any reservation. Now just think about that for a second. Jesus could pray, your will be done, knowing full well that it was God’s will that he should die. But how often do we pray those same words in the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer and secretly hope that God’s not going to hold us to that. We know God’s in charge but we’d like to at least bend his ear a little to the way we’d really like it to happen and on our time table. And likely, we’re prayed that prayer thousands of times in our life but those words slip out often without conscious or heartfelt thought behind them. We secretly hope God’s going to make an exception in our case and it’s our will not his will be done. And it’s not just with the Lord’s Prayer we hope for the pass. We hope that God will give us a pass when it comes to our lives too. We know well what God expects from his children. We know the pain it brings him to see us lusting after and caving into the temptations the devil puts in our path. We know the promises we made to at our confirmations, the promises we made to our spouse, but we struggle to keep those promises. We beat ourselves up for the times we let the devil pull out all the worst in us. We cringe at how often we’ve gone along with the crowd. And secretly we’re hoping he hasn’t noticed the other 167 hours of the week that we’re out there living for the world and not for him. Selfishly hoping that God was too busy dealing with other things to notice the words we used in that conversation with a co-worker, the website we visited, the fit of anger we showed, the gossip we spread. But if we’re hoping God didn’t see all that then we’re sadly mistaken. It’s a wonder Jesus knowing all this would even have come in the first place. Any yet.. Jesus did come for us. Jesus came to fulfill the promise God had made so long ago in another garden where our rebellion was on full display. On that day when sin entered the world we showed what we’re really all about. But God wasn’t about to leave us to die destroyed by our own arrogance and ignorance. No, God had a perfect plan to send his very own Son to make things right again. Because as we once again have witnessed in the life of our Savior, Jesus wasn’t just any man who was cursed by the effects of the sinful nature on his mind and his morals. Jesus knew all along what was coming. He knew that night as he prayed in the garden that the next few hours he would have his life’s work called into question, his dignity taken, his body bruised, beaten, scourged, and humiliated. He knew that very soon unlike the high priests before, he would not be offering up an animal sacrifice that had to be repeated to atone for sin, but that very soon he would be that sacrifice. He would be the perfect high priest who would stand in the place of every person that ever lived and ever will live as he took every one of our countless sins on him as he hung there on the cross. But it’s important that he wasn’t just true man. The fact remains, Jesus was also God in the flesh. Jesus wasn’t just simply a man who was great or better than some. Jesus hadn’t just lived in life in a way like no one else could simply for his own sake. Jesus was true God, perfect in every way so his death on the cross would count for the sins of the whole world. And so when he hung his head and cried out, “It is finished” he was speaking to the world, to the devil, that sin and its dreadful consequences has been dealt with once and for all. But when the third day rolled around and his tomb was found to be empty it proved he was much more than some good man but that he really was the promised Messiah the one who has power over life and death. And because of Jesus now when our heavenly Father looks at us, he sees the perfection that our Savior has won for us. He doesn’t see the sin sick, disgusting sinner that we really are, but God sees his Son and the sacrifice he’s made for us. We now have the right to enter into God’s presence because of our great and perfect high priest. In some ways, we go behind the veil of the temple without fear because we’ve be cleansed by Jesus’ blood. Jesus might not make the secular top ten list for most influential people because so many fail to recognize him as true God. But for us, Jesus is it. His morals, his character, his love, and his work are above reproach. He was exactly the high priest the world needed and he’s given us a new life to live here as we follow him and as he get’s us ready for coming home to him in heaven. We give thanks today for our great and perfect high priest Jesus whose sacrifice makes all the difference for this life and the one to come. Amen.