Word of Salvation – November 2010
CONFIDENCE BEFORE GOD, John Haverland
Readings: Ex 28:6-21,29-30; Heb 2:14-3:6
Belgic Confession Art 26
Text: Heb 4:14-16
Theme and purpose: To urge you to approach God with confidence for mercy and grace through Jesus our great mediator.
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It can be difficult for us to get into the mindset of this passage because it describes a situation where people felt far away from God; they were conscious of the great distance between them and God in heaven. That was the situation throughout the Old Testament period and for much of the New Testament church until quite recently.
Today in the church, and even in the world, we find quite the opposite view. Nowadays people feel chummy with God, they are familiar with him.
One reason for this is our democratic, egalitarian society. Everyone is on the same level, which also has the effect of bringing God down to our level.
Another reason for this is that church services and Christianity have become more entertaining. When the church service is about making people feel warm and welcome, happy and humored, then it is difficult to generate any sense of awe and reverence for an Almighty God; it is difficult to appreciate that there is a great distance between us on earth and God in heaven. Yet this is the situation:
God is holy and we are sinful,
He is infinitely great and we are very small.
He is righteous and we are guilty.
The Bible teaches us that we cannot approach God on our own; we are not worthy to come to him without an invitation; and we cannot draw near to him without the help of a mediator, a go-between, someone to speak on our behalf.
Because of that, God, in the Old Testament, appointed priests to act as mediators between himself and the people. First there was Moses and his brother Aaron, and then all the priests who followed them.
In the New Testament God has appointed the Lord Jesus as our only mediator. “For there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5) That is why we can sing;
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear.”
This is why we don’t need any human mediators any more, for Christ alone is our only High Priest and Mediator.
This is the subject of this article of the Belgic Confession. It is the longest article in the confession because it addressed a major problem in the Roman Catholic Church. Many of the people at that time looked to their priests and to Mary and to the saints to mediate between them and God. Guido de Bres, the writer of the Confession, warned against looking to the saints for any spiritual help.
We need that same warning today. You don’t need a priest to pray for you; nor should you pray to Mary or to any of the saints because they cannot help you; nor should you look to the pastor or an elder to go between you and God.
Instead you can approach God with confidence through Jesus who is the great mediator. This is what the writer of this letter emphasized in this passage. He urges us to approach God with confidence for mercy and grace through Jesus our High Priest.
First of all he tells us that Jesus is in heaven, and secondly he reminds us that Jesus has also been on earth, and for each of these points he develops an application.
1. JESUS IS IN HEAVEN . Jesus the Son of God “has gone through the heavens”.
a. Once a year in the Old Testament the High Priest would go from the court of the temple, through the Holy Place, and into the Most Holy Place. He only went into that Holy of Holies on one day of the year, the Day of Atonement. He went there to offer the blood of a sacrifice on behalf of the people. On the ephod and on his breastplate he bore those stones with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. He represented them before the Lord.
No one else was allowed into that room. They watched him go in and they had to wait until he came out.
b. Jesus fulfilled the ministry of those priests. He offered himself as the full and final sacrifice for the sin of his people. He represented us. He bore our sin.
Then God raised him from the dead and he went from earth, through the heavens, and into the presence of God.
He is there in heaven now – the Son of God with God the Father. We can’t see him, but we know he is there; we believe that by faith.
We know that we have a High Priest is heaven who is representing us to God because he is God. He understands what God wants and requires of us because he is the second person of the Trinity. He is in heaven as God, interceding for us.
c. The writer of Hebrews drew an application of that for us: “Let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.” (vs 14b)
The Christians receiving this letter needed this encouragement. They were facing persecution and trial. The writer was concerned that they might drift away from what they had believed. In chapter 2:1 he urged them to pay more careful attention to what they had heard. And here he repeated that and urged them to hold on to their faith and not let it go.
It is one thing to make a profession but it is another thing to continue in it. All of us need this encouragement to hold firmly to the faith we have professed.
We need this regular reminder because sometimes events and trials come our way and knock our faith. It could be sin in our life or in the life of another Christian; it could be division in the church, or sickness and ill health, or the death of a loved one.
When God allows these things in our lives in his providence we need to hold on to our faith in him.
We need to remember that God is in heaven and that he is almighty and powerful, and that he is our Father.
And we need to remember that Jesus is also in heaven as our great High Priest and he is interceding for us, representing us to God as the Son of God. We have a High Priest in heaven so no matter what happens let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
2. Secondly we know that JESUS HAS BEEN ON EARTH. The writer made two points about the earthly ministry of Jesus as a man.
a. Verse 15: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.”
That is put as a double negative for emphasis. We can put it positively by saying; we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. He can do that because he was a man, he was human like us. He lived on earth and went through what we are going through.
When you are going through a difficulty or trial the people who are the most help to you are those who have been through a similar experience: someone else who has lost their spouse, another person who has struggled with chronic pain, other parents who have had a baby die, another wife who was deserted by her husband, another woman who has been through a miscarriage. Such a person can truly sympathize with you in your situation because she has been there herself.
Jesus has not experienced everything that we experience – he was not married, he did not have children, he did not lose his job, he did not have a car accident.
But he was human like us – born just as we were, and he grew up as we did, and he lived on this earth for 33 years in a busy life of ministering to others, talking and conversing and helping those around him. He really can sympathize with you in your struggles and trials and weakness. So look to him, pray to him, and seek his help.
b. “We have one who was tempted in every way just as we are – yet was without sin.”
He was not tempted with every particular temptation we experience – he was not tempted to get angry with his wife or impatient with his children.
But he did experience every type of temptation we experience: to doubt, to despair, to selfishness, to pride, to be independent of God, to disobey God’s commands, to lust, to impatience, to envy.
He went through all that we go through, tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.
c. From all this the writer again drew out an application for us. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence…”
When we think of a throne we usually associate it with kingship and justice and judgement. But this is a throne of grace, of favour, of God’s free kindness. It is described like that to encourage us to approach it.
We approach this throne of grace when we go to God in prayer. Yet we are often slow to do this, even in times of trouble. We tend to muddle along on our own, to struggle with our trials by ourselves, to be independent and self-reliant.
Someone has said that prayerlessness is the root of all sin. We may believe in God but if we do not pray then in practice we are atheists. We claim to trust in him but in reality we often live without him.
We need this encouragement to approach the throne of grace. That hymn we sang earlier reminds us of that:
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear,
What a privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer.
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry,
Everything to God in prayer.
The word translated “approach” in verse 16 is in the present tense. You can always draw near to God. You can do this all the time and at any time. He is constantly available.
You can approach the throne of grace “with confidence”. Other translations use the word “boldness”. You can go to God with courage and assurance because Jesus is representing us.
We can do this despite the vast difference between God and us; even though he is in heaven and we are on earth; even though he is holy and we are sinful, because we are going to him through the Lord Jesus our mediator, our high priest.
We are invited to approach the throne of grace with confidence “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
All of us have times of need: we need comfort, encouragement, reassurance, help, guidance, consolation, and friendship. But our greatest needs are to receive mercy and to find grace.
Mercy reminds us of God’s forgiveness; in his mercy he has offered to forgive our sins on the basis of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. You can go to him and find mercy when you know your sin and are aware of your failures.
And God also offers his grace: he has promised to give us the strength we need to resist temptation, to overcome sin, to endure trial, to persevere in suffering.
This is God’s encouragement and his promise to us. You can and will receive mercy and find grace to help you in your time of need.
You can do that because Jesus is our high priest in heaven. He is representing us. He has gone before us. He is pleading our case.
Sometimes if you are going into a difficult or tricky situation you gain strength and courage by having someone else lead the way. You are happy to follow them, to walk behind them.
The Lord Jesus is leading the way. He has gone before us. He is the Good Shepherd and we are his flock behind him, under his care. He is the Master and we are following in his footsteps.
You and I can have confidence in Jesus because he is in heaven at the right hand of God, interceding for us, as God’s Son.
We can also have confidence in him because he has been here, on this earth, with us, among us.
He can sympathise with us in our weakness because he has been tempted in every way just as we are.
“Let us hold firmly to the faith we profess”; “let us … approach the throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Amen.