Jesus is our Heavenly High Priest- Hebrews 5
There are two psalms quoted in our Hebrews reading. The first is a quote from Psalm 2-
“You are my Son, today I have begotten you” (2:7).
This is a psalm about the king, and scholars believed it was used for the installation of a new king in the line of King David. This Psalm became attached to the expected Messiah.
The other Psalm that is quoted is from Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is the most quoted part of the Old Testament in the New Testament. It too was considered a Psalm about the coming Messiah. In Psalm 110, it talks about the Messiah as a king and also as a priest.
The letter to the Hebrews says that a high priest is “chosen from among mortals”. So, he is human. He is from the community. He is one of the people. … Priests in the Old Testament worked to create, maintain, and reestablish the divine order. Often this has to do with distinguishing between the holy and the common, the clean and unclean, order and chaos. They stood on the boundary between the holy presence of God, and the common. … It was a dangerous place to stand, in a way. The high priest would stand on the boundary to represent the Divine will to the people, and also to represent the people before God.
As we read through the Old Testament we see that approaching the Divine is like dealing with nuclear power. It needs to be treated with the utmost respect and care. To deal with it carelessly was to risk death. Priests had to maintain a special state of holiness (they wore special clothing, followed special rituals, and lived by strict cleanliness rules) that allowed them to navigate that boundary between the common and the holy.
To represent humanity, the Son of God took on flesh to live as a human being, to submerge himself in the human experience. To live as one of us. To feel the mess we are in.
He came to sit with Job on the ash heap and suffer with him. In a sense, this is another answer to Job’s questions to God about his suffering. In our reading from Job today the answer he gets from God is that Job can’t possibly understand. … But the answer he gets in Jesus, is that Jesus will sit on the ash heap with him and endure the suffering with him. Mysteriously, while we can’t really comprehend suffering, God was willing to join us in it.
Jesus came to be one of us and feel sin try to press into his life. To be tested, but to live completely obedient to the will of his Father in heaven. And having felt the strength of sin pressing in on the human condition, he is able to act with compassion towards the ignorant and wayward.
Hebrews says,
The other Psalm that is quoted is from Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is the most quoted part of the Old Testament in the New Testament. It too was considered a Psalm about the coming Messiah. In Psalm 110, it talks about the Messiah as a king and also as a priest.
The letter to the Hebrews says that a high priest is “chosen from among mortals”. So, he is human. He is from the community. He is one of the people. … Priests in the Old Testament worked to create, maintain, and reestablish the divine order. Often this has to do with distinguishing between the holy and the common, the clean and unclean, order and chaos. They stood on the boundary between the holy presence of God, and the common. … It was a dangerous place to stand, in a way. The high priest would stand on the boundary to represent the Divine will to the people, and also to represent the people before God.
As we read through the Old Testament we see that approaching the Divine is like dealing with nuclear power. It needs to be treated with the utmost respect and care. To deal with it carelessly was to risk death. Priests had to maintain a special state of holiness (they wore special clothing, followed special rituals, and lived by strict cleanliness rules) that allowed them to navigate that boundary between the common and the holy.
To represent humanity, the Son of God took on flesh to live as a human being, to submerge himself in the human experience. To live as one of us. To feel the mess we are in.
He came to sit with Job on the ash heap and suffer with him. In a sense, this is another answer to Job’s questions to God about his suffering. In our reading from Job today the answer he gets from God is that Job can’t possibly understand. … But the answer he gets in Jesus, is that Jesus will sit on the ash heap with him and endure the suffering with him. Mysteriously, while we can’t really comprehend suffering, God was willing to join us in it.
Jesus came to be one of us and feel sin try to press into his life. To be tested, but to live completely obedient to the will of his Father in heaven. And having felt the strength of sin pressing in on the human condition, he is able to act with compassion towards the ignorant and wayward.
Hebrews says,
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” (Heb 5:7).
This is believed to be in reference Jesus’ prayers in The Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus wasn’t saved from dying, but in his resurrection, he was saved from death. … But he did suffer. He did cry. He shed tears.
Hebrews continues,
Hebrews continues,
“Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 5:8-9).
(“Perfect” here, has the sense of maturity, of reaching a goal, of becoming who he was meant to be.) …
Bishop NT Wright tells the following story:
NT Wright uses this story to talk about the God the Son taking on human flesh and becoming human. We might think that because he was a son, that he could have been given special treatment and been spared some of what human beings have to go through. And yet, even though he was the Son of the Father, he was submerged in the suffering of humanity- even enduring a torturous death as a condemned criminal on a cross after being betrayed by a friend. … Having been submerged in our suffering, he is able to represent us in the very throne room of the Father as our heavenly High Priest.
In the Old Testament, a person doesn’t become a priest through ambition. It isn’t something you work towards. … (By Jesus’ day, the role of the chief priests had become corrupt, and it was something obtained through ambition, bribery, and nepotism.) … But originally, and ideally, this is a position given to the person. Aaron and his descendants were given the priesthood by God.
But there was another, a mysterious figure named Melchizedek who we read about in Genesis 14. He is the king of the city that would become Jerusalem. But he is also described as a priest of God. Surrounded by paganism, Abram meets someone who worships God. We read,
Bishop NT Wright tells the following story:
“A man I know inherited a business from his father. It sounds rather a grand sort of thing: the son comes in, fresh from his excellent schooling, to sit in a splendid office next to that of his father, and to take over in due course, ruling the company from above, enjoying the lifestyle of business lunches, golf outings, foreign trips, and the rest.”
“It actually wasn't a bit like that. For a start, it happened at a time of great austerity, when there wasn't any spare cash for even the occasional lavish lunch, let alone trips and outings. What was more, the father made sure the son learned the business from the ground up. He had to work in the workshops along with the hardened mechanics. He had to visit the suppliers to see where the raw materials came from, and find out for himself how hard it was to get them at the right price. He had to go out as a salesman into the suspicious world that wasn't convinced it wanted the product in the first place. And he had to share the work of the financial department as they spent day after day crunching the complicated numbers that told the story of success or failure. Only when he had thoroughly understood every aspect of how the business worked, was he even given an office of his own. That was only the beginning. Now he would have to learn both how to lead and how to manage a workforce at a time of growing industrial unrest, as well as to represent the business in the wider world of local and national life and politics. He had to learn what it meant to be the son of his father. Nature put him in the frame for this, but a good deal of nurture was needed as well.”[1]
NT Wright uses this story to talk about the God the Son taking on human flesh and becoming human. We might think that because he was a son, that he could have been given special treatment and been spared some of what human beings have to go through. And yet, even though he was the Son of the Father, he was submerged in the suffering of humanity- even enduring a torturous death as a condemned criminal on a cross after being betrayed by a friend. … Having been submerged in our suffering, he is able to represent us in the very throne room of the Father as our heavenly High Priest.
In the Old Testament, a person doesn’t become a priest through ambition. It isn’t something you work towards. … (By Jesus’ day, the role of the chief priests had become corrupt, and it was something obtained through ambition, bribery, and nepotism.) … But originally, and ideally, this is a position given to the person. Aaron and his descendants were given the priesthood by God.
But there was another, a mysterious figure named Melchizedek who we read about in Genesis 14. He is the king of the city that would become Jerusalem. But he is also described as a priest of God. Surrounded by paganism, Abram meets someone who worships God. We read,
“And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. He blessed [Abram] and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!’ And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything” (Gen 14:18-20).
Melchizedek was not connected to the priesthood of Aaron. Aaron was over 500 years later in the story. But he was said to be a priest of God who worshipped with Abraham. He was also a priest and a king, and his name became connected to the idea of the messiah.
There are times when the name “David” is used and it is understood to refer to the Messiah. The name “Melchizedek” is used in a similar way, and the Messiah is understood to be in a similar pattern as Melchizedek. Especially in the idea of being a priest and a king. …
The author of Hebrews wants to tell us that we have a king and a priest who understands what it is to be truly human. He knows what it means to suffer. And he knows what it feels like to resist sin. CS Lewis once wrote,
“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means”.He knows your fight against sin. And has compassion for how hard it is sometimes. He isn’t removed from our pain. He lived the life of a carpenter for 30 years before beginning his ministry. He lived at a time before pain medication. He likely endured the death of his father, Joseph. He lived in a community, and felt the normal human misunderstandings that happen among friends and family members. And when he began his public ministry, he knew what it meant to be misunderstood, rejected, betrayed, conspired against, and executed. … He is for us, and not against us. … We have a High Priest who presents us to God, having mysteriously brought human nature into God, and mysteriously invites us into relationship with God.
[1]
Hebrews for Everyone, NT Wright p.47
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