This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Hebrews chapter five, day one. Hi, this is Pastor
Tom. We're going to be walking through this chapter this week that's all about how
Jesus continues to be better and better and better.

We're going to look at verses one to seven today. And just a very quick review of
Hebrews up until now. Very brief.

We've looked at the fact that Jesus is better than angels. We've looked at the
fact that Jesus is better than Moses. Angels are good, Moses is good, Jesus is
better.

And in chapter five, we begin a very strong look at the fact that Jesus is a
better high priest. In fact, what we begin to look at here in this chapter is
the central argument, the central encouragement in the book of Hebrews. It goes
from here all the way through chapter 10 with exhortations and encouragements to
growth all interspersed throughout.

What does it mean to understand that Jesus is your great high priest? Well, this
begins in verses one to six. Every high priest is selected from among men and is
appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to other 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. This is why he has to offer sacrifices for
his own sins as well as for the sins of the people. No one takes this honor upon
himself.

He must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So Christ also did not take upon
himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, you are my
son, today I have become your father.

And he says in another place, you are a priest forever in the order of
Melchizedek. As you read through these verses, first of all, he gives the
qualifications for being a human high priest. And out of that, the writer of
Hebrews shows us that Jesus meets those qualifications and goes beyond them so
that he's our great high priest.

This shows that Jesus fits the qualifications for those who are trying to
recapture the past and go back to some former high priest. Jesus is the great
high priest. But it also shows that Jesus goes far beyond the qualifications for
those who need hope for the future.

What are the qualifications? They're very simple here. The high priest is
appointed.

He's appointed by God. He's appointed from among the people. He's appointed to
represent the people.

Because of that appointment, he's able to deal gently with the people because of
who he is. He's appointed by God. He doesn't take this glory upon himself.

And the writer of Hebrews wants to make very clear that this is true of Jesus as
well. He was appointed by God to this task of giving himself for us, of being
the great high priest for us. And in these verses towards the end, he gives two
great confirmations of the authority that's behind this appointment in the two
verses that he quotes from the Old Testament.

You are my son, today I have become your father, and you are a priest forever in
the order of Melchizedek. You are my son, you are a priest. God appointed him.

First, you are my son is the appointment of God in human flesh. God the son
who's come to give his life for us. But he also says you are a priest.

And he says a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. If you haven't
come across this in the Bible before, it's quite a name, who is Melchizedek?
He's mentioned two times in the Old Testament.

In Genesis 14 and in Psalm 110, that's all. And Melchizedek symbolizes an Old
Testament priesthood that's different than the priesthood of Aaron through the
tribe of Levi. Melchizedek became sort of a symbolic pointer to the priesthood
which had no beginning and no end.

You might remember that Jesus was of the tribe of Judah. And some of those to
whom the writer of Hebrews is writing were questioning how could he be a priest?
He didn't come from the tribe of Levi.

He came from the tribe of Judah. All priests have to come from the tribe of
Levi. How could he be a priest?

The writer says he's of the order of Melchizedek. He's a priest that has no
beginning and no end of that order. We're going to talk a lot more about
Melchizedek in chapter seven.

I know you cannot wait. And in many ways, really you cannot wait because the
truth behind this priest is the truth of Jesus's forever love and forever power
in every one of our lives. But for now, today, I'd like to go on to another
aspect of what it meant to be a high priest and what it means for Jesus to be
our great high priest.

You find it in verse seven. Verse seven says, during the days of Jesus's life on
earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one
who would save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverent
submission.

The high priest was appointed from among the people, the human high priest, so
they could identify with the people. He had weaknesses like we have weaknesses.
And this reminds me that Jesus identifies with me.

I mean, he is sinless. He doesn't have weaknesses like I do, but he came a man.
And by becoming a man, he is able to deal gently.

He's able to understand. Jesus is God and Jesus is also man so that we know that
he understands. He understands what you're going through right now.

Now, what does it mean for us to approach this mystery that Jesus became a man?
There are three things in this passage. It's not all that it means, but it is a
depth of what it means.

In this passage, we're going to read about Jesus's dependent petition, his reverent
submission, and his learned obedience, those three things. First today, we're
going to focus on his dependent petition. That's one of the ways that we see that
he became a man.

Jesus, when he came into this world, he limited himself. He didn't lessen
himself, but he limited himself. He limited himself to depending on the Father.

Now, in heaven, they're Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They're equal, but he
decided on this earth in becoming a man to limit himself to depending on the
Father in prayer because he wanted to teach you and I that we have to depend on
the Father in prayer. A dependent petition.

And this verse says he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and
tears to the one who could save him from death. This dependent petition with
Jesus, it had emotion in it. That's something to remember when you're talking to
God, when you're depending on God.

It shouldn't be something dry, emotionless. He is your only salvation. He's your
only rock.

Jesus grew up in a Jewish culture that knew how to show emotion. When the Jews
wept, it wasn't just this little tear trickling down the cheek. They wept
openly.

They wailed loudly. They even sometimes tore their outer clothes into shreds to
express their grief. If you have an image of Jesus that rejects that idea of
showing your emotions in that kind of a way, you've got the wrong picture of
Jesus with a loud cry and tears.

The power of emotion prompted Walter Hansen to write these words in his classic
article, The Emotions of Jesus. Listen to this. He wrote, "I am spellbound by
the intensity "of Jesus's emotions.

"Not a twinge of pity, but heartbroken compassion. "Not a passing irritation,
but terrifying anger. "Not a silent tear, but groans of anguish.

"Not a weak smile, but ecstatic celebration. "Jesus's emotions are like a
mountain river "cascading with clear water. "My emotions are more like a muddy
foam "or a feeble trickle.

"Jesus invites us to come to him and drink. "Whoever is thirsty and believes in
him "will have the river of his life flowing out "from the innermost being. "We
are not to be merely spellbound, "what we see in the emotional Jesus.

"We are to be unbound by his spirit "so that his life becomes our life, "his
emotions our emotions. "To be transformed into his likeness "with ever
increasing glory. " And that quote gives us the example of the life of Jesus.

And the example as we look at the life of Jesus is clear. Jesus did not deny his
emotions. He denied himself by not bowing to those emotions.

But he took his emotions very seriously. And he teaches us to do the same. He
teaches us to act in ways that recognize the importance of our feelings.

If you don't see the importance of expressing and dealing with your feelings,
those feelings actually end up controlling your life. Denial of your feelings
gives them a power over you that God never intended them to have. It's only as
you see the importance of your feelings and express them to God in prayer,
independent petition, that you and I begin to act in ways that keep those
feelings from running your life.

So you talk to God like Jesus did. You depend on God like Jesus did. You depend
on God with the emotion of your heart.

I'm not talking about desperate prayers. I'm talking about dependent prayers.
They're very different.

I'm not talking about panic. We're talking about passion. It's the passion of
hanging onto a rope if you're on the side of a cliff, if it's your only
salvation with all that you have.

You are not letting go of that rope. And that's the way that Jesus prayed. That
teaches us something about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a
woman, what it means to live as a human being in this world.

We want to depend on God with all that we have. Let's do that in prayer right
now. In your heart, in your mind right now, in that place of hurt in your life,
in that place of need in your life, in that place where you want to grow in your
life.

Just depend on God with all that you are. If you're somewhere with nobody around
and you want to say it out loud to him, say it out loud to him. Depend on God
with all that you are.

God, I need you. Without you, I am not going to have the strength that I need.
God, I am depending on you.

Sometimes I think I can depend on myself or someone else, but in the end, it is
only you, only you that I can depend on. With your heart, with your emotion,
depend on him. That's what it means to be like Jesus.

We do depend on you right now, Jesus. We depend on you. You are our life.

You are our strength. You are the one, the only one that can meet the need of
our life. So we come to you and we depend on you.

In your name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at the reverent
submission of Jesus.