Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Hebrews 7:20-28

Text today is in Hebrews chapter 7, verses 20-28. You have the handouts you can follow along on the second page of those handouts. If not, follow along in your scriptures. I’ll mention the introduction again, but we live in a world filled with various problems, difficulties, opportunities, and trials. And the Lord every week brings us very old words—words written a long time ago and yet words that have this eternal significance and are just what we need to hear to prepare us for the weeks that we walk into.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 7:20-28.

“And inasmuch as he was not made priest without an oath, for they have become priests without an oath, but he with an oath by him who said to him, ‘The Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ By so much more Jesus has become assurity of a better covenant. And there were many priests because they were prevented by death from continuing.

“But he, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens. But does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the peoples.

“For this he did once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who have weaknesses, but the word of the oath which came after the law appoints the Son who has been perfected forever.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wonderful text. Speak to us through it, Lord God. Give us, Father, what we have come here desirous of hearing—your word as it relates to our lives and how we may please you more. And Lord God, you are building us up in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for your word. Transform our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So, a new book out by a man named Thomas Friedman. Friedman’s book—I’m not sure the name, might be The World is Flat. I listened to an article that he wrote for the New Yorker magazine, I think, or someplace in May of this year that is sort of the foundation for the book. He’d come back. He was in India in one of these high-tech facilities, the corporate world headquarters of Infosys, and he had seen this big room and a huge flat screen—I think the biggest in the world—eight clocks above it signifying different places in the world where their corporate offices were. And they all come together on this big flat screen for conference calls, et cetera.

And he was thinking about how Columbus had come to what he thought was India, named the natives here Indians, and reported back that the world was not flat, it was round. And he had traveled to India and was told there as he was leaving his facility by the manager of the facility that the playing field is being leveled in terms of global commerce and competition for high-tech work.

Leveled, he says. Leveled. Flattened. He’s telling me the world is flat. The world is getting flatter. And he cites ten flatteners in his book that have led to the current situation—a very relevant situation for the next generation. You know, we think multigenerationally at this church. We’re raising those children that we sang about in Psalm 110—those mighty warriors for Jesus Christ. Well, they’re going to have a harder time the next 50 years because the world is flat and because the competition now will not come from the best and the brightest in this country. It’ll come from the best and the brightest in China and India and other places around the world in this new global market that’s been flattened.

And Friedman’s book is probably well worth reading for those of you in business who need to know global trends. It’s a wakeup call. He talked about how, you know, they used to have these—well, still do—these things would come on. “This is a test. This is only a test of the emergency broadcasting system.” And he said that his article, his book, is not a test. It’s a warning bell to put away the GameBoys, to put away the computer games and the useless time we spend on those, and to get ready to compete in a new marketplace with global strategies, men who are tied in one to the other. All kinds of things have flattened the world. Very notably, he begins with the crashing of the Berlin Wall as a symbolic removal of a non-flat place—the flattening of Eastern and Western Germany. Six months later, Netscape is launched. In that period of time also, a version of Windows that’s global is launched.

We then have in more recent times the search engines, the ability—even the boom, the bust, the boom and bust of high-tech was a flattener because what it did was, for a while, it created tremendous amounts of wealth in high-tech companies that then way overbuilt infrastructure, laying optic fiber cable all over the world and certainly to India. And that produced the ability then to outsource and offshore and all that stuff and to produce this global marketplace.

It’s a danger to our children. It’s an opportunity. There’s a global market, but it’s a difficulty. I was listening to another article talking about a woman with autism who kind of knows how to think the way animals think, and she’s worried about the abstractionism of our culture. I went into Alana’s office—Isaac’s office—and Alana was sitting there at the CRT all day on Friday doing various tasks for the church, and it struck me as interesting. And then I listened to this article on Saturday—that we are becoming increasingly people that are abstracted out from the physical created world, looking at CRTs and flat screens, cathode ray tubes, et cetera.

Not saying that’s bad. I’m saying it’s different in the history of the world. That’s different. And it probably has sociological implications and provides its own difficulties and trials for us that we don’t even know about yet. And this woman was talking about the fact that we get very abstracted out and we don’t know how to do things because we can’t see the creative world around us. We’re not learning from animals anymore. We’re abstracted away from them.

Then, of course, there’s the war in Iraq and the tremendous uncertainty that brings with it—a number of young Marines dying in the last few weeks, you know, good godly men, for the most part, in our military dying. For we’re not sure what will happen yet, but certainly it’s a very difficult situation for them, and it brings its own set of tensions and problems to our lives—those of us who, and just about everybody does because there are soldiers over there, and certainly are involved in the global work of what’s happening there.

Gas prices rise, housing prices rise, and the desire we have to build families with the best of all worlds—mom can stay home with the children while they’re younger, homeschooling, whatever it is—this becomes more and more difficult. Because for a young man starting out today, you know, even if he’s making pretty good money in the marketplace to support a family and to be able to afford house prices in Portland or the surrounding area, and then to pay three bucks a gallon for gas—this cuts way into his ability to provide for his family.

So we’ve got a number of these contemporary problems and difficulties that surround us. You can probably think of half a dozen more yourself that you may have encountered this last week. What do we do in the light of all this?

Well, we come to the church, and Jesus gives us some beautiful text here of scripture that may not at first glance appear to address these issues, but really does in a very marked way. I think it’s a wonderful text of scripture we come to today. It concludes in verses 26 to 28 with a long sentence really in the Greek that is a rhapsodic finale of this section, as one commentator put it. Beautiful words—probably an early hymn to Jesus there in verse 26. Wonderful climactic words going on.

This section will drop a couple of markers as to where the author of this sermon is going. For the first time, we formally are going to be told in this text we just read that Jesus is going to not just be the priest, but he’s going to be the offering too, that the priest offers. And his self-offering is pointed to, and that will become very important in the next chapter and on into the center of this book.

He drops, for the first time, this word “covenant,” and of course he’s going to contrast not just the priesthood now, but the old covenant and new covenant as we get into the heart of Hebrews. So he drops that marker in this text as he’s finishing up with the Melchizedekian references, talking about Jesus’s high priestly effectiveness and permanence.

And there’s this wonderful phrase: “save to the uttermost.” I put it at the top of the outline. Save to the uttermost. And that great word pantelus—uttermost, completely, regarding everything. Pantelism now is related to hyper-preterism. For those of you who have interest in such things, some people see in this verse a reference to the fact that all prophecy was completed in Jesus at his first coming and that there’s no second coming of Christ. This is heresy. We don’t believe that scriptures teach a second coming. But see, they fall into this error in part because this word pantelus—saved to the uttermost—is so powerful, so complete, and so compelling. It drives them to those sort of conclusions—wrong ones.

But when you think about it of your own personal life, you see that you have now been saved to the uttermost in every area of who you are. Whether it’s the business competition with India or the problem with abstractionism from the created world or the difficulties of soldiers in Iraq or the problem providing for your wife and family as a young man—you have been saved in every aspect of your life to the uttermost. You see, that’s what this phrase means.

And it’s this wonderful word that’s in here. It’s a wonderful text of scripture here that I think answers, or at least helps us to give the basis—you know, we have the eternal word of God here. We have this word that’s very old and very relevant. It’s always relevant. So God doesn’t give us specific strategies to deal with India in the sermon, but he does give us the source of those strategies: our relationship to Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ rather, to God the Father. So what we’ll do now is we’ll take a look at the text. You can follow along on the handout, page two, and we’ll just note some things going through here and then draw some fairly quick conclusions at the end.

Points of application. I saw a show last night. I was after Gunga Din. Wonderful movie. Good movie to remind ourselves of certain things in our post-Christian culture, perspectives on warfare, et cetera. Anyway, it starred Cary Grant. There was a little thing about Cary Grant afterwards. And after Grant died, one of his several wives—and I don’t remember who it was, maybe one of his directors—sent him a telegram, his wife a telegram saying, “You know, who will be our model now? Who will be our model now?”

Well, if your model is Cary Grant, that is really too bad. And what we have here is a wonderful depiction of the work of Jesus Christ, beautifully expressed. And at the end, I will assert, I think properly, that it’s a model for us as well as it’s the answer to all of our dilemmas and the source of all our help and the assurance of our total salvation.

Jesus also provides a model here. Psalm 110—he has the dew of his youth. The victorious church is what surrounds this reference in verse 4 that the author has been hitting on for a couple of chapters now and will now leave behind and move to a new text of scripture. But the context for all of that is that this priest forever then has a holy army of youth following him into battle victoriously. And that’s us. That’s us.

So we’ll draw some application for us as we get to the end. Three parts to the outline.

First, there’s an exposition, a short exposition in verses 20-22 of the first portion of Psalm 110:4. “The Lord has sworn and will not relent.” First little phrase—he builds on this that the difference between Jesus and the old priests is this oath by which he takes office. And the benefit is that he is a guarantor—or a surety, a guarantee—of these better promises and a better covenant.

Okay. Verse 20: “Inasmuch as…”—now that matches down to verse 22, “by so much more”—in the Greek those are parallel terms. So it connects the top and the bottom of this section as a little section in itself. “In as much as he was not made priest without an oath.”

Here’s the oath scene includes the oath. This section—oath at the top, oath down at the bottom in verse 28. This section is bracketed by that, as well as the references to priests. “But they became priests without oaths, but he with an oath by him who said to him, ‘The Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’”

So now we’ve seen this sort of language before, haven’t we? When Jesus was being compared and contrasted with Abraham—you know, the Lord swore by himself to Abraham. And so here this same idea: that Jesus becomes priest by an oath, by a swearing by God. You see? It links up with that and brings into this that in this better covenant that Jesus is the guarantee of it—is the heightened form of blessing. “I will bless you and multiplying I will bless and multiply you”—the promise he gave to Abraham. So God swears. It’s an astonishing thing. But God gives this oath form and swears. And then we have the form of it: that Jesus is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

And so that’s the truth that he teaches there. And then the application is this: “By so much more, by so much more, Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.”

What difference does it make if it’s an oath or not? Well, the difference is that because there is this sworn oath, Jesus now—see, it’s the personal name of Jesus here. It’s going to this whole section will end with a reference to the Son in verse 28. So we go from Jesus and Son—and the rest of it. Those words aren’t used, but Jesus personally has become a surety of a better covenant.

Surety, guarantee. God guarantees the better covenant and the better hope that was what the word was used earlier. This same kind of phrase was used earlier in Hebrews. The better hope—that Jesus has the anchor of our soul is this better hope. Jesus is the guarantee of a better covenant. And this is the first place covenant is used. He drops the marker here. We’re going to develop covenant. He’s going to leave Psalm 110 behind, and he’s going to move on to Jeremiah 31. And he’s going to deal then with the new covenant in the next portion of this sermon. So he drops that marker. But there’s a better covenant that’ll be expounded later. And Jesus is the guarantee.

Now, what is this guarantee term? Well, it’s not the word mediator. A mediator is a go-between. This word—this word was used in legal circles. As I said before, there are a lot of unique terms in Hebrews. The only place they’re used is here. And I believe this is one of those. And it’s a legal term. It means somebody who would guarantee the payment of a debt. For instance, he’d be surety for a debt. But beyond that, it was also used in Greek circles of a man who would give his life for the sake of another man if that was what the other man called for.

So giving of the life is pointed at here, kind of implied by the use of this term. But the strong statement here is that since Jesus became priest by an oath sworn by God, he cannot change. We have this guarantee.

Hebrews is a practical sermon. It is a pastoral sermon. He uses these texts of scripture. We’ve seen, you know, a whole string of text in chapter 1 and 2. We saw Psalm 95 used. We saw Psalm 110 used here. He’s going to use Jeremiah 31. He uses a lot of theological development of Old Testament texts, but it’s always to the end that pastoral application would come to that congregation.

And here’s the beginning of the pastoral application here. The theology of oath by which Jesus becomes priest is developed by saying that so much more Jesus now has become a surety of a better covenant. He has become an impregnable guarantee that can be relied upon totally and eternally. You don’t have to doubt: “Is this true about me?” No. God says here he has become an impregnable guarantee to you by his life of the better covenant, the better promises, the better hope ushered in with his work.

This statement that he is a guarantee is meant to exclude all doubt and guesswork as to whether or not we can place our faith and assurance in this priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. It removes all doubt. It tells us that you can rely upon this. It is a guarantee to you that Jesus Christ has brought in a better covenant, better promises, and a better hope to you than had been in the past.

Jesus is not just a mediator. Jesus is a guarantee that these things are true. So he says, “The Lord is sworn, will not relent.” The benefit to us is that he is a guarantor. He guarantees this better covenant.

Then he takes up the last half of verse 4: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” So I stressed oath in the first few verses. Now he stresses the permanence—the forever aspect—of this quote.

Verse 23: “Also, there were many priests because they were prevented by death from continuing.” Death stopped them. Not so Jesus. Death doesn’t stop Jesus. He continues. “But he, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. An inviolable priesthood.”

The term again is a legal term, rarely used. It means inviolable. It cannot be moved. It is a basic truth of the universe. The word was used. There are certain inviolable truths of medical science that the Greeks wrote of. Well, this is an inviolable truth that he is priest. He has an unchangeable, inviolable unchangeable, a permanent priesthood. He continues forever. So that’s the statement. That’s the exposition of the text from Psalm 110.

And then he gives us the pastoral implication. “Therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost.” And here’s that term pantelus. This term that means completely, utterly. Pan—everything. Telus—purpose or goal. All purposes and goals for your salvation come to completion through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is able and will, because he is a permanent priest. Death doesn’t stop him. He continues. He is able to save you to the uttermost.

Who does he save to the uttermost? “Those who come to God through him.” Once more we have special language used here. The Septuagint—this was used of approaching God in formal worship. So “those who come to God through him” has its first reference to worship, but of course has implications beyond that as we talked about last week. But he’s able to save to the uttermost those who approach God. That’s the purpose of our salvation—to live in relationship to God. His purpose is to find worshippers. His purpose is to draw us near to himself that we may live out his life in what we do.

And then, “since he always lives to make intercession for them.” This is an incredible word verse. This is a verse that in the basic meaning of it is too good to be true. It’s a verse that if I was to just say, “What do you think about this concept?” you’d think I was heretical. Let me read you what Calvin says about it.

Calvin says, quoting on this particular portion of the verse, “Seeing he ever liveth to make intercession, what sort of pledge and how great is this of love towards us? Christ lives for us, not for himself.”

You see, the verse is saying that the purpose of Christ’s eternal life—he lives forever. Seeing he lives forever, for what purpose does he live forever? He is always living. The purpose of his eternal life is what’s going to be stated. And what is the purpose? To make intercession for them, for us.

Jesus Christ—it is astonishing what this verse says—that Jesus Christ lives forever for the purpose of serving you, for the purpose of making intercession for you, for the purpose of saving you to the uttermost. This is an astonishing pastoral implication of this text of scripture.

He’s exposition it. They, one after another, those priests—83 high priests, Josephus said, from the beginning of the temple to the destruction in AD 70. Many more other priests. Death took them all. They stopped. Jesus? Death doesn’t stop him. He is a priest forever, inviolably. He saves to the uttermost us who come to God through him because he always lives to make intercession for us.

Jesus Christ lives forever for the purpose of serving his people by making intercession for us.

You know, there’s that Willie Nelson song—maybe “I Didn’t Love You Half as Much as I Should.” I’m not sure the words, but “You Were Always on My Mind.” Willie says, “Well, I wasn’t always there for you. I didn’t always do everything for you, but you were always on my mind.” And it’s kind of a modern love song. And there’s some truth to that. And you know, I think that, you know, as husbands, we know we don’t love our wives as actively as we should. And it is something that we’re always thinking about them.

Well, in point of fact, Willie’s gal probably was not always on his mind always. But God—we are always on his mind. That’s what it, you know, it says that we can cast all of our care upon God knowing that he cares for us. That word “care” means he thinks upon us. We are always on his mind.

Jesus always has us on his mind and is continually living for the very purpose of interceding for us, bringing our prayers, requests, or what we need to the Father’s throne. We are always on his mind. And unlike Willie, or you, or me, if we’re on God’s mind, then God is not like man. He doesn’t just think about us and say, “Well, gee, I should have loved you more, but I was always thinking about you.” That’s not the point of the verse.

We can cast all our care upon him. The point is he cares about us and is actively moving to save us to the uttermost with everything he does. There’s no other way of dealing with this text. That’s what it says. It’s an astonishing verse, is it not? It astonishes me.

You know, I had a lunch this week with one of you and looking for a little pastoral advice. This person asked me, you know, “Who do you go to when you need pastoral help?” Well, you know, I got guys I can go to, I suppose. But you know, the way God works with you normally is in the study of these texts each week. I pour over these. I think about them. I meditate on them. And I’m telling you, the Lord God used this tremendously in my life this week—tremendously in my life this week.

This astonishing thought: that no matter what problems or difficulties in the marketplace, in the battlefield, in the home, whatever it is—Jesus Christ is always interceding for you. And to the end that he is saving you in every aspect of your life. How more pastoral can you get? Right? This is a great sermon this guy wrote, isn’t it? Praise God. It’s a wonderful thought. It just is. It’s exactly what we need—that the Lord God has this sort of attention, love, and concern for.

So that’s kind of the, you know, that he’s going to leave Psalm 110. Now, we’ve been with that for a couple of chapters. And the way he leaves it is that tremendous pastoral implication—that Jesus, his very life’s purpose, is to make intercession for us. And what he does through that is he is guaranteeing us that he is saving us in every aspect of our lives.

This is astonishing stuff. And yet it gets more. It gets better still. It gets more beautiful, more rhapsodic as we move to the third section of the outline. We move beyond Psalm 110—from priest to self-offering. Now, as I said, this marker is going to be dropped that we’re moving toward him as the offering now, not just as the priest.

Verse 26: “For such a high priest was fitting for us. Just what we needed. Just what we needed.”

I, you know, I’m product of my times, and The Cars had this song: “I Think You’re Just What I Needed.” Well, well, that’s the kind of priest we did need. That’s the implication of this term “fitting.” He is exactly what we needed. And this section will tell us that exactly what we needed was not to become better in ourselves and somehow work it out that way. We needed somebody else’s death for us. We needed somebody else’s life for us. We needed somebody else taking control of our lives and bringing us inalterably to this perfect salvation we have just spoken of—through the preciousness of his shed blood. That’s what we needed. And Jesus is this high priest, exactly like we needed.

And who is he? It’s going to describe him now. And it becomes beautiful, does it not?

“Holy, harmless, and undefiled”—those beautiful words found their way into the Westminster Confession of Faith, section 8, paragraph 3, describing the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ and his being fit for that work. Holy, harmless, undefiled. I love that phrase. I’ve loved it for years, years, years. And it’s a wonderful description of Jesus Christ.

What does it mean? Well, first, you got this word “holy.” This is not the normal word hagios in the Greek. It’s a different word. It is used in a few places, and I’ve given you some references where the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, uses it to translate certain texts from the Psalms and Psalm references. It’s also used in Hebrews 5:7 and 8. And it’s also used in 1 Timothy 2:8 and Titus 1:8. Titus 1:8—it’s one of those qualifications for elders. They’re supposed to be holy.

In 1 Timothy 2:8, it’s “holy hands,” but it’s a different word than the normal “holy.” This word has the idea of being faithful in the task that God has called you to do. Carrying out the mission that God gives you. Okay? It’s that kind of—it’s not so much consecrated, set apart positionally, but it means following through with covenantal satisfaction to what you’re called to do.

So Jesus is holy. He isn’t just holy in the sense of being set apart for a task. He’s holy in the sense of bringing that task to completion. He is dedicated, committed, to the task that God has given him to do. You see, that’s what “holy” here means.

He is “harmless.” And in the Greek, it’s one of those “a” words—not harmful—and it means not evil. And here it has a reference. Now, “holiness,” this holiness term—he is holy. That has a reference primarily to the task that God has given him to do. He’s holy in reference to God’s task, dedicated to God. And this has reference to his relationship to men. He’s harmless. He doesn’t do harm to people. You see? Or they may harm themselves in response to him. But you know, he is not harmful to people. He is ministering to people.

He is holy. He is harmless. It’s used—the text there I show you—it’s used in Job 2:3. He is described as harmless. Romans 16:18, another place where that word is used.

And then he is “undefiled.” He’s without spot. He’s without stain. There’s nothing staining his character. Holy, harmless, undefiled. This is who Jesus Christ is in reference to his work on earth. Sir Walter Raleigh said of his novels that they were harmless. He did no man harm by the words he wrote in his novels. He prevented, he presented no undue temptation to them that might be harmful to them. And so we have that kind of connotation here as well.

Jesus—holy, harmless, undefiled—the beauty of his person here is displayed to us. And then a couple of references, I think, to his ascension: “separate from sinners.”

Now, that could mean the idea of separation from sinful people. But Jesus—you know, the references I’ve given you here in Ezra and Nehemiah indicate that this word was used, at least in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew of those texts, to describe physical separation. In Nehemiah and Esther and Ezra, rather, they were to be physically separate from the nations—of the Canaanites. God’s people were in Israel in the rebuilt Jerusalem. They’re to be separate from sinners physically, not morally. So it refers to a physical separation.

And the very next phrase certainly confirms this: “has become higher than the heavens.” We’ve seen this before. He has gone through the heavenlies. Remember, the application of that was so that we can boldly approach the throne of grace because he has gone through the heavenlies for us. It’s a definite reference to his ascension.

And I think “separate from sinners” also—that Jesus’s ascension is described in two ways. He has become separate from the spirit of sinful man, and he has gone into the highest heaven. So we have this wonderful description of the sort of high priest we needed.

We needed somebody who was dedicated to his task. We needed somebody who would not do us harm. We needed a high priest who was not with, who was without spot or wrinkle, without stain, without blemish, without impurity. He was 100% positively righteous. We needed that kind of righteousness to be applied to our account. And we needed a savior who would ascend into the heavens.

“The savior is one who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the peoples. But for this he did once for all when he offered up himself.”

And here it is. Here’s the marker that the priest that we need must be perfect. But he also must be willing to offer himself, his blood, his life on our behalf. So here is the first time this is brought up. He offers of himself. And this will be a repeated refrain in the middle of this book of Hebrews—the self-offering of Jesus Christ.

So the other priests, they had to offer sacrifices first for themselves and then for the sins of the people all the time. But Jesus? No. Once for all, 2,000 years ago, on the cross and then in heaven he presents the once-for-all offering of himself that he gave.

So there’s an opposition laid. There’s many of them. There’s one of him. They had to offer for their sins. He was sinless. They had to offer over and over again for the sins of the people because nothing would be finished in terms of that happening until the Lord Jesus Christ himself dies for our sins. And so the contrast is drawn.

And then the final summation at the end of this, in verse 28, this really is the summary statement for the whole section of chapter 7:

“The law appoints high priests, men who have weaknesses, but the word of an oath which came after the law appoints the Son who has been perfected forever.”

And the contrast is drawn. The antithesis: law versus oath. Many priests now—just not one—but the Son. Here the word “Son” finally comes into this text, matching “Jesus” at the beginning, our savior who is the Son of God.

This is, in some ways, a pastoral exposition on what it means to declare that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The Son of God is the one who is holy, harmless, undefiled, dies for sinners, offering himself once, and is resurrected and ascended at the right hand of the Father. He ever lives there to make intercession for you. And through that process, he is bringing about holistic salvation in every area of your life and for the world ultimately.

That’s the Son of God. That’s what the Son of God is.

And so the pastoral implications are drawn out. Law versus oath. High priest versus the Son. Weaknesses against the perfection of the Son. The Son who has been perfected forever. Completed task, completed work. Remember that “perfection” is really a term that’s used specifically in the priestly system, kind of matching with ordination. A man is perfected. He becomes in that office as he’s perfected. Jesus Christ, the office that he occupies as perpetual priest—he was perfected through his suffering for us. And so this matches up with the perfection at the very first of chapter 7, verse 1.

Also, we’ve read earlier that he perfects his people. And here the Son is perfected. He is perfecting us. And the Son himself has been perfected. And so our union with Jesus Christ is described. And then finally, this exists forever and ever.

So: oath, permanence, guarantee of a permanent position of Jesus Christ making intercession for us all on the basis of his self-offering to us. This is what this text describes of the work of Jesus Christ.

So making sure I catch everything on the little children’s sheet by way of review.

Today’s text points back to Psalm 110:4. We’re going to leave Psalm 110. This is the end of it. Unlike other high priests, Jesus was made priest by an oath. The Father says he has sworn that Jesus will be a priest forever. And then the benefit of that truth to us is that Jesus himself is the guarantee—the guarantee of the new covenant.

The old priests were all stopped by death. Death goes to number five. But not Jesus. The benefit of this—the second part of this three-point section today—is that he is always making intercession. Big word, kids. For us. And I tell you what it means: helping us. Jesus is always making intercession—i-n-t-e-r-c-e-s-s-i-o-n. He is always helping us.

Psalm 46:1 says, “God is a very present help in time of need.”

I described all kinds of times of need at the beginning of this sermon. Geopolitical matters, geoeconomic matters, very localized matters of gas and housing prices. Difficulties for us, difficulties of those that we know in Iraq, difficulties of what that government will look like as it’s revealed tomorrow to us, difficulties of knowing what will happen to our country.

You know, if we’ve made democracy our idol, how legitimately can we point to the god of Islam as an idol that must be destroyed without seeing that our idol—if that’s what we’re doing in this country, making an idol out of pluralistic democracy, the basic goodness of man—that bodes ill for the future of this nation if that’s what we’re doing.

Problems—we see them all around us. Problems in our own lives. Problems with becoming so abstracted. Those of you that work with CRTs all day—what do you do when you talk to your wife? What do you do? How do you reconnect to the world around us? How do we avoid the kind of Gnosticism that we’re trying to avoid as we bring about a more full Hebraic view of the faith when we’re actually living in a world that seems to be becoming more Gnostic and detached from the created order every day?

Lots of problems. But see, they’re all part of that pantelus—that complete salvation, complete perfection—that God is ushering in for us. We don’t understand how it all works out. But we can approach these tasks and difficulties with confidence, with this better hope, with the guarantee that Jesus is ushering in full salvation for us. And we can and must go to him, pray to him, that he might make intercession for us, to bring about the answers to these problems.

If we walk into the world not going to the source of the solution for this—the intercession of Jesus to the Father—and if we don’t cry out to him, “Help us provide for our families with gas at three bucks a gallon and houses at $150,000,” and if we don’t cry out to him, “Help me understand the geo-marketplace today and how we’re going to create scientists and engineers and kids that will be able to compete in that and not go downhill”—how do we compete in this new flat world if we don’t go in to God and to Jesus in prayer for the way we’re going to go about taking care of our own political matters, our own economic matters, our own interpersonal relationships?

Well, then why would we expect answers? But they’re all there. This text seems detached from all these problems. And yet it provides the core of assurance of knowing that we’re going to make it all right. Generation to generation, the world keeps spinning and God’s people keep growing. Long-term, the fools, the wicked, they’re gathering and collecting. Ecclesiastes says, for the righteous. We know long-term all this is going to happen because Jesus Christ has guaranteed it to us.

The Father has sworn an oath, gone out of his way not just to say it, but to swear to it. And he wants us to rely upon it and to have this better covenant, better promise, better hope that’ll sustain us through whatever times we have to go through.

And secondly, he provides this means of putting this hope into action, of seeking to cry out to him and have him intercede to the Father for us in every one of these difficulties. God is a very present help in time of need, but not to those who don’t recognize their need. Not to those who think that they can take care of it themselves. No.

Verse 25 says, “We are those who come to God through Jesus Christ. He saves us in every way.”

Number 10. This includes our becoming more and more holy. Cary Grant’s not the model. Jesus is. So we have these great promises, these great assurances. We know where to go to get relief. And not only that, but we’re told from Psalm 110:4, being in the context, that we are that army. We are the ones who are raising up to accomplish his purposes—not just in our own little lives but for the world, for our communities, for our families, for our churches, for our state.

He has the dew of the morning. He has the seed, the children, his offspring—us, the mighty warriors. How do we conquer? By taking on his attributes. By having him give us his holiness, his harmlessness, his undefiledness. You see, we’re to be becoming holier. He’s our model. More and more committed, dedicated—is the word, kids. This means more and more dedicated to God.

It seems counterintuitive, but the way to take care of the global economic marketplace is to become more committed to God than ever in the context of that and to seek solutions from him in terms of what to do in the marketplace. Holiness is germane to all of these things: consecration, commitment, dedication to God.

It also includes us becoming more and more harmless. And children, this means not being harmful to others. We’re tempted to strike out, to get ahead by clawing ahead. But God says, “No, that’s not God’s way. Who will control the future?”

The golden beam inclines to those who are harmless toward others, consecrated to their task to God, and consecrated not to be harmful to those around you, but to rather be harmless toward them.

And third, this also means us becoming more pure. Pure—easier word than undefiled. This means not getting dirty by sinful actions and thoughts. And oh my, young people, what a job you have here. Oh, we love the rejoicing. I love it. The joy that you have in the Christian faith will see you through whatever dark days may lie ahead of you. It was wonderful at the Fakuda house. But be careful. Be a little warned, right?

You know, I watch the movies. My kids watch the movies. But you got to be careful. We’re supposed to grow and becoming more and more pure for Jesus Christ. Untainted, not stained.

Young men, if you see things that are going to stain you, close your eyes. Run away. You’re to grow in commitment and dedication to God, in service to your fellow man. And this will be blunted. Both of those will if you allow yourselves to be stained by sinful thoughts, deeds, words, and actions.

You see, growth in purity will solve our long-term economic problems. God says that the resources of the foolish in the short term—you may lose out—but in the long term, the holy, harmless, and undefiled seed of the Lord Jesus Christ—they’re the recipients of all this world’s wealth.

We can do this because Jesus died for our sins and always is at the right hand of God serving us. He ever lives to serve us, as Calvin says.

Praise God. But again, what’s the model? If that’s who our Head is, if that’s who our Cary Grant is, our model—the model for all men—you know, I heard another thing on the radio just yesterday. A Jewish man was saying, “You know, Judaism—he was talking about cults—well, Judaism started as a cult: blood sacrifices, single leader at the top, a high priest telling me what to do. But it’s evolved into a more humane religion.”

My, my, my. Well, what he wants, what that man wants, is nobody at the head telling him what to do. He wants to be the head of his own private cult. And that’s what he is.

Not so us. The high priest was very circumscribed in what he could do—only do what God told him to do. He was a picture of Jesus Christ, who is the model, who is the king, who is the Lord. God says he’s the one who is our model. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If he’s holy, harmless, and undefiled, we want to get more like that.

And if he ever lives to serve us, what is the implication for us? The implication is clear: that we are to ever live to serve the person next to us in the pew, or the people around us in this church, or the neighborhood around us in this city or this country. We’re to serve other people. That’s what our savior does. His perpetual life is for the purpose of serving us.

And your life as Christians is for the purpose of serving Jesus by serving other people. That’s what that’s what changes the world.

I don’t want to, you know, I’m very careful what I say. I am sympathetic. Jesus is faithful and compassionate. And we want to be compassionate to one another when we struggle. If we don’t have friends, or our husband isn’t treating us this way, our wife isn’t treating us this way, or people at church are doing this or that, or I don’t have respect at the workplace, or I don’t make the money I want to make, and these people are not nice to me—okay, so I have compassion for all of that. But the faithfulness side of this is: your job is not to see who’s being friendly to you today. Your job is to serve others.

Your very life, mimicking, imitating the savior’s life, is to serve other people. Your job is to be friendly, not to get a bunch of friends in return. Now, they’ll come. Jesus will add blessings. I’m not saying they won’t. But he who seeks to gain his life, to gain friends, to gain spouse, to gain all this stuff will lose it. But he who loses his life in service to the man that God puts in your path—you will find it. Then you’ll have that joy and that well-being.

The Lord God has done wondrous things for the offering of Jesus Christ as high priest and offering. And he grants us. He comes here to give us today Christ’s word. And with that word, the gifts of Jesus Christ: his holiness, his dedication, his harmlessness, his being undefiled, his perpetual service for us—that we might in our lives radiate the brightness of Jesus Christ and shine in the midst of what is otherwise a very dark world.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, make us shine this week. Help us, Father, to have hope as we look at these global trends and individual, local trends as well in our lives. Help us to see that we have a tremendous source of help, that the Lord Jesus intercedes for us. Help us to cry out to him in our need, that he may indeed be that very present help and get us through whatever difficulties we’re traversing today.

And grant us, Lord God, that we might shine, committing ourselves afresh to holiness—without which no man will see the Lord—to a harmlessness that we would be as harmless as serpents, even as we are wise as serpents. Help us, Lord God, not to be, as we all so often are, as harmless as serpents. Help us, Lord God, to be harmless.

Help us, Father, to have the undefiled character of Jesus Christ imputed to us, but also cause us to grow in our commitment to keep ourselves unstained from temptations, sin, and problems and the temptations of the world run about us.

And give us, Lord God, the servant heart of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose very life is to make intercession and serve us. So help us, Father, to see that our living is to serve Jesus and his people.

In his name we ask it. Amen.