Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of not knowing where to go.

Whether you’re at a specific place trying to figure out where you need to be or you feel lost and abandoned because of a situation you find yourself in, not knowing where to go is one of the loneliest places to be.

Think of the reasons why we don’t always know where to go in life.

Sometimes we’re presented with an opportunity or we have an appointment and we are given instructions and we assume that we know where we’re going only to discover down the line that we didn’t have it quite as figured out as we thought we did.

We miss an appointment or we arrive late and the reason why is because we didn’t know where we were supposed to go and we are the one to blame.

That never happens, right?

There are other times, though, where something outside of our control happens.

If you’ve ever traveled to a large airport, you know that there could be upwards of tens of thousands of people wandering the hallways with you trying to find which terminal and gate they need to get to.

That can provide some serious complications, especially for those who aren’t the tallest.

There was a wife who told a story a few years ago about how she can’t see anything in a large crowd because she’s short and because of this, she doesn’t always know if she’s headed in the right direction… but her husband is 6’7 and he can always read and follow the signs.

What she has learned in her years of marriage is that whenever they are at congested places like an airport or a football stadium, she follows her husband and holds onto his hand as they get to their intended location.

This couple are followers of Jesus Christ and the wife made the comment that this is a picture of how we are to follow the Lord in every situation we find ourselves in, whether we think that we can see or not.

We trust in His guidance and we walk after Him in obedience each step of the way.

Obedience can be hard in life for a whole lot of reasons, but we know deep down that obedience matters.

If you’re a child, obeying your parents matters.

If you’re an employee, obeying your boss matters.

If you’re a student, obeying your teacher matters.

For all of us, we are commanded to obey our God and follow through with what His Word instructs us to do.

So many claim to believe in God and have faith in Him, but they don’t obey His Word.

Tozer put it like this, “The Bible recognizes no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring from faith.

The two are at opposite sides of the same coin.”

Last week we were reminded of what our Lord and Savior did for us.

How He came, lived a sinless life, and died for sinners like you and me.

How He sympathizes with us in our suffering.

It is a blessing to have that kind of great high priest!

What do we do with Jesus, though?

Hebrews 5:1-10 will dive further into Who Jesus is and what Jesus has done and the importance for us as sinners to obey our obedient Savior.

Let’s dive into God’s Word together this morning.

We serve a Savior who submitted Himself to the Father’s plan and suffered greatly in our place.

Our responsibility today is found in verse 9, to obey Him.

Is that true of you today?

Are you one who strives to obey Jesus and what He says in His Word? Let’s pray that God would help us obey today.

Our High Priest Knows Great Sacrifice (1-6)

Last week we concluded Hebrews 4 by looking at our Great High Priest and this middle section in Hebrews is all about Jesus Christ being our great high priest who has won the victory for us!

This is one of the central themes in this book: Jesus is greater.

He provides a greater victory.

He is a greater speaker.

He is greater than the prophets.

Greater than the angels.

Greater than Moses and Aaron and Joshua.

Now, in this middle section, the preacher of Hebrews is going to dive into why Jesus is a greater priest.

How do you know that something is greater than something else? Think that through.

A lot of times we’ll say that this thing is better than that one, but what is the standard that makes it automatically better?

Sometimes it’s obvious.

If you say that an iPhone 14 is better than the iPhone 4 because it has better picture quality and better battery life, you can use evidence and stats to back up that statement and I highly doubt anyone will disagree with you because I don’t know if the iPhone 4 still exists!

But a lot of times we’ll make this type of claim that something is greater than something else and it’s completely based on feelings or opinions.

This is especially true when it comes to sports as there are debates about who is the greatest of all time, or the GOAT?

There are Chiefs fans who are arguing that if the Chiefs win the super bowl tonight then Patrick Mahomes will be the greatest of all time.

By what standard is he the greatest of all time?

What makes him greater?

People have their opinions: He throws the ball better than anyone else, he has the most passing yards in a season… but what really makes him greater than someone else? It’s based on someone else’s opinion, right?

There really isn’t an objective way to judge who is greater.

You can have something that works smarter, faster, and more efficient, and cost less money and there would still be people who would say that it isn’t as great as something from 50 years ago because “back in my day...”

How do we KNOW that Jesus is greater?

These Jewish Christians were familiar with the priestly system.

How do they know that Jesus is a greater high priest?

By what basis can we make that statement?

This is what the preacher is unpacking in these opening verses and he does this by first outlining what the high priests did in the Old Testament.

He gives us four principles associated with high priests and their works in the first 4 verses of chapter 5.

The high priest came from the people (1)

First we see in verse 1 that the high priest was taken from among the people.

The literal Greek word there is the word chosen and is similar to the word called that is found in verse 4.

You couldn’t have a high priest who was an angel or a foreigner - he had to be from among God’s people.

The way that God did this historically was through the line of Aaron, the first high priest as Exodus 28 tells us as God told Moses,

The high priest represented the people (2-3)

We also see that the high priest is appointed in matters between God and his people.

The high priest has the responsibility to not only lead the people of God in worship but also in making sacrifices to God on behalf of the sins of the people.

Specifically, the high priest does this on the Day of Atonement as he offers a blood sacrifice that would cover God’s people for one year

The high priest deals gently with the people (2-3)

The high priests in the Old Testament were sinners just as the rest of God’s people were (just as pastors and Sunday school teachers are sinners as well in our church today).

Because of this, they could relate with the people because they had their own weaknesses.

They had their own sins.

This meant that the high priests, before offering a sacrifice for the sins of the people, must offer a sacrifice for their own sins.

Because of this, the high priest deals with sin seriously but sinners patiently.

The high priest is called by God, not the people (4)

The high priests in the Old Testament were called by God - not voted on by humans or elected by a group.

God revealed who the high priest was to be and that person would be the high priest.

God had the authority - not humans.

These are the 4 qualifications for the high priests in the Old Testament.

Now, just because these high priests were called by God and did these tasks, it doesn’t mean that they were perfect.

Think about the first high priest in the Old Testament, Aaron.

Whenever the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and Moses went up on Mt.

Sinai to get the 10 Commandments, what did Aaron do with the people below?

Aaron led the people to worship a golden, Chic-fil-a cow.

This man and his sons led the people of Israel in making sacrifices to God, but there’s a fundamental problem with their sacrifices because of their sin.

The best person, pastor, principle, or parent you can think of has this same problem because we’re all sinners.

We all have weaknesses.

We all drop the ball.

The biggest problem with our sin is that our sin not only impacts us today relationally with other people horizontally, but our sin impacts our relationship with God vertically as well!

Sin separates us from God - even the high priest’s sin did this!

So what do we need?

We need a Great High Priest.

We need One who can sympathize with us in our weaknesses but One who doesn’t give into temptation and sin.

We need One who knows what we’re going through, but One who overcomes what we’re going through.

This is what Jesus does!

Look in verses 5 and 6 of our text.

Jesus is a high priest just like those in the Old Testament.

He meets those qualifications of coming from God’s people, representing God’s people, dealing gently with God’s people, and being called by God, but Jesus goes above and beyond.

How? Jesus does all of His priestly work not only as a priest, but as a Son and as a King.