Lesson 7 – More 4 plus

Hebrews 5 New King James Version

As someone noted last week, the chapter split is right in the middle of a discourse.

4:14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

5 For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. ² He can ^[a]have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. ³ Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins. ⁴ And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.

⁵ So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him:

“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.”

⁶ As He also says in another place:

“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek”;

⁷ who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, ⁸ though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. ⁹ And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, ¹⁰ called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek,” 

First Impression?

• I was constantly trying to figure out how each piece applied to Jesus, to Melchizedek, and to the other high priests along the way. The punctuation was not helping me, but when one person’s first impression was “You are ignorant”, I felt better. Other first impressions were relationships, Jesus understands, relationship not religion, and Jesus is the guy.

A great High Priest – Name some major differences between Jesus and any other high priest?

• Answers I received included born of a virgin, replaced the role, is God, direct relationship, died and rose again, humble, true power, and sinless. Mainly I just wanted to brainstorm to open the mind to how awesome God is and therefore Jesus also.

Pertaining to God – What is anything that does not pertain to God?

• Answers were sin, separation, death, and evil. The idea was to point out how far we fall short of the perfection of Christ.

Ignorant and going astray – How is this different from evil?

• Intent was the main answer, but also the aspect of taking others with you. If I do not know any better and sin in private, it is forgiven and has negligible direct impact on others. If someone is evil, they sin on purpose and either do not care who knows or actively want others to follow them in their sin. There are nuances beyond my abilities to discuss between these extremes, but the idea is that “accidental” sin and “purposeful” sin are two different issues both with the penalty of eternal damnation.

What do you call a priest who took this honor for himself?

• I only wrote down fraud. I think back to the histories full of sinning priests in the church and know that the honor of true priesthood is a calling from God.

Called by God – How can a person distinguish between a call from God and anything else?

• The worthless answer of “You just know.” is not what I was looking for, but it came to mind quickly. It reminds me of learning to ride a bike and the expectation that “you will know when you know”. God has two major guides: 1) He will never ask you to sin. This is often overlooked, but it is fundamental to who God is and how He wants us to walk like Christ. 2) He will rarely ask you to do something that does not require His help. If it can be done by you, how does He get the glory?

Order of Melchizedek – What does this mean (without looking it up.)?

• I wanted everyone to pause to see where their own understanding stopped. Each of us are past youth and have been Christians for some time, so the idea was what had we already learned? Lineage was the only answer I wrote down. There is a ton of mystery and intrigue around who Melchizedek was or wasn’t and whether he died or is still alive. The Bible does not address those details because they do not impact our salvation. The idea is that he served God and his service put him into a position that we should honor him and his service. We should also honor the priests who came later, but most especially, we should honor Christ for the work He has done to restore us to God.

Remind me – How was Christ perfected?

• Through suffering. I do not understand how the perfection of Christ as God could be “further” perfected by suffering, but the Bible is clear that Christ had to suffer to serve our needs.  

Offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears, because of godly fear, learned obedience – Are you this desperate to find and follow the will of God?

• I struggled with who did this list of things. But I was convicted that my priest had to go to this level to overcome the penalty for my sins. As with the movie I hesitated to watch (Passion of the Christ), it can be hard to admit the reality of the consequences of our sin. Our sin put Christ o the cross and our sin held Him up there until He suffered unto death. We should be so desperate to accept salvation and to share it with others.