MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 4:14-16
The Divine-human High Priest.—This passage introduces the consideration of the priesthood of Christ, to which brief reference is made in Hebrews 3:1. Three things are argued:
1. His extraordinary dignity.
2. His perfect character.
3. His glorious work. The high priest was the prominent man, the example, of the Old Testament dispensation. There is an important distinction between a model and an example, which needs to be kept in view. F. W. Robertson skilfully explains that distinction. “You copy the outline of a model; you imitate the spirit of an example. Christ is our Example, not our Model. You might copy the life of Christ, make Him a model in every act, and yet you might not be one whit more of a Christian than before. You might wash the feet of poor fishermen as He did, and live a wandering life, with nowhere to lay your head. You might go about teaching, and never use any words but His words, never express religious truth except in Bible language; have no home, and mix with publicans and sinners. Then Christ would be your Model; you would have copied His life like a picture, line for line, and shadow for shadow, and yet you may not be Christ-like. On the other hand, you might imitate Christ, get His Spirit, breathe the atmosphere of thought that He breathed, do not one single act which He did, but every act in His Spirit; you might be rich, whereas He was poor; never teach, whereas He was teaching always; lead a life in all outward particulars the very contrast and opposite of His; and yet the spirit of His self-devotion might have saturated your whole being, and penetrated into the life of every act, and the essence of every thought. Then Christ would have become your Example; for we can only imitate that of which we have caught the spirit.” But if we make Christ our Example two things need to be carefully explained.
1. He must be in our plane, or we cannot hope to follow Him or to be like Him.
2. He must be out of our plane, He must belong to a higher plane, or we cannot be satisfied with Him. Fixing thought on Him figured as our High Priest, observe—
I. Christ was one with men.—In the records left us of His life there is a more evident effort to convince us of His veritable humanity than of His Divinity. It is as though men were sure to light on the idea of His being extraordinary, and it needed to be proved that He was really man. In his first epistle St. John does not argue or assert that Christ was God. That seems to have been believed. St. John demands belief in Christ as having “come in the flesh.” Illustrate:
1. The significancy of our Lord’s living so long a time as thirty years of common and ordinary human life, fully recognised during that time as a man among men.
2. The distinct apprehension of His ordinary manhood by His brethren, and by the people of Nazareth.
3. The perfect humanness of the habits and exhibited feelings of Christ’s life. Sensitiveness to suffering, bodily and mental. He was humanly affected towards the character and conduct of others. He was weary, hungry, sleepy.
4. The simple human character of our Lord’s death. One might expect such a Being to die in some sublime way. But, physically, our Lord’s was just a common and usual man’s death; and, morally, it was remarkable as a good man’s innocent death. With the idea of the humanness of Christ’ before us, we cannot but feel that His character is the expression, the outliving, of our ideal of humanity; it is the realised perfect character for a man.
II. Christ was distinct from sinners.—It is important to estimate clearly the distinction between a man and a sinner. The condition of our world would be hopeless if the two terms were convertible. All that belongs to man was in Christ, but nothing that belongs to the sinner. But Christ was not distinct from sinners because His nature was imperfect, incomplete, on any side. It was a whole. Some may only be separate from sinners in some points, because they have no capacities for certain particular sins. There is no virtue in their sinlessness, any more than there is honesty in a thief whose hands have been cut off. This sense of our Lord’s distinctness was produced on all who came in contact with Him. Illustrate: The disciples—as in the call of Matthew. People—“speaks with authority, and not as the scribes.” Enemies and indifferent—see money-changers in Temple-courts. “Never man spake like this man.” His judge and the Roman soldiers—see the awe of Pilate, and the exclamation of the centurion. The same truth is borne in on us by the record. As we study the man we feel that He is more than man, other than man. There are two aspects in which His distinctness from sinners is impressively shown.
1. His acts are never doubtful. There has never been a merely human life without some incidents of questionable truth and virtue. In Christ’s life there is no record of any, but a distinct impression is left on us that there were none to record. This is a coin that you need not ring twice.
2. His acts were never selfish. This is largely characteristic of human acts; it is too constantly the “fly” in the best pots of ointment. Christ’s acts were all done under a profound sense of duty, and under a sublime impulse of love. The acts were right in form, and the life and feeling that inspired them were right also.
III. The Divine-human High Priest exerts the most ennobling and sanctifying power upon us.—Precisely what man needed was salvation by God through man, through manhood; what he needed was a moral redemption. The Saviour of the world must be a Divine man. Only such a Saviour—
1. Could demonstrate the distinction between man and sin.
2. Could bring to light the higher possibilities that are in human nature as God designed it.
3. Could exhibit the ennobling influence of the two great principles of our nature—dependence, and the sense of duty. Ever near to God, ever doing the will of God, these are the essentials of true manhood.
4. Could show the charm which character, moral excellence, can put on all the relations of life.
5. And could reveal a sublime future for the race: as High Priest, working until all whom He represents have become like Him in fact. Then we are to be the people belonging to this great High Priest, the Son of God. What made men disciples of Christ while He was on earth? That makes men disciples now.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 4:14-16. Safety through the Great High Priest.—The epistle to the Hebrews is an argument against apostasy. Everywhere, throughout this epistle, the signal-lights of danger are swung out along the Christian track. The fear which sometimes startled the steadfast and heroic heart of Paul—lest, having preached to others, he himself should be a castaway—is declared to be, in this epistle, for every Christian a reasonable and substantial fear (Hebrews 6:4-6). Against the too common tendency of putting the main stress of the Christian life upon its beginning, of reckoning upon heaven because one imagines himself once to have been in Christian mood and spirit, though he certainly is not now, this epistle is a prolonged Divine warning. “Let us hold fast our profession,” or, as the original has it, “let us be strong in holding fast to it”—that is the solemn and strenuous exhortation of this epistle. And in order to make its warning real and sure, the epistle falls back upon the ancient Scripture, and brings forward a clear instance of a good beginning and a bad ending (Hebrews 4:11). The Hebrews started well. But the experiences of the wilderness were too much for them. They never enjoyed the Canaan rest. They were unworthy and apostate. Their carcasses mouldered in the wilderness. Now these later Hebrews to whom this epistle was addressed had begun well. They had acknowledged Jesus as their spiritual Moses—the Messiah of promise and of prophecy. Under His leading they had begun their march out of the spiritual Egypt, through this worldly wilderness, to the spiritual Canaan—to heaven, the home and rest of those who believe in and follow Christ. But the worldly wilderness was full of difficulties, and these Hebrew Christians showed signs of faltering. The Hebrew nation was against them; the resplendent and still standing Temple was against them; worldly success and the chance for livelihood were against them; bitter scorn and contumely were against them. Yet this epistle assures them there is no safety in apostasy; there is safety only in steadfastness. Apostasy is destruction. Still must they hold fast their profession (Hebrews 4:1; also Hebrews 4:11).—Homiletic Review.
Holding fast our Profession.—Now the question comes, “Can we hold fast our profession?” Yes, and our great High Priest is the reason and the power. We are not left on a lonely pilgrimage. We are not left to a single-handed conflict.
1. Since He is High Priest, He has made atonement for us.
2. Since He is High Priest, He now makes intercession for us.
3. His atonement is accepted, and His intercession is worthy, for His resurrection has set triumphant seal upon them. “He has passed into the heavens.”
4. He has Himself been tried, “tempted in all points like as we are.” So He is athrill with sympathy.
5. He knows temptation, yet He has vanquished it; He is without sin. Herein is help peculiar—the help of a victorious strength.
Hebrews 4:15. Christ’s Sympathy with the Infirm.—How many are burdened with a sense of deficiency, with their unlikeness to others—their inability to do what others can, or perhaps what they could once; how many see others come to the house of God, and are distressed that through weakness they cannot; how many feel themselves a burden to others, who would rather that others should burden them; how many mourn that their lives are useless and inactive! They want one who will take their part, comfort them by his tenderness, sustain them with his arm. In the text is such an one.
I. Consider the fact of the sympathy of the Lord Jesus. It is assured by—
1. His personal human experience.
2. His perfect knowledge and love.
3. His vital union with His people.
II. Consider this sympathy in its connection with His high-priestly work.
1. As High Priest He has direct intercourse with us.
2. He prays for the supply of our need.
3. He brings us to the Father.
III. Consider that this sympathy with infirmity is the pattern for His people.
1. It rebukes our hardness.
2. It shows one of the great needs of the world.
3. It suggests a recompense for suffering. He suffered that He might sympathise with sufferers; that is why we suffer.—Charles New.
Tempted, not overcome by Temptation.—“In all points tempted” must not be taken as meaning in all points sharing our experience in dealing with the temptation. Christ did not share anybody’s experience of yielding to temptation. He was never overcome by temptation. But that was not essential to human experience. That was fallen man’s experience. And Christ was man, not fallen man. Find what is essential to man. Christ experienced that.
Hebrews 4:15-16. The Sympathy of Christ.—According to these verses the Priesthood of Jesus Christ is based upon the perfection of His humanity; and that implies that He was possessed of a human soul as well as a human body.
1. Accordingly in the life of Christ we find two distinct classes of feeling. When He hungered in the wilderness, etc., He experienced sensations which belong to the bodily department of human nature. But His grief, friendship, fear, etc., were the affections of an acutely sensitive human soul, alive to all the tenderness and hopes and anguish with which human life is filled, qualifying Him to be “tempted in all points like as we are.”
2. The Redeemer not only was but is man. It is imagined that in the history of Jesus’ existence, once, for a limited period and for definite purposes, He took part in frail humanity; but that when these purposes were accomplished the man for ever perished, and the spirit reascended, to unite again with pure, unmixed Deity. But our Lord’s resurrection life should be the corrective of this notion. And this suggests the truth of the human heart of God. Man resembles God. Love does not mean one thing to man and another thing to God. The present manhood of Christ conveys this deeply important truth, that the Divine heart is human in its sympathies.
3. There is a connection between what Jesus was and what Jesus is. He can be touched now because He was tempted then. His past experience has left certain effects durable in His nature as it is now. It has endued Him with certain qualifications and certain susceptibilities which He would not have had but for that experience.
I. The Redeemer’s preparations for His Priesthood.—The preparation consisted in being tempted. But temptation as applied to a Being perfectly free from tendencies to evil is not easy to understand. Temptation has two senses: it means test or probation; it means also trial, involving the idea of pain or danger. Trial placed before a sinless Being is intelligible enough in a sense of probation; it is a test of excellence. And Scripture plainly asserts this as the character of Christ’s temptation. Not only test, but trial. There was not merely test in the temptation, but there was also painfulness in the victory. How could this be without any tendency to evil? Analyse sin. In every act of sin there are two distinct steps: there is a rising of a desire which is natural, and, being natural, is not wrong; and there is the indulgence of that desire in forbidden circumstances, and that is sin. Sin does not consist in having strong desires or passions: in the strongest and highest natures, all, including the desires, is strong. Sin is not a real thing. It is rather the absence of something, the will to do right. Sin is not in the appetites, but in the absence of a controlling will. There were in Christ all the natural appetites of mind and body. Conceive then a case in which the gratification of any one of these inclinations was inconsistent with His Father’s will. At one moment it was unlawful to eat, though hungry: and without one tendency to disobey, did fasting cease to be severe? Christ suffered from the force of desire. Though there was no hesitation whether to obey or not, no strife in the will, in the act of mastery there was pain. There was self-denial; there was obedience at the expense of tortured feeling. Not by the reluctancy of a sinful sensation, but by the quivering and the anguish of natural feeling when it is trampled upon by lofty will, Jesus suffered, being tempted. His soul was tempted.
II. The Redeemer’s Priesthood.—By Priesthood is meant that office by which He is the medium of union between man and God. The capacity for this has been indelibly engraven on His nature by His experience here. All this capacity is based on His sympathy. We are scarcely aware how much the sum of human happiness in the world is indebted to this one feeling—sympathy. Of this sympathy Christ, in its fulness, was susceptible. The sympathy of Christ was not merely love of men in masses; He had also discriminating, special sympathy with individuals. The priestly powers conveyed by this faculty of sympathising are two:
1. The power of mercy.
2. The power of having grace to help. There are two who are unfit for showing mercy: he who has never been tried; and he who, having been tempted, has fallen under temptation. The qualification in the text, “without sin,” is very remarkable; for it is the one we least should think of. Unthinkingly we should say that to have erred would make a man lenient; but it is not so. He alone is fit for showing manly mercy who has, like His Master, felt the power of temptation in its might, and come scathless through the trial. We must not make too much of sympathy as mere feeling. Feeling with Christ led to this, “He went about doing good.” Sympathy with Him was this, “Grace to help in time of need.” The sympathy of the Divine-human! He knows what strength is needed.
In conclusion, draw two inferences:
1. He who would sympathise must be content to be tried and tempted; he must be content to pay the price of the costly education. But it is being tempted in all points, yet without sin, that makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of a mere sentimental tenderness.
2. It is this same human sympathy which qualifies Christ for judgment. The Father hath committed all judgment to Him, because He is the Son of man. The sympathy of Christ extends to the frailties of human nature, not to its hardened guilt; He is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”—F. W. Robertson.
Hebrews 4:16. Boldness at the Throne of Grace.—The throne of grace is the reality figured in the mercy-seat, or propitiatory, or cover of the Ark, that was in the Holy of Holies. As the high priest in the old dispensation went in once a year with the incense and the blood, and brought blessings for the people from that throne of grace, so Jesus, as the great High Priest of the race, went into the spiritual Holy of Holies, and gained blessings for us from the “throne of grace.” Only there is this distinction: the old priest came out; Christ, our Priest, stays in,—the veil is never closed behind Him, and we can go in; the way is open for us to go and ask for blessings, and we can go boldly because He is there, to be the ground of our acceptance, and to plead for us.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hebrews 4:15. The Help of our Lord’s Human Experiences.—They tell us that in some trackless lands, when one friend passes through the pathless forests, he breaks a twig ever and anon as he goes, that those who come after may see the traces of his having been there, and may know that they are not out of the road. Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night, and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed, and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and that there are lingering fragrances and hidden strengths in the remembrance, “in all points tempted as we are,” bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.—A. Maclaren, D.D.