Hebrews 5 (Part 1) :1-10 • Obedience Through Suffering

all right we're in hebrews chapter five open your bibles there please we're going to continue our study in hebrews we are starting this chapter uh today we're going to read the first 10 verses of chapter 5 so follow along in your bible as i read these it goes like this for every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to god to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is beset with weakness because of this he is

obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people and no one takes this honor for himself but only when called by god just as aaron was so also christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest but was appointed by him who said to him you are my son today i have begotten you and he also excuse me and he says also in another place you are a priest forever after the order of melchizedek in the days of his flesh jesus offered up prayers and supplications

with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverence although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him being designated by god a high priest after the order of melchizedek stop there please let's pray heavenly father as we dig into these first 10 verses of chapter 5 we pray for the ministry of your holy spirit to help us because these are some challenging verses to

understand but we confess that our understanding is from you and so lord we just want to be open today to hear your voice to receive from you today all that you desire to speak to us and to be able to apply lord this word to our lives we look to you father as the teacher in this place we are the learners who sit at your feet fill us up we pray in jesus name amen amen amen okay we're going to be talking here as we see in these verses about the priesthood um but i i

always feel like i kind of have to qualify that a little bit as we get into it because the priesthood has kind of been messed with um in people's understandings particularly those of you who may have come out of a roman catholic background and i know that several of you have perhaps you were taught about the priesthood in a particular way priests were the way roman catholicism kind of framed them and and that's has been your understanding largely um and then you got groups you know like you know the mormons and so forth that have

a completely different slant on priests and the priesthood and and it's all gotten pretty muddy to be completely honest with you over the years and so we find sometimes as we're going through the scripture we have to do a little weeding in the garden to to to bring some clarity to to some of this you need to understand that when the the author of this letter speaks of the priesthood he's of course going to relate that priesthood which is revealed for us in the old testament under the mosaic covenant he's going to liken it to

the priesthood of jesus in fact that's the point of what he's writing about was so that we would see the clarity of who jesus is as our high priest and so forth and how we would be able to understand that new relationship of jesus christ to that role his role as priest as gentiles the whole priest thing is is you know we don't think as much about priests the fact of the matter is as gentile christians we know from the bible that we're all priests the bible literally refers to us as the priesthood of god

uh it's not kind of this special elite group that's gone through this special training we're all priests in a very specific sense of the word but that's not what's in view right here in the first part of hebrews 5. we're talking about the priesthood of jesus and that's key for our understanding okay in judaism of course this is this was a very important argument remember as i've said many times the author of this letter is writing to jews jewish christians and so he's relating things to them in such a way that they're going to be

able to really grasp this understanding because you know in judaism uh the role of the priest was critical so critical that without him you're kind of lost the priest was huge because you see if you're going to approach god you do it through the priest you want to bring a gift for god wonderful you give that gift to god it might be a grain offering might be a drink offering whatever you got you go through the priest you give the priest that offering he does the offering on your behalf you have a sin issue you

need to make a sacrifice related to some sin you committed you go through the priest you bring the proper sacrificial animal the priest is the one that sacrifices that animal sprinkles the blood for you right and then on the day of atonement when was kind of the general cleansing of the nation of israel you didn't go before the lord the high priest went before the lord he went into the holy of holies he sprinkled the blood of the sacrificial animal on the mercy seat of god you didn't you received the benefit but he was your

intermediary he was the one who you can see this is pretty huge right if your relationship with god is predicated upon this person who stands here in between you and god than that i don't want that person to go anywhere i that person is pretty important to me so as the author is talking about this and he's arguing for the importance of the priesthood he's of course connecting that to the new covenant and under the new covenant the fact that jesus is now our high priest and that's what he's going to talk about here so

he begins in these first four verses of the chapter to kind of outline the the the requirements of the high priest under the mosaic covenant to relate that to jesus remember it doesn't it doesn't perfectly relate because jesus kind of breaks the rules related to the the high priesthood uh as it existed under the mosaic covenant so but we'll see what the connections are verse one he says for every high piece chosen from among men and of course they had to be chosen from among men you can't have an angel standing in for you because

he can't represent you he's not one of you that's why the high priest had to be a man and of course our high priest under the new covenant also had to be incarnate as a man so that he could stand in for you he says every high priest chosen from among men is appointed that's a key word it can also be translated ordained some of your bibles if you have a different translation actually use the word ordained he is ordained to act he says on behalf of men in relation to god and this is of

course that key role that we've already been talking about that that fact that the high priest stands in a place where he comes to god on your behalf and at the end of verse 1 he mentions the other key role of the high priest and that is to offer gifts and sacrifices we've already kind of inferred what those are a gift is anything you offer to the lord like a grain offering or a drink offering or something like that a fellowship offering but a sacrifice is different in that it is a blood offering that is

offered for sins for sins committed all right so it is through him to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins and then verse two goes on with another important requirement it says he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is beset with weakness and this is this is one of those interesting connections to the the high priesthood under the mosaic law to jesus and we'll talk about what that connection is but it says that under the mosaic law he was a man who could easily empathize with the the the needs that the

people brought when they'd come with a sin offering you know he didn't look down on people and go how could you do you know that's the worst thing we could ever say to somebody when they confess a sin to us however horrific that sin may be to say to them how could you what we ought to say to people is i know how you could because i get it i'm beset with the same weaknesses i'm beset with the same issues and problems right and so the high priest had this instant empathy with the people that

he was going before god to represent because he was one of them right now that's the interesting connection to jesus jesus also has empathy because he knows what we go through but there's one big notable difference between jesus and the high priest of the mosaic covenant they were sinners just like the people they represented jesus who can understand everything you've gone through has never sinned without sin we remember we saw this in the last chapter let's remind ourselves on the screen here from hebrews chapter 4 verse 15 for we do not have a high priest

who is unable to sympathize with our our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet yet and that's that critical component yet without sin he never he never fell to that temptation but that doesn't matter he still understands what's involved and he understands the dynamics of what it is to be drawn and tempted to sin so this this this point that is being made by the author of this letter that the the high priest can sympathize because he understands he gets it that should that should be automatic shouldn't it

it ought to be automatic in the way we deal with people too like i was saying when you're dealing with people when they talk to you about their lives their issues their failures first thing we should say to us i understand maybe i don't understand exactly what you're dealing with from the standpoint of that particular specific but i understand sin real well okay i understand addictions i may not be addicted to the same things that you've been addicted to i understand addictions yeah i get that i know what it is to feel so weak that

i just can't say no i know what that's like and that should be the way that any person responds to another isn't it interesting you know when jesus was dealing with the religious leaders of his day during his public ministry one of the things he constantly called them out about was the fact that they did not empathize with the common people but they actually put themselves up and above those those people thinking that they were somehow more righteous than the common folk you know jesus blew everybody's mind when he said righteousness yeah righteousness is important

but your righteousness must exceed that of the pharisees and the scribes people must have absolutely just said oh good grief how in the world but you know that whole that whole thing that they had in their mind that they were superior to other people it was it was just fiction but they lost sight of empathy which the high priest had to have but many of them lost sight of it remember jesus even went to the trouble of telling a whole parable about that the loss of empathy the loss of understanding i'll put it up on

the screen here from luke chapter 18. it says he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt two men went up into the temple to pray one a pharisee and the other a tax collector the pharisee standing by himself prayed thus god i thank you that i'm not like that other scumbag over there you know those other men extortioners unjust adulterers or even like this scuzzy tax collector i fast twice a week i give times of all that i get look what it goes on

to say but the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but he beat on his breast saying oh god be merciful to me a sinner jesus says i tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled but the one who humbles himself will be exalted see that's the attitude jesus knew was going on among the religious leaders of israel they lost it they lost sight of the fact that they were sinners just like everybody else we

can't do that and and it is and because you know jesus doesn't lose sight of what you and i go through as he fulfills his high priestly ministry on our behalf so the high priest had to be a human being who understood human failure look at verse 3 in your bible look with me there it says because of this and the this there refers to his humanity he the the priest the high priest is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people and again that's that reminder

for the high priest that he's just one of the folk because when he'd go into the holy of holies on the day of atonement he couldn't go in on behalf of the people first first he had to take care of his own sin first he had to take the blood of a sacrifice into the holy of holies offer it there and say lord please forgive me and then he'd leave the holy of holies get the blood of this sacrifice that was made for the nation then he was able to go in to the holy of

holies a second time on that day and make atonement for the nation of israel but only after he had cleansed his own sin you see once again you've got that reminder that that that ability to to empathize with the sinful hearts of others then verse 4 look with me there and no one takes this honor for himself but only when called by god just as aaron was and this is the last requirement for the high priest under uh the law of moses you'll remember that you had to be a descendant of the line of aaron

and what that means is if somebody a jew from the tribe of benjamin or the tribe of simeon or maybe somebody from the tribe of judah even said you know dad i think i'm going to make a career out of the high priesthood his dad would say i'm sorry son you can't well why not you weren't born into the right family line only those descendants of aaron could be priests and ultimately high priest let me show you how it works put it up on the screen here in kind of a little flow chart you got

up at the very top abraham who we consider kind of to be the father of the jews who had a son named isaac right and then isaac had with his wife two boys jacob and esau jacob became the one through whom the covenant went and jacob was later renamed israel by the lord after he after he wrestled with god now jacob then had 12 sons the third of whom was levi i was joking with sue and it took her a while to get it i said his star trek name is three of 12. but see

i know some of you don't get that and that's okay because you don't watch star trek and so forget it it's an inside joke anyway so you've got the the you've got levi and everyone who came from the lineage of levi is considered a levite all right you have to be born as a descendant of levi however splintered off from the levites we have the man aaron and of course you'll remember aaron was a brother of moses aaron was the very first high priest ordained by god and god said that only his sons and their

children and their children after them could be priests and so only the descendants of aaron can function as priests and ultimately potentially become a high priest so you had to be in the family line of levi which means you know it wasn't a career path thing deal choice whatever it was just you were born into it so what's the similarity to jesus well you'll remember that uh jesus wasn't from the tribe of levi he was from the tribe of judah so he breaks the rules as it relates to the priesthood in the new testament or

under the new covenant but if you look with me in verse 5 there is a similarity between the sons of levi and the priesthood of jesus because he says so also christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest but was appointed or again if you will ordained by him who said to him you are my son today i have begotten you you'll remember that's a quote from psalm 2 and we went over it many many times in the previous chapters here in hebrews but he goes on in verse six in your bible

to say as he says also in another place you are a priest forever after the order of melchizedek all right now i need to explain this now he is quoting from psalm 110 and psalm 110 is considered to be a messianic solomon what we mean by that it is related to the messiah in other words it speaks prophetically of the messiah his coming his nature his ministry any psalm that relates to messiah specifically is referred to as a messianic psalm i'll show you a couple of verses from that psalm specifically where it says the lord

says to my lord sit at my right hand until i make your enemies your footstool and then it says the lord has sworn and will not change his mind you speaking of the coming of messiah are a priest forever this is not a temporary role you know the priests under the mosaic law were priests as long as they were alive and the high priest held that position until he died but he says to the to jesus the lord god the father says you are a priest forever after the order of melchizedek and with these words

the author of hebrews begins to explain how jesus qualifies as a high priest under the new covenant you might say well he didn't qualify under the old covenant that's true he didn't but we're not under the old covenant we're under the new covenant remember we in communion as we lifted up the cup jesus said this is the blood of the new covenant it's not the old one and so what he is saying what he the author is saying to us is that 000 years before jesus was incarnate on the earth god spoke through david prophetically

and foretold that messiah would be a priest he would not just be savior but he would be a priest and he would be a priest in the order of melchizedek and you're kind of like wow there's a melchizedek all about well we're going to talk a lot about melchizedek when we get into the seventh chapter of hebrews and i'm going to leave most of it until then but i'll just tell you that melchizedek was a man who was called a priest of the lord most high here's the deal though melchizedek was a man who wasn't

even jewish he was a contemporary of abraham he lived the same time as abraham and so the jews hadn't even you know started at this point essentially abraham is the father of the jews so melchizedek is a priest that obviously wasn't from the tribe of levi the tribe of levi didn't exist so he breaks the rules he broke the rules jesus is a priest forever after the order of one who broke the rules so jesus and god is telling you a thousand years before he's even that christ is born as a human on the earth

that this one is coming and he's going to break the rules because he's going to be a priest in the order of one who broke the rules he was a priest before there was a priesthood how was he how in the world could you have a priest before there's a priesthood i don't know god made him a priest that's all we know we know very little about the man melchizedek some people think that it was a prefiguration not just prefiguration some people think that melchizedek was christ prior to his incarnation i do not i don't

because jesus came after the order of melchizedek if he was also melchizedek he would be after the order of himself which is crazy i mean it no longer makes sense so anyway but that's a small issue we're gonna get into a lot more of that in uh chapter seven but the point that the author is making in bringing up melchizedek is to simply underscore a new priesthood a new priesthood one that doesn't conform to all the requirements of the old covenant but can be seen in some of the types and shadows of the old covenant

in other words jesus is a new high priest god is doing a new thing through jesus making him a high priest verse 7 in your bible in the days of his flesh and that just means in the days of his earthly ministry jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverence although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered now i have to stop you here after these two verses because these are important

for us to understand when it talks about jesus praying with loud cries and tears i'll just tell you that most people refer or relate this to his prayer in the garden of gethsemane i don't know that it was limited to that by any means but the the idea that jesus prayed with loud cries and tears seems to communicate to you and i that he struggled with the whole issue of obedience as it relates to facing the difficulties that came with his ministry and his his calling i mean if you saw somebody who was praying with

loud cries and tears what would you think would you think they're having a good day i mean the people who are having a good day are usually over here and they're talking and they're like laughing and smiling and stuff but we got a room over here that's filled with people you know with loud cries and tears going on and we know that we know and instinctively we know that these people are struggling how does that make you feel does that mess with your mind at all when you think of jesus struggling he struggled he prayed

with loud cries and tears wow it's crazy but it also reminds you and i that he understands our difficulties the difficulties that we face the challenges that that we face in our own struggle for obedience to obey the lord by putting our faith in him we struggle don't we i do i'll just okay true confession time i struggle sometimes to obey the lord by putting my faith in him because i go through things that are painful or hard even tragic and it's it's it the temptation is is huge and then we come to verse eight

which is you know one of the most profoundly challenging verses perhaps in the bible which says although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered and the wording there just kind of catches us and we are we're wondering good grief here we are though faced with the mystery of the incarnation the fact that jesus christ learned obedience through suffering i mean part of us is kind of like how could jesus learn anything let alone obedience but that's what we read here but the fact is and this is important people the fact is

our lord's entrance into the human race by becoming a human being you have to know presented him with experiences that are common to you and me but they would be completely unknown to the god who created all things and has no needs and who is all-powerful who is entirely self-sufficient needs no one and nothing and that god who is perfect in and has no need enters into the human race through jesus christ and suddenly he's exposed to all of these all of this suffering and it says that he learned obedience now what does that mean

because you got to be careful here please understand jesus didn't go from disobedience to obedience that's what we do that's not what he did this passage isn't saying that jesus learned to obey it's telling us that he learned what was involved in obedience he learned what experiences went along with obedience he learned what it is to obey and that brought about a completion in who he was who he is and that's what verse 9 goes on to say look with me in verse nine and being made perfect now don't stumble over the word perfect it

means complete and being made complete in that sense of his understanding right and his his experience of obedience through suffering it says he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him being designated by god a high priest after the order of melchizedek and this this this final section these final couple of verses here of what we're looking at this morning offer some very important insights about suffering in our lives too and that's i think what we need to see here because we know when we read that suffering was used to instruct the

perfect son of god as to obedience we have to kind of ask ourselves well what about me i mean what is what is suffering in my life because i'll be honest with you i don't like suffering you know what i'll be even more honest than that i hate suffering i hate it and i don't think i'm probably alone in that respect but if i'm going to be honest with you i'm probably going to have to admit to you that suffering in my life however much or little i've done has been used by god for good

i wish it weren't so sometimes what i mean is i wish i didn't have to learn that way but you know i've i've seen something as a pastor too i've seen that when people take their suffering and when they offer it up to god when they surrender it to him to his lordship he has this incredible way of using it to transform our lives now that doesn't happen to everybody it happens to those who offer their suffering up to the lord as a sacrifice whatever that suffering may be whatever challenge whatever difficulty you may be

going through right now it may not even be you you may have somebody in your family that's going through a hard season and you're just you're you're struggling and suffering watching them suffer whatever it may be when we as believers take our suffering and offer it to god and surrender it to him that he turns that suffering into a powerful tool to transform our lives and shape us into the image of his son it's crazy let me show you kind of an interesting crosstalk now before i do this suffering is an interesting kind of a

dynamic and we we've talked about this before that it is very common thing for christians to go through suffering and i'm talking about born-again believers to go through suffering and to believe that they are being punished by god that's very common i have to continually remind people you are not being punished by god you may be disciplined the lord maybe could possibly be disciplining you that's what god does in the lives of his children he's not going to punish you and you know why he already punished his son on your behalf that punishment is over

he will discipline you and that discipline can feel very much like punishment but it's not and there are in and it's important we make that that technical distinction between punishment and discipline okay it's called discipline when it comes to believers you with me so let's get the word punishment out of our vocabulary as it relates to what god might be doing in your life agreed now let me show you an interesting kind of cross-section of verses here starting in job chapter 5. job has a little something to say on suffering it says behold blessed is

the one whom god reproves therefore despise not the discipline of the almighty proverbs 5 12 says you say how i hated discipline see that's me and my heart despised reproof proverbs 3 11 my son do not despise the lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof in your life and here's why we get this beautiful passage we have to skip ahead in hebrews to do it but it says the lord disciplines the one he loves he will chastise every son whom he receives and he reminds us here it is for discipline that training that you

have to endure god is treating you as his children he says for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant and we all say amen to that but later he says notice this it yields the fruitful or excuse me the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it and those last words are so key aren't they it yields peaceful fruit of righteousness for everyone no it doesn't for those who've been trained by it right and what that means is you can go through difficulty in life you can go through a

painful experiences in life and you cannot be trained by it have you ever met an old crotchety bitter person who've lived a long time and they they can't say anything except something ugly and the reason is because they've gone through difficult things and they never they didn't either didn't know god or didn't bring it to god and so they became angry and their anger just seized for a while it became bitterness and they became and now they they can't open their mouth without spewing poison toxic poison we've probably all met someone like that it's sad

but for you and for me when we take the difficulties that we've gone through and are going through and we say lord i offer this to you use it in my life to bring about the purpose of your will because you know what other than that it's just a big fat stinker but when i give it to you there's hope in my heart that you're going to use this for some good purpose and you're going to bring about in me a greater reflection of who your son is and that's what i want that's what i

want you know because jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered we also need to learn obedience through our suffering we don't get a pass jesus didn't get a pass we don't get a pass suffering is school some of you are in school right now so be it but i remind you of these things today because it kind of flies in the face of what some are saying there are bible teachers preachers whatever out there who claim that it is never god's plan to teach his children through pain and suffering they they won't necessarily deny

that you can learn through pain and suffering but they'll say but that's not god's plan that's it's not god's will for you that you would learn through difficulty and suffering you should never have to learn that way you should always be able just to read it in the word and learn what you need to learn and then you're done and my response to that is very simple jesus learned obedience by what he suffered that's my response so if you think that i can surpass jesus you've got another thing coming he learned obedience by what he

suffered we never read in the pages of the bible that somehow we are exempt from suffering believe me i wish it was there i really do i mean good grief when in my early christian years i was exposed to the prosperity doctrine and i knew that it was hui right from the beginning but i also wanted it to be true i don't like being sick i don't particularly you know i mean who hasn't dreamt of winning the lottery and all the other things that you know the world kind of offers and and boy you know

if you can if you can squeeze that into the gospel and make it a promise sign me up i'm here i'm here right and i i thought it over carefully you know i did it's like i like this idea it's only one problem it's not in the bible that was a problem so we don't get a past but the problem is we still somehow think that people who are going through suffering are somehow i don't know we just want to say god bless you but in kind of a demeaning sort of a way you know

how they do in the south you know bless his heart basically that means you're an idiot when somebody's going through a time of suffering it's not because you have a weak faith or god despises you it's because we all go through suffering from time to time we're all going through discipline from time to time let me show you what the bible really says about suffering starting in acts chapter 14 i like this out of the niv they preached the good news in that city and they won a large number of disciples then they returned to

lystra iconium and antioch strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith and here's what they would say to people we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of god i know i know that's not the verse you put up in your fridge is it that's not that promise in god's word that you're just going to claim today i'm just going to claim that we have to go through a lot of suffering to enter the kingdom of god yes no it's like i don't want that but it's what the bible

says we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of god so don't look at the hardships you're going through and go what in the world is this some people are like that they're like look at me like pastor paul you need to explain this to me because this is not what i signed up for i get it i get it romans chapter 8 verse 18 we all love this verse for i consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the with the glory that is to be revealed to

us and not just to us but in us i love that verse and i'll tell you why it reminds us that where we have our eyes set that's what's going to be our biggest influence do you know that the vast majority of christians when they suffer what are they looking at they're suffering it's natural when i'm suffering i look at my suffering and i actually become very fixated on it having kind of a myopic view of my suffering and then and and that's the way people come to me too pastor paul i'm suffering can you

see it it's right there so and that's what happens when you fixate on your suffering do you know what paul is doing by the way the apostle paul suffered big time suffered in ways that that we will never suffer eventually church history tells us they took off his head so the man suffered but he didn't sit and look at his suffering what did he have his gaze fixed on see while other people are going my suffering he's going yeah but you know what it didn't compare with that that's what he was doing he had his

eyes this way and so when the topic of suffering came up and it came up in his life a lot he was able to say yeah but you know what it doesn't hold a candle to that doesn't hold a candle to what waits for us in heaven the glory that will be revealed in us but for those who do suffer and i know there are some among us today we refer to that reminder that we saw in last week's study of hebrews chapter 4 that says then us let us then with confidence draw near to

the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace and that word grace in that context means strength to help in time of need i get a lot of emails and contacts from people and they're going through difficult times and they they come to me for advice and counsel and the best counsel that i can give anybody is go to the throne of grace i can't give you what you need i can't give you the mercy and the grace the strength that you need in your time of difficulty but he can in fact

he is sufficient he will suffice he will satisfy you in ways no human being on earth can and and i'm not saying we shouldn't go to other people for prayer for encouragement i don't mind i don't mind offering that kind of encouragement at all and i'm not saying that people shouldn't come to someone and ask but i've stopped believing that somehow i have in paul the answer to their problems because i don't but i know the one who does and i know that he gives an invitation to come with confidence to the throne of grace

where they will find help you will find help at the throne of grace so go to god go to the lord he'll help you he'll see you through amen you