Obedient In Suffering, Part 1 (Hebrews 5:7-8)

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Obedient in Suffering, Part 2 (Hebrews 5:7-8)

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Turn now, please, to Hebrews chapter 5. When you're there, let's bow before the

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Lord in prayer before we begin. Our Father, we do thank you for a high priest who has borne the wrath that we deserve, one who intercedes for us even now, and one who is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to him in faith.

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And we thank you for this salvation which you have wrought by your grace and all for your glory. And it has been for our infinite and eternal good and our infinite and eternal joy.

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And we are grateful for that. We pray that today as we read through your word and give consideration to these aspects of the high priesthood of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, that our hearts may be filled with love and affection for him and that you would focus our mind and attention upon him and what he has done for us.

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And may he be pleased with all that is done and all that is said here today as we study your word.

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Be glorified, we pray, through it and we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Hebrews chapter 5, we're going to read together verses 1 through verse 10.

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For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

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He can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided since he himself also is beset with weaknesses, and because of it he is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins as for the people, so also for himself.

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And no one takes the honor to himself but receives it when he is called by God, even as Aaron was.

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So also Christ did not glorify himself so as to become a high priest, but he who said to him, you are my son, today

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I have begotten you, just as he says also in another passage, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

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In the days of his flesh he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his piety.

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Although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became to all those who obey him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

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So we are here in Hebrews chapter 5 examining the question as to whether or not the Lord Jesus is qualified to serve as our high priest.

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And we're not examining whether he is qualified to serve in our high priest as a priest in the order of Aaron, because if that is where he served, he wasn't qualified to serve there, he wasn't qualified to be a priest in Aaron's priesthood, because in order to be in Aaron's priesthood you had to be a descendant of Aaron, you had to be of the tribe of Levi, and Jesus did not come from the tribe of Levi, nor was he a descendant of Aaron.

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And instead he serves as a high priest in an entirely different order, an eternal order of a different high priesthood, that belonging to Melchizedek, or that typified by Melchizedek back in Genesis chapter 14.

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And in contrasting these two priesthoods, the priesthood of Aaron and the priesthood of Melchizedek, the priesthood that was of the old covenant and then the priesthood in which

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Jesus serves, in contrasting those two we've noticed that there are a number of differences between these.

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And the point of the author of Hebrews is to show that Jesus in functioning as a high priest is greater than Aaron.

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He has done a greater work, the priesthood that he occupies is a greater priesthood than Aaron's, he didn't just fulfill

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Aaron's priesthood, he didn't complete it, he didn't serve in that priesthood, he is an entirely different priest, a better priest of a better priesthood, an eternal priesthood, and everything about it is better.

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And there are a number of aspects of the Aaronic priesthood, Aaron's priesthood, which were good. Just because it was temporary and just because it was passing away doesn't mean that it wasn't in many ways good.

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It was a good priesthood and there are a number of elements of it that are good. And in contrasting the two priesthoods, what we see is in all of the ways in which

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Aaron's priesthood was good, Jesus in his Melchizedekian priesthood does the same thing. His priesthood has all the good elements, but all the bad elements, or we shouldn't say bad because they're not bad in a moral sense, but all of the inadequacies of the

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Aaronic priesthood do not carry over into Jesus' priesthood. So he is better. All of the good things are there in Jesus' priesthood and all of the inadequacies are taken care of in Jesus' priesthood.

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Let me give you some examples. Here are the good things about the priesthood of Aaron. And they're in chapter 5, verses 1 to 4.

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We looked at a few of them. A divine appointment. A priest in Aaron's priesthood had to be divinely appointed.

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And we saw last week that this is exactly what the Father did for Jesus in Psalm 2 and in Psalm 110, those promises in the

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Old Testament that the King, the Messiah of Israel that would come from David's line would be both a priest and a king, predicted in the

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Old Testament, anticipated, and it is the Father who appointed Christ the Son as a high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

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We also saw another good aspect of the Aaronic priesthood was that they offered sacrifices for people. That was a good and holy and noble thing.

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Also that he was able to sympathize, those priests in that priesthood were able to sympathize and be compassionate and deal gently with men because they shared the same and they were taken from among men and they represented men before God.

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All of those were good elements of what Aaron did. And everything about his priesthood in all of those terms, it was all good.

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It was appointed by God, designed by God in order to point forward to, prophetically, the priesthood of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. But Aaron's priesthood had a number of inadequacies. For instance, there were multiple priests in Aaron's priesthood.

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Multiple priests. Aaron was not the first and the last and the only priest to serve in his priesthood. A priest would serve for a number of years and then he would be replaced, just like that.

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And he would serve and hand that off to somebody else who would serve and do the same thing that the previous priest had done.

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And every priest knew that he was only one in a long line of men who would do that work and that having served to the fullest of his abilities to the end of his life or his tenure as a high priest, that he would pass on that work to somebody else who would pick it up and continue to do it.

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Multiple priests. Not one high priest, but multiple priests in Aaron's priesthood. Also multiple sacrifices. Day after day, month after month, year after year, for 1 ,600 years, animals were sacrificed under the

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Aaronic priesthood. That is a lot of sacrifice. That is a lot of bloodletting, is it not?

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Every day for 1 ,600 years. And all of those sacrifices, as the multitudes of them all pointed forward to some other sacrifice.

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And every priest knew that every time he offered a sacrifice, it wasn't the last one. No priest ever went to work that day thinking to himself,

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I wonder if today's sacrifice will finally atone for sin. I wonder if today's sacrifice will be enough. No priest ever thought that way.

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He knew, I'm going to do this today, and I'm going to do this tomorrow, and I'm going to do this next week, and I'm going to do this next year. I'm going to do this until I pass away.

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Somebody else is going to take over, and they're going to do it until they pass away. And this is going to go on for a long, long time. Multiple priests, multiple sacrifices, and sinful priests in Aaron's priesthood.

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They were sinners taken from among men. They were just like you and I, sinners, sons of Adam, in need of atonement.

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In fact, before they could even be appointed to the office of a high priest, a sacrifice had to be made in order to ordain them to that office.

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And then having been ordained to that office, before they could offer sacrifices for others, they had to offer a sacrifice for their own sins, because they were sinners.

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And then having offered a sacrifice for their own sins, just like all of the rest of the children of Israel, then they could offer a sacrifice on behalf of others.

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That is inadequacy. And the fact that Aaron's priesthood was intended to be temporary, it was never intended to be eternal.

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It went on for 1600 years. That may feel like an eternity, but it wasn't. It wasn't intended to be a permanent priesthood.

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It was intended to be a temporary priesthood, only to point forward to something that would fill in for all of these inadequacies.

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And then in the New Testament, we get to the book of Hebrews, and we see that Jesus's priesthood that He occupies has all of the good aspects of Aaron's priesthood, divinely appointed, sympathetic toward men, taken from among men, able to deal gently with men, but has none of the inadequacies of Aaron's priesthood.

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Not multiple sacrifices, but one sacrifice. For all time, one sacrifice.

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And not multiple priests. We only have one high priest who has ever served on our behalf. One. For 2 ,000 years,

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He has done this, and He has interceded for us. And we don't have sinful and wicked high priests in the Melchizedekian priesthood.

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Instead, we have a high priest who is the pure, sinless, spotless, perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

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And the priesthood of Jesus is not a temporary priesthood, it is an eternal priest. He is appointed a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

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Now, all of that just to sort of refresh where we're at and remind you of where we have been. And now we come to chapter 5 verse 7, and we see that this is one of the good features of the

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Lord Jesus Christ is His ability is in His priesthood to sympathize and to deal gently with us.

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Under Aaron's priesthood in the Old Covenant, the priests were able to sympathize with the people because they had the same sinful proclivities, the same sinful nature, the same sinful tendencies.

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They had the same weaknesses of humanity, which weaknesses often end up tending toward our own opportunities for sinfulness in our lives.

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The Old Testament priests had that. Jesus shares the frailties of humanity without sharing any of the sinfulness of humanity.

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And though He does not know sin in the way that we would know sin, He is able to sympathize with us. And we see this back in chapter 2, the author of Hebrews says

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He was a merciful and faithful high priest. And then in chapter 4, able to sympathize with us. And then we get into chapter 5 verse 2, and we find out that a high priest needed to be one who could deal gently and compassionately with those whom

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He represented. And now the author is making the case that if it is required of a priest that they be appointed by God, Jesus had that,

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Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 that we looked at last week. And now we come to verse 7. Is He able to deal gently and sympathetically with us?

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Is He able to know our trials, our tribulations, and our suffering? And the answer to that is an unequivocal yes, because He suffered, verse 7.

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He learned obedience in verse 8. So is our Savior able to sympathize with us and feel our pain and to know our pain?

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And the answer to that is yes, because He suffered this affliction. So the author of Hebrews now focuses in on the suffering of our

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Lord described in verses 7 and 8, and I want you to read them with me. In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications, with loud crying and tears to the one able to save Him from death.

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And He was heard because of His piety. So He is able to deal gently with us because of His suffering in verse 7.

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And then look at this very curious and odd statement in verse 8. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which

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He suffered. He learned obedience. When I think of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of His majesty and His glory of the divine

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Son, I do not think of one who learned obedience. That's kind of odd, isn't it? Do you think of Jesus as one who had to learn obedience?

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And if you think that is curious, look at verse 9, having been made perfect. Wait a second, wasn't He born perfect? In what sense was the

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Lord made perfect? He learned obedience and was made perfect. He became to all those who trust in Him the hope of eternal salvation.

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That's in verse 9. He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation. So today we're not going to look at what it means that Jesus was made perfect or that He learned obedience.

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Those are two very significant and important aspects of His high priesthood. Today we're just looking at the fact that He can sympathize with us because He suffered.

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And that is what verse 7 is all about. Verse 7, in the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save Him from death.

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And He was heard because of His piety. Verse 7 describes the suffering of our Lord. And when the author says it was in the days of His flesh,

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He's not using flesh in a moral or ethical sense. And we've seen this before. He's not using flesh as in contrasted with the

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Spirit. We sometimes use the word flesh that way. And it can mean that in a moral or ethical sense, this remnant of the sinful fallen nature that we have from Adam.

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That's not how He's using the word flesh here. He's speaking of in the days of the flesh of the Lord Jesus, in the days of His humanity, while He walked here and He is still man,

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He has glorified humanity. But in the days of His earthly sojourn, we may say, while He walked among us and dwelt among us,

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He's using flesh in the same way that John does in John chapter 1, verse 14, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

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He took upon Himself humanity. Deity was united with humanity in that one person of Christ. And He dwelt and walked among us.

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In the days of that sojourn with us in this fallen world, He experienced both prayers or He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save Him.

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Now, when you read that phrase, prayer, supplication, loud crying and tears, what incident pops into your mind?

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What incident in the life of the Lord Jesus pops into your mind? Gethsemane? That's probably what you would think, wouldn't it?

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And I'm not setting you up here with some sort of a trick question. He's going to get us to all agree to Gethsemane and then drop the hammer on us.

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No, it's not Gethsemane. It's not what I'm doing. That is probably the most likely thing that pops into your head when you read that is certainly what

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I thought of as Gethsemane. Prayer and supplication, loud crying and tears describing the anguish of the

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Lord Jesus. And I do think that Gethsemane is probably in view of the author here. After Jesus left the upper room with His disciples, we read in the

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Gospels that He left the city of Jerusalem and headed eastward toward the Mount of Olives, crossed the Kidron Valley and went to the base of the

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Mount of Olives where there was a garden. And He stayed there with His disciples on occasion. And do you remember on the night that He was betrayed,

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Judas had already left and was gone to gather his forces to come and arrest Jesus in the garden.

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And He was there with His disciples and He left some of them at the perimeter of the garden. And He went further into the garden with Peter, James and John and said to them, watch and pray.

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And then He went even further in and He prayed. And the Gospels revealed that He had this moment, this crisis of anguish of soul when

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He prayed out to the Father, my Father, if it's possible that this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as you will.

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And you read this in Matthew chapter 26, Mark 14 and Luke 22. And all three of those Gospels described the agony of the

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Lord on that night while Judas and the mob were on their way out to arrest Him.

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And that description certainly fits Gethsemane. And the description here in Hebrews chapter 5 certainly fits

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Gethsemane. But I would suggest to you that we ought not to limit it to Gethsemane. Though it would fit

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Gethsemane, I don't think that it is only Gethsemane that the author has in mind. And why would I say that? Because he says in the days plural of His flesh,

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He offered this up. Meaning that I don't think that if the author had in mind one incident, one location, one hour or hour and a half on the night before He was crucified, that he would use that phrase in the days describing the days of His sojourning, the days of His life in His flesh.

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I don't think the author has in mind just one incident. I don't believe that Gethsemane was an anomaly in the life of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, but probably more like something of the zenith, the climax, the pinnacle of a life that was lived of prayer and supplication and loud crying and tears.

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I think this is something that characterized the entire life of the Lord Jesus. Though this description would not be limited to Gethsemane, I think that is what he has in view primarily, but I think we need to consider this in terms of the entire life of the

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Lord Jesus Christ being characterized by prayer and supplication and loud crying and tears.

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I think it is Gethsemane that he has in view because he uses the term offered. He offered up both prayers and supplications.

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That's the word used back in chapter 5. I think it's verse 2 to describe that sacrificial offering of gifts.

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So he's describing it using sacrificial language. I think that Gethsemane is in view that night that he did this before he offered his sacrifice.

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He also uses the phrase, one able to save him from death. The prayers and tears that are mentioned here are in connection with praying to one able to save him from death.

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So it sounds like it is describing a prayer offered to one under the imminent cloud of a coming and soon to be death.

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So I think that it is describing Gethsemane, but I think it is fair to say that this was characteristic of the entire life of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We know of one other time in Scripture that I could think of, and maybe you can think of another, but other than Gethsemane, I know of one other time in the life of the

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Lord Jesus where we read of him crying. And that was in connection with Lazarus and the death of Lazarus in John chapter 11.

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But how difficult do you think it would be for the Holy One to live in this world and to witness all of the death and destruction and havoc that sin has caused in his creation?

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How difficult do you think that would be? We ought not to think of the Lord Jesus Christ as an unemotional, stoic character who went through his life unaffected by the reality of sin around him and completely unemotional in the face of it, only to have these two anomalies,

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John chapter 11 where he cried at the tomb of Lazarus, he wept, and the other anomaly in Gethsemane where he cried.

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I don't think that. I think that the description in Hebrews is a description of the general tenor of the life of our

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Lord. Prayer, supplication, crying, tears, loud crying.

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Remember the prophecy back in Isaiah chapter 53, verse 3, he was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

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Now see, that's not a phrase that you would use to describe somebody who cried twice in their life, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

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No, that's a phrase that you would use to describe somebody who is a man of sorrows, not a man of entertainment, not a man of flippancy and lightheartedness, not a man of superficial and shallow emotions, not a man who went skipping through life and just happened to run into the

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Roman powers at the end of it and die a victim of somebody's cruel designs, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, not a stranger to grief, acquainted with grief.

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If you are somebody who has only cried twice in your life, nobody would ever describe you as a man of sorrows, but they would describe you as a man of sorrows if your life was characterized by a grieving and a sorrow over the reality and the gravity of sin and what it has done in this life.

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During the days of his flesh, in the days of his sojourn, he offered up prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears.

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Now that is not to suggest, I think we have to be careful at this point, that we don't think of the Lord Jesus Christ in either of these two extremes, either as an unemotional, stoic individual who was unaffected by everything around Him, or as the type of man who wore his emotions on his sleeve, and anytime anybody ever gave him a compliment or said anything to him, he would just burst forth in emotion and crying and taking his robe and wiping his tears and needing something to blow his nose.

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That was not the Lord Jesus either. I think the Lord Jesus was a man of perfect emotion, and yet He is called a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, but He is a man of perfect emotion.

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I don't think ever a wasted tear, I don't think ever a wasted sorrow, but a man who was acquainted with sorrow.

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So somewhere in between there is this balance. Jesus is not an effeminate individual who is always crying and wore his emotions on his sleeve.

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He is a perfect man in the sense that He is not that, nor is He a stoic individual that is unaffected by emotion around Him.

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A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief who offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears.

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There's a growing intensity in those four words. Prayer is just the word that's used of a request that you would make to God.

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Then the word supplication adds a degree of urgency and intensity to it. Prayers is just the request.

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A supplication is a request that is offered with a sense of urgency and desire. It is a prayer that is offered with a sense of passion.

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This is something that I need. And interesting, the word that is used here for supplication, it was used in ancient times of one who was a supplicant.

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One who would come, and this is actually how it is used in ancient literature, of one who would come and seek the protection of somebody greater than them.

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So a supplicant was one, it's actually used in ancient literature, of a man who would bring an olive branch in his hand, one who was in a position of danger, and he would come with an olive branch in his hand and supplicate or ask for the protection of one greater than him, placing himself under the authority of that individual and saying, protect me.

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That describes perfectly the emotions of the Lord Jesus Christ and his stress and his prayers in Gethsemane on the night before he was crucified.

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Prayer and supplication with loud crying and tears. Loud crying, of course, you're familiar with that.

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I'm not going to demonstrate it for you, but it is the idea of just this loud cry of anguish. I can sense that that's exactly, or I can imagine that that's exactly what the

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Lord would experience in Gethsemane, facing what he was ahead of him, the loud crying and the tears being the expression of that.

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This perfectly describes a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, does it not? And again,

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Gethsemane not being the anomaly, Gethsemane being indicative of probably what much of the life of the

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Lord Jesus Christ was like. Loud crying and tears, a man of sorrows well acquainted with grief.

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And he prayed, it says, to the one able to save him. Was the Lord, in verse 7, was the

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Lord praying that he would be saved from death, from dying? It says that he prayed to the one able to save him and he was heard because of his piety.

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Was the Lord Jesus on the night of Gethsemane praying to the father that the father would keep him from death?

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And if he was praying to the father for the father to keep him from death, and yet he died, in what sense was he heard because of his piety?

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Some have suggested that the father heard the prayer that he would be kept from death and the father said no.

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And therefore, the prayer was in a technical sense heard, but it was not answered. But that doesn't seem to satisfy the language that the author is using here.

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The language seems to suggest that he prayed to the one able to save him and yet he was heard, and he was heard because of his piety, and yet the

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Lord Jesus Christ died. So if he was heard, why did he die? And if he died, was he really and truly heard because of his piety when he prayed to the one able to save him from death?

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I think that the answer to that dilemma is resting us thinking carefully about what it is that the

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Lord Jesus Christ prayed on the night before he was crucified. What was it that he prayed? Did he pray that the father would keep him from dying?

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If he did, then this was a prayer that the Lord Jesus offered that was outside of the will of the father and a prayer that remained unanswered because he did certainly die.

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He tasted death for us. Through death, he defeated him who had the power of death. So if he was praying to be kept from death and the

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Lord said no, then the father was saying no to a perfect prayer offered outside of the will of God by the son.

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Is it even possible for the son to offer a prayer that is outside of the father's will? But is that what he prayed on the night that he was crucified, before he was crucified?

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No, he prayed in anguish of soul, sweating drops of blood, he prayed that if there were any other way for the redemption of God's chosen people to be accomplished and effected, that that way would be the way that he would take and not the cross, not bearing the wrath of the father for them.

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And he prayed this in accordance with the will of the father, not my will, but yours be done.

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So that is actually what he prayed. If Jesus was trying to avoid the cross, he was the most miserable of failures.

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But every indication of scripture is that he was not trying to avoid the cross. He was never trying to avoid death.

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He knew when he came, this is what he came to do, to give his life as a ransom for many. He predicted his own death, burial, and resurrection on numerous occasions in the gospels.

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He set his face to Jerusalem, and the gospel of John chapter 10, Jesus said, nobody takes my life from me.

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I lay it down in my own accord. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again. This command I have received from my father.

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And then he said, let's go up to Jerusalem. And Jesus, and all the disciples knew that Jesus was a hated and hunted man, and that going to Jerusalem would certainly result in his death.

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And yet he went anyway. And on the night that he was betrayed, he sat there at the table, and knew who his betrayer was, and didn't do anything to stop him, or to identify him to the other disciples, to cause the disciples to stop him.

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And in fact, he told him, go and do what you do, and do it quickly. And Judas left, and Jesus knew exactly where Judas was going, and Jesus knew exactly where Judas would meet him, and Jesus went to the place where he knew

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Judas would come, because that was the place that was arranged, and the disciples met there. And Jesus knew before Judas even left the city, that a crowd was on its way out to get him.

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He did nothing to avoid death. So I have a hard time imagining that on the night before he was crucified, when he lived his entire life, heading toward Jerusalem for that purpose, to die on a cross, that suddenly he got weak in the knees, and decided that he was scared, and trying to do everything he could to avoid death.

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He wasn't at all. What he was praying for was that if there's any other way for this salvation to be accomplished, that that would happen.

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And he submitted himself to the will of the Father, and gladly, not as a victim, but as a volunteer, gave up his life for his bride, the church.

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That is the glory of that evening. Now, in what sense was he heard? What was he praying for?

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He wasn't praying to avoid death. That's not what he was praying. He was praying that the will of the Father was done, and that prayer was heard.

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But was he praying, and did he ask to avoid death, and in what sense was he heard? Let me say it this way.

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Jesus was not praying that he would not taste death, and Jesus was not praying that he would be saved from dying.

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He was praying that he would be saved from death. And I think that it's appropriate to see the

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Lord as asking the Father, and praying at some point, that the Father, who was able to save him from death, would save him from death.

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But what do we mean from death? Was Jesus saved from death?

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Was he saved from death? I'm not asking if he was saved from dying. Was he saved from death?

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He was saved from death. Yeah. And once I say it like that, you kind of go, okay, oh yeah, there's the resurrection, right?

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Now, that phrase, that preposition from, is the Greek preposition ek. It's used 890 times in the

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New Testament. It's translated various ways. The number one most common way that it is translated is as from, as it is here.

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The second most common way of translating it is as of. The third most common way of translating it is translated this way 100 times in the

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New Testament out of the 890 times that it's used, is out of, out of.

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So 100 times that it is translated in the New Testament is translated out of death, or out of. And it's used of the bread that came out of heaven.

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It's used of pulling the speck out of your eye. It's used of the demon -possessed man coming out of the caves.

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It is used of people coming out of a city. It's the same preposition. And scholars suggested that it's better probably to translate it here out of instead of from, in which case we would read, in the days of his flesh, he offered up prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him out of death.

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Did the Father save him out of death? Yes, he was heard because of his piety.

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So the night that our Lord was betrayed, he was praying and did pray with great prayer and supplication and loud crying and tears to the one that he knew was able to rescue him out of the state of death, and that prayer was heard.

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And I think this is a reference to the resurrection. The Lord Jesus knew that he could face death because he knew it was the design of the

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Father from Psalm 16 and Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Those were the predictions and the prophecies.

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It was the design intention of the Father to raise the Son to newness of life. And he knew that the

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Father would save him and deliver him out of death, not keep him from dying, but having died to deliver him out of the state of death.

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And I think that is probably the best way of understanding it here. And he was heard because of his piety. The word piety is only used twice in the

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New Testament, both times in the book of Hebrews, once it's used here, and once it's used back in Hebrews 12, verse 28, where we read this.

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Therefore, since we have received a kingdom, which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe.

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Reverence is the word. So here he is. He is heard because of his translated piety.

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In other translations, it's translated reverence. He is heard because of his reverence. And that word only used twice in all of the

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New Testament. That word describes a submissive humility, a bowing down beneath the will of another.

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It describes one who humbly submits his interests to the interests of another, that reverence and awe, that submissive gentleness of spirit, and a reverential submission.

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That's what it describes. And the two times that it is used, it is used once of the Lord Jesus Christ here.

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And interestingly, it describes His sacrifice and His service. And the second time it is used, it is used of us, that we are to have that kind of reverential awe.

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Only used twice in the New Testament, once to describe Jesus, once to describe us. And we are called in chapter 12 to evidence and to duplicate the same spirit of gentleness, reverence, and submission that the

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Lord Jesus Christ has. It is to describe, since it is to describe Jesus' sacrifice, it is also to describe our sacrifice, which

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I think is what Paul has in mind in Philippians chapter 2, when he says, have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who had that exalted position and laid that aside so that He could come and be born as a man and to suffer and die and humble

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Himself to the point of death on a cross. And God then has highly exalted Him. And Paul calls us at the beginning of that passage, which we read at the beginning of our service, to have the same attitude, the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.

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So we are to have this type of reverential submissive attitude. And so nobody took

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Jesus' life from Him. He laid it down in His own accord. And what described Him is this reverential submission to the will of the

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Father. And because of that, the Lord heard Him and delivered Him out of death, out of the state of death.

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So what does this mean for us? Let me offer you three things as we wrap this up. These are three truths that I think would be an encouragement to us and obviously to the original authors, or to the original hearers of the letter.

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Number one, our Lord Jesus Christ knows our plight. He knows the frailties and the tragedies of human existence and the human condition.

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We have one who is a high priest who knows what it is to suffer the affliction of the human condition.

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And I think it is good for us to reflect upon this. And I think that the more we reflect upon this, the more of encouragement it will be to us.

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If I err in my thinking and my meditating upon the Lord Jesus Christ, I err in this way, that when

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I think of the Lord, I do not tend to think of Him in terms of His humanity and His suffering and His affliction and what it is for Him to be sympathetic with me.

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I err on the side of considering the Lord Jesus Christ as the divine Son, the perfect Son, the exalted

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One, ascended, sitting at the right hand of the Father, waiting to come back and destroy His enemies and institute a kingdom of righteousness and to deliver

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His people and to rule and to reign as one who sits now enthroned in yonder heaven. That is how

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I tend to think of the Lord Jesus Christ. I tend to err on the side of not really considering His humanity and His sufferings and His acquaintedness as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.

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I tend to think of Him in an exalted position, not as one who can sympathize with me. And I think we need to spend more time, or at least

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I can speak for myself in this, more time considering the Lord Jesus Christ and His understanding of our afflicted condition.

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The author of Hebrews, without taking anything away from the glory of the majesty of the divine

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Son, reminds us that He who sits at the Father's right hand, who is waiting for the nations to be given to Him as His inheritance, who's coming back to rule and to reign and to tread underneath His feet the enemies of the

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Father, like a winepress treading out the grapes, that one is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

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He knows the tragedy and affliction of the human condition, and I would suggest He knows it more intimately and more thoroughly than you and I do.

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I tend to forget that, forget that we have a benevolent, gracious Savior who sits on a throne of grace, ready to dispense

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His graces to His people just for the asking. I tend to err on the other side of that.

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And I think the more we consider the suffering, and I'm not just talking about Good Friday and Easter Sunday, which we tend to do then, but if we thought about this throughout the course of the year, we have a high priest who knows our condition better than we do.

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He has suffered at worse and worse plights than we have, and He's not aloof to it. This is the second thing.

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He's not aloof to it. It's one thing to know what somebody is going through, and it's another thing to know what they're going through and have sympathy and compassion for them.

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You understand the difference between those two things? If you have had something horrible happen to you where you've dropped a bowling ball on your foot and smashed your toe and end up losing the toenail and something horrible like that happens, you feel that pain, you know it, you experience it, right?

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And then your kid steps up and goes to bowl and they drop the bowling ball and it crushes their big toe and they're crying and it turns purple immediately and you know they're going to lose their toenail.

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And your child, you have sympathy for them, you know what it is because you've experienced it. You've had that happen to you yourself, right?

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You might even my bowling ball was heavier than your bowling ball and it landed more squarely on my toe than it ever did on yours.

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And so not only do I know what you're going through, but I know it better than you are experiencing it. And my heart, you know,

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I got tears in my eyes for you and I feel the sympathy and I feel the compassion. That's one response. But then if you step up with a bowling ball and you're bowling in the same bowling alley as Nancy Pelosi and she drops a bowling ball on her foot, you might know exactly what she is going through, but do you really have the compassion and the sympathy in your heart?

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And do you really shed a tear for such a one? Would you really do that? No, there is a difference between knowing what somebody is going through and knowing what they are going through and feeling deeply the sense of sympathy and compassion, not remaining aloof to it.

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Our Lord is not aloof to this, to our suffering and our affliction and everything that we endure, he knows it and he knows it well.

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He knows it better than we do. And if you're tempted to think to yourself, well, if he really knows my affliction, why doesn't he make it stop?

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Why doesn't he rescue me out of it? If he really is sympathetic to me, it sure seems that he allows us to go through a whole lot.

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I would suggest a couple of things to you. First, I think it is safe to say that you and I have no idea what our life would look like if we didn't have a high priest who was sympathetic, interceding at the

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Father's right hand for us even now. If we got what we deserve and we did not have a sympathetic high priest, you and I have no idea what our life would look like.

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The horrors that we would know and the experiences we would have, all we know is what he has allowed us to endure, what he has allowed to come to us, what he has even sent of our afflictions to accomplish his purposes.

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But what we do not know is how much he has preserved us from. And second, I don't think there is anything that we have ever endured that could compare with what he has endured.

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Greater opposition, greater hostility, greater hatred from the world, betrayals that are worse than any betrayal you have ever experienced.

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The pain that he experienced is greater than any pain you have ever experienced. The affliction associated with suffering the

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Father's wrath on our behalf is something that we cannot even know. I have never in my life experienced anxiety or anxiousness or stress to the point of sweating drops of blood.

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Have you? Have you ever sweat drops of blood? I would suggest to you that if the

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Lord Jesus Christ sweat drops of blood, he experienced some sort of pain, some sort of anguish that you and I have never experienced.

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And not only that, but the pain that he has suffered is greater than any pain that we have ever endured. So not only did he sweat drops of blood, he resisted temptation to the point that you and I have never resisted temptation.

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Have you ever resisted temptation to the point where you've shed blood? And yet, it's safe to say that the

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Lord Jesus Christ knew all of that temptation that you and I face and he resisted it to the uttermost and obeyed fully to the very end, having never given into it and never, never drawn back from it.

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And he endured it all, far more than us. So the affliction, the suffering, the pain, the anguish, all of that he knows in a greater degree than any of us can even ever imagine.

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And he endured all of it. And the third thing I think that we can learn from this is that like the Lord Jesus, we will most certainly be saved out of death.

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The resurrection is the answer to our suffering. We will be delivered out of death. The same father that raised the son from the grave will raise us up to newness of life as well.

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We have also the hope of eternal life because we trust in one and we pray to one who is able to save us from death.

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We are not going to be saved from dying. Nobody here will be, unless the Lord returns and takes us all to be with him.

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But barring that, it is the plan and purpose of God for everybody in this room to eventually die.

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And we're all going to taste it. We might taste our death without the prayer and the supplication, without the loud crying and the tears, but we're going to face that.

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Every one of us will. But we pray to one and we trust in one who is able to save us out of that death.

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So the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, which he looked forward to, and with that ahead of him, he endured that cross knowing he would rise from the dead because he prayed to one able to save him out of death.

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You and I endure the afflictions and the suffering and the human condition knowing that we are trusting in one who also will deliver us out of death.

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We do not and we will not and we have not shared fully the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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But we will share fully the glory of his kingdom and the life that he now lives.

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And we will share it to the fullest in the kingdom. We pray to one who is able to deliver us out of death.

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The resurrection of the body for the believer is the answer to all of our suffering.

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And we wait for that. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your gracious and kind mercy and your goodness to us and the reminder of what our

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Lord has endured and what he endured on our behalf. We thank you for that high priest who is able to sympathize and be compassionate, who knows the affliction and suffering of our condition.

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We pray that you would fix our hearts and our minds and our attention and our affections upon him and help us in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our uncertainty, in the midst of our anxiety and our anguish to believe upon and to trust in and to rest in the one who knows those afflictions and sufferings better than we do ourselves.

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Help us to always remember that he is our high priest and help us to always be mindful of what has been accomplished by him and by his death and his sacrifice.