You Need Help!

The Old Testament reading this morning is page 83 of your Pew Bibles, the book of Leviticus, chapter 4, verses 27 -31. If anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the Lord's commandment ought not to be done, and realizes his guilt or the sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring for his offering a goat, a female without blemish, for his sin which he has committed.

And he shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering, and kill the sin offering in the place of the burnt offering. And the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.

And all its fat he shall remove, as the fat is removed from peace offerings. And the priest shall burn it on the altar for a pleasing aroma to the Lord. And the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.

New Testament reading is 1 John 4, 7 -12. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

In this the love of God has made manifest among us that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. You may be seated.

Hebrews 2 and the Need for a Merciful High Priest

Take your Bibles this morning, and let's turn together to Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2. You follow as I read this chapter. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will.

It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the Son of man, that you care for him?

You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.

At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctified and those who are sanctified all have one source.

That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will sing your praise. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, behold, I and the children God has given me.

Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Let's pray. Father, open your word to us now. We're thankful that you speak to us in the word. Now help us to hear your voice, not just hear it abstractly, but hear it as it speaks to us where we are, with the troubles that we have, with the temptations that we face.

Help us to see this high priest today, for your glory and our good. In Jesus' name. Amen. How do you imagine Jesus? What do you think he's like? What is he about? For some, he's the justice warrior, fearlessly speaking truth to power, taking on the mighty hypocritical religious leaders of his day.

Maybe he's the miracle worker, coming to heal and to make life better for poor, diseased, afflicted people like us. For others, he's the loving brother. He's the one who comes alongside. He never judges you, but only speaks words of acceptance and love.

Still others see him as this great moral teacher who's dared to say the things that no one else has dared to say, and who turns the world upside down by his ethical principles. But we've seen Jesus in a different light in this chapter.

Jesus came to fulfill God's original purpose for mankind, that is, to rule creation for God's glory. The Son of God became man in order to bring many sons to glory, blazing the trail to that glory by his death.

He came to destroy Satan's power and deliver us from the enslaving fear of death. We've seen all these things in this chapter, and now we come to this last thing in verses 16 through 18. Here's what Jesus is about.

For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Jesus came to be a faithful and merciful high priest because we need help. We need help. So let's look at this together.

Jesus came to help you. Now who exactly does Jesus help? Who exactly does Jesus help? The writer has told us over and over that Jesus suffered like we do, that he tasted death like we do, that he was made a little lower than the angels like we are, that he calls us brothers, and therefore he must partake of the same things that we do.

So it is not angels that he has come to help. Now, I was in seminary.

Oh, man.

I actually had a friend from seminary, one of my really good friends from seminary, we had our stay overnight last night as he bikes his way across the country. Don was his name, but Don and I were in seminary together.

And boy, that is, I can't believe how long ago that was. But I do remember some things from those days. And one of the things I remember makes me angry still to this day. We had a semester where we were going to talk in one class, the doctrine of angels and the doctrine of salvation.

And I was saying, all right, I get to really listen in and think about what the doctrine of salvation is like. I figured we'd deal with the angels in the first couple weeks and then dive into the doctrine of salvation.

And my professor spent weeks on angels so that when we got to the doctrine of salvation, not much time was left. And I was infuriated because we spent all this time, and he made me dumb questions, like when an angel swings at another one, does he connect?

Who cares?

I want to know about the atonement.

I think he needed to read the book of Hebrews. You remember that the writer has argued in chapter 1 that Jesus holds a superior position to the angels because he is God. He is God. Angels are his servants.

And as a matter of fact, he also has told us up to this point, angels are servants to us for our salvation. We make a lot of noise about angels. I mean, I'm not going to reveal any names here, but I get pressure every once in a while about preaching on angels.

Of course, given my seminary experience. Anyway, angels are these magnificent beings. You ever notice that Christmas angels almost vie with Jesus for attention? Well, because they're so important, they're prominent.

They are decorations. If you don't have a star on the top of your tree, you've got an angel. If you have a star on your tree, you've got an angel outside somewhere or hanging somewhere else on the tree, right?

We sing songs that mention angels. Angels we've heard on high, hark the herald angels sing. Angels from the realms of glory. And that's okay because they play a major part in the story of Jesus' incarnation.

But Jesus did not come to help angels, powerful as they are and as important as they are. He came to help us. He came to help, as he says here, the offspring of Abraham. Now remember the original audience of this book.

These are Hebrew Christians. And they were steeped in the religion of the Old Testament and they were tempted to go back to that. They were tempted to go back to that old way that God had dealt with them because right now they were starting to feel the pressure of following Christ.

They were already losing their property. They were being ridiculed. They were being thrown in jail. Why not go back to what God had had us doing before and get away from this pressure that comes from following Jesus?

And so the writer makes the point to these Jewish people who put a lot of stock in powerful angels that Jesus is superior to the angels and to the old ways of approaching God which were no longer part of God's economy.

But surely this now represents more than just Jewish believers. It represents all the people of God. Jesus came to help people. Jesus came to help you. You who were created a little lower than the angels in power.

You who were created to rule over God's creation as his image bearers but who have been subjected to death and to Satan. You who no longer wear the crown of glory and honor. You are the ones that Jesus came to help.

The Kind of Help That Truly Rescues

And this is a help that truly rescues. This is a help that truly rescues. I remember in the summers, John Street when he was pastoring down at Clear Creek and Rick Wilson when he was at Grace Covenant and us and me and our families would go down to the Master's Mission down in North Carolina.

We would teach the counseling module down there. And it was teaching in the morning and this is up in the Smokies, right? This is a really nice area. And they had a lake there. And one night we were out fishing.

John and a bunch of the kids were out on this dock fishing. Our kids were little then. Lydia must have been maybe eight or nine. And she fell off the dock and just went straight down. It's getting dark.

You can't see under there. Now, we could help Lydia by saying, Lydia, flap your legs and wave your arms and come to the surface and grab the dock and then we'll pull you in. We could have done that. But John, who happened to be on the dock with the children, dropped to his knees, reached down as far as he could, caught her shirt and pulled her up.

Now, that was help that rescues, you see. He rescued her. That was truly help. That's what this word means. He hasn't come to help angels. He's come to, what? Rescue us. He's come to rescue us. That says something about the kind of help that we really need.

We don't need Jesus to help us along. We need Jesus to intervene and rescue us. You see, that's what we need. But in order to do that, he had to become one of you. That's what he says there in verse 17, the first part of verse.

Therefore, if he's going to rescue us, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect. Therefore, or for this reason, because he came to rescue men and women, he himself had to be made like them.

And he had to be made like them in every respect. Now, if you've been here for any period of time, you know that every year we have the Night of Carols, right? That's kind of a tradition. One of our, if I can say this about Leroux Baptist Church, one of our set-in-stone kinds of traditions.

We don't have very many of them, but that's one of them. And Enola Jones oftentimes, you remember, will compose a poem or something about the advent or the coming of Jesus. And several years ago, she read one that really stuck in my mind.

She reminded us that Jesus left the grandeur of heaven to enter the world where your first impressions are the odors of animal bodies and waste, to be rubbed with salt on baby soft skin and wrapped in fabric so tight you can't move, and then put into a smelly, tight place surrounded by itchy hay.

Right? Jesus was a baby who cried and had to be burped and had to be changed like every other baby. Jesus knows what it's like to have brothers and sisters. Jesus knows what it's like to have parents who don't understand him.

Do you think he smashed his finger while he worked in the shop with Joseph? You ever think he did that? Do you ever think he, as a carpenter, he knew hard work and working for people who didn't appreciate his skill, do you think he knows what it's like to work for people who don't pay their bills?

Huh? He knows the heartache of betrayal, the sadness of losing a friend to death, as well as physical exhaustion and hunger and thirst. He knows the distress of false accusations made against him. He knows what it means to suffer extraordinary pain but not sinning in his suffering.

In every respect, he has been made like us. In every respect. Listen, representation requires identification. You know, it's for a good reason that any of our representatives in the State House or representatives in Congress are required by law to live in the districts that they represent.

Do you think a Berliner who reads about our district would do a good job representing us?

No.

But one who lives among us, who knows the obstacles in our district, who knows what it's like to live in this area? You think he'd make a better representative? Well, so it is with Jesus. The Son became man because it would have been impossible to redeem what he did not assume.

And so in every respect, in every respect, he was like us. This goes beyond he walked in your shoes, folks. He lived in your skin. In every respect, he had to become like one of us. Now, according to our text, he had to do this so that he could become a faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God and to become a merciful high priest to support and comfort God's people.

Jesus the Faithful High Priest Before God

Here is the nature of the help that results from the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus came to help you with God. Jesus came to help you with God. Verse 17. So that he became like us in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

He came to be a faithful high priest in the service of God. He came not to be served, but to serve as a faithful high priest. He came in the service of God to reveal, here's the first thing, to reveal the perfections of God.

To reveal the perfections of God. The high priest in the Old Testament had special obligations that only he could perform. If we would go back to Leviticus 16, we would read about the Day of Atonement.

In that you find a description. In the Day of Atonement, the high priest, and only the high priest could perform certain tasks. Only the high priest could enter the most holy place and only on that day, only on the Day of Atonement, to purge it from the impurities of the priests and the people by sprinkling the blood of the sin offering on the mercy seat, which is the cover on the box that held the Ten Commandments and Aaron's Rod and so forth.

There was this gold cover with these cherubim facing each other and their wings touching at the top. The high priest would go in on the Day of Atonement and sprinkle blood once a year on that, what's called the mercy seat.

He would sprinkle blood on that, which represented the sacrifice that had been made. Only the high priest could purge the rest of the sanctuary with blood as he sprinkled it on everything else. Only the high priest would put his hand on the scapegoat, which was then sent out into the wilderness, representing taking the sins of the people away.

Only the high priest could offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people and the fat of the sin offerings on the altar. Only the high priest could do that, and he had to do that. The message was clear to everyone.

When all these things happened, the message was clear. There is a God who is just and holy and is worthy of all your love and devotion and worship and obedience. He is worthy of all those things. But a problem exists, and that is that people who treat God are guilty of indifference and distrust and preferring other things above God.

I love what an old British theologian, and he's no longer with us, but he was a great man. His name was John Stott. John Stott wrote this. I want you to listen carefully. This tells you the kind of God that the priest, Jesus himself, has revealed to us.

Sin arouses the wrath of God. This does not mean that he's likely to fly off the handle at the most trivial provocation, still less that he loses his temper for no apparent reason at all. How many of you have thought of God that way?

He's not that way. For there is nothing capricious or arbitrary about the holy God, nor is he ever irascible, malicious, spiteful, or vindictive. His anger is neither mysterious nor irrational. It is never unpredictable, but always predictable because it is provoked by evil and evil alone.

The wrath of God is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations. In short, God's anger is poles apart from ours. What provokes our anger, injured vanity, never provokes his.

What provokes his anger, evil seldom provokes us. That is how you need to think of the wrath of God. It is never irrational. It is very predictable. He is angry against evil in all its manifestations.

And when the high priest made those sacrifices, it was saying loud and clear, God is angry because you are evil, because you have not been faithful, because you have disobeyed. And so, Jesus serves the function of that priest in revealing the perfections of God, but that's not all.

He comes in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of his people. Right there in verse 17, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. This high priest comes to offer the sacrifice of himself.

He comes as the sacrifice. He is the sacrifice. He offers himself. And his sacrifice is a propitiation. Now, some translations shy away from that word, because who uses the word propitiation today? But I'm glad it's there, because then you've got to explain it.

So, I'm going to explain it. Don't forget it. To propitiate someone means to make them so they're not angry at you. I want you to be propitious towards me. I don't like you to be angry with me. In fact, that's one of my weaknesses.

I love people to be propitious towards me. I'd rather no one was angry with me.

Alright?

And so we propitiate someone, we turn their wrath away. And so Jesus offered his sacrifice to propitiate the anger of God. To turn his rightful anger away. His holy, righteous anger. To turn it away. To appease the wrath of God against us.

Now, I've read many who call themselves Christians who said, What a barbaric idea! What a barbaric idea! Thinking of God as someone to whom we must offer a sacrifice to turn away his wrath. But you see, we do not offer that sacrifice, do we?

Not one of us here offers that sacrifice. It is God himself who makes the sacrifice. Now, don't lose this. What is the sacrifice that turns away the anger of God? It's the sacrifice that God himself makes.

To turn away his anger. Do not think that God loves you because his wrath has been appeased by Jesus. Do not think that God is gracious to you because his anger is satisfied. That's not the way to think.

It is God's grace towards sinners that caused him to send his son in the first place. It is God's love of sinners. It is Jesus' love of sinners that moved him to offer himself as a propitiation. Don't ever forget that.

The God who is angry is the very God who sent the sacrifice that would turn his wrath away. And he's gracious to you not because of that sacrifice. His grace moved him to send that sacrifice. He does not love you because of that sacrifice.

His love moved him to send that sacrifice. We heard it this morning. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

It is God's love that moved him to appease his wrath. Matthew Henry, a great, old theologian, way back in the 1700s, wrote this. There was a great breach and quarrel between God and man by reason of sin.

But Christ, by becoming man and dying, has taken up the quarrel and made reconciliation so far that God is ready to receive all into favor. And friendship, who come to him through Christ. So Jesus helps you with God.

He cannot fail in his duty to reconcile sinners to a perfect, holy God. The last thing we see here is that Jesus came to help you in life. To help you in life. He is a merciful high priest for the comfort and support of God's people.

He's faithful to God. He's merciful to you. That is to say, he has great compassion, great pity on his people. You see, because he suffered at the hands of sinners, he has great compassion. He has great mercy for his people because he has suffered.

He knows what it is to suffer like you. When I was 24 years old, my appendix burst. I got this really horrible pain. And I remember going to the doctor and he said, get to the hospital now. But before they could operate, it burst.

So they got in there and pulled all, whatever they could out of it. And I was in the hospital for, oh I don't know, almost two weeks. I had many days of fever and pain. And one day the doctor came in and I didn't expect him.

And what he did was he took these scissors and he clipped a couple of my stitches in my side and made a little bit of a hole. And then he took these Q-tips, which were that long. And he put them in that hole and he did this.

I have never felt so much pain in my life. I soaked, I literally soaked the bed with my sweat. Man, that hurt. It hurt. I sweat now just thinking about it. But you know what? He never said a word to me.

He walked in, did his thing, and walked out. No warning, nothing. I sensed that he was not sympathetic to my pain. In fact, I believed he'd never been through that procedure. Not so with Jesus. In fact, Matthew Henry uses the term that Jesus is a sympathizing physician.

That he's tender and skillful. He knows how to deal with tempted, sorrowing souls. He is touched with the feeling. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Because he himself has been sick of the same disease.

Not the disease of sin, but the disease of temptation and trouble of soul. He knows it. He knows it. The remembrance of his own sorrows and temptation makes him mindful of our sorrows and temptations and our trials.

And he seeks to help. That is the Jesus that we worship. So when Jesus summons you to believe and obey. He does so with compassion. Because he has been faced with everything that you have been faced with.

When your friends at work make fun of you. Ridicule you. Twist your words. And then Jesus tells you to return blessings for cursings. Remember this. Jesus hung on a cross. Where people mocked him. And twisted his words.

And he said.

Father.

Forgive them.

When you face hate for the fact that you have stood for righteousness. And you won't go along with unrighteousness. And then Jesus says to you. Commit yourself to your faithful creator. And continue to do good.

Just remember. That Jesus when he was reviled. Did not revile in return. When he suffered he did not threaten. But continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. When the one closest to you betrays you.

And leaves you all alone. And you hear Jesus say. Do good to those who abuse you. Remember. That Jesus restored Peter to ministry. And said to the disciples who had left him all alone. Meet me in Galilee.

When you feel all alone. When loneliness is your companion. And you hear Jesus give you the promise that God will never leave you nor forsake you. You remember. That Jesus was abandoned. That he knows loneliness.

Beyond compare to what you ever faced. When he cried out my God my God why have you forsaken me.

You see.

Jesus helps us in life. And at the deepest level.

So.

How do you see Jesus today? Justice warrior.

Miracle man.

Loving brother. Radical teacher. Or see the faithful high priest. Who's come to offer a sacrifice once for all that reconciles you to God. When you consider Jesus now is he a distant deity. A sovereign sitting on his heavenly throne.

Demanding that you worship him and obey his commands. Ready to whack you for your infractions. Or is he a merciful high priest. Who knows exactly how difficult it is to obey. In a sin cursed. Temptation laden world.

Jesus came to help you. And to help you at the deepest levels. Father thank you. For revealing to us. Marvelous savior. Who became like us in every respect.

So that he would be.

A faithful high priest to you. And a merciful high priest to us.

God.

Father. This week let this truth transform us. When we face difficulties and we're tempted to worry. When we're tempted to return. Tit for tat. When we are tempted. With sorrow beyond what we think we can bear.

Remind us. Of this high priest. Who's become one of us in every respect. And so can offer himself. To you as the perfect sacrifice. And be faithful. And merciful to us. Lord don't let this truth. Lie dormant in our hearts.

Bring it to mind. Help us to live. In light. Of a savior and king. Who knows us.

And loves us.

We pray this in his. All sufficient name.

Amen.