Promises of God & priesthood of Christ — Bruce Rodgers

Our Father, we would come into Thy Presence and give Thee thanks that Thou art eternally faithful, and the promises that Thou hast made will come into effect. And we can look forward with a confident anticipation of a day of perfection and glory in Thy Presence, and of the victory of Thy Kingdom in this world where there is so much indifference and apathy toward Thy Name today.

We would entrust ourselves to Thee this evening and pray that our meditation together in Thy Word might be beneficial and might be strengthening to each one of our hearts. We commit ourselves to Thee and seek Thy blessing in our Savior's Name.

Christ Our High Priest in Hebrews

Let's turn again to the book of Hebrews, pick up on the last verse of chapter 4. Hebrews 4 and 16 says,. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

And then there's a description of the necessity and calling of high priests, and then there's reference to Christ's priesthood. And verse 9, chapter 5 says,. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation.

Unto all them that obey him called of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God.

And are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat or solid food. For everyone that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But strong meat or solid food belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith towards God, of the doctrine of baptisms or washings, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment.

And this will we do if God permit. And then there's a section relating to those who have departed or fallen away, as the expression is. And then a contrast in verse 9. But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you or concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which you have showed toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. And we desire that every one of you to show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, that you be not slothful but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.

For men verily swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge, to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whether the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Melchizedek's Priesthood and the Promise of Access

Now, chapter 7 begins really the explanation of what he means by this expression, a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. And he says, For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being by interpretation king of righteousness, and after that also king of Salem, which is king of peace, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abideth a priest continually or to perpetuity.

Now, if you look at that section, verses 1 to 3, that's all one extended sentence, and really the main clause of the sentence is simply the first phrase and the last phrase, For this Melchizedek abides a priest continually or to perpetuity.

Now, I want to connect what we have at the end of chapter 4 and think a little bit about the Lord Jesus as our high priest after the order of Melchizedek. And really, the story that we have in Genesis chapter 14 really is an example of what it means at the end of verse 16 of chapter 4 to find grace to help in time of need.

That is, an intervention by the high priest to secure the faith, the stability of the believer, of the pilgrim, who is about to be tempted to find grace to help. And I remember seeing it translated or interpreted as to help in the nick of time.

So maybe we should just read the story in Genesis 14, even though it's already referred to in our book, but there's a few details that are left out. So Genesis chapter 14, and there's been a battle, and Sodom and Gomorrah and some of the other kings have been overtaken.

Lot is carried away, and all the goods of Sodom. And Abraham goes after them and pursues, and he is successful and brings back all the goods and all the people. And it says in verse 16, and he brought back all the goods and also brought again his brother Lot and his goods, and the women also, and the people.

And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Shadr Laomer and of the kings that were with him at the valley of Sheba, which is the king's dale. And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God.

And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand. And he, that is Abraham, gave him, Melchizedek, tithes of all.

The king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons and take the goods to thyself. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou should say, I have made Abram rich.

Save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, let them take their portion. And after these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram.

I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. Now this is a very interesting story from the book of Genesis. And I'm just going to draw attention to a few of the details that are given to us in Genesis 14 and show how it links with the substance of what I want to think about tonight.

Melchizedek intervened as the king of Sodom is coming out to meet Abram, coming from the slaughter of these other kings. And it seems that however close they may have been, Melchizedek just comes in between and the first thing he does is he feeds him.

He provides for his immediate needs. And so Abram is refreshed and strengthened. And that in itself is one important facet of our preservation and strengthening as we go through life. When we've become worn down and we're hungry and tired and thirsty, we sometimes don't make the best decisions.

And so he takes care of his physical needs first. And so he's refreshed and encouraged. But then he brings this revelation of God to him. This is the first time that the expression, the Most High God, is used in our Bible.

And you notice how he connects his own relationship to God with Abram. He's called the priest of the Most High God. Now that expression, the Most High, refers to God as sovereign. It emphasizes that God is above all and has power and sovereignty over everything on earth.

And basically you can say that the Most High God is the one who determines who gets what and when they get it. And Abram had been given promise that all of that land, in fact it was really just back in chapter 13, after Lot separated from him, all of that land was to be his.

Everything was going to be his inheritance. But not yet. God hadn't given it to him yet. Now the king of Sodom is really offering to him, you might say the richness of this land in the immediate instead of waiting for God's provision that was still to come.

And however we would relate that to our present life, I know you can think of different facets of life and what it would mean to trusting God in contrast to getting our needs met or our riches, our wealth from the world.

One illustration that would come to my mind is the lottery ticket ideas, the casinos, all of these ways of being instantly wealthy and they could say, I have made that man rich. And we have been given tremendous promises and that's what we're going to be trying to look at a little bit tonight.

And Abraham, as the one who is the heir of the promises, through the intervention of Melchizedek, he's enabled to withstand the temptation to make any kind of alliance or agreement or to be under obligation to the king of Sodom.

And he's able to be kept in separation from the world in its wickedness in that sense. But the revelation of God is the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth. And then God is praised, in verse 20, as the one who accomplished this deliverance.

So again, he's reminding Abraham, Abraham, it's God who has granted you this deliverance today. And in recognition of this relationship with Melchizedek and the most high God, Abraham gives him tithes, which is really a worship towards God himself.

And Abraham, as he responds then to the king of Sodom's offer, he says, I have left up my hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatch.

God's Sovereignty and the Patience of Faith

It's interesting that this expression, this title of God becomes prominent again in the book of Daniel in a very significant context where the nation of Israel has lost their inheritance. They've been dispossessed, and God does not call himself the God of Israel during the captivity, but he does make himself known as the most high God.

And he has this, you might say, conflict with the emperor of Babylon, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, and the most powerful man on earth has brought down to his knees and to eat grass, to have everything taken from him until he acknowledged that the most high God rules in the kingdoms of men, and he gives the kingdom to whomever he will.

And so this is the recognition of God as the sovereign God who has made promises, but there is the endurance of faith to wait for the promises to be fulfilled. So there's a parallel, I believe, that is being drawn here in Hebrews in that the Lord Jesus has been called of God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, and really I'm just drawing from the illustration of Genesis to show that even the character of his ministry to us has a certain parallel with what Melchizedek did for Abram.

But the expression after the order of Melchizedek is really teaching the idea of an unchangeable priesthood, of an eternal priest who never will be replaced, never be superseded, and therefore God's final purposes, God's ultimate promises, are going to be fulfilled through his ministry.

So in Hebrews 5 and 9, speaking about the Lord Jesus and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. So he's become the cause of eternal salvation. Now, the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him called of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

So this is where we begin to get some of the description of what the writer wants to be able to convey of the riches of the inheritance, of the greatness of this priest, his great ability to bring us into God's final purposes, and yet he's acknowledging a hindrance in it, and that hindrance is that the saints were becoming hard of hearing.

And the term hard to be uttered is really difficult to be explained because you have become dull of hearing. Now, I'll just point out that that expression, dull of hearing, is actually the same, I think the word dull is the same, as what we have down in chapter 6 and verse 12, that you be not slothful.

And so it's really talking about the fact that we can become slow and sluggish and unresponsive to teaching. And I suppose that happens to all of us. Sometimes when I think back to younger days when every conference was a wonderful experience and I was like a sponge to absorb the teaching and the ministry that was given, and sometimes now I get to go to 7 or 8 or 9 conferences in a fall season, and as I think back, I have to ask myself, not only what do people remember or absorb from what I have taught, but how much have I absorbed, retained and benefited from all the ministry that I've been exposed to over a 3 or 4 month span in the fall conferences.

And I know we all have our limitations on how much we can absorb and the fact as we do gain in knowledge, we're only sort of picking up smaller bits of new teaching, so it's not quite the same as when we're young.

But at the same time, I know there's also another problem and that is that we do become, we flatten out in our zeal, we flatten out in our interest in God and His things and we plateau. And that same kind of challenge is brought to us in Philippians chapter 3.

And it's not always the same kind of reason for that happening, but in the context of the passage here, it is that the believers have become disheartened and there was lots to discourage them. There were the persecutions that were ongoing, the losses that they had suffered as chapter 10 teaches us, the fact that others were departing and the defections were really robbing them of their joy and stability as they would see this relative and that one that they had counted as among them turning away.

And as we have in the first part of chapter 6, those who actually return to Judaism and spurn Christ and actually, it says, crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh. Those are very sobering things that are told us in that passage.

And in one sense, I realize that to its fullest extent, this could only be in the first century, in that first generation after the Lord was presented to the Jewish nation. Because here were a people who had been the covenant people of God, but the covenant itself was being replaced and a new way was being introduced.

And if they didn't come forward and move into the new covenant relationship, they couldn't go back and just keep where they were and retain a relationship with God. They were going to lose everything and actually become enemies of God, which is what some of them are said to have done in the book of Hebrews.

And so that effect upon the true believers who continued into the fullness of Christianity would have been very, very significant. And so all of that combination of things had made these believers unable to really enter into the fullness that was theirs in Christ.

And he says that you need somebody to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. Now, coming down into verse 9 of chapter 6, in contrast to the defections, the departure, the turning away, he says in verse 9,.

Grounds of Assurance for Believers

So I want to notice with you the grounds of assurance that is given to us here. And the first ground of assurance is in verse 10, where we have a righteous God. It's a wonderful thing to be in relationship with someone who will never forget anything good you have done.

Any expression of love that you have shown, any care, any kindness. We have the tendency to become forgetful of what other people do for us, but we sure remember things that they do against us. And we find this beautiful combination of God in that he will never forget or disregard our love, our faith, our service.

And yet in chapter 8 and in chapter 10, he makes this wonderful promise. Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more. So God, in taking up this eternal relationship with us, has so dealt with the issue of sin that he can handle every failure, every weakness, every faltering, and not let it change his attitude of love for us and his faithfulness to us.

And so you have a righteous God who will not be forgetful of the love and goodness that has been done. And so the second ground of assurance that is conveyed in this little section is your work, the evidence of salvation.

And I think there is a conscious contrast between verse 4 down to verse 6, where you have all of these spectacular supernatural manifestations. The pouring out of the power of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Lord Jesus into the world.

Those who were enlightened to the truth of who Christ is. The good word of God, the powers of the age to come. I would suggest that's the miracles that they saw that were evidences of the kingdom of God having come.

And yet after having seen and experienced, and not just being witness of it, but like Judas would have been, someone who actually would have healed people, who would have shared in the powers of the Holy Spirit being poured out.

And I think that's a sense that is intended of made partakers of the Holy Spirit. People who had experienced all of that and yet turned away from Christ. Verse 11, no verse 10, the last part of verse 10.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which you have showed toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. That sounds pretty ordinary, doesn't it?

Something that we can do today. And so our work, our labor, our love, as shown in our care for one another, is understood as evidence of our true relationship to him. So verse 11 then is the encouragement, the desire that each one of us would show the same diligence.

And of course the word diligence is really the opposite of the word slothful. That you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, and that you become not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

I remember reading in a book on counseling a number of years ago that the two things that every individual needs is hope and responsibility. Every one of us need a sense of hope. We need to have a hopefulness towards the future.

There has to be something that motivates us. And we also need to have a sense of responsibility. And people who lose their hope or lose their sense of responsibility are people who don't end up functioning very well and end up in this condition of slothfulness.

So if we lose sight of our hope, we lose our zeal and our diligence. But followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. So again in the context of the book of Hebrews, faith and patience is linked together.

And so it's not just a matter of yes we believe certain truths, but that we in believing them endure through the present in all that the present may involve as we wait for the promises of God to be brought to fulfillment.

And those promises in the book of Hebrews emphasize eternal things. And there's a stamp of finality and perfection that is given throughout the epistle. And we get expressions like eternal salvation that we read in chapter 5.

We have eternal redemption, eternal inheritance. And so we are talking about the things that are everlasting, enduring, eternal things that we have been brought into. And then the example of God and Abraham is given for our encouragement.

And the importance I think of the promise being connected here is that that promise was concerning the promise of redemption. Surely blessing I will bless thee, multiplying I will multiply thee. And the promise made to Abraham was in connection to God's will to bless all of humanity.

Faith, Responsibility, and Persevering in Hope

Now this lawfulness that is mentioned in verse 12 will cause us to give up or give in to the pressures of life, to the influences that are around us, and we will become kind of stalemated. And we will let the enmity of the world or the apathy and indifference of the world become our condition as well.

Now I remember a very extreme case of this back in the Timmins area a number of years ago. And there was one sister in particular who had a lot of natural ability. She was really quite intelligent, quite capable, but she was also unfortunately lacking in ambition and incentive.

And she had gotten to the place where she was living by herself, and she had no responsibilities. She was on some kind of a disability pension of some kind, even though she was just a young person. And she had these different anxieties and phobias, and she couldn't hardly go out among people.

And she was just almost becoming a prisoner in her own little world. And she would often be in bed in the middle of the day and all of that kind of thing, just a totally disorganized, useless life. And she had had a Sunday school class, and I think she had said she was going to give it up.

And so my wife and another sister went to see her, and they thought maybe they would have to try some shock therapy on her and figured they had nothing to lose, and so just basically told her where she was headed and told her that she had lots of potential and that she had to make a choice.

And Becky offered to take her, go to the doctor with her, and ask the doctor if she needed to be on the medication she was on, which was making her all the more dull and apathetic and unable to function.

And so she surprisingly agreed. I think she had gotten to the point of being pretty sick of her life. She was depressed and everything like that. Went to the doctor, and the doctor was not the most personable kind of fellow.

And after the case was presented to him, he says, No, you don't need to be on it. But if it keeps you from crying all day, well, that's what it's for. And so basically she realized, it's up to me. I'm going to either live the rest of my life this way.

And I think one thing that had triggered her just prior to that was that her sister, who had gotten married and had two little children, her sister had told her that, I wanted to have you as my, whatever, the alternate caregiver if something ever happened to us, that the children would be taken care of by you.

But she says, I can't do that because you're not responsible. And that was one thing that had at least twigged in her conscience. But happily, she made the choice. And it was pretty slow progress at first.

Becky would go with her to get on the bus to go to the mall. That was an achievement, to be able to go out and make a trip on the bus to the mall. And eventually she got her, you know, so that she would take responsibility to do more and more.

She finally went back to school, went to college, got her nursing training, graduated top of the class, became a nurse, and she's gotten married since, and moved away from Timmins, and finally they moved back to Timmins, and now they're a help.

And so there's just such a vast difference in one life of the choice that we can make, whether we're going to just let our circumstances and conditions that affect us control us, or whether we're going to hold on to what can be ours.

And so this is part of at least the message of this chapter, that through faith in God and his promises, we can endure through what is very unfavorable, and experience the power of God for us. When you think of the promises of God, I want to just draw attention to a little bit to what we have here told us about God.

God's Willingness and the Certainty of His Promises

First of all, we see God's willingness. Verse 17 mentions, wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. So God is very, very willing.

In fact, he's determined to bless. And I always find the confrontation of Balaam and Balak with God over Israel in Numbers 22 -24 a very thrilling section. They go to meet with God to try to bring a curse upon God's people.

And over and over again, Balaam brings back the wrong message. And finally, Balak says, Well, just don't bless them at all and don't curse them at all. Just shut up and be quiet. And Balaam says, He has blessed and I cannot reverse it.

There's a number of amazing statements that Balaam is forced to say. God has blessed. God has made his will known. And so you have God's determination. And what guarantees it? Well, his greatness. He is supreme.

He's supreme in authority. There is no one else who can ever come to him and say, You can't do that. That's not up to you to make that kind of a promise. And you're not allowed to make that kind of a commitment.

There's no one who can override his authority. There is no one who can resist his power to achieve his promise. And there's certainly no one who can outwit him and prevent it. He is supreme in wisdom.

He's also supreme in goodness. And he is so generous in his love and his promise to us that he's really promising us the world. He's promising us everything that can be shared with us, apart from his own deity.

So when he says to Abraham, Surely, blessing, I will bless thee. Multiplying, I will multiply thee. He's really telling Abraham, Abraham, you're in the middle of my plans. Whatever blessing that I give, I'm going to bless you.

Whatever multiplying I'm going to do, you're going to be multiplied. And so Abraham had this great promise bestowed upon him. But God let him wait, and wait, and wait. If you think of Abraham's life, most of it was spent waiting.

Most of us would seem to have been spent for nothing. And he just lived to see the very, very beginnings of this purpose of God in fulfillment. Of Isaac being born, and then Isaac getting married, Abraham just saw the inkling of the beginning of God's purposes.

But it says, so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. So you have God's will, you have his greatness, you have his oath. And if there's one thing that is redundant, it is that God should ever need to swear an oath.

There is nothing more sure than God speaking and uttering his will. But it says here that God, because it is among men common that an oath is made to confirm or establish a promise, God condescends to our low level of confidence, and he binds himself to make an oath.

And because there isn't anyone greater that he could swear by, he swears by himself, by his own life and his own immutability. And so we have this wonderful reality that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation or strong encouragement who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.

So we have a strong consolation that is a fortress of strength. And my mind at least always goes to the cities of refuge as possibly the analogy that is being drawn from here. And it's interesting if you remember the cities of refuge that were appointed, and a person could flee to that city of refuge for safety, it was always related to the length of the life of the high priest, until the death of the high priest.

So again we have a hope that is associated with a high priest, but this is in a very different connection really, to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil.

Christ's Eternal Priesthood and the Open Way to God

Now, thinking about the Lord Jesus as being this one who has entered into the veil, within the veil, we're really approaching here where the new covenant truth completely goes beyond anything that the old covenant could ever picture for us.

And just thinking about the high priest in the Day of Atonement, the only time in the year that he was allowed to come into the Holy of Holies, and he was only there just a few brief moments. There was no chair there for him to sit.

There was no expectation that he could sit and commune with God for a period of time, let alone live there, and let that be his place of residence. And there certainly was no anticipation that he could ever lead the rest of the priests in, let alone lead all the people into this Holy of Holies to dwell in God's presence.

But here we have the tremendous truth taught, that there's both a present and a future outcome intended from this. For the Lord Jesus to go in as the forerunner means he's going in ahead to prepare the way, to secure the way for us also to be able to enter.

And when it says, even Jesus, made in high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, we are being shown that this is God's final plan for his people. And the Lord Jesus, in his presence, in resurrection, in heaven itself, guarantees that you and I can come to God at any time, at all times, without any hindrance or restriction.

The way is open for us by means of the Lord Jesus having entered by his own blood, as chapter 9 teaches, and having made the way into that presence of God within the veil. So that is, for the present time, while we're here on earth, we have access to that divine presence.

And so even though we are, in a sense, just like everyone else on earth, we're living our life here, yet we are bonded to heaven and we have that open access, but it also means that in the future, that's home, that's where we belong, that's our portion in the very presence of God itself.

And so then this teaching of the significance of Melchizedek and his priesthood is emphasized at the beginning of chapter 7, where we read, and it's interesting that the description of Melchizedek, every detail that is given to us is made use of to present the foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus.

Now, I remember some years ago, when I guess I must have been speaking somewhat on this subject, and a brother came to me and asked me, who do you think Melchizedek really is? Well, I was kind of thrown off by that question because, as far as I know, Melchizedek is Melchizedek.

But it is true that Melchizedek is a title, and it could be a name and a title, but this brother, who is a very, very intelligent student of the word and quite a thinker, he had a very interesting suggestion, and I have no idea whether there's any validity to it or not, but he traced out the genealogies and the time periods, and he actually believed that I think it was Shem, one of the sons of Noah, who was still living contemporary with Abraham in those years.

At least he had it figured out that way. So, is that possible? I have no idea. It would at least explain how he could be priest of the Most High God, and not just someone out of the blue that had no connection to Abraham whatsoever.

But, again, as far as I'm concerned, that's completely speculation. But here's a man who simply appears on the scene. He's in this unique relationship to God, priest of the Most High God. There's no record of any parents, no children, no birth, no death, and all of these details are carefully left on the record so that he could be a perfect picture of the Lord Jesus as high priest in resurrection.

I think we have to see that it not only is a type of the Lord Jesus as the eternal Son of God, and I think we could claim that from this little section, when it says, having neither beginning of days nor end of life but made like unto the Son of God, abides a priest continually.