A Superior Priest (Hebrews 7:1-10- Jeff Kliewer)

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A Superior Priest Hebrews 7:1-10 Jeff Kliewer

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as we come into your presence we remember every blessing that you poured out so freely from above lifting gratitude and praises for compassion so amazing what we've come to give you thanks for all you've done because of your love we're forgiven because of your love our hearts are clean we lift you up with songs of freedom because of your love as we come into your presence we remember every blessing that you poured out so freely from above lifting gratitude and praises for compassion so amazing all we've done to give you thanks for all you've done because of your love we're forgiven because of your love our hearts are clean we lift you up with songs of freedom forever we're changed because of your love amen we are changed because of his love we're continuing to sing about his love this morning it's amazing how when you think of love sometimes it's it can have a kind of a distorted
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I guess connotation these days how to love everyone God is love but as believers we truly know what love is don't we
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I mean Jesus came to earth to die for us not many people can say that they would put their lives on the line for someone else but his love was so deep for us his that he decided to come from a perfect heaven to this little speck of dirtiness to save us a lot of times we'll see that verse
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John 3 16 and we say it sometimes so fast it's just not something that we really settle in our mind that God loved us so much that he sent a son in the world to die for us because we're sinners and there was no other reason for us to get his gift because because he loved us how deep the father's love for us how fast beyond all measure that he would give his only son to make a wretch his treasure how great the pain of searing loss the father turns his face away as wounds which bar the chosen one bring many sons to glory behold the man upon the cross
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I sit upon his shoulders ashamed
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I hear my mocking voice called out among the scoffers it was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished his dying breath has brought me life
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I know that it is finished I will not boast in anything no gifts no power no wisdom but I will boast in Jesus Christ is dead and resurrection why should
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I gain from his reward I cannot give an answer but this
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I know with all my heart his wounds have paid my ransom
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Lord Jesus we welcome you here this morning it was your wounds that paid our ransom it was all at Calvary on that hill the
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Lord we we are grateful that that wasn't the place that we remember you but you did rise again and you're seated on the throne
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Calvary the light of all the world the world on his shoulders the way of all our shame on here sky when the angels the father final breath he bowed his head the man of God by his free by his the great for me
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Oh praise God into the father's hand borrowed to his mother but the stone was he conquered free by his the great cross for me.
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Oh praise the God of Calvary.
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And if I never, never lose sight of this place,
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I will never, never lose sight of your grace.
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Your cross is all, all I need to see.
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Oh praise the God of Calvary.
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And if I never, never lose sight of this place,
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I will never, never lose sight of your grace.
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Your cross is all, all I need to see.
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Oh praise the God of Calvary.
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By His wounds I am set free. By His blood
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I've been redeemed. The great divinity crossed for me.
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Oh praise the God of Calvary.
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Your cross is all, all I need to see.
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Oh praise the God of Calvary.
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Amen. You may be seated. It is expected that we come during a rose from the dead because it was not caused by heaven.
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Like an anchor within the veil, you have secured our salvation there at the
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Father's right hand where you are seated. So this morning we look to you as our high priest.
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We ask that you would help us to understand better who you are and what you've done. That we would look to your word and that you would transform us by the hearing of your word.
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In Jesus' name. Amen. There is a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan that has a million dollar priest.
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Now you might be thinking that's a pretty good salary for a priest, right? A million dollars. But no, that's not his salary.
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That's how much it costs to build him. He is a robot. In this
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Buddhist temple in Japan, they built a robot and this robot serves as their priest.
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The guy who runs the temple said, Buddhism isn't a belief in a God, it's pursuing
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Buddha's path. It doesn't matter whether it's represented by a machine, a piece of scrap metal, or a tree.
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Their priest is a robot. He goes on to commend this robot priest with these words.
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This robot will never die. It will just keep updating itself and evolving.
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Said Tensho Goto, the temple's chief steward. With artificial intelligence, we hope it will grow in wisdom to help people overcome even the most difficult troubles.
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It's changing Buddhism. They really love their robot priest.
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One of the things they love about their priest is that it will never die. Reminds me of Hebrews chapter 7.
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We have a priest who ever lives, not a robot. They even say that in hospice settings, so when somebody is dying, elderly
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Buddhists who don't have people on hand to recite prayers on their behalf use robot priests.
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And devices known as Nyan -fo -ji, which essentially recite the name of Buddha endlessly.
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That to me sounds like someone singing It's a Small World After All in my dying moments. It would be no comfort to hear the name
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Buddha or some mantra repeated endlessly to bring comfort.
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We can laugh at robot priests, but in truth it's sad, isn't it?
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That some have no hope and they look to vain man -made, obviously man -made robots, man -made religion to get to God or just whatever sense of the metaphysical they have.
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The first place in the Bible that we see man -made religion, of course, is Genesis 11, the building of the
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Tower of Babel. And notice in the building of the Tower of Babel, the people did precisely the opposite of what
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God commanded them to do. In the creation when man was made in God's image, he said what?
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Spread out, fill the earth and subdue it. Instead, the people at the
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Tower of Babel decided to join together, centralize power and build up to make a name for themselves.
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The exact opposite of what God said to do. And there was the beginning of all the
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Babylonian mystery religions and the fake religion that comes from the mind of men.
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Right now in Washington, D .C. or just outside of Washington, D .C., there's plans to build a new
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Amazon headquarters for the East Coast. And I would say if you get a chance to Google this and look at it, it looks eerily close to the
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Tower of Babel. It's like a cone -shaped ziggurat of some form, but it represents,
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I think, the concentrated power of big tech. Babylonian mystery religion lives on even today in aspects of the
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Roman Catholic religion. Now sadly, the Roman Catholic religion has elements of the truth of Christianity, the
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Trinity and the message about Jesus dying and rising, and those things are good. Many people can come to saving faith through that aspect of the
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Roman Catholic faith, but there is also within it Babylonian mystery religion, man -made religion.
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And it's seen especially in transubstantiation in their version of the
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Eucharist. At the Eucharist, the priest uses certain words, words from which we get the term hocus -pocus, that's where that term comes from, in order to transubstantiate the elements of bread and wine into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.
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In other words, rendering him in body, soul, blood, and divinity really present on the altar.
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Now we know, biblically, that the altar of God is the cross. A man -made altar, where a priest is said to make propitiation for sins, is a human device.
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For the Bible tells us that propitiation was made once and for all in the precious blood of the Lamb. This aspect of Roman Catholicism is just one example of a world full of man -made religion.
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The first priest was Aaron, and Aaron had two sons, his oldest,
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Nadab and Abihu. As soon as they were given the task of officiating at the altar of God, Nadab and Abihu, rather than doing as prescribed by God, invented their own man -made religion.
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The Bible tells us they took strange fire before God. We don't know what that looked like.
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It was some kind of hocus -pocus, something they invented that they were doing with fire, maybe putting on a show, trying to impress the people with some fiery display, and God looked at their offering and sent fire from his altar to consume them.
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Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, were killed that day from fire from God's altar.
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You see, the issue was man -made religion versus what God has prescribed.
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The issue is not sincerity. The world is full of sincere people, practicing their religion sincerely.
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The issue is not what makes a person feel good. Many people feel satisfied in their man -made religion.
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The issue is none of those things. The issue is revelation. What has
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God prescribed? This is what God expects to be done. Psalm chapter 19, verse 9 to 11, read like this.
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The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the
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Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
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Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward.
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See, the Bible says in Psalm 19 that God's word is pure gold and there is great reward when we keep his word.
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Everybody here would like to be blessed of God, wouldn't we? I would like to be blessed.
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And the method, the means to being blessed, according to Psalm 19, is in keeping his word.
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In keeping them, there is great reward. So today, as we go to Hebrews chapter 7, we need to first of all establish a little bit of context regarding the
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Levitical priests. You see, although it was God who established a priesthood from Abraham's descendant, namely
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Levi, God always had a superior priesthood, which was shown to be greater by Abraham's interaction with Melchizedek.
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So we're going to get into Hebrews chapter 7, 10 verses today, but we really can't understand what the author is saying to us by his inspired word unless we have context.
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The context of Hebrews 7 is really with reference to the
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Levitical priesthood. What is the Levitical priesthood? This is a system of sacrifices officiated by a certain tribe of Israel.
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One of the 12 tribes, the Levites, were set apart to be priests in Israel.
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So I ask you, how did the Levites become the priests of Israel?
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It's kind of a complicated answer, but it's very interesting. Here's how it came about. After the
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Passover, the very next chapter, Exodus 13, when Israel has come out of captivity, the first thing
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God says to them is, consecrate to me the firstborn. The firstborn are to be consecrated.
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So the firstborn cow should be offered as a sacrifice. The firstborn lamb should be offered as a sacrifice.
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The firstborn human should be consecrated unto God for a lifetime of service.
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Every firstborn should be devoted and consecrated to the Lord. Exodus 13.
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Fast forward a little time, and Moses goes up on Mount Sinai. You know the story.
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He gets the Ten Commandments. There's a whole Charlton Heston movie about it. When he comes down, what does he discover?
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That Aaron, it's kind of like when the Moses is away, the Aaron will play. He just does whatever he wants.
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He says, here's what I'm going to do. Everybody give me all your gold. And he takes the gold of all the people, and he puts it into the fire.
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And as he describes it to Moses, out pop this calf. He makes a golden calf out of all the gold of the people.
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So now here comes Moses down the mountain with Joshua as his assistant. And in the distance, they can hear this great sound.
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And he says, what is that? Is that a war cry? Are we at war? Or are they celebrating the victory from war?
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Or are they mourning defeat from war? What's going on? The closer they get, Moses and Joshua are talking, and they say, no, that sounds like a party.
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Some kind of party going on. And when Moses gets down the mountain, Aaron had figured
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Moses was gone. He had been up there for like 40 days and 40 nights. Been up there a long time.
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So Moses rebukes Aaron and says, what have you done? And he grinds that golden calf into powder, and he puts it in the water, and he makes all the people drink it.
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Like to make a point, you don't just do things your own way. You need to listen to God and worship the way he prescribes.
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And then an interesting thing happens. God is not done judging. And Moses says, okay, whoever is on the
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Lord's side in this, come to me. And right away, one of the 12 tribes rallies to Moses' side.
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Now, it makes sense that it would be the Levites, because Moses comes from the tribe of Levi, as does
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Aaron. But all the Levites rally to Moses, and God puts swords in their hands, meaning they're to take their swords, and they kill 30 ,000
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Israelites that day. By God's decree, as an act of God's judgment,
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God is able to do that and has the authority to execute judgment. But that day, the
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Levites were recognized as consecrated to the Lord. Fast forward, next couple chapters, well, into the next book,
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Numbers chapter 3, we see that God chooses then the
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Levites to replace or substitute for the firstborn.
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Remember, after the Passover? The firstborn are to be consecrated. He says, okay, now the
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Levites are going to stand in the stead of the firstborn of every family.
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The tribe of Levi will represent me at the altar. So the
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Levites become God's representatives among the people. They are given this blessing.
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They will be the priests. That's important. Here's why. Because, recognize, it's
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God himself who sets up the Levites as the priests.
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And every time they offer these sacrifices on the altar, they're doing the right thing. God made this system.
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So now, we go to Hebrews chapter 7. With that as the context, we can understand what happens next.
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Where are we in Hebrews 7? Well, really, we're in a book that explains that Jesus is better.
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He's better than angels. He's better than Abraham. He's better than Moses. He's better than mankind.
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He is the new representative of humanity. And here in chapter 7, Jesus is a better priest.
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He is a priest that's better than any Levite ever was. Better than Aaron. He's a better priest.
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That's the big context. Now, I said that Hebrews is really summarized with two words.
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Session and intercession. Session meaning to be seated on the throne.
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Intercession meaning to stand in between God and man. Jesus is presented in the book of Hebrews as the king who sits on the throne.
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And he's presented as the priest who goes between God and man. Both of those concepts are explained in Psalm 110.
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And the book of Hebrews is an unpacking of that idea. So here in chapter 7, we get into this idea of Jesus as a priest.
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That's the big idea. That's what the author needs to prove. Why is that so important?
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Well, if you are a Hebrew in the first century, and you've left
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Judaism behind because you saw in Christ that he is a miracle worker.
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And he rose from the dead. You've come to Christ. And you're gathering with the
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Christian community. There's a lingering question in your mind. Well, what about the sacrificial system?
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What about the offerings being made in Jerusalem? And where is our priest?
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Okay, we get it. Jesus from the tribe of Judah is the king. He's the Messiah.
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But where's our priest? It can't be Jesus because God said that the priest has to come through Levi.
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And so now Jewish people are coming back to their brethren and saying, look, you got excited about this
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Jesus idea. But I don't think it's consistent with what God revealed throughout time.
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You have no priest. Come back to Judaism.
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The water is better here. Come back. And many begin to do that because of the persecution.
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So how is it then that we do have a priest? That's the question.
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And for us here in the kind of 21st century, it's hard for us to see why that's such a big deal. But that was a big deal.
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They needed that question answered. Otherwise, God isn't consistent with his own word. Let's read it.
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Hebrews 7, we're doing 1 to 10 today. For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the
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Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.
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And to him, Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness.
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Then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
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But resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest forever.
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See how great this man was to whom Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth of the spoils.
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And those descendants of Levi, who received the priestly office, have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people, that is, from their brothers.
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Though these also are descended from Abraham. But this man, who does not have his descent from them, received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.
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It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior.
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In the one case, tithes are received by mortal men, but in the other case, by one of whom it is testified that he lives.
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One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor.
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When Melchizedek met him. Now, admittedly, this is one of the more complicated passages in the
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Bible. Which is why, again, we were commanded to pay more close attention, to really dig in and to become mature and eat the meat of God's Word.
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So let's do that. There are four words here that I think summarize the argument.
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King, priest, blessing, and tithe. Those are the issues.
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Kings, priests, blessings, and tithes. And as we understand how those things relate to one another, we will see in it an exaltation of Jesus Christ.
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First, chapter 7, verse 1, and the first part of verse 2. This we call the recounting of events.
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This is a recounting of the story of Genesis 14. The necessary and relevant elements are kings, priests, tithes, and offerings.
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See this? For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, that's number one. Priest of the
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Most High God. That's the second important thing. Met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.
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The blessing is third here. And to him, Abraham apportioned a tenth.
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That's a tithe of everything. So we have a recounting of the story that focuses on those four things.
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So store that in your mind because now the author will unpack those. From king to priest, he'll do tithe first and then blessing.
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And then he'll wrap it up with a couple other thoughts that ties it all together. So you'll follow the train of thought if you see the structure that he lays out at the beginning of the chapter.
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I'll tell you why I love teaching on Melchizedek. It proves that the
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Bible is true. This is why I love this subject so much.
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Because if the Bible is just a collection of books written by men, Moses wrote
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Genesis and some unknown author wrote Hebrews, then you would expect to get disparate thoughts and ideas.
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Merely the whims and intentions of a human mind. But if there is a common author to every book of the
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Bible, namely the Holy Spirit who carried along the human authors, then you will have material like this.
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Because the hallmark of truth is consistency. Consistency is the hallmark of truth.
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A good liar is hard to peep. His story will be largely consistent.
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But you find certain points of inconsistency that reveal that a person is lying.
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The hallmark of truth is consistency. And from beginning to end, the
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Bible is consistent. There is no type of Christ in the Old Testament that receives more treatment in the
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New than the story of Melchizedek. An entire chapter showing that Jesus was foretold in those three verses of Genesis 14.
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In other words, the New Testament finds this to be very important. I think it's important for us in the 21st century.
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As obscure as it all is, some people might find it boring.
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But then again, our culture finds the Bible not only boring but untrue.
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They think it's riddled with myth. They think that it's invented by men.
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But if what we see today is really there, and not just the invention of men, then everything that this book says to us is true.
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And it is. In three verses of Genesis 14, we have now unpacked an entire chapter of meat, important teaching that comes from God.
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So that's the importance of the recounting of the tale. Focus us on verses 1 and 2.
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Look at the second part of verse 2. That's a joyful noise to the
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Lord. That's what I call it. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness.
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And then he is also king of Salem. That is, king of peace.
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Repeated three times. You guys know what we're focusing on here, right? The king. The story of the
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Bible is the story of a king. Genesis chapter 1, when
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God makes man in his image, he says, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion.
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That's kingdom language. And notice this. Turn with me really quickly.
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Back to Genesis chapter 5, verse 29. When Noah was named, it was with the expectation and the hope that he might be the promised king.
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After mankind fell into sin, God made a promise in the
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Garden of Eden that a seed of the woman, a descendant of the woman, would crush the head of the serpent.
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The serpent represents more than a snake crawling on the ground. It represents Satan and the kingdom of evil that seeks to overthrow the rule of God.
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God will send a ruler, a king, who will crush the head of the serpent. And look now at Genesis 5, verse 29.
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Notice that Lamech is looking for the king. He's waiting for the coming king because when he names his son
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Noah, he does that for a reason. He called his name Noah, saying, out of the ground that the
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Lord has cursed. That's Genesis 3 language. Now look at the
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Genesis 3 .15 language. This one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.
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Lamech is looking for Noah to hopefully be the promised seed of the woman, the one who can reverse the curse, a coming king.
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And likewise, when Abraham comes, he's told that through your seed, all of the nations will be blessed.
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Again and again, as you follow the story of the Bible, it is the story of a kingdom.
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And the great expectation of the entire Old Testament is that there is coming a king.
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The scepter will not depart from the tribe of Judah. The scepter is the ruling staff between his knees, a coming king.
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And each successive covenant expressed in the Old Testament, every promise of God, unfolds more and more information about this coming king.
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Finally, the Davidic kingdom, the Davidic covenant, promises that the king will come from the line of David.
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David will always have a ruler seated on the throne. And so the descendants of David are eligible to be potentially the king who will reverse the curse.
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Of course, Noah didn't turn out to be the one, did he? After saving the world, in a sense, coming off the boat, he gets drunk and falls in that way.
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All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But there's coming a king who can reverse this curse.
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Back to Hebrews 7, verse 2, Melchizedek pictures this king.
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After kings go to war, five against four, this bloodbath of a war.
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And picture Abraham coming back. He's not coming dressed in fine clothes. He's coming back bloody and holding a sword.
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Here comes another king, a mysterious king. And the kingdom that he represents is righteousness.
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His kingdom is peace. You see, Melchizedek pictures the king of the world.
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Jesus alone fits this description. He's pointing us to the coming king.
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Look at verse 3. The second word we have today is priest. And this answers the
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Jewish question. Where's your priesthood? Our Levites are still offering sacrifices in the temple.
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Where's your priest, Christian? He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the
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Son of God, he continues a priest forever. This Melchizedek, not only pictures the coming king, but what
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I called last week the beautiful parenthetical. That little phrase hidden in Genesis 14, 18 to 20.
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It says in parentheses, he was priest of God Most High.
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I think that's also why he brings bread and wine. In those three little verses, and if you weren't here last week or you might have missed that sermon, in fact we had some technological error, so that's okay if you missed that.
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Go back and spend some time reading Genesis 14. Because this is what we're talking about.
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Three little verses in Genesis 14 with so much gold treasure hidden in that passage.
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Some of that gold is that he is a priest. He brings bread and he brings wine. Of course when Christ comes and he's the true and final priest, he brings the bread of his own body and the wine of his own blood, which we will represent in communion after this sermon.
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Why do we take communion? Bread and wine. Because of the body and blood of our priest.
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He is the priest and the sacrifice he brings is his own body. But Melchizedek pictured that because when
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Abraham comes back bloody from war, tired and hungry and thirsty, he's met with a feast.
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It wouldn't be this, little cracker. It would be bread and wine to refresh him after the war.
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So verse three, he is a priest forever. Now we're getting into the final two areas that help us understand the greatness of Melchizedek over against the
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Levites that the Jewish people celebrate. I know it's a little hard to follow, but just think in terms now of tithing verses four to 6a.
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See how great this man was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the spoils.
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Abraham. Abraham's the greatest. He's father
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Abraham. The Jews consider him unequaled.
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Except maybe Moses. But Abraham, as great as he was,
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Abraham gives the tithe to Melchizedek. So what does that make Melchizedek?
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Even greater, this is what we'll see. And those descendants of Levi who received the priestly office have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people, that is from their brothers.
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Though these also are descended from Abraham, but this man who does not have his descent from them received tithes from Abraham.
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So again, we need context. Again, part of what makes the Bible so beautiful is that it's consistent with itself.
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It all fits together and weaves a story that leads us to Christ. Well, why do we say that the
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Levites receive tithes? Numbers 18. God tells the
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Levites, I give you your priesthood as a gift and now let all the people of Israel, the brothers, the eleven other tribes, bring their first fruits.
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Every first fruit of your crops and of your animals. Ten percent, the first ten percent will go to the
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Levites. You come and you offer your tithes to God through the
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Levites. So notice the direction here. The direction is what really unlocks this for us. Notice the direction.
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The lesser humbly comes to the greater. God is great and here we are, sinners, but because we seek him and we want his blessing, we come to him and the lesser offers the tithe to the greater.
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And there between the great God and the sinner bringing the offering stands a priest.
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So the priest is above the man, the brother. He comes and he offers his tithe up to God.
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That's the direction it's moving from the inferior to the superior.
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Do you see that? So the Levites stood in that position as a gift because he had rallied to the side of Moses.
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Because God chose him for that role. He would stand and be blessed to be a priest as an intermediary between God and man.
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This was a very privileged place for the Levite to take tithes from the people.
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So what does that say to us about tithing? Well, we don't have
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Levites. The New Testament understanding of offerings is very much from the heart.
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The key passage of all of this is 2 Corinthians 8 and 9.
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And out of the generosity of a willing heart, even the poverty of the
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Corinthian church welled up in giving as a response to God.
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The tithe is not taught in the New Testament. The last place we see the tithe taught is the second to last chapter of the
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Old Testament where God says, test me in this. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse.
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See if I don't pour out blessing on your head. So in the Old Testament, in Israel's economy,
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God would bless the obedience of tithing. If somebody comes, the
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Israelite comes and obeys God by bringing the 10%, then there will be physical blessing.
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Their crops won't fail. Their children won't die in childbirth. Disease won't run through their city.
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They will be physically blessed. In the New Testament, we do not have that same kind of promise.
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We are promised blessing for obedience. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial.
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Our physical circumstances may not improve, but we will be blessed with the crown of life.
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This is James 1, 12 to 17 speaking, where James says every good and perfect gift comes from the father of lights who does not change like shifting shadows.
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We are to bring our offering to God because we are a kind of firstfruits, we're told.
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So the New Testament equivalent to tithing is not that we have to set 10 % aside, although if the
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Israelites did that, I always find that's a good benchmark, but God doesn't care how much money you bring, even percentage -wise.
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He is after the heart, and in the New Testament, God loves a cheerful giver.
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That's what he looks for. So there is a New Testament equivalent that we come and we bring our offerings to God.
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It's part of our religion that God accepts, a pure heart. Big idea, four through six, is that the tithe is offered up.
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We come and we offer that tithe to God, and the priest is above the one offering it.
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He stands as an intermediary to usher your gift to God. Now, let's see how this all ties together.
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The last of the four is blessing, the second half of the sixth verse. And blessed him who had the promises.
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So Melchizedek blessed Abraham who had been given the promise of descendants like the sand on the sea or the stars in the sky.
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Abraham had these great promises to be the patriarch of a nation that God was creating to mediate blessing to the whole world.
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He had these wonderful promises, and yet it was Melchizedek who blessed
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Abraham, not the other way around. Do you see the big idea here?
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And well, if you didn't see it, look at the next verse. It establishes it clearly. This is the big idea, verse seven.
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It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior.
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Who's greater, Abraham or Melchizedek? Melchizedek.
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Now, if you were a Jew in the first century balancing
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Christianity and Judaism, being offered the sacrifices back in the temple, this would be a big deal to you.
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This would be mind -blowing. Wait a minute, what? There's somebody, Melchizedek, I barely even remember reading about him.
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You're telling me he's actually greater than Abraham? Yeah, that's exactly what the word of God says.
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By what principle? By the principle of tithing and blessing that the lesser brings his tithe to the greater and it's the greater that blesses the lesser.
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By that principle, Melchizedek is superior to the inferior
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Abraham. That's a big deal. And so the blessing is offered, the greater to the lesser.
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In the New Testament, we have an equivalent, Ephesians 1 .3 says, blessed be the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, he's still the source of all blessing.
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He's the blessed one. He's happy and he blesses us with his joy.
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It says in Ephesians 1 .3, who has blessed us in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
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In the heavenly places. Maybe it doesn't mean that you'll have a car that works all the time, it might break down.
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You might get struck by the virus. You might go bankrupt, although you work your tail off.
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We are not Israel, we are the church, but we are blessed in every possible way.
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In the beloved, we are in Christ. And so despite our circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, we can have love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control, the fruit of the spirit.
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That's what it is to be blessed. And then to know that these light and momentary afflictions are achieving what?
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An eternal reward. We are so blessed. Blessed to have promises.
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Blessed to have forgiveness of sin and the assurance of salvation. To know the one true
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God and to walk with him. To pray and to have answers to our prayers on earth.
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To have his word to open and read. To have the blessing of God on our families.
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We are blessed beyond measure. Again, James 1, 12 to 17 says, blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial.
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Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. Coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
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We are blessed. Hebrews 7, 8 then makes the point.
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In the one case, tithes are received by mortal men. Here's the connection to Jesus.
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But in the other case, by one of whom it is testified that he lives.
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As we get from verses 11 and following, we'll see what he's talking about here. It's the idea that Levites, yes,
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God established the Levitical priesthood. It had a purpose for a time.
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But every Levite drops dead. He serves for a little while, but he's a mortal man.
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But our priest lives. He's alive.
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Jesus rose from the dead. Acts 2, 42. I'm sorry, that's the wrong verse.
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Acts 2, 24. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
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When the Levitical priest does his duty, he gets old, he dies. And death holds him in the grave.
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That's where he'll stay until the resurrection of the dead. The faithful Levite will be resurrected with us.
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And all of us have the same problem. Death has an ability to hold us, doesn't it? It's not possible for death to hold our priest.
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Having died the death that we deserve, they put him in Joseph's borrowed tomb.
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He had no tomb of his own. Because he didn't need a permanent tomb.
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He was only staying there for three days. And on the third day, he rises and he ascends and he's seated at the right hand of the
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Father within the veil in heavenly places. And there he makes intercession as our priest for us.
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And he ever lives to do this. My sin will never defeat his position in heaven.
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And though I'll fall short of his glory, I'll always have a priest. And he will ever live and never die.
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And I can come back to him again and again, run to the cross, and find forgiveness and help in my time of need.
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Brothers and sisters, don't give up. Maybe your sin feels like a weight you'll never throw off.
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One day you will, when this body is thrown off and you're given the resurrection body and you'll be like him.
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But he is able to keep you until that day. You have a priest in Jesus that lives, it says.
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And then finally in verses 9 and 10, this is a really neat kind of conclusion of the matter.
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This ties it all up. It says, one might even say. You hear the author here getting kind of philosophical.
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He says, one might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham.
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For he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. Now you have to understand something about Jewish thinking and also
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Christian thinking at this point, that there is a concept of headship in the Bible.
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So consider it this way. Romans chapter 5 unpacks this, that Adam was the federal head of mankind.
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So when Adam was in the Garden of Eden and he fell into sin, all of his progeny, all of those descendants who would come from Adam, fell into sin with him.
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He was our representative. And that's why all mankind is sinful and condemned in our sin.
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Because Adam sinned and we would have done the same thing. He's our federal head. But Christ comes at the proper time, born from the line of David, born under the law, lives a perfect life, and dying the death that we deserve, secures for us, as our federal head, what we couldn't earn.
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In other words, Adam was the federal head of humanity, Christ is the federal head of the church.
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There's a new race born in him. So that's the idea of headship. Get that?
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Adam is the head of humanity, Christ is the head of the church. Well, Abraham was the head of the nation
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Israel. You guys familiar with the Abraham Accords? They just were signed recently.
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Israel making peace with the UAE and Beiran and Sudan and Morocco. This peace that's been signed.
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What was the basis of the Abraham Accords? It's only like a page long. If you read it, they reference the fact that the
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Arab people descend from Abraham. And the Jewish people also descend from Abraham.
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So they say if we have the same head, why can't we just get along? And be friends.
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And that's the peace that was brokered between those four countries and Israel a couple months ago. The idea there is headship.
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That's what we have in the text. So if Abraham is the head of Israel and the fourth generation being
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Levi, descending from Abraham, Levi is within Abraham.
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So Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob who changes his name to Israel and has 12 sons.
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Levi is one of those 12. So he's within Abraham. When Abraham gives the tithe, as under that head,
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Levi gave the tithe to Melchizedek. So in other words, if Levi is this priesthood to come from Abraham, then the whole thing, the whole priesthood is subservient to a greater priesthood.
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That's what God hid in the text like gold in Genesis 14.
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So that when Christ accomplished the thing for which he was sent, it would all come together. The pieces of the puzzle would fit.
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And here we are 2 ,000 years later seeing it all unfold. Seeing how it all fits.
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That's the point of verse 9 and 10. One might even say that Levi himself who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when
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Melchizedek met him. So in application, offer our tithes, in quotes, our gifts, and do expect a blessing from God, but not as a transaction.
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Just give from the heart to the one who also blesses you. Look up to God through a priest.
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We don't have Levites. Guess what? We have a better priest who ever lives. Look through Christ to God.
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Remember this, that the way to the Father is exclusively through the
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Son. This priest who ever lives is the one way to the Father. John 14, 6.
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I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
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He's the only priest. He's superior to the Levites who served as a type of Christ until the time when
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Christ would come, but it's ultimately only Christ that can bring anybody to God. Don't make up your own religion.
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Well, how do I know that this religion is true and the robot in Japan is only man -made?
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God testifies to himself with the consistency of his word. When you have something like Melchizedek, that he seeded the ground with this
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Melchizedek promise, and then 2 ,000 years later brings it all together, we see that the word of God comes from him, and it's no man -made book.
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You can trust God's word. You can stand upon it. You can trust your priest. Acts 2, 42.
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Now I'll say what that was. After they, the first believers came to faith, 3 ,000 of them in a day, and got baptized, the
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Bible tells us they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer, and so those are things that God prescribes.
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How should we relate to God? By coming, even in a snowstorm, and I see the cars are starting to get some snow on your roofs, but you'll be able to get out.
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Don't worry, unless I keep preaching a little too long. Maybe the
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Lord wants us to spend a little more time in fellowship. Be stuck here for a week. Yeah, a week.
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We have food. So, those prescribed things, the apostles' teaching.
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Well, we don't have apostles. Oh yeah, you do. Not me. You have the apostolic word.
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They left us 27 books. Which makes the prophetic utterances more sure, fit together.
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We have God's word. Fellowship. Why is it so important that we gather and spend time with one another?
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That's not just something we do like social clubs do. You can do that like bowling with a friend or something. No, when the church comes together, it's the fellowship of the saints, the holy ones, us.
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Breaking of bread, prayer, and prayer. These are things that God ordained.
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This is no man -made religion. This is God's ordained means of coming to him.
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We do it through Christ our priest. And so, we're gonna go now to a time of communion. If anybody didn't get one of these little cups with the bread on top,
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Nate will bring you one. Just raise your hand. Carefully take the top layer off.
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There are really two layers and it's easy to pull them both off at the same time. It's hard to just get the one.
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But this here piece of bread, it's symbolic.
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And reformers used terms like symbolism because, as I mentioned earlier, the view of the
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Roman Catholic Church with transubstantiation had gone too far and added things that are just not in the Bible.
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But we can also err if we think that symbolism means merely a symbol.
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When you get baptized, you're symbolically buried with Christ and raised with him to newness of life.
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But there's something powerful that happens on the day of your baptism. It's some kind of means of grace that God uses.
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I don't want us to think that this is merely a symbol as in it doesn't really matter. A fellow pastor of mine from up in Wantage, New Jersey, Hope EFC, Pastor Palo, he was helping me to understand this a little better as we talked through theology last week.
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And he said the way he likes to think about it is that the element is like a representative of Christ.
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That when we take bread on a Sunday morning as the saints gather, we need to understand that Christ is really here.
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And when you hold this symbol of his body, it's representative of him. It helps you to realize that like him standing here, he sees you.
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You're holding him in your hand. Not in a transubstantiation way, body, blood, soul, and divinity, but in a representative way.
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You are to examine your heart and spend time with him. So let's do that now.
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Before we eat, we need to take this and then we'll drink. Take a moment to pray.
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Realize that Christ is here. Our great high priest is within the veil, but he said he would not leave us as orphans.
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His spirit would be with us. He is here right now. And before we take of it, we're told to examine your heart, confess sins.
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We all fall short of God's glory, but we take this and bring our sin to Christ, our representative.
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So let's take a few minutes to pray. Confessing sin. Thank you, our great high priest, for being faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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That we are washed whiter than snow by your precious blood.
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Amen. The Bible says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the
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Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, thank you,
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Lord, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
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And now, if you'll take the cup, in the same way, also he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
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Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
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For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
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Amen. Worship team, let's come forward and we will close with song.
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Will you stand with me? Your blood has washed away my sin.
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Jesus, thank you. The Father's wrath completely satisfied.
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Jesus, thank you. Once your enemy has seated at your table.
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Jesus, thank you. Jesus, thank you.
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By your perfect sacrifice I've been brought near.
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Your enemy, your babe, your friends.
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Pouring out the riches of your glorious grace.
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Your mercy and your kindness knows no end.
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Your blood has washed away my sin.
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Jesus, thank you. The Father's wrath completely satisfied.
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Jesus, thank you. Once your enemy has seated at your table.
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Jesus, thank you.
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Lover of my soul. Lover of my soul.
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I want to live for you.
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Lover of my soul.
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I want to live for you.
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Lover of my soul. I want to live for you.
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Your blood has washed away my sin.
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Jesus, thank you. The Father's wrath completely satisfied.
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Jesus, thank you. Once your enemy has seated at your table.
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Jesus, thank you.
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Jesus, thank you. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have
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God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the