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Text: Hebrews 7:23-28
No more death in this priesthood (vss 23-24)
- Wages of sin no longer apply in Christ’s priesthood. The wages of sin is death. Death would be the constant companion under the law. No matter how good the priest was, the shadow of death lingered over his calling. Eventually death would put an end to that good man’s priesthood.
- Have you ever thought about how the wages of sin and its effects on how you are forced to live your life in a dying body?
- You’ve got to spend time thinking how you’re going to leave things to your children.
- You’ve got to think about the time in your life when your health will fail.
- You’ve got to spend time preparing the future generations in hopes they will follow the Lord.
- Samuel, the great priest and prophet of Israel. As good of a man as Samuel was, the day came when he could no longer do what was required of him in the priesthood. God is no respecter of persons, and Samuel wouldn’t be exempt from the wages of sin. He passed his priesthood on to his sons who walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment. (1 Samuel 8:3)
- Have you ever thought about how the wages of sin and its effects on how you are forced to live your life in a dying body?
- The wages of sin would be done away with in Christ’s priesthood.
- Just as death would put an end to a priest’s priesthood, the law could only go so far. And where that priesthood ended, at death, Jesus Christ’s priesthood would begin. What the law was incapable of doing, Jesus Christ would do. The law went as far as death for the priesthood and could go no further. Jesus Christ’s priesthood would begin where the law would end.
- As Paul said, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. And literally, the Lord Jesus Christ’s priesthood would begin where the former priesthood would fail and come to its end.
No more separation from God in this priesthood (vs 25)
- Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
- Law was unable to bring anyone to God. In fact, the law made sure that man did not come close to God. The veil, the walls, the separation from God and the people was built into the law and the architecture.
- Saved to the uttermost is the most extreme
- He said save them to the uttermost, to the most extreme level of salvation if they’ve come to God by him.
- He will completely remove all enmity with God. Saved mind. Saved heart. Saved body. Saved soul.
- Not only the absence of danger, but the presence of God and enjoying all His creation and blessing.
- Drowning man, life preserver. Salvation is in hand, but he’s still surrounded by danger. Coast Guard gets him on board, takes him to the hospital. He’s saved, but he’s banged up. He recovers from his injuries. He and his wife go home. He’s saved, no danger of drowning again, recovered from his injuries, but he has yet to enjoy being home. He and his wife make it home, they sit on the couch and thank God the whole thing is over. Not only is he now saved, and not only is he not in any danger of drowning at all anymore, not only has he fully recovered, but he is free to enjoy being home. In regards to the danger of drowning in the ocean as he was, he has been saved to the uttermost.
- Intercession is mediation. Intervening on behalf of someone else.
- Consider even the architecture under the law was changed when the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom.
- Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth.
- Under the law, God was in the midst of the people, but remained separated from them.
- Under Jesus Christ, not only was God communing with people, He was going out and finding people who were not in the camp, not in the city, not in the state, not in the country, not even on the same continent, Jesus Christ priesthood would seek them out to commune with them.
No more sin in this priesthood (vss 26-28)
- The law made provision for sinners to be high priests. If you remember in the law a priest had to first perform his own sacrifices in order to be sanctified to minister in the temple for others. So the law identified sinners as priests.
- Jesus Christ’s priesthood no longer needed to make provision for a sinner to be priest. The basis for this priesthood would be:
- Holy
- Harmless
- Undefiled
- Separate from sinners
- Higher than the heavens
- Jesus Christ’s priesthood eliminates sin, so there is not a regular accounting of sacrifices anymore. In this priesthood God would only deal with sons, not sinners.
