Better Priest

So we're in a Hebrews series.

In this month of April, we have five messages over four weeks, but there's an extra one because of Good Friday.

And the subtitle of our series is Everlastingly Better.

The word better appears throughout the Book of Hebrews in kind of interesting key points.

So we've kind of taken that idea, the better idea, and then connected it with our theme for this year, which is everlasting.

The thesis statement that we've come to a few times is Hebrews 1, verse 1.

In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.

But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

In this series, we're looking at five messages that Jesus is the better revelation.

He is a better priest.

He gives a better sacrifice.

He wins a better victory, and he promises a better covenant, because Jesus is better.

That's our Hebrews series today.

We're in a message called Better Priest, which I think is page 38 in the green book, if you're following.

In this message, I want to tell you upfront what we're going to do.

We're going to trace a biblical theology of priesthood in the Bible from Old Testament and New Testament, and then land in Hebrews and show how Jesus is a better priest.

But before we get there, I want to start in what you might think is quite an odd place to start, and that is Luke chapter 5.

We read this in verse 12.

While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.

When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

I am willing, he said, be clean, and immediately the leprosy left him.

Now, that's an odd place to start a sermon on a biblical theology of priesthood from Old Testament to New Testament landing in the Book of Hebrews.

But the reason I want to start there is because when I say biblical theology of priesthood from Old Testament to New Testament, I feel my shoulders slump, and I feel like we collectively go, okay, this is going to be a long half hour.

And yet, I think part of the reason we have that kind of reaction is in my mind and maybe in your mind, we have separated the Christ of the Epistles with the Jesus of the Gospels.

So the Epistles, the Letters, the bulk of the New Testament, talk about Jesus Christ as the Son of God with incredible, beautiful, doctrinal, kind of theoretical language about who Jesus is.

And then you read the Gospels in its story after story of the most incredible life that's ever been lived, healing and transforming and teaching.

And sometimes, we don't connect those two together.

And so, the reason I want to start with this story is that that story is a narrative illustration of what it means for Jesus to be the better priest.

We're going to look at a whole lot of theory and ideas from Hebrews, but I don't want us to be stuck in our heads the whole time.

I want to have this story as an anchor because this is what it means for him to be the better priest.

You know, priests in the Bible were bridges between heaven and earth.

So, Genesis 1 verse 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, heaven and earth.

And the picture in Genesis is that heaven, the realm of heaven and the realm of earth are totally overlapping until, as we looked at in Genesis 3, two weeks ago, human beings rebelled against God and separated heaven and earth.

But that was not the way that it was meant to be.

And so, God instituted the priesthood.

The priests of the Old Testament were supposed to minister in the overlap between heaven and earth.

In a sense, they were to be fully human with two feet on earth, really human beings, but who kind of reach into heaven and through sacrifice and the system of the temple mediate in between heaven and earth.

That's what the priests did.

And when we come back to this story, that's exactly what Jesus is doing.

Notice the word that Jesus said.

He doesn't say, be healed.

He doesn't say, be transformed.

He says, be clean.

Because this is a cleanliness issue.

It's a priest story, where Jesus is bringing the wholeness of heaven into the brokenness of earth.

He says, be clean, and the man is clean.

Jesus is a better priest.

My hope is that in this message, that would not only be abstract and theoretical, but it would land in the story of our lives.

He's a better priest because he's better than angels, better than Aaron, and better than Melchizedek.

I love a three-point sermon.

Jesus is a better priest because he's better than angels, better than Aaron, and better than Melchizedek.

Firstly, Jesus is a better priest because he's better than angels.

So what are angels?

If you've read any part of the New Testament or the Gospels, you've probably come across angels.

The Greek word angelos, that we get the English angel, means, according to my favorite Greek dictionary, it means a transcendent power who carries out various missions or tasks.

You read the New Testament and the Old Testament, angels are messengers of God, spiritual beings that do the will of God on earth.

God says, go tell this person this certain thing, and the angel comes and does that.

So angels are kind of like bridges between heaven and earth.

And just for fun, for a bit of Bible trivia, when an angel appears in the New Testament, what is the first thing they nearly always say?

What is the first thing an angel says?

Fear not.

Do not be afraid because angels are terrifying.

When a heavenly being is manifest on earth, the natural human response across the Bible, across the New Testament is fear.

In fact, there's stories in the Book of Revelation where John gets on his knees and starts worshiping an angel.

That's how glorious it is.

He thinks he has seen God.

But the angel says, no, no, no, no, no, get off your knees.

I'm not God, but I'm sent by God.

So angels are these spiritual beings, sometimes manifest on earth, but they operate in the overlap between heaven and earth, kind of like a priest.

In priests, they minister in the overlap between heaven and earth.

The difference is it's almost like you could think that a priest has two feet on earth.

They're a human being who ministers in heaven, but they are human, whereas an angel is two feet in heaven, spiritual being that sometimes does things on earth.

In that sense, I think we could kind of think that priests and angels are like mirror reflections of each other.

Both of them are commissioned by God to minister in the overlap between heaven and earth.

That's what angels are.

Now, I think it's interesting when you read the Gospels, you read the stories of the Bible, that God could have saved us.

He could have redeemed his people.

He could have accomplished his redemptive purpose in the world through angels.

He could have.

Angels do incredible things.

They fight and they speak and they do stuff, but God did not use angels.

God could have sent an angel, could have sent a legion of angels to fix this world, but he didn't.

He sent his son, a human being.

So we read this in Hebrews 1 verse 3, which is after the thesis statement that I read before.

So in the past, God spoke to our ancestors, but in these last days, he spoke to us by his son.

And then verse 3, the son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.

So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

And if you're familiar with Hebrews, and I would encourage you to read through the letter to the Hebrews this month.

You could read it a few times.

You're probably going to get more out of the sermons if you read the letter a few times.

After that, we have pretty much two chapters of Old Testament quotations from the Psalms and different places, all on this theme of angels, which culminates in Hebrews 2 verse 14, since the children, he's referring to the people of Israel, since the children have flesh and blood, he, Jesus, shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

For surely, it's not angels that Jesus helps, but Abraham's descendants.

And this is, I think, the important bit.

Verse 17, for this reason, he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a faithful and merciful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Jesus is better than angels because he's human.

He's better than angels because he's a human being.

Now, angels are awesome, not like in the way that a teenager would say awesome, but in the old fashioned sense, awesome, awful, full of awe.

That's what angels are like.

And yet in the Bible, angels are only ever temporarily manifest on earth.

But when God stepped into history to fix this world, he became like us.

He took on a body.

He became human.

God is, Jesus is better than angels because he's a human.

And that means he's a better priest for us.

You know, there are, I think, three main ways that we can relate to the experience of another person.

Three ways that we relate to the pain of another human being.

The first is apathy, sympathy and empathy.

Apathy, sympathy, empathy.

Apathy comes from two Greek words, pathos, meaning suffering or passion or feeling, and the prefix a, which means not.

It's a negative.

So apathy is not feeling.

That means that I look at you in your plight, your suffering, your situation, and I have no feeling.

That's apathy.

Secondly, you have sympathy, which from the Greek is pathos, feeling, and sin, or sim, meaning with, like a symphony, with.

Now, sympathy is great, but I think that the phrase that sums up sympathy today is thoughts and prayers.

You know, you see something on Instagram or someone, something bad happens to someone, and you say thoughts and prayers.

You're feeling pain with them.

You're like, oh, sympathy, my sympathies.

But in a sense, sympathy is distant from the other person.

The third way that we can relate to the experience of another person is empathy.

And empathy is the Greek pathos, feeling, suffering, passion, and en or em meaning in.

Empathy is to feel the other person's feelings in yourself.

And you can only feel another person's feelings if you are with them in the midst of it.

We read this in Hebrews 4.

This is the passage that Abby read for us.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize, but we have one who is able to empathize, who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin.

Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Jesus is a better priest.

He's better than angels because he's human.

He is like us, which means he feels our pain.

He is not apathetic.

He is not uncaring.

He's not even sympathetic.

Thoughts and prayers from afar.

He is empathetic because he became like us.

He felt our pain.

The betrayal of a relationship that falls apart, he felt.

The sting of death, he felt.

He knows what it's like to be a human.

Jesus feels, felt, temptation.

He knows what it's like.

In fact, sometimes we might think that, yeah, Jesus knows what it is to be human, but he never sinned, so he doesn't like fully know what it's like to be human.

CS.

Lewis, the author of the Narnia books, says it's actually the exact opposite.

And he gives this image, and I've said this before, so just tune out for 60 seconds until we finish.

Imagine you're walking against a hurricane-force wind, and it's temptation.

You're fighting and you're struggling and struggling.

At some point in the battle against temptation, every single human being has given up and fallen backwards and been blown away.

But Jesus, according to Hebrews, felt every temptation we feel, yet he did not sin.

That means that he pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and reached the end.

And so we say, Jesus, you don't know what it's like to feel the temptation of us human beings.

He knows more than we do because he knows how much harder it is at the end of the road that no one has ever got to.

So CS.

Lewis has this crazy idea that Jesus knows what it is to be human more than we do.

He has felt our pain and he is with us in our time of need.

That line, our time of need, comes from Hebrews 4 16.

Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

And I want to come back to that idea a few times in this message and suggest that one of the things that our time of need means is when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

It spells halt because that's probably what you should do if you're in that situation.

Hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

You're feeling temptation.

Now, let's do this as a trivia thing.

The New Testament gives us two clear, explicit portraits of Jesus dealing with temptation.

What are those two stories?

Desert, yep, after his baptism in the wilderness and Gethsemane.

So after Jesus was baptized, the Spirit sent him into the wilderness for 40 days.

Now, think of Holt.

Think of Jesus in his two temptations and whether he was hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.

He was hungry.

He was lonely.

He was probably tired.

He was probably angry at that pesky devil that kept on coming at him.

And in Gethsemane, he probably wasn't hungry because he just had the last supper, a meal belly full of bread and wine.

But he was lonely.

He felt the beginnings of the cup of the wrath of the Father on his shoulders, and he was tired.

He felt everything we feel.

So when you are hungry, angry, lonely, tired, he is with you.

And he knows what it is to feel that.

Jesus is a better priest because he's human.

He feels our pain.

And secondly, he's a better priest because he's better than Aaron.

Now, remember Aaron, he was the older brother of Moses.

We are introduced to him in the Book of Exodus.

God commissions Moses to go speak to Pharaoh and say, let my people go.

Moses, maybe he had some kind of stutter or he wasn't good with words.

So Moses said, I can't do it.

So God said, okay, I'll give you your brother Aaron.

He will be your mouthpiece.

And then we read this in Exodus 28.

God says to Moses, have Aaron your brother brought to you from among the Israelites, sorry, along with his sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eliezer and Ithamar.

So they may serve me as priests, make sacred garments for your brother Aaron to give him dignity and honor.

So this is the setting apart of Aaron and his family as the priests.

Now we've already had, have we already had at this point?

I can't think.

Late either already or after this moment, God sets apart the family of Levi.

So Levi was one of the 12 sons of Jacob whose name becomes Israel.

And that whole family of Levi were to be the temple workers, the ones who fill up the oil in the lamps and do all the kind of temple-based things.

And they were to receive their wages from the temple.

But then God here in Exodus 28 chooses a family within the tribe of Levi, the line of Aaron, and God says that family will be the priest family.

And over the rest of the whole Old Testament, every priest is in the line of Aaron.

Aaron's sons, grandsons, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandsons.

It comes from this place.

The priesthood comes from the line of Aaron.

Jesus is better than Aaron, and we see this in Hebrews 5.

After pretty much four chapters of comparing Jesus with the angels and concluding Jesus is better, we read this in Hebrews 5, verse 1.

Every high priest is selected from among the people, and again, more specifically the tribe of Levi, more specifically the family of Aaron, selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.

The priest is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray since he himself is subject to weakness.

This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as for the sins of the people.

So, the high priest, the priesthood were human.

Obviously, they were human.

From the line of Aaron, they are human beings.

Now, it's great to have a human being as your priest, one who can empathize with the sufferings of human beings.

But there's two problems with having a human priest.

Problem one, they have to deal with their own sin first.

Every human priest in the line of Aaron had to deal with their own sins through the different ritual purification rights before they could deal with the sins of the people.

That's problem one.

Problem two, we see in Hebrews 7 23, there have been many of those priests in the line of Aaron since death prevented them from continuing in office.

It's great to have a human priest that is able to empathize with our weakness, but if they're human, they keep on dying and we keep needing a new one.

And with almost every kind of generational legacy type thing in the Old Testament, it gets worse and worse and worse.

The kings get worse and worse and then sometimes better, but generally worse.

The same with Aaron's sons.

They generally get worse and worse and worse because they keep dying.

And so our passage continues in verse 24.

There have been many of those priests since death prevented them from continuing in office.

But because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.

Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

Jesus is better than Aaron because he's divine.

Jesus is better than Aaron because he's divine.

That means the two problems are solved.

Problem one, Jesus is God, he doesn't sin.

He doesn't need to deal with his own sin.

And problem two, he's God, I mean he did die.

The Easter story is that he did die, but he came back to life again.

Jesus does not die and then the priesthood ends with him.

In fact, what is it, Hebrews 7, 16.

This is like such a cool line.

Look at this.

Hebrews 7, 16, Jesus has become a priest, not on the basis of a regulation as to ancestry.

He's not a son of the line of Aaron, but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.

How good is that line?

He is a priest because of the power of an indestructible life.

Death can't take him down and sin can't take him down.

That means Jesus is a better priest, better than Aaron, because he is divine.

In a sense, that means that...

So in the first point, he's better than angels because he's human.

That means two feet on earth.

He's truly human.

But at the same time, he has two feet in heaven because he's truly divine.

Now, without foraying into complex like Christological theology, I don't mean to say Jesus has four feet.

He has two feet.

But he has two on earth, metaphorically, and two in heaven.

And I want to avoid two extremes.

I don't want to say he has four feet.

He doesn't.

But I also don't want to say that he has one foot in heaven and one foot on earth.

Because we read from the Chalcedonian Creed, which is from, I think, the 5th century, one of the early creeds.

Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all, with one accord, teach men and women to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the bit.

At once, complete in Godhead, and, and that's the most insane and, how on earth that and functions, we don't know, and complete in manhood.

So it's not that Jesus has four legs, two in heaven, two on earth.

It's not that he has one in each, but he is fully God and somehow fully man.

Jesus holds those two things together.

He's better than Aaron because he's divine, and he's better than the angels because he's human.

So what does it mean for you and for me?

The fact that he is divine.

The fact that he's better than Aaron.

It means he can help.

He's not only empathetic in your suffering, which is great.

That's a beautiful thing, but he can do something about it.

It's one thing to have a friend get around you in your pain, and say, I'm with you, like I feel you.

But if they can't do anything about your pain, then there's a limit to what they can do.

But Jesus is not only empathetic, he is empowering in our time of need.

He can do something about it.

And that's what we see in the Gospels, in that story from Luke 5.

Jesus is fully human.

He's fully, he's got this beating heart moved by empathy at the plight of this man with leprosy.

He's fully human.

But rather than just giving him a fist bump and saying, I feel you, isn't the world tough?

Jesus has the power to do something about it, because he's God.

He holds those two things together.

So coming back to our time of need, that's Hebrews 4 16, grace and mercy to help us in our time of need.

When you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or generally in need more broadly.

I think Jesus modeled for us the response in temptation.

The two places, remember, the wilderness, he was tempted and Gethsemane.

In those two places, he showed us how to tap into the grace and power of God to endure temptation.

And in fact, I preached a message on this in March last year called Gethsemane as part of our Mark series.

So if temptation is kind of a thing that you're thinking about, I submit to you that message.

You might find it helpful.

Let me give you one of the ideas from that sermon here.

In Gethsemane, there are two ways to deal with temptation.

The disciples model one and Jesus models the other.

The disciples succumb to the flesh.

That means they let go and they fall asleep because they can't hold out.

Jesus surrendered to the father.

And those are the two options you have in temptation.

Succumb to the flesh or surrender to the father.

Now both involve letting go.

The difference is the direction you fall once you let go.

Because the disciples, we, if we succumb to the flesh, we're fighting against the wind, to use Louis' image, and then let go and just let it rip and do the sin and then pray for forgiveness afterwards.

Jesus let go, but he didn't fall backwards.

He fell forwards into the presence of the father.

And he said, God, I can't do this.

If it's your will, take this cup from me.

He's asking for grace and mercy to help him in his time of need.

And Jesus received that.

And so in our time of need, when we're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or more generally, wave the white flag quickly, the white flag of surrender to the father, and say, I don't have it in me to resist this, but you have it in you.

And you have given me the Spirit of God to resist this sin.

Hebrews 7 26 kind of pulls this together.

Such a high priest, meaning one that is divine.

Such a high priest truly meets our need.

One who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.

Unlike the other high priests, he doesn't need to offer sacrifices day after day for his own sin.

He's God, he doesn't sin.

And then for the sins of the people.

But he sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.

Jesus is a better priest, better than angels because he's human and better than Aaron because he's divine.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus is a better priest because he's better than Melchizedek.

So who's this Melchizedek guy?

He's a weird, weird, like probably top five most weird Bible characters if I was making a list.

The name Melchizedek appears only 11 times in the entire Bible and really only appears in three separate parts of Scripture.

The first time and the main time that Melchizedek appears is Genesis 14.

So the context is Abraham, Abram, his name was at the time, has a nephew called Lot, and a coalition of pagan kings conspire to kidnap Lot.

So Abram gets together a rag tag bunch of blokes from his crew, and they go with swords and rescue Lot.

And on the way back from rescuing his nephew Lot, we read this, Genesis 14 verse 18.

Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, it's like record scratch, no context for who this guy is, appears from nowhere.

Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.

He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, blessed be Abram by God Most High, creator of heaven and earth.

And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.

Then Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.

That's it, that's Melchizedek.

So weird, top five most weird characters.

The second time Melchizedek appears is Psalm 110.

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.

You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

Again, top five most weird characters.

And then we get to Hebrews 7.

Hebrews 7 is the lengthiest discussion of the character of Melchizedek.

And we read in verse one, this Melchizedek was king of Salem.

Salem is the Hebrew shalom, meaning peace, king of peace.

And priest of God most high, he met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him.

And Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.

First, the name Melchizedek means king of righteousness.

Tzedekah is the Hebrew word for righteousness, Melchizedek.

King of righteousness, then also king of Salem means king of peace, king of shalom.

Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the son of God, he remains a priest forever.

Just think how great he was.

Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder.

I'm actually sorry to Melchizedek for calling him top five most weird people.

Top five most great people is what the author of Hebrews would say.

But that's Melchizedek.

That's the entirety of the time that he shows up in the Bible.

And weirdly, he gets a lot of airtime in Hebrews.

He's this shadowy kind of figure that pops out of nowhere, that seems too good to be true, that feels like he's pointing forward to something.

Like we haven't fully found the explanation for who he is until Jesus comes.

And when Jesus comes, we see that he is better than Melchizedek because Jesus is real.

Now Melchizedek was real, I assume, had a body.

But he was dreamy, don't you think?

In Genesis 14, he's this too good to be true kind of figure because he's a silhouette of Jesus.

He is the one with our beginning of days and beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God.

Jesus is that person.

Jesus is better than Melchizedek because Jesus is real.

He is real to us.

So again, back to our time of need, whenever you need help, our time of need, but more specifically, maybe when you are hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

In that moment or in that season of temptation, what you do not need is an abstract, dreamy, too good to be true story from Genesis 14.

That doesn't help anyone.

That's not real.

And the temptation is real.

I mean, you are a human being, I assume.

I don't think we have any super-advanced AI human.

I think we are all human, which means we have all felt temptation.

And you know as well as I do, the temptation is real.

The struggle against the flesh is real.

And in that time, in our time of need, we need a God who is real to us as well.

One who is present and able to do something to help us in our time of need.

Christians, for 2,000 years, have talked about the 3 enemies of the soul.

The world, the flesh and the devil.

The world, Willard defined as socially organized flesh.

So let me talk about flesh and then I'll socially organize it to get to the world.

Flesh is the human nature apart from God.

It is a power and a nature in opposition to God.

And when you have one flesh, it's called flesh.

And when you get a bunch of them together and they create countries and laws and systems and institutions, we call that the world.

A power in opposition to God and His people.

And then you have the devil, that guy who is the ultimate enemy of the people of God.

The world, the flesh and the devil are real to us.

In our time of need, they are very real.

And what we need is a God who is real to us as well, to help us in our time of need.

So then how is Jesus real to us?

I read this book, The Familiar Stranger by Tyler Staden, and I would really recommend it.

Fantastic book on the Holy Spirit.

And he has this bit in part one where he talks about, he kind of has this hypothetical.

He says, imagine you were given a choice.

You can have one hour with Jesus face to face.

One hour to speak to God in the flesh.

Or, you can have a lifetime knowing God the Holy Spirit and being indwell by him.

So one hour with Jesus face to face, or a lifetime knowing God the Holy Spirit.

And Tyler Staden in the book says, in his experience from asking people, almost everyone would take one hour with Jesus, and I would do the same thing.

I think most of us would do the same thing.

One hour with Jesus, I would take that over probably a lifetime with the Spirit.

But then he does this incredible thing in the book where he goes to John 14-17, which is when Jesus and the disciples are in the upper room, which actually will happen in the Christian calendar on Thursday night.

So that's the scene.

And Jesus says, it is better for you that I go and give you the Spirit.

Jesus is saying that having God the Holy Spirit dwelling in a believer is a staggering improvement on having God the Son in the flesh in front of you.

And yet, for me, that is like a total mind shift that needs to happen to really feel like that is true.

Because I'd take an hour with Jesus any day, but Jesus said, it's better that you have the Spirit.

So how is God present to us in our time of need by His Spirit?

It's such a human struggle to find the nearness and the reality of God.

Remember Exodus 32, the golden calf story.

Remember, Moses goes up Mount Sinai to receive the law.

And the people at base camp suddenly have lost the human being who was their connection point with God.

And they start freaking out thinking, who is God?

Where is He going to lead us?

Where is He?

And so Aaron, by the way, not a great guy, really, not a great guy, Aaron, Aaron gets all the gold earrings from the women and all the gold.

He collects all the gold in Israel and he builds a golden calf.

And he says to the people, that's your God.

That's the one that got you out of Egypt.

And the people are like, finally, something we can look at and touch and knock and smell and see.

It's a physical God that we can see.

And of course, Moses comes down and knocks the whole thing over and melts it and pours it into dust and forces them to drink the dust of the gold, of the God that they had made, which is a crazy story.

The point is human beings struggle with the immateriality of God.

And yet, if we take Jesus' word in John 14-17, having God, the Holy Spirit, dwell in us is a staggering improvement over having God the Son in front of us.

That means that in your time of need, the temptation is real.

In a season of life or in a particular moment, when we are in need, the temptation is real, but God is realer.

He is present with you by His Spirit.

Paul says in Galatians 5.16, So I say walk by the Spirit.

That's like rhythmic and intentional and real.

Walk by the Spirit.

Know the Spirit's presence in your day to day life, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Jesus is better than Melchizedek because he is real to us in our time of need.

So to bring it all together, Jesus is a better priest.

He's better than angels because he's human.

He's better than Aaron because he's divine.

He can do something about it.

And he's better than Melchizedek because he's real.

That's what it means in Hebrews for Jesus to be a better priest.

Now again, that's lovely.

Three points, like roughly equal length for each of the points.

Looks good in a notepad.

But it's theory.

So I want to land back in the story in Luke 5 and see if the theory that we've learnt about who Jesus is as the better priest, see if that applies in the story of the gospel.

So Luke 5, this is the story that I opened with.

While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.

The Greek word for leprosy is a range of skin diseases.

He's got some kind of clearly defiling skin disease.

When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.

I am willing, he said.

Be clean.

And immediately the leprosy left him.

Is that a story of the priesthood of Jesus?

I want to kind of take our three points and see if they line up with this story.

And I want to take the three points in reverse order.

So Jesus is better than Melchizedek because he's real, better than Aaron because he's divine, and better than angels because he's human.

Flip it upside down and then reword it a little bit to ask these three questions.

These are really the three questions we've been asking.

Is Jesus present?

Is he real?

Is he tangible?

Is he present?

Is he able?

Can he do something about your situation?

And is he willing?

Does he care?

Is he empathetic for us?

Is he present?

Is he able?

Is he willing?

Let's take those three questions and ask them of Luke 5.

Is Jesus present?

Simple answer, yes.

He's walking down the road, and the man sees God the Son in the flesh and recognizes that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Jesus is present.

Is he able?

Look at what the leprous man says.

He says, you can make me clean.

You're able.

Somehow, the man must have heard stories about the things that Jesus did, and so he had enough faith to believe that this is not an ordinary human.

This is God the Son in the flesh.

He is able.

And then the third question is what the man asks.

He says, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

And what does Jesus say?

I am willing.

Be clean and immediately the leprosy left him.

Jesus touches the man.

He touches him for two reasons.

You do not touch a leprous person.

One, hygienically.

He's got a defiling skin disease.

You don't touch a person like that for simple hygiene sake.

And secondly, the ceremonial religious ritualistic reason that according to the Jewish law in Leviticus, if a person touches someone who is unclean, they will become unclean and have to do this whole process of cleansing themselves.

Jesus ignores all that, and he mediates between heaven and earth.

He brings the wholeness of heaven into this man's life with a touch and a word.

He says, be clean, and immediately the leprosy left him.

Jesus is a better priest, the one who brings heaven onto earth, into this man's life.

So we've seen that the theory of Hebrews does land in the story of the Gospels.

But finally, theory is great, Gospel story is great, but what you're thinking, what hits us the most is the story of our lives.

In our time of need, are those three questions answerable?

Is Jesus present when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, when you're battling the flesh, when you're suffering under the brokenness of this world?

Is He present?

I couldn't even choose one passage from the Bible to answer that question because it's on every page.

He is present.

Just take the Gospel of Matthew alone.

That's the, when you look at the Christmas part of Matthew in Matthew chapters 1 and 2, you see that Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means what?

God with us.

So Jesus, from the start of Matthew, is framed as the God who is with us, who is present.

And then, you know what the very last thing that Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew is?

What is it?

And it's the Great Commission, go make disciples.

The last sentence that Jesus speaks in Matthew is the bookend of the whole thing.

And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

He is with you.

You may not have an hour of face-to-face conversation with Jesus.

But if we take Jesus' own words, you have God the Holy Spirit with you, more than that, in you, in your heart.

He is present in your time of need.

Secondly, is he able?

Again, you can't pick one story from this thing to show that God is able to do something about your situation.

Finally, you know, I didn't tell Jaz this, but we sung God is able.

He is able.

I didn't hear anyone not singing that song thinking, no, he's not able.

That's not true.

He is able.

In this story, in Luke 5, he is able to heal the man, to transform his life.

He is able because he's the one who defeated death.

So he can handle your temptation.

He can handle the thing that you're going through because he broke the power of him who holds the power of death.

And finally, is he willing?

Is he willing to help you in your time of need?

Is he willing to forgive your sin and to reconcile you to the Father?

Again, the answer is an emphatic yes.

He is willing.

In that moment in Gethsemane, Jesus was wrestling with the calling that God had on him.

And he said, not my will, but yours be done.

And he resolutely made his way to the cross because he is willing to go to the utmost ends of the world, to face death on our behalf because he is willing to bring heaven to earth in your life.

He is able, he is present, and he is willing to help you in your time of need.

And that means he's a better priest.

He's better than having an angel come.

An angel is not human, doesn't know what it's like.

And it's better than just having a brother or sister or a human.

That's great.

But he's able to do something about it.

And it's better than having some airy, fairy, nothing Melchizedek weird guy, top five most weird slash great guys.

He's real.

He's present.

He's able and he's willing in your life.

So let me finish by reading the passage that Abby read for us.

And then we'll worship together.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest, who has ascended into heaven, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, and yet he did not sin.

Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Let me pray, and then we'll worship.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the letter to the Hebrews and the insight it gives us into what it means for you to be the better priest.

We thank you, Lord, that you are present with us, and I ask for all the hearts that are in this room.

We need to, we long to know your presence in our lives.

When we wake up tomorrow, when we're facing temptation, when we experience the brokenness of this world, God, we just want to know that you are with us.

So by your spirit, would you make yourself manifest to our senses in a way that we could perceive?

Help us to know you are present.

And Lord, we thank you that you are able.

We thank you at this Easter time that we, as we reflect on your death and resurrection, we thank you that there is nothing that can hold you back.

Not death, not the world, not the flesh, not the devil.

You are victorious over all of that.

You are able to help us, Lord.

We thank you for that.

And Lord, I pray that you would be willing as well.

Willing to bring heaven into our lives in the brokenness that we feel.

We thank you that you showed how willing you were when you freely gave your life on the cross.

When you rose again, you broke the power of Him who holds the power of death, that we might have eternal life, and that means to know you, God.

So we ask that your kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven, that you would be willing to bring heaven to earth in our lives.

So Lord, we approach the throne of grace with confidence, only by the blood of Jesus.

And Lord, we want to receive mercy tonight and grace to help us in our time of need.

So give us that grace Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

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