Title: Christ as Son and Priest
Today Passage:
So too Christ did not glorify Himself in becoming a high priest, but it was He who said to Him,
“You are My Son,
Today I have fathered You”;
just as He also says in another passage,
“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Verse 5 is from Psalm 2:4-7
He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
Then He will speak to them in His anger
And terrify them in His fury, saying,
“But as for Me, I have installed My King
Upon Zion, My holy mountain.”
“I will announce the decree of the Lord:
He said to Me, ‘You are My Son,
Today I have fathered You.
Contextual Summary:
Pslam 2 makes it clear that from the beginning, God the Father’s plan was to install His Son on Earth to carry out His plan of reclamation of the human race.
Verse 6 quote is from Psalm 110:1-4
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at My right hand
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
The Lord will stretch out Your strong scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”
Your people [a]will volunteer freely on the day of Your power;
In holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn,
Your youth are to You as the dew.
The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind,
“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”
Contextual Summary:
Psalm 110 makes it clear that the role of Jesus on Earth was to become the Great High Priest, to make the once-for-all sacrifice, that would forever fulfill the Law’s requirements, appease the Father’s righteous wrath, and (most importantly for us) allow all who claim Christ to be forgiven, adopted, and known by the Father.
Consider what Matthew Henry says about this concept:
In the manner of his call, in which God said unto him, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee (quoted from Ps. 2:7), referring to his eternal generation as God, his wonderful conception as man, and his perfect qualification as Mediator.
Thus God solemnly declared his dear affection to Christ, his authoritative appointment of him to the office of a Mediator, his installment and approbation of him in that office, his acceptance of him, and of all he had done or should do in the discharge of it.
Now God never said thus to Aaron. Another expression that God used in the call of Christ we have in Ps. 110:4, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec. God the Father appointed him a priest of a higher order than that of Aaron.
The priesthood of Aaron was to be but temporary; the priesthood of Christ was to be perpetual: the priesthood of Aaron was to be successive, descending from the fathers to the children; the priesthood of Christ, after the order of Melchisedec, was to be personal, and the high priest immortal as to his office, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
So what are the great takeaways from today’s verses in Hebrews?
Well, if we look back at last week’s message, we note that the last thing that the author of Hebrews tells us about the human high priest, the good high priest, was that he does not “take the honor of High Priest for himself, but rather receives it when he is called.”
And last week I simply remarked that this is a reminder that to lead is to serve. But it is so much more than that. Christ, too did not seek this title…he received it from His father.
Some of the reason for this clarification was contextual to the early audience of Hebrews.
Dave Guzik correctly reminds us:
It is easy to see why the priesthood of Jesus was difficult for early Jewish Christians to grasp. Jesus was not from the lineage of Aaron. Jesus neither claimed nor practiced special ministry in the temple. He confronted the religious structure instead of joining it.
In Jesus’ day, the priesthood became a corrupt institution. The office was gained through intrigue and politicking among corrupt leaders.
Application:
- Just as Christ changed everything for Jewish mindset of how offering/sacrifice/redemption works, so also does Christ change everything about our present understanding of the ONLY path to God.
- Jesus is not exclusive for the sake of being exclusive. We don’t claim Christ is the only way to salvation because we are arrogant, or an elitist religious club. No! Passages like this remind us that Jesus was the only one who did the WORK of living and dying for our sins! Buddha didn’t do that, Muhammed certainly didn’t do that, and no religion made of man does anything but distract from the Christ.
- When we talk about the superiority of Christ over all other religions we are actually testifying to these two verses in Hebrews! We are stating:
- Jesus is the only Son of God.
- Jesus is the appointed Eternal Great High Priest that paid what we could not.
In other words, when we claim the exclusivity of Christ we are saying: No one is what Jesus is, and no one did what Jesus did. I believe that with all my fiber, and all that is noise just fades to the background in the shadow of that great singular truth.
pray/qa