Mediation

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Sunday, April 10, 2011

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

My children have a tendency to be late to things, late to church, late to events. I don’t know if you ever had that problem in the past or if you have that problem right now, but there is one father who dealt with this in this fictitious story. He told his son, “You know, Son, you’re late. Tomorrow I need you to be on time. We have things planned after school. But if you’re not on time, there are going to be some consequences. When you come to dinner, we’re not going to have anything for you, maybe a piece of bread.”

So the next day came along and the son never came in, and he was even later than usual. He came in the door and he was filled with all kinds of excuses and the parents just looked at him and they were silent. The boy went upstairs and he thought he got away with it. He said, “Whoa, got away with it. Nice.”

But then he came down for dinner that night and there in his spot, there was a plate and a piece of bread and a glass of water. He looked around him and he saw everybody else’s plate is full of meat and potatoes. He looked at his father’s plate. It was overflowing. He looked at his father’s face and yet, he was silent. He expected some kind of conversation, some kind of interaction but nothing. He was silent.

His mother came in the room. She looked at his plate. She walked over to the father and kind of bent down. She whispered in his ear. He was still silent. She bent down and she whispered again and, finally, this time he kind of gave this little nod. The mother went over and grabbed her plate that was full and she put it in front of the son, and she took his empty plate and she placed it on her own. You see, the mother was acting as a mediator between the father and the son. She came in and she gave him what he didn’t deserve.

Jesus acts as our mediator, a mediator between our Father in heaven and us. We are separated by sin. Jesus came as that mediator to stand in between, to draw us to the Father.

As we talk about this whole mediation thing, it’s just one role that the priests maintained. It was mediation. But before we get into the topic of Jesus being the mediator, being the priest, the High Priest, we need to understand it in its context, understand a little bit more about the Old Testament priests, what their primary roles were before we understand Jesus as our High Priest.

In the Old Testament, we find that there were four primary roles of the priests. Number one, and probably most important, they were set apart. In Deuteronomy 18:5, it says, “For the Lord your God has chosen them out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, Him and His Son for all time.” They were chosen to be taken out of all the tribes. It wasn’t that they were separated but they were different. They were set apart. They were taken out for specific tasks.

We see in their second primary role, the task is to worship God or to serve God wherever he dwells. If you remember the Israelites, as they left the land of Egypt, they headed into a new territory. God said, “Things are going to be a little bit different and you are going to be a little bit different.” This is when He said in the Deuteronomy passage that He sets apart a priest and that priest then goes and serves God wherever he dwells. It happened to be for them that it was the Tent of Meeting.

It was a tent that they traveled along with and wherever they stopped, they set up the tent and the tent was divided into three sections. The priest, being set apart, was only allowed to enter certain parts and only one priest, the High Priest, could enter the holiest of holies.

As they would serve the Lord, the people would bring their offerings, their sacrifices, both of grain and of animal, to the priest so that the priest could offer them before the Lord. That would be their job. That would be their reason for being set apart, and the people needed the priests in order to make that happen because they could not go directly to God Himself and offer those sacrifices.

We also see their third primary duty that goes along with the whole serving in the tent and then later on in the temple, was intercession. They interceded on behalf of the people. So when the people had a request and they had prayers they wanted to offer to God, they would bring them to the priests and the priests would then offer those prayers up to God. He would act in behalf or stand between the people and God.

Listen to this from Joel. As he talks about one of these intercessary prayers that the priest offers up to God, it says, “Between the vestibule and the altar was the priest, the ministers of the Lord weep and say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations.’” The priests stood in the way as the people were often, as we looked at it in the Old Testament, on this roller coaster ride. They fell away from God and then they turned back towards God. They fell away and turned back. The priests themselves would be those interceptors. The people turned back to God. He would go to God in prayer and say, “Spare these people. They’ve turned back to you and they’re ready to hear your word.” Without the priest, the people were not able to go to God directly. They needed the priest to offer sacrifices, to bring prayers.

Their fourth primary duty is what we find very early on in the first High Priest, Aaron. Their fourth primary duty is to speak a word of blessing. The first blessing we find in Numbers 6, God speaks to Aaron and He says, “This is what I want you to tell the people: ‘May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.’” It’s the blessing that God says to Aaron. He said, “Make sure you go and tell the people a word of blessing.”

They’ve understood the forgiveness. They’ve understood the sin offerings that they’ve offered, that they are forgiven, but now, “Tell them a word of blessing. Make sure they know that my face is turned towards them once again.” There was no greater compliment than to understand that God was looking at the people. When His face was turned away, that meant He was angry. But in this blessing, we find that it says, “His face is shining upon you. He’s turned toward your people.” The blessing, the blessing that it says only the priest could pronounce.

Four primary duties of the priests and yet, what we find also, there is a flaw. The priests themselves even offering these sacrifices, offering prayers, we find they have a weakness. They too are sinful. They too have weaknesses. When they offer the one day a year they can go into the holy of holies, even the High Priest, the one who is allowed to enter, he must go through a ritual process of cleansing himself before he can even enter that place. Even when he’s offering that sacrifice to God, he has to offer it on behalf of himself and the people because he is sinful. He has weaknesses.

We find that in this sinful nature, the priesthood itself started to take a decline in Israel. Throughout some of the Old Testament, what we find are there are priests who are abusing their power and authority. When they start to tell the people what they want to hear, it’s no longer about what God is saying to them. It’s no longer what their primary roles and duties are. It’s primarily just to make sure the people are happy. They’ve turned their face, their ear away from God and they’ve turned it to just making sure they maintain their power and authority.

We see the corrupt nature of the priesthood even later on as the kings come into play. The priests are still there except some of the priests are no longer listening to God either. All they’re doing is listening to the king. They’re listening to the king and saying, “Alright, King, what do you want me to tell the people?” It’s not, “Hey, God, what do you want me to tell the people?” It’s, “Look at the king.” It was all to maintain this power and authority they had over the people because, as you can see in their primary roles, nobody else could get to God except through the priests.

We see the parallel in our world today, the corrupt nature of the priesthood. And I’m not just talking about Catholic priests. I’m talking about pastors and preachers across the world. They’ve caused harm. They’ve gone out and lied and stolen and cheated and abused. It’s a nature we find they have clung to their power and authority and they have abused it. We no longer speak the things of God. It’s turning their ear from Him and, all of a sudden, it’s just the things that are going to make people happy. What’s going to make people say, “Hey, good message today.” Are those the things from God?

Not everything has to be a word of judgment and a word of doom. While we can’t deny that God’s word, every once in awhile, brings His correction back to us, a word of law that’s spoken to our hearts, when we turn our ear from that, when we decline to hear it because it doesn’t make us feel good, we turn our ear away from God.

We’ve seen this corrupt nature. It’s hurt people. It’s hurt relationships. That’s why it’s great news that we find here today, that there is one who came and fulfilled the priesthood perfectly, Jesus Christ.

Now Jesus, throughout the gospels, is never once mentioned as a priest. People call Him teacher. People call Him rabbi. People call Him some other things, but they don’t call Him priest. There’s only one place in scripture that addresses Jesus Christ as the priest, and that’s the book of Hebrews. I want to take you there. As we look at Chapter 4 in Hebrews, it gives us this nice outline and understanding of who Jesus Christ is as the High Priest and some of the qualifications that He’s fulfilled being the High Priest. This is the way Chapter 4:14 starts out; it says, “Since then, we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens.” And just in case you don’t know who it is, the writer of Hebrews follows up with, “It’s Jesus, the Son of God.”

We have a great High Priest, not one we can say, “Well, we don’t know really who it is.” It’s the great High Priest who passed from heaven and came to earth, who is in the richness and fullness of heaven but gave that up to become a man, to live amongst His creation. And who is this? Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So we move on to some of His qualifications of what it means to be High Priest. It says, “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” This is significant because there was a time when the High Priest was so set apart and was so different from the people that they became separated by nature, because of the office. People could say, “I can’t connect with the High Priest because he is just so different,” because they saw him almost as sinless. But in this passage, what we find is there is connection now. They’re saying, “For this High Priest isn’t like one that’s set apart, one that’s way different from you.” He said, “This High Priest sympathizes with our weaknesses.”

Jesus Christ became human, in the flesh, walked amongst us, understood pain and hunger, thirst, sadness, anger. He has come and been a part of the human condition. He is not separated from it. He is not beyond it just because He’s also God. He came into the flesh and dwelled among us. It’s not just our weaknesses that He’s familiar with. As Hebrews continues to go on, it says, “But also, in every respect, He has been tempted the same way that we are.” The temptations that we deal with on a daily basis, it says that Jesus knows about those temptations. As He went through and started His earthly ministry, He went off into the wilderness and He didn’t eat for 40 days and for 40 nights, and there it was that the devil came and tempted Him at His lowest point in His life. He said, “Here’s some bread. Why don’t you eat it. Look at all these cities. They could be yours.” Power and authority. These are all the same temptations that we deal with in our world. He was offered it.

The thing that makes our High Priest different is what it follows up with. It says, “He knows about our temptations and yet was without sin.” This is the primary reason why the sacrifice He could offer would be accepted by His Father in heaven. But if you look at this, He is both, at the same time, the High Priest and He’s the sacrifice. He’s the only one who can bring the sacrifice. He’s the only one who would have been acceptable to His Father in heaven. And He, at the same time, being a sacrifice, is holy and acceptable to God.

Our great High Priest sacrificed Himself so that we could be brought to the Father. It says in Matthew that as Jesus was on the cross, He breathed His last and He said that it was finished. The Matthew account shows that the temple shook in Jerusalem and as it shook, the temple curtain tore in two from top to bottom. It’s significant because all of a sudden, what we find is no longer does the holy of holies separate us from God, no longer do we have to stand out and look beyond as we see a priest but, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the curtain was torn in two and we have access to the Father.

So then what must we do? Hebrews follows up then and says, “Let us then, knowing all of this,” knowing that Jesus is the sacrifice, knowing that He knew our weaknesses and knew our temptations, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace and help in time of need.” Such a short couple of verses in Hebrews and yet, he’s telling the people the curtain is torn in two, you’re free to enter, to enter before the Creator of heaven and earth with confidence, knowing that when we offer our prayers He hears them and not just hears them, but He listens to them and He answers them and He’s there in our time of need.

With confidence, we go before our God knowing all of that. It’s great news today. It’s great news today that even in the sinfulness and broken nature of our world, we can still go to our Father in every time of need and Peter even continues to call each and every one of us to something different. What Peter says in his book, 1 Peter, he calls each of us “the holy nation, the holy priesthood.”

So something is moving further in God’s plan of restoration. It just didn’t stop with the sacrifice and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The plan has continued, and it continues in each of us because we are called the holy priesthood, set apart, knowing that we can go directly to God with every prayer, every care and every need. We are part of the plan. Amen.