A Superior Priesthood

00:01 Well, we want to give glory to God this morning for the things that He has done, that He wants to do, and that He is doing, and the opportunities that lie before us as a church and as a community to share God's love in this Christmas season. Would you turn in your Bibles this morning to the Book of Hebrews, the eighth, excuse me, the seventh chapter? 00:22 And we'll be continuing this morning on the subject of the High Priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've entitled the message this morning, "A Superior Priesthood," a superior priesthood. Superior is a comparison word. What do you mean it's superior? Superior to what? 00:41 Superior in this passage of Scripture to the priesthood of Melchizedek. We ended last Sunday morning from Hebrews 6:19-20, where it says, "This hope we have is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil, 01:01 behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, 01:06 having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." What we have here this morning is a tie-in to this thing which is now mentioned the second time here in Hebrews about the order of Melchizedek as being the type of priest 01:24 that Jesus was and would be for His people. And He talks here about going back behind the veil, the veil of the tabernacle, the veil of the temple. And I'd like to ask you the question this morning, who represents you to God? Who represents you to God? 01:44 On what basis do you come to God? And who is your mediator between God and man? Now, we know, of course, we're here this morning. We're Christians. We're in a church. We're believers. We know that Jesus is that High Priest. But what makes Him a High Priest? And what kind of a High Priest is He? 02:02 We have an appeal this morning to a different model than the Aaronic priesthood or the priesthood of Aaron and the Levites, which now we're going to chapter 7 and read about this new priestly order. "For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, 02:24 to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated king of righteousness and then also king of Salem, meaning king of peace. Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, 02:44 remains a priest continually. Now consider how great this man was, to whom even this patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. And indeed, those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, 03:04 that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham. But he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and promised him who had the promise or blessed him who had the promises. Now, beyond all contradiction, the lesser is blessed by the better. 03:23 Here, mortal men receive tithes, but there, he receives them of whom it is witnessed that he lives. Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him." Now, 03:44 it is impossible for us to understand this passage of Scripture this morning without an understanding of the Old Testament. And we are building a case this morning on the superiority of the priesthood of Jesus as compared with the priesthood of Aaron and the Levites. So we want to look at the priestly role of Aaron. 04:06 We want to look at the priestly work of Melchizedek and the eternal work of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm going to take this a little bit backwards this morning because He's building a case going forward. I want to build the case coming backward so that we can get the historical perspective, and then we can look at how that compares with Jesus Christ. 04:27 What we have here in this passage of Scripture is the order of Melchizedek being defined, comparing that with the order of Aaron as priest in the Old Testament, comparing that with the current and present ministry of Jesus Christ as our great High Priest. Now, when we think about the last several chapter verses here, 04:50 verses 5 through 10, He says, "Indeed, those who are the sons of Levi who receive the priesthood have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law." So the priesthood in the Old Testament we know was limited to the sons of Aaron or the sons of Levi, 05:11 the tribes of Levi, and the priesthood was limited to the sons of Aaron. What we have here is their call, the call to connect the nation and the worshiper to God. That is the function of a priest. Brother Trevor mentioned that the other week, that the priest is to represent the people to God, 05:34 representing the people to God, standing in the gap between a worshiping congregation and a receiving of worship, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, as we've already said, the sons of Levi were to be the Levites, and the sons of Aaron, 05:53 who was of the tribe of Levi, was to be the priestly line, to represent the people to God through sacrifices and reconciling sinful men to a holy God, and then on behalf of God to the people, 06:11 the blessings that would come from God above down to the people. And so you would have the priest on his feet daily in the tabernacle, later in the temple, taking the sacrifices and the prayers of the people and mediating between them and God, offering those sacrifices to God, 06:31 and then taking the blessings of God that were coming from heaven in response to those sacrifices and that worship and distributing that, administering that by blessing to the people. And so you had the priest in an upright position without stretched hands, outstretched to heaven, outstretched to the people, 06:50 to heaven on behalf of the people, to the people on behalf of God. That was the role of the priest. Now, we see this in Numbers 1:50. Why don't you turn with me a couple Old Testament passages? Numbers 1:50. You don't have to turn to that one, but we will to Numbers here in just a minute. 07:10 God told them, told Moses, "You shall appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony," that is, the tabernacle of the covenant, the tabernacle in the wilderness, "over all its furnishings and over all things that belong to it. They shall carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings. 07:31 They shall attend to it and camp around the tabernacle." So you remember in the Old Testament, you had the camp, the tabernacle in the middle of the camp, and then you had three tribes to the west, three tribes to the east, three tribes to the south, three tribes to the north. 07:46 And the Levites were camping all around those, up close to the tabernacle because they were commissioned to take care of the tabernacle and then later the temple. They were the tabernacle and temple workers. But if you turn over to Numbers 18, and let's get a little bit bigger, 08:06 a little bit more extensive picture here of the Levites and the priests, "Then the Lord said," Numbers 18:1, "The Lord said, 'You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear the iniquity related to the sanctuary, 08:21 and you and your sons with you shall bear the iniquity associated with your priesthood.'" He's talking to Aaron here, the duties of the priest. "Also bring with you your brethren of the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may be joined with you and serve you while you and your sons are with you before the tabernacle of witness. 08:42 They shall attend to your needs and all the needs of the tabernacle, but they shall not come near the articles of the sanctuary and of the altar lest they die and you also." So we have Him talking to Moses or to Aaron at first, "You and your sons are going to be the priests, and the ones from the tribe of Levi are going to be your associates. 09:03 They're going to be your assistants, and they will attend to your needs and to all the needs of the tabernacle." Now you go down to verse 6, "Behold, I myself have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel. 09:18 They are a gift to you," speaking to Aaron, "given by the Lord to do the work of the tabernacle of meeting." You have kind of the High Priest and the priests being the ministers. You have the elders being like the tribes of the Levites, assisting the priests in the work of their ministry. 09:39 "Therefore, you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for everything at the altar and behind the veil, and you shall serve. I will give your priesthood to you as a gift for service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death." Then you go on down to verse 23 of chapter 18 of Numbers, 10:00 where it says, "But the Levites shall perform the work of the tabernacle of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations that among the children of Israel, they shall have no inheritance. For the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer up as a heve offering to the Lord, I have given to the Levites as an inheritance. 10:22 Therefore, I have said to them, 'Among the children of Israel, they shall have no inheritance.'" So the responsibility of the Levites and the priests, the priests were to serve in that intermediary capacity, representing God to man and man to God, assisted by the Levites, 10:41 and they were to have no inheritance of land. They were the odd man out. They were the odd man out. You say, "Now how could you get 12 tribes and then the tribe of Levi?" Well, if you remember in the Old Testament, Manasseh got a double portion. And so you had two tribes of Manasseh. You had the half tribe of Manasseh, 11:01 and you had the other half tribe of Manasseh. They made up the 12 tribes. And then you had the 13th tribe, was the tribe of Levi. They got no inheritance. So how are they going to support themselves? They're going to be supported by the tithes of the rest of the tribes. 11:19 When they brought their tithes to the offer or to the tabernacle, to the temple, those tithes would be distributed, some to the priests and some to the Levites so that their needs would be taken care of. But God said very clearly, "I am your inheritance. I am your portion and your lot. 11:41 And I have given to the Levites the gift of being able to take care of the temple and the tabernacle. And I've given them to be assistants to the priests. And I've given to the priests the responsibility and the privilege of being the intermediaries under the support of the tithes of the people." And even their cities in Numbers 35:2, 12:03 the cities in which the Levites dwelt were taken from the other 12 tribes. They were taken from all the tribes, and those cities of Levites were distributed throughout the various tribes of Israel. And so their cities were taken out of the lands of the various tribes. Deuteronomy 14:27 says, 12:23 "You shall not forsake the Levite who is within your gate, for he has no part nor inheritance with you." See, they got no inheritance. They were God's inheritance, and God was their inheritance. 1 Chronicles 23:27. Why don't you turn over there to 1 Chronicles if you can find your way over? 12:45 1 Chronicles 23:27. David, he kind of reformed worship once the temple was in the process of being built and so on. And he instituted more of a Davidic form of worship. And it says verse 27, 13:05 let's see, 23:27, "For by the last words of David, the Levites were numbered from 20 years old and above, because their duty was to help the sons of Aaron in the service of the house of the Lord, in the courts and in the chambers and in the purifying of all the holy things and the work of the service of the house of God, 13:25 both with the showbread and the fine flour for the grain offering, with the unleavened cakes and what is baked in the pan, with what is mixed and with all kinds of measures and sizes, to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord, and likewise at evening, 13:39 and every presentation of the burnt offering to the Lord on the Sabbath and on the new moons and on the set feasts by number according to the ordinance governing them regularly before the Lord, and that they should attend to the needs of the tabernacle of meeting, the needs of the holy place, and the needs of the sons of Aaron, their brethren, in the work of the house of the Lord." Now, 13:57 you really don't understand the book of Hebrews if you don't understand some of those basic principles and the process that they were going through. Now, Hezekiah, when he cleansed the temple in 2 Chronicles 29, it says of him, "But the priests were too few. They didn't have enough priests to go around so that they could not skin all the burnt offerings. 14:19 Therefore, their brethren, the Levites, helped them until the work was ended and until the other priests had sanctified themselves. For the Levites," it says, "were more diligent in keeping themselves and sanctifying themselves than the priests." And so that was an interesting statement there. The priests needed a revival. But if you couldn't, here's the point. 14:39 If you couldn't trace your lineage back to Levi, you didn't serve in the tabernacle. If you couldn't trace your lineage back to Levi, you didn't serve in the temple. And if you couldn't trace your lineage back specifically to Aaron, you could not be priest. 15:01 And you certainly could not be High Priest because all of those priests, High Priests, and attendants were from the tribe of Levi. No Levi, no serve. And yet here we have Jesus. What do we do with Jesus? 15:21 Because Jesus is not of the tribe of Levi. So how do we get Him to be a suitable representative for us in relation to God and the worship of God and the reconciliation to God? How can He stand before God on behalf of the people, these sinful people like you and me, 15:40 who need a representative to God and who need an intermediary to get God's blessing back down to us and to offer a sacrifice that would suffice and be sufficient for our justification? How could He be fit if He was not a Levite or a child of Aaron? 16:00 Well, hence we talk about He is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. So who is Melchizedek? Let's go back to Genesis 14. Genesis 14. Melchizedek is an interesting character in Scripture. In fact, 16:18 if you go to Wikipedia, you'll find all kinds of interesting things about Melchizedek, some that you didn't even need to know and some you didn't want to know and some that you did and some that are true and some that aren't true. And the Jews have been captivated by this character of Melchizedek since he's in their Jewish Pentateuch, 16:38 the first five books of Moses, the book of Genesis, and has to do with their father Abraham. And so they have a lot of wild speculation about Melchizedek. And some of it's interesting, and some of it is just very far out. 16:53 But nevertheless, here we have Hebrews talking about Melchizedek and establishing him as a new priestly order. So what happens in Genesis 13 and 14 is you have a battle going on between five kings and four kings. 17:14 You have five kings from the area there in Canaan against four Assyrian generals. The Scripture in Genesis calls them kings. You've got four kings attacking five kings. Some of those five kings are the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, 17:36 the king of Adma, the king of Zeboim, and the king of Zoar. And they were attacked by four kings from Assyria, who was the governing and the military mighty entity in that day. And after they conquered those four kings, 17:58 excuse me, the four kings conquered the five kings, they then subjected them to a taxation for about 12 years. And finally, after that 12-year period, those five kings rebelled against the Syrian kings. They said, "We're not going to do this anymore. We're going to put up with this, and we're going to rebel against it, 18:17 and we're going to take on those four kings and send them packing." Well, Lot entered into that exchange, and he's living down there in Sodom, in the area of Sodom. 18:28 And he says, "Well, I need to help these guys out." And so Lot enters into the military conquest, and those kings get soundly defeated and carried away all their stuff, including Lot, all the way up to Dan, 18:45 which is on the north part of the area of Israel and of Canaan. Those of you that were in Israel, you remember Dan. And it's up there, clear up north to the Lebanon border. And they took Lot and his stuff and carried him away from captivity. 19:07 And Abraham then says, "I've got to go, and I got to get my nephew Lot back. And this is terrible what has happened, and Lot needs me." And so Abraham proceeds, five-day journey, I believe it was, all the way up to Dan and attacks at night. 19:24 And Josephus says that while some of the men slept, that is, the Assyrians, and others were too drunk to respond, Abram's army of 318 men plus three additional friends routed these four Assyrian kings. And so they got back all the stuff, 19:46 all the loot. They got back all the people. They got back Lot and his house. And they head back south down to Sodom, down to South Canaan. And the Bible says that when he got back, they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, verse 11 of Genesis 14, 20:07 and all their provisions and went their way. They also took Lot, Abram's brother, son of who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods and departed. Okay, now let me see if I can find my right place here. Verse 16. So they brought back all the goods and also brought back his brother Lot and his goods, 20:27 as well as the women and the people. And the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the valley of Shabba, that is, the king's valley, after his return from the defeat of Kedorlaomar. And the kings who were with him, then Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was the priest of the Most High God. 20:46 Here shows up this fella named Melchizedek. Don't know where he came from. Don't know what happened to him. Don't know what kind of person he was, except that he was a priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him, that is, Melchizedek blessed Abraham and said, 21:07 "Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. 21:17 And he, that is, Abram, gave him, that is, Melchizedek, a tithe of all." So he's tithing from the loot to Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God. Now, the word Melchizedek here is a compound word. 21:36 It's from the word mela, which means king, and sedek, which means righteousness. He is the king of righteousness. He is also called the king of Salem, Salem being what Jerusalem was called before it became called Jerusalem. And so he's the king of Jerusalem, and Salem means peace. 21:55 So he's the king of peace, the king of righteousness, the priest of the Most High God. Some Bible scholars believe that this was actually Shem. Now, Shem would have been about 465 years old by this time and might have been Shem, may not have been Shem. 22:14 We don't know. It really doesn't matter because at any rate, he's a mystery. He's a mystery man. He's a mystery king. He's a mystery priest. Here's 10 truths about Melchizedek. We'll just breeze through here quickly. He is king of Salem, that is, ancient Jerusalem. He is the priest of God in Abraham's day. 22:34 Abraham and him were contemporaries. And he met Abraham returning from his military victory, conquering the four kings from Assyria and restoring Lot and the riches of the five kings of down south. He received a tenth of the spoils of war from Abraham. 22:56 Now, that's significant. This whole passage in chapter 7 of Hebrews is built on this truth that Abraham tithed to Melchizedek, and Melchizedek blessed Abraham. You have a priestly function happening here. 23:15 So then we have he is called the king of righteousness. He is called the king of Salem or the king of peace. By the way, doesn't that kind of describe our Lord Jesus Christ, who is righteousness and peace to us and for us? He had no record of descent, of pedigree, 23:35 or record of birth or death. Now, go back to our text in Hebrews because this also needs some explanation. There are those who would say that Melchizedek was a pre-incarnate Christ. Was Christ come on the scene, 23:56 an appearance of Christ? It's called a Christophany or a Theophany when God or Jesus shows up in the Old Testament before the New Testament incarnation. Well, this says he had no record of descent and without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, 24:17 but made like the Son of God, made like the Son of God. Really, I believe what this means is there's no record of where he came from. There's no record of where he went. Doesn't mean he didn't have a father or a mother, but there's just no record of it. The record is he's just a mystery priest, 24:37 king priest, that shows up on the scene and became a type of Christ as king of Salem and king of righteousness. He was an ordinary man. Look at this in verse 4. Now, consider how great this man was. 24:56 I don't believe this was Christ showing up pre-incarnate because it says he was an ordinary man. He was just an ordinary person. He was not Christ, but he's a picture, a type of Christ, and a type of Christ in that he was greater than Abraham. 25:17 Now, the writer here says in verse 7 that the lesser is blessed by the better. In order to really bless someone on behalf of God, you must be better than the blessee. Now, in the New Testament, 25:36 we don't look upon that in the same way because we bless each other. We even bless our enemies, and we bless one another. When we say, "God bless you," it doesn't mean that we're superior. But in a priestly sense, it does. If you are a priest, you are standing above, receiving blessing from God and imparting it to a subject. 25:57 Now, who's doing the blessing? Melchizedek. Who's doing the receiving? Abraham. Who's doing the blessing in the Old Testament Levitical system? Abraham's descendants, which is a step or two down from Abraham. 26:18 And what's happening here in our text is that Abraham is ministering tithes to Melchizedek. 26:27 And in the last couple of verses, it says that Levi, in the loins of Abraham, was also, even though unborn, tithing through Abraham to Melchizedek. So the writer of Hebrews is saying the sons of Aaron and Levi are inferior to Abraham, 26:48 and Abraham is inferior to Melchizedek. He's the high priest. And so if you want to have a great high priest, he does not have to come from the tribe of Levi. He can come after the order of Melchizedek. And Levi actually paid tithes to the greater, to Melchizedek. 27:10 That's what this is all being built on. Even Levi, verse 9, who receives tithes, Levi was above the people of Israel in receiving their tithes, but he tithed in Abraham to Melchizedek, for he is still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. 27:30 Now, what in the world does this all mean about anything? Let's spend the rest of our time here looking at the superior work of Christ because twice now we are told that Jesus is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. 27:50 Did this thing kind of take God by surprise that, whoops, we didn't have Jesus born from the tribe of Levi? He was born from the tribe of Judah. Why didn't God give him a Levite father and a Judahite mother or something like that or vice versa? No, why? Because there's a higher priest, this order of Melchizedek. In fact, 28:10 in Psalm 110, about verse 4, is where this is being quoted from when in prophesying about the coming Messiah, he is referred to as a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews is not just pulling this out of the hat somewhere. 28:30 This is prophesied under inspiration in Psalm 110. So we're talking about Jesus and the superiority of Christ over Melchizedek, but that he was a priest after the order of Melchizedek. 28:50 So how is Christ's work superior to Melchizedek? Number one, he is superior in genealogy. Melchizedek, there was no genealogy. It says there was no record of his father, no record of his mother without genealogy. 29:10 It's a picture. It's a snapshot, an inferior snapshot of a superior Christ. But no matter where Melchizedek came from, he had a father, even though there's no record. He had a mother, even though there's no record. And he was a man where Christ is the Son of God. 29:29 Christ's ministry is superior because Melchizedek may have been able to trace his roots back to Adam, but Jesus traced his roots back to eternity, clear back to eternity. Melchizedek is the picture. Christ is the real thing. 29:45 And he is superior to Melchizedek because he traces his lineage all the way back to eternity past. He is superior in his sacrifice. He brought about true forgiveness and cleansing from sin. 30:01 Did you notice when we read about Melchizedek, what did Melchizedek bring and give to Abraham? Bread and wine. What did Jesus give to his disciples? This is my bread that is broken for you. 30:20 This is my blood that is shed for you. Now, Melchizedek, what he brought could not forgive Abraham's sin. But what Jesus brought, not in the emblems, but in himself when he said, "I am the bread of life. 30:36 I am the the the the blood of of life," what Jesus brought actually cleanses sin. The priesthood of the Old Testament would would cover sin. But Jesus is far superior in that he brought true forgiveness and cleansing, 30:56 not just cleansing of the record, but cleansing of the spirit and the heart. And we'll see that when we get into chapter 9 more specifically. 31:09 He is superior. Excuse me. 31:15 He is superior in that he has an endless priesthood. 31:19 Now, of Melchizedek, it says there's no record of his birth, no record of his end of life, but made like the Son of God remains a priest continually. Since there's no record of Melchizedek's death, the assumption is that Melchizedek's line can just keep going and going and going. 31:41 But Christ is superior to Melchizedek because as a man, Melchizedek would have an end. As the Son of God, Jesus has no end. He is our high priest for eternity future, from eternity past to eternity future. And Melchizedek was the picture. 32:03 He is superior in his office. Melchizedek was the king of Salem, king of righteousness, priest of righteousness. But he is not referred to as a prophet. Jesus, our Messiah, is all three: prophet, priest, and king. 32:22 He gets the full load of authority upon himself: prophet, priest, and king. And then Jesus is superior in his authority. He received tithes from Abraham and from Levi. And Jesus receives tithes from the whole world. What kind of tithes is he going to get? 32:43 Well, first of all, he's going to get the whole world at his disposal, under his authority. And secondly, he's going to have the tithe of worship. For every knee will bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He's going to get it all, brothers and sisters. 33:03 He's going to get it all. And therefore, he is that through which the blessings of God flow to the people of this earth. 33:12 In eternity, in the millennial kingdom, the blessings of God will flow through the Messiah so that it will be true of what was shared with Abraham, that in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. His authority is superior. 33:31 He is superior in peace. Isaiah chapter 9 says, "Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end." Now, Melchizedek, king of Jerusalem, it was not a lasting peace, believe me. 33:52 How many wars and rumors of wars and how many times has Jerusalem been under siege and how many times, how many kingdoms has Jerusalem passed through? It is not a lasting peace that Melchizedek offered. But he's a picture of Christ offering eternal peace, lasting peace. 34:11 Of the increase of his government and peace, there, whoops, will be no end. There may be an end to my PowerPoint, but there's no end to his peace. And finally, he is superior in righteousness. Melchizedek, 34:32 being the king of righteousness, was not able to impute righteousness to anyone. But Jesus has become for us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. 34:49 Jesus Christ, as that high priest after the order or the picture of Melchizedek, has fulfilled the Melchizedekian role of being wisdom and righteousness to us. 35:04 And yet, something slightly bothered me 35:12 as I read this 35:16 because if Abraham and his descendants, Levi, Aaron, the priest, the Levites, everybody paid tribute and tithe to Melchizedek, 35:35 if Jesus was still unborn and from the descendant tribe of Judah, would not Jesus also have paid tithes to Melchizedek, which would have meant Melchizedek was greater than Jesus? 35:56 Ah. But then we remember what Jesus said about Abraham. Before Abraham was, I am. So Jesus didn't pay tithes to Melchizedek. 36:15 We know the virgin birth and all of that. Don't know exactly how all that played out as far as the descendant being the descendant of that through the mother, through the father. He was born of a virgin. So his father lineage would not have provided tithes to Melchizedek. But the clincher for me was before Abraham was, 36:36 I am. And he is the one who receives all tithes. Let me just say this yet about tithing. Some people look at tithing as being an Old Testament law. And it was. There were tithes to the priests. 36:57 There were tithes to the Levites. There were tithes to the temple. There were special offerings that were given. Some people will look at that and say, "Well, because that's under the law, tithing is not a principle or a requirement today that we need to worry about. If we want to tithe, fine. 37:16 If we don't want to tithe, fine." However, tithing predates even Abraham. Abraham was doing something in relation to Melchizedek that was standard operating procedure when you came into contact with the holy. 37:38 And therefore, is still maybe not mandatory in the sense that you're being disobedient if you don't tithe. But it certainly is a biblical response, yes, rooted in the Old Testament. 38:00 But why would we do any less in the New Testament than they did in the Old Testament, especially predating Abraham? So just a thought. 38:16 So my question to you this morning is, who gets us back to God? And wrapping this all up and putting this in perspective of verse 19 and 20 of chapter 6, I want to just tie this together. Where is this priest going to take us? This high priest who is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, 38:38 where is he going to take us? Brothers and sisters, he's going to take us right into the presence of God behind the veil. That's where we go. That's where we go, into the presence of God. He is the one who cleanses us from sin. 38:58 He is the one who reconciles us to the Father. He is the one who offers sacrifice for us, the sacrifice of himself. He is the one who stands in the gap. He is the one who takes his own blood. We'll see it in chapter 9 and applies that to the heavenly tabernacle. 39:18 He is the one who blesses us with eternal blessings. He is the one who washes our body and our soul and our spirit with pure water and makes us clean inside and out. He is the one who intercedes on our behalf since he has the Father's ear and the Father's full attention back behind the veil. 39:40 That's where we can go. You can't get there through Aaron. You can't get there through Levi. You can't even get there through Melchizedek. But you can get there through Jesus. That's the whole point of Hebrews chapter 7. Let's pray. 39:57 Father in heaven, thank you for this opportunity this morning to exalt Christ. We admire Melchizedek for his stand that he took as he represented God in his day and age so many years ago in antiquity. But we worship Jesus. 40:18 And we appreciate the priesthood under Aaron and the call that you had placed on them and the Levites to administrate the temple and the tabernacle in the Old Testament. We appreciate that as well. They did a very important role. But we worship Jesus. 40:40 For he alone is worthy. He is a sufficient high priest to represent us to the Father and represent the Father to us. And brothers and sisters, 40:59 this morning, I would just say this by word of encouragement and practical application. Our high priest is such that when we come to him, he has the ear and full attention of the Father. Thank you, 41:19 Lord, that we can bring our petitions and our prayers and our requests all the way back through the veil to the Holy of Holies where we meet God through Jesus Christ. Thank you. 41:42 We take comfort in that truth, in that fact. 41:49 And now, Lord, we've been given an opportunity today to leave this place in an hour or so and go represent you through singing Christmas carols and to the elderly and to those shut-ins. 42:07 We pray that we will represent you well and that you will give us the joy of not only the season, but the joy of Jesus, the joy of Christ. In the middle of a world that's a mess, we still have something and someone to sing about. And now, 42:28 Lord, we also thank you for this nourishment that we're about to receive to our bodies. You've nourished our souls with the bread and wine of Christ's blood and body. And now you nourish our bodies with the daily sustenance of life as our provider Father. 42:49 And we give you thanks. In Jesus' name. Amen.