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December 4, 2002
Advent - Mid-Week
Psalm 110:4
Pastor Joel Zank

Jesus is Our Great Priest!

(Psalm 110:4) The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."

In Christ Jesus, our merciful and faithful high priest, dear fellow redeemed,

How do you prepare for Christmas? Do you decorate your home? Do you go Christmas shopping? Do you listen to some Christmas Music? I would imagine that many of us do all of these things and more in the weeks and days leading up to December 25th. But think of the challenge God had on his hands as he worked to prepare his Old Testament people to celebrate Christmas. There were no manger scenes to display no Christmas songs to play. There wasn't even a word for Christmas. And yet none of this stopped God from creating among his faithful people a sense of joyful anticipation as they prepared to celebrate a very mysterious event on a day and at a time known only to the mind of God.

How did the LORD stir up such expectation? Well rather than zeroing in on the details of Christmas, he used people, places and events to sketch and foreshadow the great blessings Christmas would bring to this world-blessings the world needed then and still needs today. Because this is true, our coming celebration of Christmas can only benefit from a look at these ancient silhouettes that depict our own great need for the Christ of Christmas. Today the Scriptures draw our attention to the Old Testament priesthood and use that office of ministry and those who served it to show us that Christmas has brought us the one priest who succeeded where all others have failed. So with this truth in mind, we take as our theme: Jesus is Our Great Priest, born to replace a temporary priesthood; and born to provide a lasting salvation.

I realize that we Lutheran Christians may not be all that familiar with the concept of priesthood. We hear the title priest and perhaps immediately think of the Catholic Church. But long before Catholicism and its priesthood existed, God's people of old were served by priests-not so much because they wanted to be, but because they needed to be.

You see, when the world was new, there was no need for priests. Our first parents, created in God's spiritual likeness, lived in perfect fellowship with God. You might say that Adam and Eve were always at home with God, walking with him in the cool of the day, talking with him any time they pleased. But then came that sad day when Satan persuaded them to run away from their Father's house, leading them to believe they could be happier and more complete people by living life apart from God. Adam and Eve sinned and by their sin carved a Grand Canyon sized gap between them and God. They ruined their relationship with their Father. They realized it immediately, but try as they might, there was nothing they could do to repair the damage. In fact that first sin of theirs just kept multiplying and so with each passing day, that sinful couple and all of their sinful descendants just kept widening the gap between themselves and the Holy God of heaven.

It is truly a wonder that God didn't just wash his hands of our whole sinful race, leaving us all to suffer forever the misery we deserve. But instead God devised a plan to bridge the gap caused by sin. That plan involved the work of a priest who was to serve as a mediator and, by his work, reconcile God and sinners.

We find the sketch of God's plan beginning to take shape in the pages of ancient Israel's history. God selected one of Israel's twelve tribes: the tribe of Levi, and from it selected one family: the family of Aaron, to serve him as mediators. From then on every male descendant of Aaron was a priest.

Israel's priests carried out their duties at the temple. The first part of priest's work was done at the big bronze altar that stood outside the temple sanctuary. There lambs, bulls and goats were killed, their blood sprinkled and flesh consumed in elaborate ceremonies. After making the sacrifice, the priest stepped inside the sanctuary itself and prayed: "Lord forgive the sins of your people!" Here was the second part of the priest's assignment: to speak to God on behalf of sinners. Day after day the priest would sacrifice and pray; and so the sights and sounds and smells of the temple taught God's people one important truth: the way back to God is through the priest.

But remember, that Old Testament priesthood was only a shadow of what was yet to come. So by itself, that priesthood could not offer sinners the peace with God they most desired. The New Testament book of Hebrews reports, "Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins" (Hebrews 10:11). So what was the point of all this? God was preparing his people for Christmas. He was using the priesthood with its system of sacrifices to train his people to see how deep was their stain of sin and how desperate was their need for the Great Priest-the one God would soon be sending them. Again it says in the book of Hebrews, "The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place [the presence of God] had not yet been disclosed...9 This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper.10 They are only a matter of...external regulations applying until the time of the new order" (Hebrews 9:8-10).

There's the key term - "new order." The priests from the line of Aaron were on temporary duty. They would soon be replaced by a new priest from a different line, a new order. God had said so already through his servant David here in our text. Allowing us to eavesdrop on words spoken by God the Father to his eternal Son, David says, "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: 'You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.'"

Melchizedek is a man who comes upon the pages of history quite mysteriously. He is described as a king and a priest, but there is no mention of any royal line, no date of birth or record of death. We meet him in Genesis 14 in an account involving the Patriarch Abraham. After defeating four kings who had invaded his territory and kidnapped his nephew Lot, Abraham gives a tenth of the plunder he recovered to the priest of God named Melchizedek.

Keep in mind that Abraham, the founder of God's chosen nation Israel, lived hundreds and hundreds of years before his descendant Aaron first became a priest. So by giving Melchizedek such an offering, Abraham was honoring this mysterious priest over and above any of those who would come from the line of his great-grandson, Levi.

So on the basis of the prophecy in our text, here is what God's Old Testament people were waiting for and here is what we are to see when we stare into Bethlehem's manger-a special priest who has no connection to Aaron or to the law that made him a priest. Rather in Christ we find a great priest who is to be honored above Aaron, a great priest born to replace Aaron and the temporary priesthood of his descendants. And like Melchizedek, for whom the Scripture holds no record of birth or death, we are to find in Jesus a priest without beginning or end-a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

By now you may be wondering what all this has to do with us. We're not a part of Old Testament Israel. We've never been served by its Levitical priesthood. Of what value are these Old Testament shadows to us? They are of great value for the teach us that although we are not part of that Old Testament nation, we do have something in common with its people-the stain of our sin runs just as deep as theirs. And like their sin, ours causes the same enormous gap between God and us, a gap that none of us can bridge. Oh we try to patch things up with God. We offer sacrifices to him all the time-not bloody animals, but the best efforts we can muster. We promise God that tomorrow we'll clean up our act-no more filthy language, no more visits to porn-filled websites, no more angry outbursts, no more gossip, the list goes on. We promise to trust, to love, and to serve God better than we ever have before. But none of it works. Within no time at all our conscience it telling us that our best isn't good enough; and our conscience is right. If the best of those Old Testament sacrifices offered up by God's priest at God's own command couldn't set sinners right with their LORD, then our poor sacrifices will never come close. If we're going to be freed from a guilty conscience, if we're going to escape the punishment of hell, we'll need a better sacrifice and a better priest to offer it. We have both in the person of Jesus our great priest, born to provide a lasting salvation.

Jesus is able to provide such a permanent blessing because of who he is-the perfect Lamb of God-perfect by reason of his human birth as the Son of God and perfect by reason of the holy life he lived here on earth. As our great priest Jesus did all the things that God requires of us, and best of all, as our mediator, he did them all for us. As our Substitute he loved God above all else. During all of his 33 years he loved all people as himself. He did what we had not done so that God might count us holy on the basis of his efforts. And then, Jesus took that righteous life of his and he offered it up as a perfect sacrifice to God on an altar of crossed-shaped timbers. Serving us as both Priest and Victim Jesus spilled his own holy blood on that Friday long ago to undo all the sin we have ever done.

Three beautiful passages from the book of Hebrews point to Christ's one sacrifice for sin as complete and all sufficient. Listen and believe that Jesus has forever bridged the gap of sin between you and your God. The holy writer says, "[Jesus] entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12); When this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12); 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" (Hebrews 7:24-25).

An Old Testament priest could never sit down in God's holy presence as Jesus did, because the word of that Old Testament Priest was never finished. He had to keep coming back to offer sacrifices year after year, and upon his death he had to be replaced by another priest who had to keep sacrificing year after year. That is not the case with Jesus, our great priest. The fact that he lives after dying points to the power and success of his sacrifice. Jesus lives not to offer more sacrifices but to pray for us, and on the basis of his one sacrifice to present us all as faultless before the throne of God in heaven.

No wonder we celebrate Christmas! For the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: The birth of Jesus, our great priest, guarantees us peace with God now and forever. Amen.