Heb 4:14–16 — Our Sympathetic High Priest

The title of the sermon today is taken from our text, verse 15, Our Sympathetic High Priest. This is such an encouraging passage. We have a high priest who is not unable to sympathize, but one who is able to sympathize with us because he has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin. I am not sure that there is any other passage quite like this one in the New Testament. It is so full of comfort and grace. What an encouragement that we have this Savior. We have something that the world knows nothing of.

All the other religions of the world, they have all of their good works that you have to do, all of their regimens and disciplines and prayers and offerings and sacrifices that you have to make. But do any of them have this glorious Lord Jesus who is like us in every way, who has become one of us, who has gone to the cross experiencing the ultimate test has passed that test and has now been raised to heaven where he is there for us.

He did not forget about us. He did not say, okay, I am done with the work. Now I can go back to what I was doing before. He still remembers that we are his and that he is our savior and he cares for us and he loves us. And so we can go to him at any time to receive grace, to help in time of need.

Jesus, the Son of God

What an encouraging passage this is. The key is verse 15. The heart of the passage is verse 15, describing for us this glorious, great high priest, Jesus, the Son of God. But it is surrounded on both sides by Exhortations, verse 14, the verse before says, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

That is the main exhortation there, to hold fast our confession. Which, reinforces my interpretation that I gave in the previous two Sundays regarding the nature of rest. Remember the whole debate over whether entering God’s rest is future at the end, either at death or at the second coming of Christ, or whether it is something that we are called to do now, that we are called now to exercise that muscle of faith and to enjoy the rest that we have in Christ. That he has fulfilled the law in our place.

He has done the work. He has already entered into that rest, and we have that rest in him. I think that verse 14 confirms that interpretation, that it is not a future rest at the end. It is a present rest. It is a gospel rest. Resting in all that Christ is for us. Because verse 14 then takes that same command, the command which is throughout the whole preceding section, let us enter God’s rest. Do not harden your heart like the wilderness generation, but let us enter God’s rest.

The author of Hebrews then translates that exhortation into this language here. Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens and entered into that rest, let us hold fast our confession. In other words, holding fast our confession is the same thing as entering God’s rest by faith, exercising that faith muscle and resting in all that we have in Christ. Let us hold fast our confession of Christ. Let us not harden our hearts like the wilderness generation or like some who are in the congregation here of Jewish believers who are thinking about going back to Judaism. Let us not harden our hearts, but let us enjoy the rest that we have in Christ. And that means holding fast to our confession of faith in Christ our Lord and Savior.

The heart of the passage is this word of comfort in verse 15 about this high priest that we have, but it is surrounded on both sides, verse 14 and 16, by exhortations. The first exhortation is to hold fast to our confession. The second exhortation is in verse 16, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. That we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Ultimately, that is referring to worship, drawing near to worship the Lord, whether in corporate worship with God’s people or in personal worship and prayer. And that is another way that we can exercise that faith muscle and enter into and enjoy the rest that we have in Christ.

What is amazing as well is not only do we have this wonderful, comforting passage telling us that we have such a great high priest, but it comes right on the heels of that penetrating section, the paragraph just before, verses 12 through 13, where we hear the word of the law of God. The word of God’s law, exposing our sin, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, and showing us our sinfulness.

It is uncomfortable, and we have all kinds of defense mechanisms to try to shield ourselves from that searching spotlight of God’s law. We try to compare ourselves with others. We try to comfort ourselves that we are not that bad. We try to compensate for our sins by looking at all the good things that we do in service to the Lord.

But the Lord continues in his love to show us our sin so that we can then appreciate who Christ is and what he has done for us. We will not really appreciate this comfort, the comfort of verse 15, that we have a great high priest who is able to sympathize with us in our weakness, we will not be able to appreciate that comfort unless we first sit naked and exposed under the penetrating sword of the law of God. We need to hear it. We need to know that we are indeed sinners before the Lord.

And although it is uncomfortable and we try to wiggle our way out of it with different defense mechanisms, it is a good thing. It is a good thing to hear that law showing us our sin because then we are able to appreciate even more who Christ is for us and what he has done.

Not only what he has done for us in the past, This is one of the main emphases of this book, this letter to the Hebrews, is it will talk a lot about what Christ did for us in the past in his perfect life and obedience unto the point of death, how he offered himself as the final sacrifice for sin, but even more, what he is for us now.

He has been raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, he has passed through the heavens, and he is there for us now. And he has not forgotten all of his suffering. He has not forgotten all of the difficulty that he went through. He is there for us in heaven now as our sympathetic high priest. As the one who is there on our side, for us, who is able to understand our struggles and our temptations and our trials and tribulations. And therefore, we are encouraged to exercise faith in this glorious Savior even now, and to cry out to Him for mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. There is one difficulty here in our text that we really need to address before we go any further, and that is this. Jesus is the divine son of God, and we have seen that clearly presented for us in the previous chapters, especially chapter one of Hebrews, that he is the divine son of God, that he was there at creation before the world was made.

Tempted Yet Without Sin

He was the one through whom God made all things. He is the radiance of God’s glory. He is the exact representation of his nature. He is greater than the angels. But if he is this divine son of God, how is it possible that he could be tempted as we are? How could he be tempted if he is divine and if he has no sinful nature? How could he be tested and tempted as we are, yet without sin?

There is profound Christology going on here in our text. Profound Christology, that is understanding who Christ is. Understanding the two natures of Christ in one person. It is an amazing thing to think about. He is the divine son of God who became a man. A man just like us. He took upon him a true human nature.

Although that human nature that he took on was without sin, he did not inherit original sin from Adam, he did not have any sinful desires, yet he did enter into our experience. And in fact, he took upon himself a human nature that was experiencing all of the effects of sin.

He himself was without sin, but he entered into this world after the fall. He entered into this world in its sin-cursed state, and therefore he experienced the effects of sin. In terms of just physical suffering, even death itself. A sinless man like Adam before the fall was not going to die. Death is the wages of sin. And yet he, though without sin, he experienced one of the effects, one of the deepest and darkest effects of sin, consequences of sin, which is death itself and all that entails even before death.

Suffering, anguish, pain, difficulty. He entered into this fallen world. He took upon him a sinless human nature, but a sinless human nature that was post-fall and living in this fallen world with all of its decay and corruption and suffering and pain and ultimately death.

This Christology of the two natures of Christ is presupposed here in our text. It goes back to Hebrews chapter 2. After explaining that Christ is divine in chapter 1, that he is the divine son of God, the author of Hebrews then in chapter 2 tells us that he had to be made like his brothers in every way.

Hebrews 2:17.

A High Priest Who Sympathizes

He had to be made like his brothers in every respect. So that he might be able to be this high priest who is able to make propitiation for the sins of the people. So that he might be able to be this sympathetic high priest who understands our weakness. So how then can he be tempted if he had no sinful desires? He had no sinful desires, but he did have ordinary human desires to avoid suffering and death. And we can see that by looking at a later passage, it is just the next chapter over in Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 7.

Hebrews 5:7 says, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death.

Did you hear that part there? He was crying with prayer with loud cries and tears to be saved from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. That is, he was heard when the Father raised him from the dead. But he did have loud cries and tears, crying out to the Father who was able to save him from death.

This is referring, of course, to the agony in the garden, in the garden of Gethsemane, when he cried out to the Father and said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. The cup is the cup of suffering that he is about to drink as he goes to the cross. If it is possible, let this cup pass from me. And yet, he said, yet not my will, but your will be done. It is like there is two layers.

There is that ordinary human layer of Christ. He is a true man who had ordinary human desires to avoid suffering and to avoid death. But then there is that second layer, which is that he is the divine son of God, and so he subordinated his ordinary human desires to avoid suffering and death to that higher purpose, because he knew that he was called to a mission, that he had to endure suffering and death to save his people, to make that final sacrifice that would deliver us from sin. Then the basic outline of what it means to experience temptation and then to submit to God and to trust God in spite of the suffering involved. And yet, it is without sin. There was nothing in his heart that was angry with the Father and saying, this cannot be. There was nothing in his heart that did not want to do what he was called to do from his eternal commission before the foundation of the world, to be the Savior of his people. And yet, there is that ordinary human layer there where he does desire at some level, although he does then submit to God’s will, but at some level he has that desire to avoid suffering and death.

And yet, he submitted to God’s will, he trusted his Heavenly Father, and as Hebrews 5:7 says, he was heard. His cries were heard, not maybe in the way that we are thinking that, oh, so now you do not have to go to the cross, but rather he was heard in the sense that he was vindicated and he was delivered.

So the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 5:8, although he was a son, although he is the divine son of God, yet he learned obedience. Through what he suffered. And that is then how we can resolve this tension in our text, that he is able to sympathize with us in our temptations. And we can say that he was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin. With us, Temptation is very different. With us, when we are tempted, there is something inside of us that is desiring sin, and that is in rebellion against God.

James talks about this in James 1.14, where he says that each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. That is the nature of temptation for us. Who are sons of Adam and have original sin. We have a corrupt sinful nature within us. And so when there is temptation, there is a sinful desire within us to want to go towards that sin.

Not so with Christ, not so with Christ. He had no sin within him. There was no hook within him that sin could latch onto and try to attract him away from the will of God. Christ did not have sinful desire. He did not have the flesh. The flesh is that sinful human nature that we all have that we have inherited from Adam because of his sin. He had no sinful flesh that was attracted to sin.

Yet, because of his unique task, he was called to voluntarily offer himself as a sacrifice to save his people. He had to endure suffering willingly in our place. And thus, he had to submit to the Father’s will and obediently suffer. And that was not easy. It was not just, well, he is God, so it is no problem. It was not easy because he was a true man with all of the emotions that we have. And so his natural desire at that lower level as a human was to not want to suffer and die. He was a true man.

So he cried out in the garden of Gethsemane, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. But of course, at another level, as the son of God, he knew that suffering and dying was God’s will. And so he submitted in spite of the pain, trusting that God would vindicate him, trusting that he would not abandon him to Sheol, to hell, to the place of death. And so he was tested, and yet he passed the test.

Now we, as sinners, we give in to those tests so much sooner. We give in quickly. And the longer we hold out against that temptation, the more intense the pressure is. Imagine how intense the pressure was for the sinless Son of God. It was an intense pressure, even to the point of death on the cross. His obedience, then, is all the more incredible when you consider the intensity of the pressure to preserve himself and shrink back from the cross.

In this way, we can say that he was tempted in every way, just as we are yet without sin. When I was a kid, I used to hear this verse preached and I used to think, is that really true in every single way? Jesus was never married, so he never had marital conflict, so it seems like he did not experience that particular sin or that particular temptation to sin. There are many things that he did not experience literally the way we do, and part of it is because of our fallenness and our sinfulness.

And yet, what we can see is that even though he was not married and did not have that particular difficulty in his life, yet we can see that he experienced the fundamental paradigm of having to submit to God’s will even when it hurts. And that is the fundamental point. That is what he learned. He learned obedience. He experienced it, and he learned it. He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.

What encouragement this is for us as we deal with all of our trials and temptations and difficulties in this wilderness. We are like the wilderness generation. We are not yet there in the promised land. We are not yet in heaven. And we are living here in this fallen world with all the trials and difficulties and temptations, partly because of our human nature, but also partly because of our sinful human nature. And the amazing thing is that Christ is not distant from us.

He does not merely know all of our temptations and difficulties and trials. He has experienced them. He does not just know them intellectually as God, because of course God is omniscient and knows all things. He knows it in a different way. He knows it in the sense that he has experienced it personally in the depths of his soul. What an incredible reality that is. Maybe an analogy would help.

Who would you rather have for a coach, whatever sport you want to fill in the blank, someone who has never played the game before or a former player? Who has been through things, who knows what it is like to experience injury, or to experience a bad referee call, or to go through all these difficulties in the game. You want a coach who has been there, who has done it, who is experienced it himself, who can guide you and encourage you from a place of sympathy, from a place of someone who has been there and done that, and who knows what it is like, and who can guide you through it.

In one way, that analogy is not very good because Christ is not just our coach. He is not simply telling us what to do and instructing us and disciplining us. He is played the game for us. He has already won the game. The active and passive obedience of Christ means that he is not just the coach, he is also our substitutionary player. He has already done the game for us. He has already won the victory for us.

So he is far greater than a coach, but he does know what it is like. He is now in heaven for us as one who has been there and done that, and he can sympathize with us. And even though He is beyond suffering now, He is not living in this fallen world anymore, He is not experiencing ongoing struggles and difficulties and He does not have to deal with the suffering of the cross anymore. Even though He is beyond that, He is now exalted in glory.

He has not forgotten what He went through for us. He has not forgotten how intensely hard it was to deny himself and his ordinary human desires to avoid suffering and death and to submit to the plan of God and to trust in God. How do we know that he is not forgotten?

You might say, where do that in our text? It is right there in verse 15. In verse 15 where it says, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Notice it is in the present tense. We have a high priest who is able, is now able to sympathize with our weaknesses. Why?

Because he has been tempted. And the perfect tense there of that verb, he has been tempted, means that it is a past event. With ongoing relevance today. It does not say he is able to sympathize because he was tempted and passed the test. No, it says we have a high priest who is in the present tense able to sympathize with our weakness because he has been tempted. The perfect tense there implies that it is a past event with ongoing significance and relevance for us today.

He is now in heaven, a high priest who has been tempted and who knows what it is like to be tempted and who is there for us as the one who was tempted and is even now still experiencing that reality of having been tempted for us so that we might know that he is there for us. As not merely our coach, but as our savior, as our substitute, who has won, who has done it for us.

He has paved the way. This is a wonderful theme throughout the book of Hebrews, which is this theme of Christ as the forerunner. That exact term is used later in Hebrews chapter six, verse 20, when it says that Jesus has gone into the heavenly place as our forerunner, our forerunner on our behalf. But this idea that Christ is the forerunner, is so glorious, is it not? It is like, I do not know, it is like in cycling. Where you have the guy in the front who is breaking the wind and then the guy behind who is like coming in right behind because of the power and strength of the one in front of him.

He has gone before us. He has paved the way. He has gone through the most intense suffering and temptation imaginable. And he has gone through it for us. And he is now in heaven having passed through the temptation, passed through the suffering, and he is there for us to encourage us as we follow in his wake, as we hide within his strength, as we trust him that he will be there for us. In our struggles and temptations.

This is a glorious truth, a glorious understanding of who Christ is. Two exhortations follow from that, from this glorious Christology of the divine human Son of God, the eternal Son of God who became man and then was tempted in every way just as we are past the test, trusted God in spite of the pain has now gone into heaven for us.

Hold Fast Our Confession

Two exhortations follow from it, and we will just do the two that we looked at in our text. The first exhortation is, therefore, let us hold fast our confession. Let us hold fast our confession of this glorious Christ, our confession of faith in Christ. That is why we recite the Apostles’ Creed. And in this worship service today, we are going to recite the Nicene Creed. We recite these creeds because we say, I believe in this glorious Christ. I believe in this Jesus who has suffered in our place and who has gone ahead of us. That is the first exhortation to us. Let us hold fast our confession. And we are so tempted to lose our confession or to let it waver or to be swayed by doubts and by all the things that go on in our lives.

Just like the audience here in Hebrews. They are Jewish Christians who are being pressured by their unbelieving Jewish friends and family to stop believing in Christ, to stop going to church. Come with us to the temple. That is where everything is at. And they are being swayed by that. They are beginning to waver in their confession of Christ.

So the author of Hebrews says, let us hold fast our confession of faith in Christ. I love also this wonderful statement here. When he defines what our confession is, he just gives us this very brief summation of it. What is our confession? It is that we believe that Jesus, the Son of God, has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God.

Do you not love that title for Christ? I love that. That is so powerful. It brings to mind both natures of Christ. Jesus, which is his human name, very ordinary Jewish name in the first century, Joshua, Very ordinary name, but it indicates his humanity. But it also shows us his deity, Jesus, the son of God, the divine son, this powerful great son who is greater than the angels. Jesus, the son of God. It is a perfect summation of the confession of our faith in Christ.

Recently, I was looking around at various evangelical non-denominational church websites. And I came across one, I will not give the name because I do not want to embarrass anybody, but I came across one, and they gave as their mission statement this statement. They said, we exist to help people find and follow Jesus.

Now in itself, that is not bad. We believe in Jesus. But notice how easygoing that is, how informal, how casual. It is very SoCal. Like, You just go to church in your flip-flops and your shorts, and I am going to help people find and follow Jesus, ? But that is so different from what we see here in our text. Our text does not talk about helping people find and follow Jesus.

Our text here is saying, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, Let us hold fast our confession. What a more robust Christology. What a more robust confession we have. And we are not trying to help people find Jesus. We are confessing that Jesus, the Son of God, has found us and saved us.

So how can we not want to follow him? And to obey Him and to live for Him. The Jesus of Hebrews, the Jesus of the New Testament is so much greater than the flip-flop SoCal Jesus that is around us in the evangelical world. This one who is the divine Son of God, who has suffered and experienced suffering to the point of agony on the cross, who has also experienced the great reversal when he was resurrected and exalted at the right hand of God. And he did all that as our forerunner. And therefore, we can suffer and trust God as well. We can trust God for our ultimate reversal as well in union with Christ.

Just give you one example, one illustration of this. Let us say you are suffering right now because you are being slandered by someone. That is a pretty common experience. Sometimes it even happens in the church, unfortunately. That is very painful. That is hard. That is hard to deal with.

And you might be wanting to do anything you can to try to fix the situation. Maybe you want to make your case and go around to all the people that have heard the slander and maybe believed it, and you want to prove to them that slander is false. You want your day in court. You want to be able to vindicate yourself and show that you are in the right and that those slanders are false and evil. But the Lord is calling you to trust God, just as Jesus had to trust God.

Jesus experienced that, did he not? He experienced slander. He was rejected by his own people. Even his own family members thought he was crazy. Remember that? In the Gospels, they thought he was out of his mind. Jesus experienced slander. He experienced being misunderstood, but he did not take matters into his own hands. He did not try to get his day in court. He did not sue his accusers.

He simply trusted God, and he waited for God’s vindication, which began at the resurrection. As continues now in his exaltation and will one day be fulfilled at the consummation when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You are in Christ and He is your forerunner. And so therefore you too can endure the pain and the suffering of being misunderstood and slandered. And you can trust God for the ultimate reversal that will come to you too one day. Just not right now. Just not today. You can trust Him. He has already made it through the other side. He has already been through the intensity of that suffering. And He is there in heaven as your forerunner saying, I have got you. I am with you. Do not worry. And we are not far behind. We are just running in His wake, confident that He understands, confident that He is on our side, interceding for us, that He is bringing many sons to glory.

Remember that glorious phrase back from Hebrews 2, Hebrews 2:10?

Draw Near with Confidence

He is bringing many sons to glory. And that is why he had to endure this suffering. That is why he had to endure the cross. So that he could bring us safely through. So that is the first exhortation from our text. Let us hold fast our confession. The second thing, the second exhortation in our text is let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. Let us draw near. Verse 16, that phrase to draw near is the first of seven occurrences in Hebrews. And most of the time in Hebrews, that phrase to draw near means to draw near in worship. It is referring to corporate worship, when the people of God would draw near into the sanctuary to worship God. It also applies to us in our corporate worship, but also in our personal worship, which is also experiencing that reality of drawing near to God with confidence.

And we can do that because we have a sympathetic high priest. We can do that in our time of need. Going back to that example that I said before, let us say you are going through a very difficult trial of being misunderstood and slandered. You can go to Christ in that time of need. And you can ask him for grace to help you to submit to God’s will, to endure the suffering, and to trust God for the outcome. We do not need to wait until Sunday. Yes, we can do it on Sunday as well, but we can also do it any time of the week. If you are stuck in traffic, go to the throne of grace. Shoot up those arrow prayers. Lord, I do not know how to deal with this slander or this situation in my life. I leave it to you, Lord. Help me. Give me grace to help in time of need.

We can come at any time to the throne of grace. The doors of heaven are open 24-7. We can come at any time. If you are lying in bed and you cannot sleep, go to the throne of God in confidence, knowing that you have a great high priest who is there. And you can ask Him to help you.

Most of the time in our prayers, it is that not we do not know what to do. There are times where that happens. We do not know, should I take this job or that job? That does happen, and so you can ask God for help with those things too. But most of the time, it is that not we do not know what to do, it is that we know what to do. We know what God is calling us to do, but it is painful. And we do not really want to do it. And so we need to trust the Lord.

That is the hardest thing. That is exactly what Jesus himself went through. He had to experience that reality of denying himself, submitting to God, and the key to that is always what? Trusting God. Trusting God that even though it hurts and even though it is not what I really want to do, I can trust him that it is going to be okay in the end and that he will take care of me. That is the ultimate form of prayer, is to say, Lord, here is what I desire, but not my will, but your will be done, even as Jesus prayed for us in the garden.

So the second application, and the first one was to hold fast to our confession of Christ, the Son of God, but the second application is to pray. And to pray in this particular way, that is, when you are going through difficulty, to go to the throne of grace knowing that you have a forerunner there who knows what it is like and who is experienced it first and that he is with you, he cares for you, that he is going to vindicate you and see you through. What a glorious passage this is. What comfort we have. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.

Let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help.