The Wicket Gate

Introduction

Good morning, Church. Open up to the book of Hebrews, chapter 7. We are going to finish chapter 7 this morning, God willing with part 3 of our discussion of Melchizedek as a type of Christ and the priestly order of Christ. Last week we talked about the better hope that is established for us in Christ and this week we full flesh out the concept of his better covenant. To do that properly we need to rightly understand what a covenant is. In biblical terms a covenant is an agreement between two parties. Like where God says, you can eat from any tree you want except this one tree and if you do that just as I have said you will live. If you eat from this one tree though, you will surely die. We know what happened there. Or we have the covenant with Moses where the law is given and God says obey this and live, disobey this and you will die. Again, we know what happened there.

What was the issue with those covenants? Aside from the fact that they were broken, they didn’t work because the keeping of those covenants was dependent upon man. God gave the agreements but it was man who was responsible for keeping them and history is not on our side when it comes to covenant keeping, is it? As we mentioned last week the post fall reason why covenant keeping is impossible for man is because those covenants concerned themselves with external action and obedience but our problem was and is an inward condition problem. We are separated from a holy God because in our sin we have become, in our nature, contrary to him and as such our disposition is always contrary to him. So often we focus on the outward sins when in reality those are only the presenting symptoms of an internal corruption. By the grace of God though, there is a remedy for this and a way to think about this biblically. It starts and ends with this better covenant guarantee that is offered to us in our text this morning. To that end we will be looking at 3 things from our text. The assurance that we have as a result of the promise and oath given to us, the ongoing intercession we receive that maintains us, and indeed how fitting Christ is for us. I pray it would please the Lord to open our hearts to receive what he has for us this morning.

I want to also say as we wrap up chapter 7 that I fully agree with what one commentator said with regards to Hebrews 7. That along with Romans 8 and Psalm 23, Hebrews chapter 7 deserves to have its place as one of the richest and most edifying chapters in the whole of Scripture. I want into chapter 7 with a bit of reservation about what I was to make of this strange Melchizedek and close having received a new and lasting treasure from God’s word. By God’s grace I hope you feel the same way about this chapter and this book.

Please stand as we read Hebrews 7, starting in verse 20

Hebrews 7:20–28ESV

And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever.’ ” This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.

Oath of Assurance

Let me begin by turning your attention back to Hebrews 6 for just a moment. It wasn’t that long ago so I am sure your fresh minds will quickly recall this. In verse 13 of chapter 6, the author shows us that when God made those great promises to Abraham he secured it with an oath. Since God has no one greater by whom he can swear, he swore by himself saying, “surely I will bless you and multiply you.” So the surety of that promise to Abraham and his decedents was not only because it was a promise given by God but also because God himself swore an oath by himself that such things would indeed come to pass. By those two unchangeable things, a promise and an oath, in which God cannot lie, we have a strong encouragement to hold fast the hope that is set before us. The author of Hebrews goes further to say such things are a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.

Naturally then we should consider it a great encouragement to receive a promise and an oath from God but what about when that promise and oath concern this better covenant that we have been laboring to grasp? What if this better covenant with us concerns conditions only God himself has to fulfill and in that contains promises and oaths, only God can make.

A covenant is only as good as the principle parties involved, isn’t it. You buy a house and you sign a covenant with a lender. The lender gives you the money to buy the house and in exchange you agree to pay them back at so much per month and for that service to you, you agree to pay them some additional money in interest.

Sounds like a fair enough agreement and assuming both parties involved hold up their end of the agreement everything goes smoothly. But is such an agreement fully trusting or assured on both sides? We know that it isn’t fully trusting because of all the due diligence that is always done. We check multiple lenders to make sure we are getting the best rate, because we have some suspicions that maybe they are trying to get a little extra from us. The lender requires a long list of things that they use to determine whether or not you are trust worthy to hold up your end of the agreement. What happens if in the middle of it something causes a break in the agreement? The bank closes down, they sell your agreement to someone else and that someone tries to change the terms. What if you die halfway through the agreement, then how is the agreement fulfilled?

The point there is that we understand that covenants between parties whereby said parties are wholly unable, in their own power, to keep their covenants on account of so many external variables are not lasting covenants, nor are the covenants that can be fully depended on. That’s not even to mention that many times one of the parties involved just decides they don’t want to keep this agreement anymore so they just break it.

Let all that stew in all your big brains for a bit while we pull is all together. The former priests, the levitical priests were made priests on account of what? Their birth. They were born into a specific family and as a result they were made priests not through a promise or an oath but by birth, correct? Further as principal parties in a covenant these priests were required to uphold terms that were established even before they were born. But what happened to all those priests, why were they continually needing to be replaced? Because they all died. This covenant which required priestly intercession to maintain its efficacy was hindered by the reality that it’s principal parties kept dying. Imagine an agreement that is constantly having to be renewed, in a sense, because the parties involved keep changing. I suppose that would be an underwriter’s dream or maybe nightmare but it would be solid job security. There is something better though.

Hebrews 7:20–28ESV

but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever.’ ” This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

Imagine now that you enter into a covenant to buy a house but instead of you being the principal party, another comes in and says, I will be the guarantor on this agreement. How good is that agreement? Well it’s still only as good as the guarantor, right? But what if this guarantor can not lie? What if he is so perfectly trustworthy that everything he says is always true? What if this person can not and will not change his mind? What if this person can never break a promise, can never back out of an oath? “That sounds great, I’d love to be backed by a person like that but what happens if that person dies, then what would I do?” That’s the best part of it all. Our Surety, this guarantor, can not die either. Could you be assured that any agreement would stand if that kind of person was your guarantor? That’s what Hebrews is showing us this morning and by using that word guarantor it really is communicating to us something foundational. This word “guarantor” in the Greek is a legal term reserved for legal documents, much like a mortgage, whereby one puts forward something to stand as security for a loan. Someone signs all their donkeys away as security saying if the agreement is defaulted you can have all my donkeys as payment.

But in this case the security that Christ offers to seal and secure this covenant is not a flock of sheep or a paid off vehicle, he offers himself as the security of this agreement. So that as long as Christ lives, this blessed covenant concerning our salvation will ever be secured by him. In a couple weeks we will celebrate the glorious reality of Christ walking out of the grave and in that we will certainly celebrate the fact that in his resurrection he has fulfilled all prophecy, been justified in his perfect fulfillment of the law, and in doing so has also dealt with our sins, made peace with corrupt man and reconciled us back to God. Praise be to God. Let us not forget though that in the defeat of death and his ascension into the heavily places at the right hand of the father he has guaranteed our salvation. We can and must have the full assurance that nothing will ever again separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. How? Because he has made an agreement with us, swore it with an oath, sealed it with his blood and secured it with his eternal life and unchanging character. That is why this new covenant is a better covenant. Not only because of the terms of the covenant, though they certainly are better, but if they didn’t contain a rock solid guarantor then the best covenant in the world would eventually be broken.

This new covenant is better, and infinitely great both because of the terms and because of the oath on which it was founded and by the perfect eternal life by which is eternally secured. You are going to have to come back next week to hear the precise terms of this better covenant but rest assured that is secured because it is guaranteed by the unending life of Christ.

Ongoing Intercession

Let’s now consider the ongoing intercession that our text describes. I did reference this last week with respect to Christ’s intercession that helps us through trials but in the text this morning it is this ongoing intercession of Christ that is the basis of our ultimate salvation.

I’m not really on social media much at the moment but I do peek in from time to time at some of the happenings in the evangelical world just to make sure I don’t totally miss something big. Apparently our dear brother John Piper stirred up some people this week with some comments he made on the assurance of salvation and justification. I won’t get into that specifically and I do value Piper’s teachings very much but I would perhaps differ slightly from him on his emphasis of assurance and precisely who we should depend on for our ultimate justification and salvation.

“He holds his priesthood permanently because he lives forever.” This priestly ministry of Christ is permanent because he lives forever, I know we get that. He is also able to save to the uttermost, that is totally and fully save for all time, those who draw near to God through him, how? Because he always lives to make intercession for them. So someone like Piper may emphasize that our assurance comes strictly from our perseverance and I think there is some nuanced truth that, but I want to emphasize as I think our text does that our assurance comes from our perseverance but our perseverance comes purely by the intercession of Christ. You will be save to the uttermost because the eternal Christ is constantly keeping you.

That too is tied in with the new covenant and the promise and oath of God. It is so good and so gracious that he does the saving all by his will and power and he does the keeping all by his will and his power. “Well but don’t tell people that or they will just live however they want!” If your response to the pure grace of God in Christ is, “Sweet now I get to do whatever I want and still go to heaven.” You have gravely missed the mark and the spirit of God has not yet opened your eyes to the sweetness of his grace. If you want a verse to memorize and hide in your heart that will surely be used by the spirit to comfort and encourage you it’s Hebrews 7: 24-25

Hebrews 7:24–25ESV

but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

There is also a quick aside worth mentioning here on a couple common errors with respect to Christs intercession that I think are certainly relevant for us this morning. The first is the error that assumes that Christ’s intercession is not sufficient or that somehow Christ is too busy for everyone and we should include prayers and pleadings to the other saints to supplement or so that they may get Christ’s attention on things that he has maybe overlooked. This is a significant error because it robs Christ of the sole position as our help and shepherd that he himself has claimed that he is for us.

I know at least one person has a similar experience but there is an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Debra, Ray’s wife, is asked to bring a casserole for thanksgiving dinner. When she arrives she finds that Ray’s mom has made a duplicate of her casserole and when she questions her about it, Ray’s mother responds by saying that she wanted to be safe and have an extra in case Debra’s didn’t turn out.

So the idea of supplementing there demonstrates a fundamental lack of trust and a somewhat demeaning one at that. When we supplement the intercession of Christ with anything else we are effectively telling him, I just want to be safe in case yours doesn’t turn out. We either put all our trust in him and him alone and get everything including eternal salvation and everlasting life or we spread our trust around to “be safe” and in the end, get nothing. Spread out your investments for security, but with Christ, it’s all him or its nothing.

Another error we make is to pit the father and the son against one another as though the Father is quite angry and full of wrath against us all the time and is just waiting for an opportunity to smote us and Christ is pleading for us continually that God’s hand of judgement may be stayed.

We need to remember though who it was that sent Christ in the first place. Was it not the father? Did the father not love you so much that he sent his son for you, that through believing in him you would have eternal life. No the father is not angry with you, he knows you and because of Christ he sees you as he sees Christ.

Indeed Fitting

The final thing I want to cover this morning is the idea that it was indeed fitting that we should have a high priest such as Christ. What is meant there by indeed fitting? As translator notes, perhaps a better translation of the Greek there is that “such a high priest was fitted to us.” Have you ever been working outside on a hot day and you are full of sweat and your mouth is dry and you come inside and your lovely wife hands you an ice cold glass of lemonade. You take a few long drinks and what do you say? “Ah! just what I needed.” In that way an ice cold glass of lemonade is perfectly fitted for that situation. Far be it from me to compare our Lord to lemonade but I hope you see that with respect to our situation, Christ was and is the perfectly fitted priest that we need. He is all the things we are not or weren’t. Holy, innocent, unstained, exalted about the heavens and in that way he was separated from us. He wasn’t like any of the other priests who made intercession. While being like us in the fact that he became a human as we are and was tempted as we are, he was also as much unlike us as could be possible. He was God and who is like God really?

But by becoming flesh and becoming a priest forever on our behalf and one who is human like us, he was and is exactly what we need. The God-man, priest who stood in the chasm separating man and God. These two (God and man) being so far apart there was no hope of reconciliation but Christ enters as both God and man, like us in humanity but also not at all like us in divinity so that in this miraculous union of God and man we have the very thing we need. A worthy priest, a worthy guarantor, a worthy savior and worthy substitute for us, a worthy redeemer the perfect fit for our needs and if you want to know what true refreshment feels like come and drink from the well of living water.

There is something else to note about how fitting Christ is that is alluded to us in those traits laid out in the text. What was established under the old covenant as an appropriate or fitting sacrifice for sins? It was to be spotless and unblemished, right? You couldn’t just grab any lamb for the offering, it had to be the right one, it must be a fitting and worthy sacrifice. In that way we of course see the foreshadowing of Christ, the spotless, perfect lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The fitting and worthy sacrifice whom the father looks upon and because of Christ’s infinite worthiness sees fit to accept it as an eternal offering for our sins. Once for all paid in full, signed and sealed, and guaranteed till the very end of time. This is the blessed and better covenant guarantee and this is freely offered who in faith come to Christ to receive him as their guarantor forever

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and evermore shall be, world without end. Amen, amen