Jesus Is Our Great High Priest

Hebrews 1:1-3 When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, he was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be our prophet, priest, and king.  He is our prophet in that he speaks the Word of God faithfully because he is Word who has taken on our flesh.  He is our King who rules our lives and the church and the world for the sake of our eternal salvation.

But it is his work as our great high priest that is especially remembered during the Lenten season as we mediate on the sacrifice of his own life that he offered on the cross of Calvary for the sins of the world.  A man and a moment that had been promised by God from the beginning.  The Bible says that:  Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,

When Adam and Eve sinned, when their lives were full of fear and shame and guilt—God stepped in and promised them that everything their sin and the devil’s deception had destroyed, he would restore by sending the Seed of a Woman who would make things right again.

And he showed them what that meant in the death of the innocent animals whose blood was shed to cover the shame they had tried to hide themselves.  From that moment on, the shedding of blood was the central act of worship of God’s people.

In those days, the head of the house would serve as the priest for his family, telling the story of a Savior to come and shedding the blood of the innocent. 

Eventually God established a formal priesthood that would serve all of God’s people by standing between them and God and confessing the people’s sin and assuring them of God’s pardon and shedding the blood of the innocent as a sign of that great truth of God’s love for the fallen and his plan to redeem them by the One to come.

 That story was told again and again over thousands of years by Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and the judges and the prophets. 

All of them telling the same story connected to the shedding of blood and adding more and more details as God revealed them by his Spirit—the One to come would be born of a Virgin in Bethlehem, that he would be raised in Nazareth, that he would flee to Egypt, that he would heal the sick and raise the dead, and that the blood that would finally bring sinners peace and forgiveness would come from the stripes laid upon his back and from his hands and feet that were pierced.

Through priests and prophets—in the details of the worship of the people of Israel--in the various signs and miracles-- the story of God’s Savior was told and re-told right up to the moment of his birth.  The Bible says that:

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

            The One who was promised in the garden to Adam and Eve—the one whose story was told for thousands of years—the One who was born in Bethlehem-- was different from every other servant of God who had come before—for he was no mere servant but was the Son of God.

            He was there in the beginning with God and everything was created through him-- and he will stand upon the earth on the last day and call into being a new heaven and a new earth unbroken by sin and death and the devil—a world just like he created in the beginning. 

From the very beginning of his earthly life he was worshiped by the Kings of earth and by the angels of heaven-- for God himself, in the person of his Son, had entered into this sin-broken world to fulfill the mission promised in the beginning when God spoke to Adam and Eve and all their children and promised that he would send a Savior.

For thousands and thousands of years it was sufficient for salvation to believe that promise-- and the promises of the prophets-- who added more and more brushstrokes to the portrait of the Savior of the world. 

In Jesus Christ that Savior has come and God spoke again and said “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him!”  Jesus is God’s first and final word to a world full of sinners because he is the only one who can truly reconcile us to God for he is himself God in human flesh.  The Bible says that:

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

            Throughout the Epiphany season before Lent, the church reveals the meaning of these words that the radiance of the glory of God filled Jesus Christ because he was, by his very nature, not only man, but God.

We saw an ordinary baby worshiped by great men and the heavenly angels.  We heard Anna and Simeon proclaim him as the Savior of the world while he slept in his mother’s arms.  We heard him lay claim to the temple as his Father’s house.  We saw him heal the sick and relieve the shame of a young couple at Bethany just like he did for Adam and Eve.  We heard him quotes the prophets concerning the Messiah and say that in himself were their words fulfilled.

By healing the sick and raising the dead and calming the stormy seas he reveals the power of the Creator God who has come to his broken creation to restore it and make it right.

And finally on Transfiguration Sunday we saw him on the mountain surrounded by Moses and Elijah as the veil of his very real human flesh was allowed to show forth the fullness of the radiant glory of God that filled the temple and hovered above Sinai and led the people to the promised Land—now in the human flesh of Jesus.

And the church tells that story through the words of Holy Scripture so that we can know just exactly who it is that identifies himself with our sins and bears them on the cross and suffers and dies under that terrible burden—that it is God who is there at the cross—the Creator dying for his creatures.

If you and I and a world full of sinners from every place and time are to be saved, it cannot be the death of a good man or wise teacher that saves us-- but it must instead be the death of God himself.

That same God who brought the world into being—that same God that upholds the universe by his power—that same God who is holy and righteous and good—that same God who is all powerful and all-knowing and eternal and present everywhere—that God who is so filled with love for a world full of sinners—is the God who suffers and dies on the cross so that we might be saved from our sins. 

Jesus is our great high priest who has purified us from our guilt and shame by the shedding of his own blood on the cross.  The Bible says that:  After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

            Our great high priest Jesus Christ offered up upon the cross the once for all, fully sufficient sacrifice of his own life that has fully paid for our sins and reconciled us to God.

Every one of your sins—those of which you are particularly ashamed, those that continue to undermine your life with God, those you are no even aware of-- have been washed away by the blood of Jesus at the cross where he was not only the sacrifice but the priest that offered that sacrifice.

The Bible says that the blood of Jesus Christ purifies us from all sins and the Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and the sins of the world.  When he died on the cross he said, It is finished.

But his death on the cross was not the end of the story.  Every other priest before him, every other sacrifice before died and that was the end of the story—death.

But Jesus Christ our great high priest rose from the dead—the Father’s own promise that the Son’s high priestly work was accomplished and complete.  The end of death had come so that his priestly work now means life for all who receive it by faith.

And after his resurrection, he ascended to the right hand of his Father where his priestly work continues for us.

He stands at the Father’s hand at this very moment, lifting up his sacrifice in place of our sins.  He intercedes for us with his heavenly Father so that his saving will is accomplished in us.

And he continues to serve his people with the gifts of salvation by giving us the same body and blood sacrificed on the cross, now under bread and wine, so that we can be assured that his priestly work is an ongoing reality in our lives, forgiving us again and again of our sins.

The one who was promised from the beginning, the one who would destroy the work of Stan, the one promised by the prophets has come to us in Jesus Christ, God’s own Son who is our great high priest.  Amen.