Old Testament Reading
Our Old Testament passage is chapters 28 and 29 of Exodus, but as you can see, these are very long passages or very long chapters. So rather than reading all of both chapters, I will read some sections from each chapter.
Chapter 28 is concerned with the garments that the high priest wore and a little bit about the garments that the regular priests wore in their service in the tabernacle. I’ll just read verses 1 through 4 to begin with.
So first, chapter 28, verses 1 through 4. Then bring near to you Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the people of Israel to serve me as priests. Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, and you shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, for glory and for beauty. You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they may make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood. These are the garments that they shall make, a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checkerwork, a turban, and a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, and his sons to serve me as priests. They shall receive gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen.
And then if we were to read on in chapter 28, we would read all of the details of how those various garments were to be made. And then coming to the end of the chapter, picking up at verse 40, these are the final instructions concerning the priest’s garments.
Verse 40, chapter 28. You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh. They shall reach from the hips to the thighs, and they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place, lest they bear guilt and die. This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him.
Chapter 29, the concern of this chapter is the ordination or the consecration of the priests who would serve in the tabernacle. So first I’ll read verses one through nine. Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them that they may serve me as priests. Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them a fine wheat flour. You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket and bring the bull and the two rams. You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Then you shall take the garments and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breastpiece and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod. And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them. And you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.
And then the rest of chapter 29 has the details of how the priests were to be ordained and the various sacrifices that were involved with that. I’ll read the last few verses of chapter 29. These have to do with the daily offerings that were to be offered at the tabernacle and later at the temple.
So starting in verse 38, chapter 29. Now this is what you shall offer on the altar. Two lambs a year old, day by day, regularly. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. And with the first lamb, a tenth measure of fine flour, mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering. The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer it with a grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma of food offering to the Lord. It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak to you there. There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory. I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar; Aaron also and his sons, I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord, their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord, their God.
So keep your place there in Exodus, and let’s turn to Hebrews chapter seven for our New Testament reading. And as you have noticed, I’m sure, many of our New Testament readings have been in Hebrews, because Hebrews explains to us all of the significance of the tabernacle and the priesthood that we have been reading about in Exodus.
New Testament Reading
So Hebrews chapter 7, verses 23 through 28. So chapter 7, verses 23 through 28. 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.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
The Three Offices of Christ
Many of you will already be familiar with this concept, but in the Old Testament, God provided three kinds of offices or leaders for the people of Israel. He gave them prophets, priests, and kings. And the people of Israel needed each one of these offices for their salvation and for their faithfulness to the Lord.
And the same is true for us. As Christians, for our own salvation, for our faithfulness to God, we need someone who can perfectly fulfill each one of those offices for us. We need a perfect prophet who will make known the word of God to us. We need a perfect priest to offer a perfect sacrifice on our behalf in order to take away our sin. And we need a perfect king to rule over us, to defeat his enemies and our enemies.
And of course, Jesus, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, He is the one who fulfills all of these three offices for us. As our Savior, as our Lord, He is our great prophet, priest, and king.
As a prophet, Jesus declares to us through the scriptures the will of God for our salvation, for our growth and grace. As a priest, the Lord Jesus offered up himself as a sacrifice to atone for our sins forever. And as a priest, he continues to make intercession for us before his Father in heaven. As a king, Jesus rules over us for our good. He fights and he conquers all of our enemies.
Because these two chapters in Exodus are all about the institution of the priesthood, what I want to consider with you today as we consider these chapters is what do these chapters tell us about the priestly role that Jesus has fulfilled and continues to fill for us? What does it mean that Jesus is our great high priest?
As we have been looking at all the details of the tabernacle, we’ve been seeing how they all point in one way or the other to the coming of Christ. Today, the details have to do with the priesthood, the people that would serve in the tabernacle. And so since the priesthood in the Old Testament was a type of, since it pointed towards the true high priest, the Lord Jesus, we’ll look at these chapters by asking the question, what do these chapters teach us about Jesus, our great high priest?
There are three truths about Christ as our priest that we can glean from these chapters from Exodus. First of all, as our high priest, Jesus was appointed by God. So Jesus was appointed by God to be our priest. Secondly, as our high priest, Jesus was and is holy. And thirdly, as our high priest, Jesus is compassionate.
Appointed by God
So first of all, as our high priest, Jesus was appointed by God. In this very long section of Exodus, in these two chapters that we are taking together, obviously we will not dwell on all of the details because there are too many. But in chapter 28, what is described for us is the special clothing that the priests were to wear as they ministered in the temple. So God had a purpose, a plan for their clothing. They were not to wear ordinary clothes, but they would be clothed in this very special way. And chapter 29 describes how the priests would be ordained to this office.
But before all of that, the very first thing that the Lord tells Moses at the beginning of chapter 28 is who would serve as the priest, or who would serve as priests. The Lord gave that responsibility, that privilege, that office to Aaron. Aaron, of course, was the brother of Moses, and it would be Aaron and his sons who would serve as priests in Israel.
So look at verse one in chapter 28. Verse one in chapter 28. This is the Lord speaking to Moses. Then bring near to you Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the people of Israel to serve me as priests, Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.
It’s just assumed here at this point, but it becomes clearer later in scripture that there would be one priest who would be the high priest or the chief priest. He would have the greatest responsibility, the greatest privilege of all the priests, because he would be the chief of the priests. And the high priest, the first one would be Aaron. He was the first high priest. And then the office would be passed down to one of Aaron’s sons and to one of his sons. And so it went from Aaron to Eleazar to Phineas and so on.
You’ll notice that Aaron was not chosen to be the high priest as a result of a democratic election among the people of Israel. Aaron did not run a successful priesthood campaign. He wasn’t elected to serve as high priest by popular vote. Rather, he was elected to this office in a very different sense, and that is he was elected by the only one whose vote matters, and that is he was elected by God, by the Almighty God, the Sovereign Lord. It was his choice, his appointment. He is the one who made Aaron the priest.
And in doing this and choosing Aaron to be the high priest, the Lord was laying down an unbreakable and inviolable law. And that is this: It is God and God alone who chooses the man who will serve as priest in Israel.
The book of Hebrews puts it this way, Hebrews chapter 5 verse 4, “And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.” So there were no self-appointed priests, at least legitimately. There were no democratically elected priests, but there was only the priests and the priests whom God had chosen.
Now, sadly, the Israelites did not really understand this until they learned it the hard way. Later, as we read through the Old Testament, we read about the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. And in one episode, there is a man named Korah, who is a Levite. And he couldn’t stand the fact that only Aaron and his sons were to be priests. He was jealous that only they could be a priest. And so Korah decided to do something about that.
He gathered 250 men to himself, and together they accused Moses of wrongfully denying them and the rest of the Israelites the privileges of the priesthood, the access to God that only the priest could enjoy. And as a result of Korah’s rebellion against God and his will for the priesthood, what happened was, as you know, God caused the earth to open up under Korah and his family, and he and his entire family were sent down alive to the depths of Sheol. And so that was what God thought of Korah’s idea that everyone should be a priest.
The lesson was this, according to the words of Moses. This is what Moses said after this incident with Korah. In Numbers 16:40, he said, “no outsider who was not of the descendants of Aaron should draw near to burn incense before the Lord, lest he become like Korah and his company.” And so only Aaron and his sons could be priests. Later in Numbers, the Lord himself says this to Aaron, “I give your priesthood as a gift and any outsider who comes near shall be put to death.”
And so a priest was, or to serve as a priest, that office, it was an honor that no one could take upon himself. Only God could appoint him to serve as a priest.
That was true for Aaron, and that was true for Jesus as well. He was appointed by God. He was set apart by God in order to serve as our high priest. Hebrews chapter five, verses five and six say this: “So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘you are my son, today I have begotten you.'” Verse six, “as he says also in another place, ‘you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'”
I believe that one reason why the Lord was so clear and so insistent on this point that only he would choose who the priest of Israel would be is because in this way, the Lord was teaching his people that salvation, that eternal life would be found only in the Savior that he himself would choose for his people, the Savior that he would raise up for his people. It’s as though through this law that only God could choose the priest, it’s as though the Lord was saying to the people of Israel, “you need to understand that your hope, your hope of my dwelling with you forever, your hope of the forgiveness of your sins, your hope of eternal life and salvation, it depends upon the ministry of the priesthood, and it depends ultimately upon the ministry of the one true priest who is yet to come. And therefore, I, not you, will choose who will be your priest.”
Again, it is as though the Lord was saying to the people of Israel, “I know your hearts, you Israelites. You would choose your own priests. You would make yourselves priests. But the only priest that I choose, the coming Messiah, only he can bring you eternal salvation. And so you must know that it is I who will appoint and give you your true savior, and so the priest is the man of my choosing, not of yours.”
And so it’s significant that Aaron was chosen by the Lord to be the high priest because that was the way in which God would bring salvation to us. He would choose the man who would be our high priest, and that is Jesus. So first, Jesus was appointed by God as our high priest.
A Holy High Priest
Secondly, as our high priest, Jesus is holy. He is holy.
In chapter 28, after the Lord told Moses whom he appointed to serve him as priests, he told Moses how the priests were to be clothed for their ministry in the tabernacle. And that is the concern of all of chapter 28. You can go home, you can read that whole chapter. You can look at the pictures online of what the priest’s garments looked like to give you a better idea of that.
But these are the garments that Aaron was to wear and the high priest who came after him. Verse 4 gives us a summary of the various parts of the outfit that the high priest was to wear as he ministered in the tabernacle. This is chapter 28, verse 4. These are the garments that they shall make, a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checkerwork, a turban, and a sash.
The breastpiece, or it’s called the breastpiece of judgment, this was a piece of cloth that was folded over. It was square, about nine inches by nine inches. It was made out of gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns. It was made out of fine twined linen. And it was laid on top of the ephod on the chest of the high priest.
Now the breastpiece had two very important features. The first was there were fastened on it 12 precious stones that were arranged in four rows of three stones each. And on each of these stones was engraved the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. So literally, the high priest bore the names of the tribes of Israel before God as he ministered in the tabernacle, and we’ll come back to that point in a few minutes.
The second feature of the breastpiece was that it contained the Urim and the Thummim. The Urim and the Thummim. This is one of these mysterious details that the Old Testament gives us, but doesn’t give us much information about it. What exactly were the Urim and the Thummim? Nobody knows for sure, there’s no description of what they were. But whatever they were, they were used by the Israelites to determine the will of God in certain circumstances. When you read on in the Old Testament, you’ll read how from time to time the Israelites would consult the Urim and the Thummim to seek God’s will for a particular decision that was to be made. And so, whatever they were, they were part of the breastpiece that was worn by the high priest.
The ephod was like the breastpiece in that it was also made of the same material. It was made out of gold, of blue, purple, scarlet yarns, fine twined linen. This was the outermost garment that the high priest wore. And so it was on top of the ephod that the breastpiece was laid. And under the ephod, the priest wore a blue robe, and under the blue robe, he wore what is called a coat in checkerwork. And then under that, the high priest and all of the priests, they wore linen undergarments. This was literally the underwear that God appointed for them and even designed for them to wear in their ministry in the tabernacle. The chapter also describes the turban that was worn on the head of the high priest.
Now, about all of these various garments, the Lord says this in verse 2. So look at verse 2, chapter 28. Notice how the Lord describes these garments that Aaron was to wear in his high priestly duties. They were holy, they were glorious, and they were beautiful.
So first, the garments were holy, and they were holy because only the high priest could wear them, and they could only be worn as he ministered in the tabernacle. And so just like everything else that’s connected with the tabernacle, the priest’s clothing also was holy, and that’s because the tabernacle was holy. And as we’ve seen, the tabernacle was holy because that is where the holy God dwelt. That is where the Lord made his presence among his people. And because God is holy, everything in the tabernacle was holy, down to the priest’s garments that he wore when he ministered there.
They were also glorious. They reflected the glory of God. You may have noticed that all of the materials that went into making the priest’s clothing, they were the same materials that were used to make the tabernacle. Fine twined linen, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and gold and so on. Just as the tabernacle itself was a reflection of the glory of God, so the priest’s clothing reflected God in his glory as well.
And the same can be said for beauty. The tabernacle was beautiful. And it was beautiful, like we’ve said, most of all because the Lord is beautiful, because that was the Lord’s dwelling place. And so the tabernacle was beautiful. And the high priest showed forth the beauty of the Lord as he wore the beautiful garments that God himself designed.
And so in this way, the garments that the high priest wore, they showed forth, they expressed the splendor of God, His greatness, His glory, His beauty, His holiness. And this was one of the basic functions of a priest. This is one reason why God gave to Israel a priest. It was in order to represent to the people of Israel who God is, to represent God to the people of Israel. And one way that He did this was with these garments that He wore.
However, the more important function of the priest was not to represent God to the people, but it was to represent the people before God. And it’s for that reason that what is stressed above all else in both chapter 28 and chapter 29, what is stressed, what is emphasized is the absolute requirement that the priest had to be holy. He had to be holy because he was representing the people of God to the Lord.
And so chapter 29, again, we only read part of it. You can read it at home to get all the details. It describes the ordination of the men who would serve as priests. And everything in that ordination service, all of the sacrifices, the blood that was sprinkled on the priests, this was in order to set apart these men as holy, as those who would serve as priests before God. In fact, their ordination is called a consecration, and that’s what it was. They were consecrated. They were set apart. They were made holy, distinct from the rest of the people of Israel as one who was serving God in a unique way. And so they were made ritually holy so that they could serve as priests for the people of Israel.
Now, it’s important to understand that the priest had to be holy as he represented the people of God before God, not because the people were holy. In fact, the people were not holy. They were unholy. They were unrighteous. They were sinful. Rather, it’s because he represented a sinful people before a holy God that he had to be holy in order that the sacrifices, the worship of people who were unrighteous, unholy, people who sinned, in order that they might be acceptable to God, in order that their persons might be acceptable to God, they had to be offered through a priest who himself was holy.
This is what is meant by the words that were engraved on the gold plate that was on the turban that the high priest wore on his head. The words that were engraved on that gold plate are, “holy to the Lord, holy to the Lord.” But listen to how the Lord explains this to Moses. So this is verse 38, verse 38 in chapter 28. “It shall be on Aaron’s forehead,” that is the gold plate, “and Aaron shall bear any guilt from the holy things that the people of Israel consecrate as their holy gifts. It shall regularly be on his forehead that they,” that is the people of Israel, “that they may be accepted before the Lord.”
And so in order for an unholy people to be accepted before the Lord who is holy, they needed to offer their sacrifices to him through a representative who himself was holy. In other words, the holiness of the priest was a requirement for the people of Israel in order that their worship and that they themselves would be received by the Lord. And so the priest had to be holy.
And even today when we hear the word priest, we think of someone in theory who is holy. When I was a seminary student and I met someone for the first time, they asked me what I do and I told them that I’m going to seminary. So often their first response was, “oh, so you’re going to be a priest.” And I thought to myself, “well, no, I’m married. Priesthood’s definitely not an option for me. I’m Protestant. I’m not going into the priesthood.” But just being called that by other people kind of made me feel a little strange. I felt like in their eyes, there must be a halo over my head. There must be a divine glow coming out from my face. And somehow I’m unlike them. I am holy because I’m studying to be a priest, or so they thought.
But of course, that’s not the case; even as a pastor, I’m a sinner like everyone else. That’s one reason why I’m glad to be called, not a priest, but a minister of the gospel, a minister of God’s Word. I’m just one sinner ministering to other sinners and showing them the one who gives us forgiveness and eternal life.
But the priest, at least ritually, ceremonially, the priest had to be holy. But that was the problem. That was the problem with the entire institution of the priesthood that God ordained. The reason why those priests could never bring an eternal salvation, the reason why their ministry would never result in the forgiveness of the sins of the people of Israel, at least forever, was because they were not truly holy. The priests were men. They were sinners just like the rest of the Israelites. Of course, they were made ceremonially clean and holy, but there was still always the need for a perfect priest, a holy priest, to represent sinners before a holy God.
And of course, that is the priest that Jesus came into the world to be for us. He came to be the high priest that the Israelites lacked. He came to be the high priest that we desperately needed, one who was perfect in every way, one who personally possessed in himself a holiness, a righteousness that is acceptable by God. And of course, Jesus is holy in this way because he is very God himself, because He is the Son of God. He is personally holy.
Hebrews chapter 7 describes Jesus as our high priest in these words. These are the words that we heard from our New Testament reading, verse 26, chapter 7: “Jesus is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” You could not say that about Aaron or any of the high priests. Verse 28: “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.”
And just as the Israelites were accepted by the Lord by the ministry of the high priest who was ceremonially holy, ritually holy, so we are accepted by God in the person of Jesus Christ because of his inherent, his intrinsic holiness and righteousness.
The high priest was clothed with the garments of holiness when he presented the sacrifices to the Israelites. But compare that with Jesus. Jesus, the true high priest, when he offered his sacrifice, that once-for-all sacrifice of himself upon the cross, what were the garments that Jesus wore at that time? Well, he had nothing on. Jesus wore nothing. He was naked. And why is that?
Well, humanly speaking, historically speaking, it’s simply because that’s how the Romans crucified their victims. They took off all their clothes to increase the shame that they experienced as they were lifted up on the cross in order to die that excruciating death naked. But there’s a deeper meaning to that as well in the case of Jesus. It’s because he did not need any outward garments of righteousness. His garments of righteousness were his very own intrinsic holiness and righteousness that he possessed in himself as the holy, the innocent, the unstained Son of God.
All of this means something wonderful for you. It means that because of Jesus Christ, if you are trusting in him as your savior from sin, it means that God will receive you in Christ no matter how bad your sin may have been, no matter how far you may have strayed from the Lord, no matter how sinful and unrighteous and ungodly you may have been. When you, by the grace of God, repent and come to Jesus, when you come to Him confessing your sins, seeking forgiveness, God forgives all your sins. He forgives every sin that you are guilty of, no matter how heinous, no matter how bad, and He can do that because of who Jesus is, as both High Priest and Sacrifice, because He is holy, because He is the innocent, righteous Son of God. His priesthood and His sacrifice are sufficient to cover all of your sin, all of your guilt, and to give you a perfect righteousness before God.
If your faith is in Jesus Christ, you have a perfect and eternal salvation because you have a perfect high priest. He not only interceded for you at the cross when he offered up himself a sacrifice to take away your sin and guilt, but the Bible tells us that Jesus continues to intercede for you. He pleads for you before the Father in heaven by virtue and on the basis of his once for all sacrifice. And so he continues to serve you as your great high priest. And because he is holy, his service is effective in your salvation and taking away all your sins. So as our high priest, Jesus is holy.
A Compassionate High Priest
Thirdly, as our great high priest, Jesus is compassionate.
Aaron and his sons and all the priests that would come from them, they were human in every sense of the word. Of course, they were human beings. They were men just like us. But when we say that someone is human, we also imply that they’re imperfect; they sin just like we do. And that was true for Aaron and his sons. No matter how exalted their office was, they were fallen human beings. That’s why they had to be clothed in these garments of righteousness. That’s why their holiness was only a ritual holiness. That’s why in their consecration to the office of priest, they were sprinkled with the blood of sacrifices to make them ritually holy and pure. But they were still sinners.
However, as sinners, as men, they could sympathize with those whom they represented, their fellow Israelites, because they too were weak and frail. They too were tempted. They too struggled with sin. And so they could have compassion on the people for whom they ministered, because they knew what it was like to be human, because they were men themselves. Hebrews 5:2 puts it this way, speaking of the high priest: “he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” And so the Israelites knew that though this high priest occupied this great office, nevertheless, he was really no different from me. He could sympathize with me. I could even perhaps confess my sins to him, and he would understand.
Well, Jesus also served and continues to serve as our high priest, and he serves as our high priest as one who is human, one who is man. Now, Jesus is divine. He is true God. He always was true God, even in his conception, his crucifixion. He continued to be 100% divine, yet he was always, since his incarnation, true man, truly human, and his humanity was a sinless humanity. Nevertheless, though he was sinless, though he was righteous, he experienced the struggles and the temptations that you and I face in this world. Hebrews makes that very clear. Hebrews 2, verses 17 and 18: “Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
And so Jesus never succumbed to temptation, praise the Lord. If he had, we could not have him as our Savior. Nevertheless, Jesus was tempted, and he suffered. He suffered. He lived in this world in which there is grief and pain and loss. He experienced all of those things. In fact, there is no form of suffering that you can endure in this world, no matter how extreme, whether it is spiritual or physical or emotional suffering, there is no kind of suffering that you can endure about which Jesus cannot say, “I know what it’s like to go through that.” He knows.
Now that doesn’t mean that Jesus suffered in exactly the same way that you have suffered in all the exact same circumstances, but it means that because He suffered as a man to a degree that no human being has ever suffered before or ever will, because He suffered as a man, no matter your exact circumstances, He knows your pain. He knows what it’s like to live in this fallen world. He knows what it’s like to experience temptation. And for that reason, he can sympathize. He is compassionate. He knows what it’s like to endure sorrow and grief. He knows what it’s like to endure the physical pain that he suffered, the emotional pain that he suffered. He knows what it’s like to be tempted.
One of the beautiful pictures of this description of the priesthood is how the high priest wore the names of the tribes of Israel on his chest, on the breastpiece. Actually, he wore them in two places. There were two onyx stones on his shoulders that were inscribed with the names of the tribes of Israel as well. But the breastpiece and the names of the people of Israel, or the tribes of Israel, were over his chest, over his heart. In fact, that’s what the passage tells us. In chapter 28, verse 29, it says, “So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart when he goes into the holy place to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord.”
Well, as your high priest, Jesus does the same thing. He bears your name on his heart. He knows everything that you are going through, and he brings you to remembrance when he prays for you before the Father. And can you imagine a better friend than that? Someone who knows you perfectly, someone who knows what it’s like to go through whatever you may be suffering, one who has himself suffered and been tempted, but one who is merciful, one who always has you on his heart and who prays for you continually before the Father in heaven, before the one with whom he has most intimate fellowship. He prays to you, to the one who hears and answers all the prayers of his son.
And this is the kind of friend that you have in Jesus. He is a faithful, he is a merciful high priest. And so he is our great high priest. And as our priest, he is God’s choice for our salvation. He is holy and he is compassionate.
Let’s pray.