Please be seated as we hear the scripture reading from God's Word, which is taken tonight from Hebrews chapter 4. We'll begin the reading at Hebrews 4 verse 9, although our focus in the sermon will be on verses 14 to 16. So hear now God's Word. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 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 weakness, 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 in time of need. Let's pray before we hear more from God in his word. Our Heavenly Father, once again we ask that you would draw near to us by your spirit, that spirit without which our hearts remain cold and our minds remain closed. We pray that you would illumine our minds and that you would open our hearts so that we might receive with thanksgiving what we are about to hear from your word. And we ask it in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. I hope you've come this afternoon needing some encouragement, some help. If that's not you, you might be disappointed because what we have in God's Word this evening is of wonderful encouragement to us. I get to bring you some fantastic news this afternoon. And we're going to look at these three verses, Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 to 16. So if you don't still have your Bibles open, I invite you now to turn to that passage or pull it up on your phone, however you prefer to do that, but have the text in front of you as we look at this section of the epistle to Hebrews. What's the epistle to Hebrews all about? I wish we had all day to talk about that, but we don't. So we're going to jump right to the end for our clue. In Hebrews chapter 13 verse 22, the author tells us how we're supposed to understand this epistle, this homily, an early Christian sermon. He says he's written, to those who received this, he's written a word of exhortation, a word of encouragement. That's the whole point of the book of Hebrews. And those of you who've studied Hebrews over the years know that Hebrews holds out to us in a glorious way the finished and full work of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also his present heavenly work on behalf of his people in heaven as a great high priest. And Hebrews says that we should draw great encouragement as we consider Jesus. Time and time again, Hebrews uses the language of considering, gazing at, looking at, fixing the eyes of your faith, your spiritual attention, squarely on Jesus as your great high priest, and that as you do so, you should find great spiritual encouragement. So I hope you need some of that encouragement this afternoon. I think we all do, and that's exactly what we find in our passage. Just as we start here, can I say a word to the young people, the boys and girls, the teenagers. I wonder what you had for lunch, actually. Now, maybe you had a really nice lunch today. Maybe you had a roast dinner, or maybe it was leftover turkey or turkey sandwiches, maybe some other kind of sandwich. We like sandwiches in our house. We've moved around a lot over the years as a family. So when we lived in Australia, we learned to like Vegemite and cheese sandwiches. I won't go into Vegemite just now, but if you've tried Marmite or Vegemite, you know what that's about. In England, what kind of sandwiches did we have? Well, we had, again, kind of cheese sandwiches is normally the thing. But our favorite remains that good old American standard, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So maybe some of you like those kinds of sandwiches. We've got a kind of sandwich in front of us in these verses tonight. I don't know if you've noticed it, but have a look. And boys and girls, too, you can see this if you've got your Bible. It's a very strange kind of sandwich. It's a very healthy sandwich. Instead of having bread on the outside, do you know what it has? It's got two pieces of lettuce. Do you see it? Look at verse 14. Verse 14. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. Here comes the first piece. Let us hold fast our confession. And then look at verse 16. Let us then with confidence draw near. So you see that two pieces of lettuce on either side. Let us hold fast, let us draw near. I don't know if you like lettuce, though. That might seem a bit overly healthy. But the best part of this sandwich, like the best part of most sandwiches, is right in the middle. Right in the middle is where we get whatever you like best. Protein, meat, that peanut butter and jelly. It's right there in the middle in verse 15. It starts in verse 14. but guess what's in the middle? In the middle comes this wonderful truth about what we already have. We have, this author tells us, a great high priest. And verse 15 tells us exactly what kind of high priest he is, partly by telling us the kind of high priest he isn't. So we've got this beautiful gospel sandwich that we're going to tuck into together this afternoon and that's ultimately where we're going to find our encouragement is in the middle what is it what does it mean to us that we have Jesus himself the son of God as a great high priest and how does the having verse 14 therefore since we have and verse 15 we do not have you see that repetition of we have How does the having Jesus enable us to do what those bits of lettuce are telling us? How does having Jesus help us to hold fast? How does having Jesus help us to draw near? Because the having enables the holding fast. The having motivates the drawing near. So it's the having that's the good news for us this evening. Verse 14, we have a great high priest who helps us to hold fast. Verse 15, we have a high priest who sympathizes with us in our weaknesses. Verse 16, we have a high priest who invites us and helps us to draw near. That's the lettuce sandwich of our text tonight. So let's take it verse by verse and see if we can't understand and apply this to our own hearts a bit more. In verse 14, you can see there's an inference, isn't there? There's a kind of conclusion of a sort. The then is there. Since then. Well, what's come before the then? If we had time to go back through the first four chapters of Hebrews, we'd see that there are really two things that the author has in mind as we come into these verses. On the one hand, we've been hearing more and more about who Jesus is. He is that great priest who made purification for our sins. in chapter one. And having made purification for our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. And then in chapter two, this glorious, this great high priest, the son of God himself, we're told he stepped into time, into space, and he took on a human body and he suffered and he was made like us in every way except without sin. And he did that in order that he might become, chapter 2 says, a merciful and faithful high priest for his people. So this revelation, this wonderful truth about who Jesus is as our great high priest has just been unfolding chapter by chapter in Hebrews, and that's in the background for us as we read in verse 14 of our text, since then we have. But there's something else that's in the background, and that's become more and more evident in chapters 3 and 4. In chapters 3 and 4, the author of Hebrews draws on Psalm 95. Some of you remember that really well. Psalm 95, which itself is a retelling of the wilderness story and the wilderness generation and how when they were brought out of Egypt and God's mighty hand made a way through the death waters of the Red Sea and opened that for them and brought them through, and then he led them to his holy mountain and he gave them his law And he promised to lead them into a land full of wonderful things, the promised land. But what happened to that wilderness generation? Hebrews 3 and 4 reminds us of the stark reality that the first generation in the wilderness fell away. They fell away, and they didn't make it to the promised land. So do you see how those two things are in the background for us here when we come to the end of chapter 4? The good news about Jesus as a great high priest and the reality that it's possible under pressure to fall away and not enter into the promised land. And both of those things ought to be ringing in our ears and our minds as we come to verse 14 and here. So then, since then, we have a great high priest. There's a promise and a reality of what we have in Jesus as a high priest and there are pressures in the world around us. and even within us that are working to keep us from entering that promised land. And we're told, we're told then in verse 14, with those things in mind, what are we supposed to do? What's that first piece of lettuce? Let us hold fast our what? Our confession. Let us hold fast our confession. What does the author mean? What's our confession? Well, Calvin thought that this confession was our faith, that when we have faith in Christ and we embrace the gospel by faith, that's our confession. Our confession is, to hold fast to our confession, is to rely unhesitatingly on the gospel. Another one that we are familiar with, perhaps by the name of John Owen, said this, he said, well, there are two senses to this confession. There's an internal sense that internally I trust in Christ and I've got to hold fast to my faith in Christ. But externally, I also make a confession, don't I? I make a profession of faith. When you become a member of the church, you take membership vows. And some of you have stood up here and done that. Others have done that in other churches and maybe transferred your membership here. Some of you, young people or others who are new to the church, maybe have yet to take those vows. But when you do, when you say I do to those vows, you are making a public profession. And it's a robust one, isn't it? It's not just that you have faith that Christ Jesus is your savior from sin, but you're professing your faith in those wonderful creeds and confessions that have been handed down to us by our forefathers in the faith. So there's a robustness and a public face to our confession isn't there and even more for that in Hebrews externally Owen goes on to say there's there's the working out of that confession how do we as we hold fast continue to hang on and live the Christian life faithfully in a culture that continues to pressure us so do you see that's that's all all of that involved in this exhortation in verse 14 that's what it means to hold fast our confession and that that term that's used for hold fast is a term for for clinging tightly for holding on maybe even for dear life it's the kind of thing maybe some of you played american football i wasn't a football player you can tell that wasn't my sport but maybe some of you played football and maybe some of you had that experience as a running back where you've got the ball you've tucked it under your arm and you've got to make it through the opposing line but what's happening Hit after hit is coming at you from every direction and you can feel those fingers trying to pull the ball out of your grasp. That's the kind of thing that's in view here in our text. We've got to hold firmly, hold fast under pressure. Or maybe it's a bit like what I experienced one time with our two oldest boys. When they'd just turned nine, we'd moved to England and we went with some other dads and young boys on their first backpacking trip. and in the north of England, there's an area called the Lakes District. It was one of our favorite places, a beautiful, beautiful area of the country, and there are mountains there. They call them fells. Now, they're not California mountains, you know, no snow-covered, jagged peaks. These are 3,000-foot hills, and there are no trees because they've been cultivated for centuries, but it's a gorgeous place. And so the three of us with our friends were hiking up steeply all afternoon. We get to the top, and it's late afternoon, about this time, and we need to set up our tent. And so we pull the tent out of the bag, get the rainfly ready. The only problem is the wind has picked up, and it's about 30 to 40 mile an hour gusts of wind. And we're exposed. No trees, no cover. And we're on this steep ridge. It's gorgeous, but it's cold. And the wind is blowing, and you can imagine what that tent is doing. It's flap, flap, flap, flap, flapping in our hands. And I'm thinking, with these young boys here, if I let go of this tent, it's gone. It's going to be miles away before I can even chase after it. I've got to hold on to this tent, and I've got to get the stakes in, and I've got to get the rain fly up. And then finally, we've got our shelter for the night, and we managed to hold on. But in our text, both for these original hearers of this letter sermon, and for us the pressures around us are a bit like those 40 mile an hour gusts of wind trying to pull that tent out of our hands. There are lots of things seeking to prise our fingers off of the confession of our faith. What are some of those? Well you know the old triad, the world, the flesh and the devil, right? We've got things within us and without that are trying to rip that ball out of our hands, rip that tent away from us. But in Hebrews, there's really a focus on these two things. One is in us, one's outside of us. The one inside is our natural weakness and indwelling sin. And chapter three, in holding up the wilderness generation, makes this really clear. Look at verses 12 to 14 in chapter three. We're told, take care brothers, lest there be in any of you Do you see the danger and the pattern of danger that's being held out as a warning for us? They disobeyed. Why did they disobey? Where did their disobedience come from? It came from unbelief, and it was unbelief that came from sinful hearts that were prone to give in to the deceitfulness of sin. The deceitfulness of sin leading to unbelieving hard hearts leading on to disobedience. It comes from the difficulty for that generation and for us of trusting in God's promises when according to everything we can see and according to the world's standards, what are we doing as Christians? We're just traveling endlessly in a wilderness when we could have been much more comfortable back there in Egypt. The temptation then for us is to believe that we're not really pilgrims on the way to the promised land, but that we're suckers who've been played. It could all be a lot more enjoyable. It could all be a lot easier. Life could be a lot better if we just let all this go, right? Why make such a big deal? Why make such a big deal about Jesus being the only way of salvation? Why make such a big deal about that robust confession of faith, which means that we set ourselves under the authority of God's word and what it says about who we are as human beings, as men and women and children designed in the image of God and only authorized to conduct our lives in certain ways. Not able to follow our own selfish desires. If only we could just cast all of that aside, it'd be so much easier. Go back to Egypt. But that's the danger. That's the danger that comes from within and from without. But there are other pressures that these original hearers of Hebrews had facing them. right? I'm not so sure that we're all that different. If you want to keep a finger in chapter 4, you can turn to chapter 10. Otherwise, I'll just read it. You don't have to flip back and forth. Chapter 10, verses 32 to 34, tells us this. But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. That was a world in the first century where there were very few Christians. We sometimes feel like a minority. It's nothing compared to the earliest Christians who were a true minority in the midst of a pagan world. And then you add to that, some of these Christians, the first hearers of Hebrews, were Jews who had come to trust in Jesus as their Messiah, as their Savior. And so they're being pulled back by their family and their friends in the synagogue away from their newfound faith in Christ. Just come back. Just come back to the synagogue. Others are Gentiles who've embraced this new faith and they're being pulled back to all kinds of pagan religion where it's so much easier. You can offer a sacrifice that you can smell and you can see and you can enter into a temple that you can see with your eyes. It's so much easier. But no, Hebrews says you've got to hold fast and not give in to that pressure. Some of these first Christians had their property taken away, these verses tell us. There were legal pressures from the government who didn't like what they thought was starting to happen amongst the Christians. And there was ridicule and there was pressure. Is that so different, perhaps, from the kind of thing that we face? Well, I think we've still got it pretty easy here. When we look at our brothers and sisters around the globe, our Christian brothers and sisters and the persecution they face in various places, it's not so bad here. and yet the pressure is mounting. And that is pressure that makes it hard to hold fast. It's hard to hold fast to our confession. But Hebrews tells us we can do it, not in our own strength, but we have someone. We have someone who enables us to hold fast. You'll have to forgive the Presbyterian for a moment for going to the Westminster Standards. In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 25, we hear why it's such good news that we have Jesus as a high priest. Here's what it says. How does Christ execute the office of a priest? Christ executes the office of a priest in his once offering up of himself as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God and in making continual intercession for us. Did you hear that? Why is it such good news in verse 14 when we hear that we have a great high priest? Because he has taken the wrath of God which we deserved and satisfied divine justice. He has atoned for our sin and reconciled us. We who are enemies with God are now his children and his heirs. And that last part we sometimes miss, but Hebrews insists we can't miss it. And he now is continually making intercession for us. That's why it's good news tonight that you've got a great high priest if you trust in Christ. So yes, it's hard to hold fast. Yes, we've got to hold fast to our confession of faith. But we hold fast and we can do so because we have Jesus, our great high priest. A high priest who, verse 14 says, has passed through the heavens. He now is in the invisible heavens interceding for us. Verse 15 goes on and adds an important truth for us. Because we might be tempted, we just might be tempted to think, well, if Jesus has passed through the heavens, we can't see him. We can't see him. That's the first difficulty, right? Our eyes can't see him. We only have the eyes of our faith. But not only that, if he's in the invisible heavens, in the very throne room of God, isn't he too high above us? Isn't that kind of majesty simply something that would lead us to cower in fear and to stay at a distance because we know that we are undeserving? Well, verse 15 reveals something to us that puts those fears to rest. Do you see what verse 15 says? For we do not have, 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. We have a high priest who knows what it's like to be human because he took a human nature to himself in the incarnation and he is still living as God-man, ascended on high as our great high priest. Jesus has not forgotten what it's like to be a human being and that enables him to sympathize with your weaknesses. Jesus himself suffered. He suffered. He was tempted. He knows what it's like to have temptation knocking at the door of your heart, of your mind, of your life. He knows what it's like to live in a body that grows weary and fatigued and grumpy and tempted to lose your temper. He knows what it's like because he was and is a man. Again, John Owen says, enables Jesus to be deeply concerned for you in your infirmities, in your sorrows, and your suffering. It's not just that because Jesus is God, he knows everything, and he knows what's going on in your mind and your life. Yes, that's true, but it's also that he knows what it's like because he identified himself with us, and that makes him a wonderful, great high priest. He knows what our natural weaknesses are like. Now, these aren't weaknesses, right? Having a body doesn't make you sinful. Being tired doesn't necessarily make you sinful. So Jesus knows these things, yet was without sin. Jesus knows what it's like to feel the temptation that arises from human weakness. But he also is the only one who ever resisted all the way to the end. What happens to you and I normally. We're tired, well maybe not you, but I get tired. I get tired and with my beautiful family and my seven children, sometimes I get tired and I say things I shouldn't say and I use a tone of voice that is really unkind and I snap and I lose my temper and I sin. Well, what about Jesus? Jesus knew what it was like to be exhausted, to be tired. And yet, whereas I give in to that temptation and fall into sin so easily, so quickly, Jesus never did. He resisted all the way to the end, which means, really, he knows a lot more about the full strength of temptation than even I do. He resisted to the end and was without sin. And because of that, because of that, he's able to sympathize with you in your weakness. Even now as he sits in heaven, he's not too high above you to know what it's like in your life and the temptations that you face right now or the temptations that you'll face this week. He's able to sympathize with you. I went to the Westminster Standards. Let's go to the Belgic Confession for just a moment because the three forms of unity are good stuff too, aren't they? as all of you know. So here's what the Belgic Confession Article 26 says with reference to our text. It says, But this mediator ought not to terrify us by his greatness. We should not plead here that we are unworthy, for it's not a question of us offering our prayers on the basis of our own dignity, but only on the basis of the excellence and dignity of Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is ours by faith. So the Belgic goes on, get rid of this foolish fear. For since he suffered being tempted, he's also able to help you who are being tempted. And what more do you need? Those are beautiful words. And that's exactly what our passage is saying to you tonight. You have a great high priest who helps you hold fast. He's able to, he's powerful to because he's ascended on high and passed through the heavens. And he's wanting to. And he knows how to because he can sympathize with you in your weaknesses. Verse 16 rounds out our passage then. Having heard what a wonderful great high priest we have in Christ. Having heard that news and that promise, we get our second piece of lettuce, don't we? What's the exhortation in verse 16? Let us then draw near to the throne of grace. this ought to leave us with a sweet taste in our mouth this evening. And I hope that it does. I hope that we don't hear this only as one more exhortation, one more thing to do, but rather as an invitation because we know who the high priest is whom we have. Maybe some of you were the shy child in the family, and you can think of Thanksgiving's past or Christmas's past where you're sort of on the edge of the action and not quite confident enough to plunge right into the center of everything. Or maybe, better yet, you could picture this. The outcast who's in the dark alleyway, alone, frightened, hearing that there's something wonderful going on inside. And then the door opens and there's light that shines out from this warm, enticing room. and then a finger beckons, come in, draw near, come and join. That's the kind of thing that we hear in verse 16. And yet, and yet I know, I know that for some of you, there will still be, there will still be obstacles for you to draw near in the way that verse 16 is asking you to. What are those obstacles for us? Some of us have very, very scrupulous consciences. and we hear God's word and we hear the law of God and we know ourselves to be sinners and we know how deep that sin goes in us and we despair and we're afraid and we feel keenly our sense of unworthiness and we think, no, I know how great Christ is, but I can't, I just can't come. For others of you, it's a different obstacle. It's a hardening of the heart because of the deceitfulness of sin. It's the busyness of the week that just rolls you on and you don't even really feel the need to draw near. You don't want to draw near and so you don't draw near. But our passage this evening exhorts us to draw near and to draw near with what? With confidence, with boldness, with a holy confidence, some of the older writers said. With a bold expectation, not just drawing near and wondering what's going to happen, but drawing near to God's throne of grace with an expectancy, knowing that good things are going to happen as we draw near to that throne of grace. Why? Because we know whom we have. We have Jesus as our great high priest. What does it mean to draw near? By the way, we use this language. Sometimes we don't always define it. What does it mean to draw near? Well, I think to draw near here is a variety of things that we do in the Christian life week by week. It's certainly personal prayer and drawing near to the Lord day by day in our own prayers. That's what this text is beckoning you to do. And so maybe this evening, we need to repent of our prayerlessness for whatever reason, And we need to heed the call of this passage to draw near, knowing that we can do that by the grace of our high priest. But I don't think it's just personal prayer. I think we can extend that to family prayer, prayer in our homes, morning, evening, around the table, family worship. How is that going in your home? Is it like my home where it's sometimes good and sometimes a real struggle? And yet, by the help of our great high priest, we can endeavor together to draw near to the throne of grace and to bring our covenant children with us. But chiefly, what is this drawing near? Chiefly, it's what we're doing today. It's what we've done this morning. It's what we're doing this evening. It's to draw near, to be drawn near in corporate worship as a covenant community and to receive all the blessings that the Lord would pour out into our lives as we come together to that heavenly Mount Zion and that festal gathering and to find grace and mercy that we need because it's a throne. It's a throne of grace. Yes, it's a heavenly throne of righteousness, of holiness, of glory. It's a throne that pulses and radiates light and power. But for you, Christian brother and sister, You who trust in Christ, it's a beautiful throne of grace. You enter by crossing a threshold. And on the threshold, in a mosaic tile, is the word grace. And you cross that threshold, and you draw nearer. You walk the path that leads you towards the throne. And what's that path marked out with? Grace. And you come to the very foot of the throne and the footstool of the king who sits upon that throne, the king-priest. and on that footstool is engraved the word grace. But you still can't raise your head up, and so you feel him raising your head and raising you up, and you look and you realize you are surrounded by divine grace because of the work of your great high priest. It is a throne of grace, and it is, as Calvin says, a delightful truth, A delightful truth that the Lord adorns his very throne with grace and gives it a name that can only allure by its sweetness. Calvin goes on to say that you haven't really taken hold of Christ until you draw near to the throne of grace and hold on to him as your great high priest. Then you have him. That's what we're being beckoned into this evening. We have a great high priest who helps us to hold fast, verse 14. we have a great high priest who sympathizes with us in our every human weakness but has resisted temptation and is sinless verse 15 and in verse 16 we have a great high priest who beckons us into his very throne room of grace and so brothers and sisters as we close this evening I hope that you hear that as encouragement I hope that you hear that as good news I hope that you hear that as a motivation and an enticement this week to draw near to the throne of grace and to take hold of your great high priest. Let's pray. Our gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for the riches that it holds out to us. And we thank you that we have such a great high priest, your very son, whom you've given to us as a savior, but even more than a savior, as a mediator and as a priest who has atoned for our sin, who has purified us, and who even now is working to intercede on our behalf. We pray that you would help us this week and that you would draw us near to your very presence so that we could serve you and serve our neighbors in love and in the ways that you have called us to. We cast ourselves down before you this afternoon knowing our own great need and our sin and we ask for your forgiveness in Christ's name, amen.