Prayer Meeting 4/10/2022

The Tender High Priest - Part 1

Hebrews 4:15

Our puritan prayer tonight is from ‘The Valley of Vision’, entitled ‘The Love of Jesus’. It’s on page 44 of the leatherbound version and page 25 of the paperback:

O Father of Jesus, Help me to approach thee with deepest reverence, not with presumption, not with servile fear, but with holy boldness. Thou art beyond the grasp of my understanding, but not beyond that of my love. Thou knowest that I love thee supremely, for thou art supremely adorable, good, perfect. My heart melts at the love of Jesus, my brother, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, married to me, dead for me, risen for me; He is mine and I am his, given to me as well as for me; I am never so much mine as when I am his, or so much lost to myself until lost in him; then I find my true manhood. But my love is frost and cold, ice and snow; Let his love warm me, lighten my burden, be my heaven; May it be more revealed to me in all its influences that my love to him may be more fervent and glowing, Let the mighty tide of his everlasting love cover the rocks of my sin and care; Then let my spirit float above those things which had else wrecked my life. Make me fruitful by living to that love, my character becoming more beautiful every day. If traces of Christ's love-artistry be upon me, may he work on with his divine brush until the complete image be obtained and I be made a perfect copy of him, my Master. O Lord Jesus, come to me, O Divine Spirit, rest upon me, O Holy Father, look on me in mercy for the sake of the well-beloved. 

Some of what I share will be drawing from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon entitled ‘We Have A High Priest’, taken from Spurgeon’s book called ‘Sermons On Christ’s Names And Titles’.

Hebrews 4:14-16 (NKJV)

¹⁴ Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵ For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:14-16 (KJV)

¹⁴ Seeing then that we have a great high Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. ¹⁵ For we have not an high Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

We do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, meaning Christ as our High Priest. He is not just a High Priest, He is our High Priest, and He has feelings, and those feelings are touched by our problems, weaknesses, struggles, worries and sins.

The Greek word for ‘touched with feelings’ is: Συμπαθέω’ – ‘Sympatheo’. Of course that’s not hard to translate. It is as it sounds: to sympathise and have the same feelings. Wow, think on that, we have a High Priest that feels what we feel, He is able to delve into our whole being and experience what we experience , for the sake of being our Advocate and Help, our Paraclete that takes it to God, in the purest of ways.

He as our High Priest is not touched with anger, but first touched with tenderness. Spurgeon says: ‘He has assumed a very tender office’. Know this brothers and sisters, we do not have a High Priest who is not patient with all he knows about us.

Spurgeon adds:

Great knowledge needs great patience if it would instruct the ignorant.

It’s not that Christ can listen to our infirmities, our pains, our trials, our worries and failings. It’s that He is bound to, He is called to, He desires to, it is who He is. He can no more not hear and feel our woes than we cannot get wet from water. It’s in His very purpose to take all our petitions and cares to the Father. He doesn’t just communicate, as Spurgeon says, for men: ‘He was to communicate with God from men’.

Our High Priest takes all our mess and perplexities, and puts them in the right order, the right meaning, the right need, the right perspective, and takes them to the Father as a tender advocate and personal Priest. He doesn’t just know our sins and battles, His whole heart enters them and takes them as His responsibility.

Let me add at this junction, since Jesus is our perfect model, how many of us can say we fall way short of taking others’ burdens and weaknesses and having a tender and compassionate heart, that is both patient and understanding with that poor soul? How many of us, can continually have that right heart and put things and hear things from a Christlike perspective?

Surely to have such a High Priest is not just one we look to and be grateful for, but one whom we do all to act like and imitate in our own priestly, caring, and holy office towards our brothers and sisters, and all of humanity. Spurgeon reiterates time and time again that it is a ‘tender office’. How tender are we with others’ infirmities?

It tells us in the text that we have a High Priest who deeply feels our pain, but is not affected in a sinful way towards them. He is only affected in a loving, caring way; never ever, ever in a selfish, unloving, uncaring, or condemning way. Nor does He comfort, or plead with the Father based on His own needs or wants, or loss.

Are you starting to see the difference between the High Priest and us? Can we really take our brothers and sisters burdens and carry them, and dissect them, and understand them, and present them, and care for them in a compassionate, holy way? The answer of course will be no! I fail a lot. Yes, we all do. But we have a High Priest who never fails, who never reacts poorly, who never fails in His perfect presentation of the depth of every situation. This is why we must, must, must bring all our petitions to Him. Let the Holy Spirit lead us to a better, more tender heart.

Christ’s affections are perfectly balanced, His care is perfectly weighted, His love is perfectly placed. He weighs all things up, that is exact in its nature and its reasons. He takes all that and brings it to the Father. Never ever is there a single minuscule of imperfect analysis of both the problem nor the need.

Spurgeon says:

Our High Priest is quite at home with mourners, and he enters into their case as a good physician understands the symptoms of his patients. When we tell our Lord the story of our inward griefs, he understands it better than we do. He rightly reads our case, and then wisely presents it before the majesty on High, pleading his sacrifice, that the Lord may deal graciously with us.

Spurgeon wonderfully adds:

Our merciful High Priest will never make a harsh observation, not ask a rasping question nor pronounce a crushing sentence.

Oh again, how far away are we from being that to others mostly? I say not this to presume we could ever reach that level of perfection; but for a twofold reason. Firstly - that we know the High Priest we have, and continue to take everything to Him. But secondly - that we endeavour to both imitate it/Him and be willing to crucify our own flesh when we fall short of it, and take our shortcomings to Him also.

To say to the Lord in prayer: ‘Lord I fail in my compassion’, and my ability to be tender in my patience and understanding is to allow our High Priest to bring balance to our own failings, and in turn help us to be better and more lovingly support to our fellow brothers and sisters. How different would our prayers be, how different would our counsel be, our reactions be, if we were to see the depth and the, as Spurgeon calls it, ‘the inward grief’ of people’s actions and reactions?

Proverbs 20:5 comes to mind.

⁵Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water,
But a man of understanding will draw it out.

Yet we are often way, way too personally affected that our own sin sabotages the plight of others.

Know also that Christ is also a perfectly consistent High Priest. He is not compassionate and caring towards some but not others. How many of us are so patient with some, yet so judgemental towards others? This is for sure proof that the patience we have to some who we have selected, is truly not selfless love, but selfish love. God’s Word says:

1 John 4:20-21

²⁰ If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? ²¹ And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

How inconstant are we in our love and compassion? Yet Christ is never inconsistent, nor does He ever misunderstand the meaning, or the situation.

---He is never clouded by His flesh---

---He is never warped by His own need---

---He is never ever driven by His own pain---

This is the High Priest we have. Therefore we must, in all things, lift our hearts and voices to the Lord in times of unrest, in times where we lack peace, in times of anger, and frustration, and mourning, and temptations. He will never ever misunderstand, nor warp the situation. He will take it and present it to the Father as if it was He Himself who was going through it. But do so with the heart and spirit of one who knows the Father and knows what the Father desires.

Will there be rebuke in that? Yes there will be, but that rebuke will be a holy, loving rebuke. A rebuke that leads us to a deeper desire to know Him, and imitate Him and be more wise in our walk.

Spurgeon says:

He rebukes but never breaks our heart.

Often our rebukes break the hearts of others. Not because what we say is not true, but because it’s not pure. Isn’t it true that we can take any rebuke from Jesus, that comes even at times through man. But only if that man is speaking the Word and not the wisdom of man. Spurgeon says of these types who are not that:

Their kindness is hard and cold; their counsel is without the sweetening of fellow feelings.

But he then says of them who are that:

But they are other men blessed among their fellows, who seem to be like heaven’s ships, you rejoice to cast your anchor under their lee (shelter). You feel ‘I could tell that man anything. I know that he would have patience with me and pity for me, and that his heart would go out before me’.

Yes, I’m sure we can all say I can do that at times. But can we say we would be consistent, especially when we are personally affected by that which is shared with us? But we do have a High Priest who is always consistent, and therefore its Him we look to, cry to, and Him we in all things try to imitate.

Amen.