Prayer Meeting 1/11/2022

The Tender High Priest  - Part 3

Hebrews 4:14-16

Well, this will be the last of three prayer meetings and messages on ‘The Tender High Priest’, drawing from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon of the same title. The scripture Spurgeon is drawing from in his sermon is:

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.

Before we go in, as always we read a puritan prayer, usually from the ‘Valley Of Vison’, however this one tonight is from another book I highly recommend called ‘Into His Presence -  Praying With The Puritans’. It’s a wonderful addition to your ‘Valley Of Vision’ book. Okay, I’m going to read  from page 78-79 of the ‘Into His Presence’ book. The prayer is entitled ‘Fullness To Fill The Soul’, and unlike the ‘Valley Of Vision’, this book tells you the author, who is on this occasion Thomas Brooks.

‘Fullness To Fill The Soul’

Lord Jesus, nothing is so suited to my heart as you. You punctually, exactly, and directly meet the needs of my soul, satisfy the desires of my soul, fulfil the longings of my soul, answer the prayers of my soul. May I crave nothing, nor wish for anything, that is not found in you. For in you there is light to enlighten the soul, wisdom to counsel the soul, power to support the soul, goodness to supply the soul, mercy to pardon the soul, beauty to delight the soul, glory to ravish the soul, fullness to fill the soul. Health is not more suitable to the sick, nor wealth to the poor, nor bread to the hungry, nor drink to the thirsty, nor clothes to the naked, nor balm to the wounded, nor ease to the tormented, nor health to the diseased, nor a pardon to the condemned, nor a guide to the blind, than you are suitable to all our needs, all my needs. Earthly portions cannot satisfy our immortal souls, for the soul is the breath of your Spirit, the beauty of humanity, the wonder of angels, and the envy of devils. So nothing can suit the soul except you, nor can anything satisfy the soul without you. The soul is so high and so noble, that neither rocks of diamonds nor mountains of gold can fill it, or satisfy it, or suit it. We need a higher good, a more suited portion, a more excellent treasure. And you alone are such a portion. So make me to seek you with all my heart.

- Thomas Brooks

We started on the first part of ‘The Tender High Priest’ by sharing about Jesus being able to sympathise with our weakness. Here are a few things I said on this:

He doesn’t just know our sins and battles, His whole heart enters them and takes them as His responsibility.

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.

Let me add one thing before I move on: if you’re broken-hearted by godly rebuke, it’s not broken-hearted you are, it’s that you can’t stand the feeling of parting with your carnal desires. If we are believers, a godly rebuke may well pierce but it never breaks our Spirit, it lightens it.

Then two weeks ago we shared part two and in particular:

Hebrews 4:15b

but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

All points tempted, yet was without sin. Here are a few things I said:

Jesus was as tempted as we are as humans, yet He never sinned. He never allowed others’ sins to make Him sin. He could totally saturate Himself with compassion on all our sins and weaknesses, but never did it affect Him in any other way than as a loving, caring compassionate High Priest.

Let me take this to another level. He even was a tender High Priest towards those who treated Him like a sinner while they acted righteous and abused Him. He prayed for them: ‘forgive them father for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34). He was tempted to act ungodly almost every moment, yet He never did.

How many are so unforgiving, bitter, angry, lack sympathy, are too affected and too little affected?

One of the reasons that is the case is as Spurgeon points out, that:

‘Too many people are so wrapped up in their own grief, that they have no room in their souls for sympathy.’

He then says: ‘don’t you know them?’

Isn’t that, as a believer, the worst thing we can be? So wrapped in our own issues and agenda, and grief, that we don’t even notice others, never mind bring Christ to them. I closed with this quote from Spurgeon, he says:

They monopolise all the sympathy which the market can supply and then there will be none to spare for the afflicted. If you are greatly taken up with self, there is not enough of you to run over to anybody else. How different is this from our Lord, who never cried, ‘have pity on me! Have pity on me oh my friends’.

Oh how far off are we at times from imitating Christ? This tender heart towards man, this ability to be able to be tempted yet not sin, is maybe both the greatest battle, and at the same time the greatest illustration of a sanctified life we could ever show the world, and the greatest blessing to the world and our fellow brothers and sisters. This is why we need to saturate ourselves in these messages and seek God about them with complete abandonment.

I have to close this section on Christ being tempted, yet never sinning with something I read recently. C.S. Lewis once answered the question of one who stated:

If Jesus never sinned, then he doesn't know what temptation is like. He lived a sheltered life and is out of touch with how strong temptation can be.

Lewis responded with this:

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… …A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.

He continues:

That is why bad people, in one sense know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in… …Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

Okay, let me share the last part.

Hebrews 4:16

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.

This part Spurgeon does not share anything on in his sermon. So we won’t be drawing from that, but simply from the scripture itself and maybe a few commentators on it.

One thing I think I’ve discovered over the years is how more boldly do we come to Christ in our own need if indeed we were more like Him with other’s needs? How much more would we boldly approach Him with a submissive heart if we had an ounce more compassion within our own lives? How much more would we come to Him if we were not consumed with getting and blaming? How much more would we come if we tasted the level of love it requires to put aside our selfish ambition and carried other’s burdens more, instead of seeking our own comfort and/or revenge from man?

But way, way more than that. How much more easily could we come boldly to the throne of grace if we never thought we were entitled to anything, and knew that it is only through Him alone that we have a life at all. How can we come boldly to seek mercy when we feel we are entitled to better, or are seeking carnal things? How can we come boldly when we feel hard done to, when we don’t see our own need for repentance and forgiveness?

I will tell you, the man who knows he needs forgiveness is the man who comes quickest to the throne of grace. The man who knows he has not been honourable to Him who gave all is the man who does not run from grace but runs to it. We don’t mostly stay away from the Lord because we feel unworthy, although that’s what we think. We stay away from the Lord because we are seeking worth elsewhere, we are not empty. However, we can come boldly because He knows our struggles, He knows our angst, He knows when we have failed. He knows when we give into temptation, He knows we are unable to do what He can. But we must be willing to go to Him who is tempted but does not sin.

He was the one tempted way beyond us as C.S. Lewis wonderfully put it, but did not sin. He knows the battle. We, in our own strength, will be tempted and sin without Him. So we go to Him as ones who fail, ones who can’t make the grade, ones who are broken and weak, and ask Him to make it for us. And the more we have this bond, the more we are strengthened to not sin when tempted.

I must add here that this verse is not: ‘well, I can live how I want and come to Christ when I fail’. None of us are able to do that. None of us can ‘come boldly’ to the throne of grace, when we are full of unwillingness. Even we at our worst can’t violate that holy place, no matter how merciful it is. It’s not: ‘well, I can just pop into the throne of grace when I want and get a quick pardon and go back out’. Like a Catholic confession. This verse is not ‘come after you have yielded to temptation’, it’s ‘come at the first sign of it’. What does it say in the verse? – ‘In your time of need’.

That’s very important: ‘in your time of need.’ Not after you have done all to get your need met and its led to nothing, not after you had no other option, but ‘at the time of need’. Help is at hand at your time of need.

Remember Richard Sibbes’ teaching from Song of Solomon? Entitled ‘I Took Off My Coat’, where by the time the woman (the bride; the church) eventually went to the door He (the Bridegroom; Christ) was gone. She just didn’t want to stop her flesh from calling the shots. We should not wait till the temptation is so great that we succumb and then go to Him. We go to Him during temptation because He knows temptation way beyond our level.

John Macarthur says:

We cave in way quicker than Jesus ever experienced.

When should we run to the throne room of grace? In our time of need. Not when we have succumbed to the need, and then we come as people who did nothing. We come in our time of need, our time of temptation, our time of weakness, our time when we want to seek other things, we come then; we come boldly then. We must run to that throne. Yet how often don’t we run? We go everywhere but there when temptation and trials come.

We will never enter with boldness until we become people who want His nature . Then we enter and ask for His will be done, make me like you, help me strengthen my faith that I too in temptation will not stumble. This is what the Apostles all started to achieve. Apostle Peter, who was at one time continually tempted and sinned, wrote:

2 Peter 3:14

¹⁴ Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless;

John writes, at the end of his final epistle:

3 John 1:2-4

² Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. ³ For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. ⁴ I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.

Then he writes:

3 John 1:11

¹¹ Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.

Apostle Paul’s final written words are astounding - from a man who pursued Christians, and did all to kill and destroy them said this:

2 Timothy 4:17-18

¹⁷ But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear. Also I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. ¹⁸ And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!

These are the words of a man who came boldly to the throne of grace. These are the words of a man who was also tempted, yet preached Christ and was not swayed to sin. Yet he was a man who knew he was weak, a man who knew he couldn’t stop sinning. Yet now he is a man who is now able to be Christlike around constant abuse and sin. Why? He is a man who knows the mercy of Christ. He is a man who has tasted the grace of God at such a level. He is a man who lives his life with the throne of grace continually in his grasp.

Let me bring this in and ask a question you might think you know the answer to but really maybe you haven’t considered, even though its plainly written. What do you think you will find, what awaits us when you enter into His presence, into that throne room of grace? You obtain mercy, are given grace. When we enter, we find Jesus waiting to give you more of Him. He is giving you more of Himself. He is giving you what He has and what you can’t attain yourself. He knows you can’t beat temptation, He knows you’re weak and feeble.

I will close with a quote from A.W. Pink.

Pink writes:

He knows what it’s like to be sorrowful and overwhelmed, and what it’s like to be refreshed by the sunshine of divine favour, and to rejoice in the Spirit.

We may come into him expecting full, tender, deep sympathy and compassion. He is ever ready to strengthen and comfort, to heal and restore, he is prepared to receive the poor, wounded, sin-stained believer, to dry the tears of Peter weeping bitterly, to say to Paul, oppressed with the thorn in the flesh “my grace is sufficient for thee”.

Pink concludes:

We need only understand that we are sinners and that he is the high priest.

Brothers and sisters, don’t come looking for anything else, don’t come with the desire for anything else. Come boldly and brokenly, looking for Him. And there He will be, waiting to give you all He has accomplished. Total mercy, grace and forgiveness.

He cries: ‘it’s okay, come. Come now, I’ve taken it all. And I give you back my goodness, my righteousness, my very self’. And we walk out once again clean and He says to us: ‘go and show the world the wonder of the cross. Show them what it’s like to live a life of freedom. Show them they too can come and meet with the loving, tender High Priest’.

Amen.