A High Priest Forever
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Jeremy Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 27 September 2026
- Hebrews 5:5-11
So we're going to go Hebrews, and we're going to be talking a little bit about the law today. And as I look at the office of high priest, we were looking last week at the qualifications of high priest.
In order for an individual to be high priest, they need to meet certain qualifications. Now, it is my opinion that as we apply those qualifications to individuals who have started spiritual movements or started religions, that they fail in these qualifications, they do not meet them. As a result, it is my opinion that we should reject them as high priests. That the way in which they tell us to approach God should not be trusted because they do not meet these qualifications. Now, obviously, the book of Hebrews is about Jesus meeting these qualifications, that he is the individual who shines above, who is a step beyond that.
He has a ministry which excels. He has a position which is more valuable than any other individual. So we're going to begin to look at that in chapter five, verse five. So we're going to go through five through seven through 11. So chapter five, verse seven through 11.
No, I'm sorry, we are in five. Okay, so verse five, chapter five, verse five. So. So Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest, but it was he who said to him, you are my Son, today I have begotten you. As he also said in another place, you are priests forever.
According to the order of Melchizedek, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from. From death and was heard because of his godly fear, though he was a son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. And having been perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him, called by God his high priest, according to the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. So we're going to start in chapter five. And even though this encouragement in verse 11, of which we have much to say and hard to explain, since you have become dull of appearing, this qualification is not just written to the individuals in the book of Hebrews, right?
It was true that whom the author wrote to, that the author had an understanding that these individuals were hard of hearing, that what they needed to learn was hard to explain, but they were not able to comprehend it because they were dull. Dull. I don't know if you've ever tried to explain math to. To someone who doesn't get it, right? One thing homeschooling does is it gives you that opportunity a lot, right?
Everything. You're trying to explain a different concept to a child, to a young person who doesn't quite understand it. How do you explain functions to an individual that's never had to do them before? And you're left, oh, man, how do you explain this? And they're dull until they get it.
But the truth is, not only are the recipients of the book of Hebrews dull, you and I are also dull.
Not just us, but we by nature have, do not have the ability to understand hard things that we should have. There is a necessity to be able to think clearly, to understand the gospel, which people who have become dull of hearing do not comprehend in everyday life. Obadiah is going through a class and they're asking his first assignment is, what is the benefit of education? Something like this, right? What is the purpose of education?
Right? And to someone who doesn't use math on an everyday basis, they say things like algebra just doesn't have any importance at all.
They say, you know, you get into even higher, higher math, physics and all these things. These things don't matter to anybody. And that's what they say. But really they're saying it because they don't understand how much algebra, physics, trigonometry actually has on our everyday life. They only say that because they don't understand.
It really affects them very much more than they realize. And in a certain way, maybe even more important. The only reason we don't recognize how much the office of high priest actually affects us is because of how dull we are.
So we're going to look at this idea, first of all, showing that Jesus fulfills the office of high priest. So in chapter five, verse five. Now we started off in chapter five, verse one, in four qualifications that high priests meet that need to meet. And now we're going to work backwards. We're going to see that number four is going to be addressed first and then third is going to address, and we're going to work opposite each other, kind of like a mirror image.
So the last one was, no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God. Just as Aaron was a high priest, in order to be high priest has to be called by God. Now we're going to start the first thing in addressing that in the mirror Image in chapter 5, verse 5, how Christ was called by God, it says, so Christ did also not glorify himself to become high priest, but it was he who said to him, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. As he also says in another place, you are a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek, just like you.
And I don't go through life thinking how important algebra is or trigonometry, or whichever. You don't feel like we're missing out because we don't remember our high school algebra lessons. Some of us go through life not understanding how important the office of high priest is. We act as if it were not important, that it doesn't need to be thought about, that it does not need to be considered. It is something like, that's far away from me, as far as the east is from the West.
I don't need to think about this. But in reality, just as in every aspect of our everyday life, math impacts us in every physical level. It does. Whether you understand it or not, it does. And in a similar way, but even higher, the office of high priest affects your life even more.
I remember going to the Hoquiam court, and a friend of mine was in there, and so I was waiting for his turn to come up to stand before the judge. And I got to watch all these other cases. In that particular court session, one guy, just like the judge, told him to sit down, meaning he was arrested. He came into court to plead his case. The judge said, no, you sit down on that bench, which means you are arrested.
And he just kind of edged toward the door, opened it and. And ran out. And they called the police. And he had been arrested by that judge. And now he was a wanted man.
He ended up getting found anyways. But another interesting thing, there was a man, and it was his turn, and he said that he wanted to represent himself before the judge. And the judge kind of looked at him for a minute and said, do you know what you're doing?
Do you recognize. Yeah, you want to represent yourself. But do you know that if you're found guilty, it may be that you may go to prison for five years and get the maximum sentence? You think that you want to represent yourself. Some sort of noble idea, but do you understand the repercussions of not having a lawyer?
He thought about that for a second. Do I really want to go to jail for five years? And he made the decision, and the judge thought he was pretty smart. He's like, you know, I changed my mind. I do want a lawyer.
I want someone to represent me. Some of us go through life thinking, we don't need a high priest, we don't need a lawyer. We feel like everything is fine. Surely the judge that we're going to stand before is going to view us in a similar way as the rest of society views us. Maybe our parents or people we love, they view us a certain way.
So God will also. While it is important even in Hoquiam to have a lawyer, that is not the highest court in the land, that there is city courts, which are the smallest, there are county courts. And we would say as things progress in seriousness, as they move up the chain, it's more and more important to have an adequate lawyer to represent you. It may be that you want to represent yourself before Hoquiam, and that's fine. But as things move up, it's almost unheard of when you get to courts like the court, for an individual to say, you know, I'm going to represent myself before the Supreme Court.
No, there's whole teams of lawyers, not just one lawyer, teams of lawyer who spend months prepping for the importance of a case that is going to stand before the Supreme Court. They put supreme amount of effort into it because the outcome of that case is so important.
You and I, if we were just to stand at the end of our life before Hoquiam, it may be reasonable to say, you know, I'm going to represent myself. But if it were the Supreme Court, I think we would be a little more careful. But there is another court, and this is found. I'm going to go to the Scriptures in Psalms that these come from. It says, you are my Son, today I have begotten you.
And the next one, you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. These are two Scriptures out of Psalms which talk of the reign of the Messiah.
So the first one in you are my son, today I have begotten you.
Let me see where we are.
In Psalm 2:7.
And then the other one is in Psalm 110. So in Psalm 2:7.
So it starts off this picture. Why do we need a high priest? And then what? What kind or quality of high priest do we need? Certainly, if you were to stand before the court in Hoquiam, you would not hire a lawyer with the credentials of lawyers who state their cases before the Supreme Court.
You would need a higher level of attorney for the Supreme Court and maybe a lower, lower, lower level for the court in a city. Let me read the whole thing in Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us Break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. So here we see the problem.
This is the court case. This is what is at stake. This is the nature of what we're dealing with. This is not something minor. This is not a traffic offense.
You didn't get pulled over for going five miles an hour. Order here. The seriousness of the crime will indicate what kind or quality of attorney you need. Here we see that the nations are raging. They have taken their stand.
They have made a determined effort. We are going to supplant. We are going to take over. We're going to undermine. We're going to destroy the rightly dominion of the Lord of all the earth.
We're going to reject his authority. We're going to. It says, against the Lord and against his knowing, saying, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. They viewed the Lord in some way. He has put his law around us, but he is against us.
And we're going to break in pieces. We're going to do whatever we want. We are our own gods. We are responsible to ourselves. That's the court case.
This is what happened. This is the evidence being presented against us. But the judge views this a certain way. He says, he who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill. The viewpoint of the Lord, in viewing this rampant display of rebellionness is. He is going to laugh. He is going to hold them in derision.
He already views the defendant in a certain way. He comes into the court case with a certain smell about them that the judge does not like. The evidence already points to rebellion against him. This is our condition. This is what we are in.
Not just a small court, not just an affable judge. We have an incensed judge who the evidence points to individuals as guilty as rebelling against his authority. You and I need a high priest. We need someone to go and stand before us. What kind of person could plead our cause against an angry judge?
If it were your life at stake, if it was your future. 100 years in jail and you just learned, oh, no, my court case just happens to go against the person that I stole from. That person now gets to be the one who judges my case. Some of us be like, no, this is serious. I might go to jail for 100 years.
I need to employ an attorney. I need to have someone to represent my case. In our case, the One who we are responsible to is the God of the whole earth. But in verse seven we see I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son.
Today I have begotten me. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. The astonishing thing is that the Lord appoints a lawyer. What kind of lawyer does he appoint? What kind of person?
We see that he has to appoint somebody to defend us who has certain qualifications. There are qualifications of some lawyers that are not sufficient to stand before his throne. They're going to be cast out. Here we see he appoints his son to be a high priest for a guilty party. This is the person he appoints.
I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. Here we see that this high priest being appointed to represent the needs of a guilty people, is the Lord's own son.
This is the individual who he cried out twice, saying, this is my beloved son. Hear him, he says, this is the one that I share my glory with, that I have been in fellowship with, that I have shown all things. The individual being appointed for the cause of man is the Son. The Father sits on the throne and the Son has been appointed lawyer. Now you may think, well, this is great news, and it is great news.
But it is not required that all will take the Son as their high priest. Not all will hire him, as it were, to represent them. But what we do have to ask back to chapter five in Hebrews. Is there any other appointed high priest who could satisfy the demands of the Father except the Son? Could there been another high priest appointed?
There were other high priests that were appointed. Aaron was appointed. The other people appointed. They had the blood on their thumbs, their big toes, their ears. They had the Ephods on their front.
They had the Urim and the Thummim. They had linen garments. They had outer garments for glory. They had a crown on their head. Why couldn't one of them have been appointed?
Why couldn't it have been some of the other people who self appoint themselves? Why aren't they good enough? The truth is he had to appoint his son because no other person except his son could be found to satisfactorily leave the justice demanded by God. It took his Son. The judgment against people was so great, so damning, so hurtful, the evidence so obvious.
That it took the highest kind of priest to be able to satisfactorily represent people before God. My hope is, and I believe the hope of Hebrews is, is to view this high priest in a certain way that you would put him in a scope to recognize that this person should be focused on throughout the day. We're going to go to the second verse, and this is in Psalm 110. You are a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Now, just like we said, there's other orders of priests.
Aaron was an order of priests, the Aaronic line. But here we're saying that the Aaronic line was not good enough, was not of sufficient value. This new order did different things. And we're going to look at what those things are in Psalm 110, And it's a small chapter, too. We'll just read it to kind of get the idea of the need for a different order.
The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. One of the. The most quoted scriptures in the New Testament. Very important to understand. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies my footstool.
The Lord shall send out your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. In the beauty of holiness, from the womb of the morning you have the dew of your youth. The Lord has sworn and will not relent.
You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Then we see something in verse 5, 7. The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations.
He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries. He shall drink of the brook by the wayside. There he shall lift up the head. Here we see that in the judgment seat of God that all does not go well with people, that the low places are filled with bodies.
They are filled in with a multitude of people who could not stand before that throne, that he would execute kings. It wasn't your position on earth that enabled you to have something. Individuals were in need of something. The Lord has sworn that he would make a priesthood that could stand in that day of judgment. Only one priesthood.
The order of Melchizedek. The order of Melchizedek. I hope that through that if we go back to Hebrews, we can see it is necessary scripturally to have a high priest who can offer sacrifices and gifts for us. It is necessary to have one of certain qualifications that the high level of the court demands. The Lord has sworn you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.
He says in the last part of verse five, you are my Son. Today I have begotten you. You need the Son as your high priest because only the Son can offer sacrifices and gifts before the Father that are accepted.
If you were on trial for your life and you said, jeremy, I got a problem, I'm going to go to the death chair, would you represent me in court? I'd be like, you know, that's not smart. You need someone else. And here the Son has been declared to be high priest because only he is capable of being high priest. The second thing is we work backwards that he is in chapter five, verse three.
Because of this, he is required for the people. So as for Himself to offer sacrifices for sin. Jesus had to also meet that qualification. Not only did he have to be called, but he had to meet the qualification listed in chapter five, verse three. In verse seven, we're going to begin to look at that.
It says, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear? Here we have to see, in order for a high priest to have something to offer for the people, that he has to be able to be heard by God. If God does not hear his voice, then there's no use in using him as a representative, as a high priest. We're looking back. It says, who in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear?
If you remember Jesus, remember that Geography of the Little I am aware of. But Jesus ate that last supper with his disciples, right? I personally do not believe it was the Passover meal. I think it was prior to the Passover meal. But then they left that meal.
At that meal, there were several things that happened, right? Jesus identified his betrayer after John asked who it was. And it appears that Jesus teaches chapter 15 through around 21 of John at that meal, right? A very important time. And he prays for disciples.
He prays to the Father, he talks about the vineyard and all these things. A very beautiful time at this last supper they had together. And then they get up from there, rise, let us be going. And they Cross over the Brook Kidron, right? And if you imagine these two steep hillsides, one, Jerusalem and the Temple on one side, Brook Kidron on the middle, and the Mount of Olives on the other side.
They cross over the Brook Kidron and go to a garden on the other side. And if you remember, Jesus began to be distressed. And he said to his disciples, pray with me. The time is short. It's necessary to pray.
And he began to pray. Pray in such a way as no one has ever prayed. He said he was in great distress. Great drops of sweat fell like blood from him, that he was in anguish, praying for something. He needs an answer to this prayer.
It says that he was heard. This individual had, in the weakest moment of physical existence, was able to pushed through to the throne of God to receive something back from him in the worst possible circumstances.
You and I go through hard things. Life, maybe to some of us, appears difficult. You have encountered challenges. There's been obstacles in your way. There's been horrendous things you've had to deal with, all of which I'm not trying to minimize.
But they don't compare to that level of despair that Jesus encountered when he was praying. There was something that he had to overcome during that time, which, if he could overcome, means something to you and I. If he could find solace there, if he could find an answer to his own soul in midst of the difficulties that he encountered there, then he could also find help for those who encounter needs, though not as great. What he was looking at was probably more difficult than the work week ahead of you this week. He had to deal with the sins of the whole world.
Now, one sin is pretty ugly, pretty nasty. And if you had to really understand what one sin was, it would send you down to hell. The weight of it would be so intense. Now, we have had to experience parts of sin, the flavor of sin, the smoke of sin, but never the fullness of sin. But Jesus had to wrestle with the fullness of sin.
And he wrestled in such a way that he found solace before God there. And he prayed, not my will, but your will be done. I know that you're going to take me through this. In victory, it says, an angel came and ministered to him there. This praying is described with being an individual with vehement cries and tears.
You and I love to listen to those lawyer movies, right, in which everything seems to be lost. And yet, at the last moment, the lawyer comes and presents a surprising defense to the judge. The evidence is thrown out and the individual is said to be guilty or the case is switched or such. Right. There never has been such a compassionate outcry from a lawyer for the needs of people.
There never was a defense for your own soul that could near mimic what Jesus prayed regarding your sin.
The best lawyers have lots of evidence and they use tremendous, tremendous words and language to try to sway the judge onto their client's favor. But here we see Jesus presented with the reality of your personal sin.
Not your neighbor's sin, that was different. Not your wife's sin, that was another story, right? Not how everyone else's sin, but your sin. Yeah, that one.
And he cried out with great and vehement cries. The tears rolled down as he presented not his own case, but your case before the Father. And it said he was heard. He was heard. That already the outcome of this tremendous high priest diligent effect in regard to your need, the outcome was absolutely gained.
At that moment, the result of the trial shifted directions. Without a doubt, it looked like all was lost. That the evidence pointed absolutely to your demise, destruction and destroyed. That everything about you from the day you were born until the day that you die was focused on rebellion against God Almighty, breaking his laws and rejecting Him. And yet he presented such surprising evidence for you that the case was averted, the destruction changed, and now a different path.
This is the ability of this high priest to represent people that need it. I think we're just going to close and look at the last two next week. But if I can leave you with something, because in some ways I'm maybe smarting because I don't have an engineering degree. And instead I went and worked with a machete down in Honduras, sweating out. I still like math.
And I still would like to say that so much of good that we enjoy is because of math, whether you understand it or not.
And I would try to say you should appreciate math and stop cursing it.
It's wrong. But Jesus Christ did a work for you, for me that he was called because he could only be the only person. It had to be the Son. No one else possessed the favor with the Father to be high priest. No one else possessed the energy to present the our case before the Father.
I have prayed for people and sometimes they're in really bad shapes. And I tell them, I'm going to pray for you, dear God bless them. And then I go and Stacy, his dinner ready yet? I'm hungry. Someone's in my chair, right?
The Lord prayed for us with great and mournful cries. With such diligence, he presented Our case, could there be a high priest like Jesus? Someone who loves our soul so much, could we not look at him, recognize our need for him, and embrace him? My hope is, is that, you see, math is beautiful. But I hope you see that Christ is even more beautiful.
Oh, he loves your soul. He loves your soul and he died to give you freedom and joy. At the least, I hope that you can say in a moment of silence, thank you, Jesus. Thank you. I didn't deserve it.
Thank you. The moment you could just take a little bit, just to say, you know, my life's busy, it's complicated, there's problems. But someone loved you, was a high priest for you, and we're going to see, made a sacrifice of his own life for you.
I believe it's real, and I believe that it makes a difference on Judgment Day. Who represents you? I pray it's Jesus Christ. I pray there's one less body thrown in the pit. I pray it's not you who are the kings being executed, but you will have approached a lawyer like no other, embraced him and asked him to be a part of your life.
Amen. Let's pray. O Father, you are the only high priest worthy to enter that throne room. It's only your sacrifice that has sufficient merit. Lord, it's only you who stirred yourself up on behalf of your people to pray for them to plead their cause.
Lord, all others have been like under shepherds who fled. But you are the great shepherd of the sheep. Lord, I pray you would cause our mind to be focused. They are dull, God, they are dull. They are not focused.
Help us, O God, change our minds. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.