Transcript
Tim Keller (0:03)
Welcome to gospel and life. The Book of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were weary of troubles, struggling with fear and discouragement. Sound familiar? Today, Tim Keller is preaching from the Book of Hebrews, showing us how fixing our eyes on Jesus is the only way to truly deal with the challenges we face in our lives.
Tim Keller (0:28)
The script you're reading this morning is from the Book of Hebrews, chapter 7, verses 18 through 27. The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless, for the law made nothing perfect. And a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God. And it was not without an oath. Others became priests without any oath. But he became a priest with an oath when God said to him, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever. Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. Now, there have been many of those priests since death prevented them from continuing in office. But because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need, one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins, once for all, when he offered himself. This is the word of the Lord.
Tim Keller (2:12)
Now, we've been saying that the Book of Hebrews is written to a group of people who are so beset by troubles and difficulties that they're about to give up. And that, in a sense, in a very real sense, the Book of Hebrews is actually a piece of pastoral counseling. Very intense pastoral counseling. And this week we come to a place where the counselor says, there's nothing more practical for you to be able to handle life than to know that Jesus is your advocate. Now, what does that mean? That's what we want to look at. And it's not just obviously a. An abstract doctrinal issue, because we have to remember that this whole book is written not as a theological treatise, but it's a piece of, in a sense, pastoral counseling. And so let's ask three questions. Why do we need an advocate? How is Jesus Christ the advocate we need? And what difference will it make in your life if you receive him as such? Why do we need an advocate? How is Jesus the advocate? What difference will it make in your life if you receive Him? Okay, first of all, why do we need an advocate. Now look, right here at the beginning, the form of regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless, for the law made nothing perfect. And a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God. Now this is talking as if Jesus is a better priest. And it's talking as if everybody tries to draw near to the Deity through priests and through temples and through sacrifices. It sort of assumes that everybody's trying to do it, but that Jesus is the way that is going to really work for you. And right away we're having trouble as modern people reading this and trying to apply this to ourselves because, yeah, there was a time in which on every street corner, as it were, there were temples and there were priests and there were sacrifices and there was really no religion without them, in fact, and there was no one without a religion. Okay? So everybody was doing it. This is the way life was, but it's not true anymore. So all this stuff about Jesus being our priest in here and sacrifices and all doesn't seem to work. But it can, especially because in verse 25, there's a word that talks about Jesus work in this regard. The word intercede. And the word intercede. And we're going to look at this again all through this talk sermon today. The word intercede doesn't just mean something that priests do. Of course. Priests intercede to God for the worshipers. But the word intercede also had a legal meaning. It also meant to appear as a representative in court, to appear as the representative of someone who was on trial. And that immediately begins to open a few doors to us. That immediately begins to make us say, well, okay, wait a minute. Okay, maybe I can get into that. And yes, we can. Let's think of it like this. What do you really look like? Do you have any idea what you really look like? You have a picture in your mind of what you hope you look like. I mean, some years ago, I remember reading in the New York Times magazine this article. It said it was a woman writing it, and it Sundays, more than 40 years of looking at myself in the mirror have left me, like so many other people I know, almost totally ignorant of what I really look like. In the mirror, I see reality. Not reality, but a composite of memories, wishes, half truths. I've learned to live with my shadowy self image. I know there's a real me lurking somewhere, though I can't see her. And what she goes on to explain is, for example, you don't keep the pictures you hate. You throw them away. You keep the pictures you like you don't even look in the mirror in certain angles. You come to learn that there's certain angles that you look. Want to look at yourself, and you just stop looking at it in other angles. In other words, you walk around with an image in your head of what you hope you look like to other people, but you're kind of afraid that you don't. And that's just the physical. Because you also walk around with an image of your head of what you look like as a person to people, what your character is like or what your soul is like. Are you a lovable person? Are you a hard to love person? Are you a good person or a bad person or how good are you or how bad are you? Are you beautiful or are you ugly? Morally, spiritually, personally? And we walk around again with an image in our head of what we hope to be that we look like to other people, but we don't. Actually, deep down inside, we're afraid we don't. Now, here's what's interesting. You can't not care about this, no matter how hard you've tried, even if you think that it's a sign of mental health and it's not. But no matter how hard you try, if you really think you can live satisfied with your own evaluation of yourself, your own verdict, your own pronouncement of whether you're good or bad or beautiful or ugly, you can't. You can't live just with your own evaluation. You desperately need pronouncement from outside. You need to know, though you're afraid to know. But basically you're living your entire life trying to prove yourself so that you get those verdicts, so that you get that pronouncement. One person who put it awfully well, I think, is this character that Arthur Miller creates in his. You know, Arthur Miller had just died. The playwright. In his play after the Fall. There's one place where one of the characters talks like this. He says, for years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you're young, you prove how brave you are or smart. Then later on what a good lover you are. Later you prove what a good father or husband you are. Finally, you prove how wise or powerful or whatever. But underlying it all, I see now I always made an assumption that when moved on some kind of upward path towards some elevation where I don't know what, I could be justified or condemned. A verdict. At any rate, I think my disaster began when I looked up one day and I realized the bench was empty, no judge in sight. And all that remained was the endless argument with myself. This pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench. Which, of course, is another way of saying despair. Now, that's a pretty powerful statement. Here's what it's saying. First of all, it's saying that no one can sit, no one can avoid basically turning your life into one big trial in which you are arguing and trying to prove to other people that you are good rather than bad, that you are lovable rather than unlovable. You're trying to prove yourself, and you cannot. You cannot rest in your own evaluation. You've got to get it from outside. Someone has to pronounce you. And what's intriguing, of course, is that Arthur Miller, like so many modern secular people, are describing a person who came to the realization that all along he was actually trying to impress God. But then one day he realized there is no God. He kind of grew up and he began to realize, oh, you know, I'm now sophisticated. I don't believe in God. But guess what? He couldn't stop arguing. He couldn't stop the trial. He said, there's this. I couldn't stop it. There's this endless argument with myself now, and endless litigation. But that's not really what I'm doing. I'm trying to prove myself. I need approval. I need verdicts. I need accomplishment. I need these things. And yet, of course, he's in sort of in despair because he can't stop it. And yet who is he impressing? Who is he trying to get this from? Now, the book of Romans explains what Arthur Miller is describing. Which, of course, is quite, you know, impossible to deny. And the book of Romans explains it. And that is that whether you admit with your mind or not that there is a God, your heart knows that there is one. And that actually your life is a trial. It's unavoidably a trial. And underneath all of the efforts to get verdicts from people, verdicts about how you look physically, verdicts about how you're doing vocationally, verdicts about how you are morally and personally, you're after verdicts, you're after pronouncements. You're after awards, you're after accomplishments. You're looking for a word from outside. And underneath it all, you're looking for a word from the Lord of the universe. Because there really is an ultimate bench before which we're all arguing. There's an ultimate court before which we all know we must or we are, in a sense, appearing. And the real question Is, are you going to go into that court alone or not? You know, I know there's these fiction, you know, every so often you'll see a TV show or a theater or something, some dramatic courtroom drama in which the accused decides to be his or her own lawyer. You know, I'm going to be my own attorney. I'm going to represent myself. And of course, sometimes, occasionally, they win the trial, but all real attorneys know that that never happens. It is an absolute disaster to be in court without an advocate, without an attorney, without a representative. To be your own representative just simply doesn't work. And the book of Hebrews says you don't have to go alone. People that go alone are crazy. People who go alone are nuts. People who go alone are religious, who think that they can argue themselves. They can say, look, I'm living a pretty good life. I'm doing very good. I'm a good father, I'm a good mother, I'm a very moral person. That's not what Christianity is all about at all. Jesus, according to the book of Hebrews, is the advocate you need in that trial that you unavoidably are in. Jesus is the advocate. So, okay, secondly, let's take a look. Why? Why is Jesus. How is Jesus the advocate we need? Well, here it is, verse 24 and 25. Jesus lives forever, so he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Okay, now we're mixing our metaphors, but it's fair because. And now, you know, here we are. I've been giving you the metaphor of going before the bench with your advocate, your representative, your attorney here, of course, is talking about going before God with a priest. But it's essentially the same thing. And this word intercede. This word intercede does mean that if you go take a look at what the word meant in Greek, it can certainly be used for a priest arguing before God. But here's what it also can mean. If back in those days, you got in trouble with the magistrate or the local ruler or the local king or the emperor, if you got in trouble, you did not want to go and appear before the seat of authority by yourself. Very seldom did you know people in court. Very seldom were you eloquent enough. Very seldom did you know the rules and the issues and all the ways in which the court kind of worked. So what you did was you went and got an advocate. You went and got someone who could. Could appear before for you. Now, what do you look like in court. What do you look like in court? You look like your advocate. Now think about this. It's your advocate's performance, not yours, that will make or break you. If your advocate is eloquent, if your advocate is brilliant, then quite literally, you are eloquent. You are brilliant. Because all of the benefits of that eloquence and brilliance are going to be imputed to you. If your advocate wins, you win. If your advocate loses, you lose. Why? Because your advocate is not just your advocate. You are in your advocate. See, your advocate is your substitute. Now, if you're in a court and you have an attorney and your attorney's brilliant and your attorney is skillful, then all of that comes to you. And what we're being told here, though, is something extremely powerful. And that, of course, is this is what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is not simply to have Jesus as your example, where you say, well, I pray to Jesus and I ask him for help. And I try to live like Jesus lived. I try to love my neighbor as myself, and I go to church and I read my Bible, I try all those sort of things. That's to appear in court and be your own attorney. And that's a disaster. Here's what it means to be a Christian. And a lot of people think that's what it means to be a Christian, to use Christ as an example or have Christ as a helper. To be a Christian means to be in him. Paul says this over and over and over again. It's union with Christ is to be in him is to have him be your substitute. And this is the reason why. And it's really pretty interesting. An awful lot of people believe they're Christians because they come to church, because they try to obey Christ's teachings and they have some general understanding. He died for my sins. Yeah, that's right. I don't know really how that worked. But that's not the same thing as understanding him as an advocate. According to the Bible, according to the Book of Hebrews, Jesus Christ is the ultimate advocate. He stands as you represented before the ultimate throne, the ultimate bench, in the ultimate trial before the court, which is the only one that counts. Jesus is your advocate. Now, how does this work? When I first became a Christian, when I was a new Christian, a young Christian, I heard of this idea that Jesus Christ intercedes for us before the Father. And it was of no comfort to me at all. And one of the reasons why it sounded bizarre, and it was also of no comfort to me, partly because I think of some of the ways in which some high profile lawyers actually operate in court, and because of what I saw in some of those high profile trials. I really misunderstood what this was all about. Here's what I thought was really happening and here's why it wasn't any comfort to me. I figured every day Jesus came before the Father with a kind of caseload and okay, they pull out a folder. Keller. All right, okay. So he looks up and he says, ah, yes, Father, you know, all these promises he's made to change and change, and he's doing it again anyway. But please give him a break for my sake. Give him one more chance. I know he means well this one more time. This could be it. And you owe me. I went to earth and all those things. So pretty please. I ask for mercy for my client. I throw myself on the mercy of the court. And then I expected, I guess, that the Father would say, well, all right. And here's the reason why that was of no comfort to me, because I understood that what Jesus was doing, if that's the intercessory work of Jesus Christ spinning to get mercy out of the Father, I thought to myself, how long can he keep that up? Because why wouldn't one day, finally the Father say, there's no particular reason why the Father one day couldn't just say, look, he's a minister now, you know, it's too late. I've had it. He can't keep doing things like this. But that's not at all the kind of advocate Jesus is.