Come and Go Sunday School Lesson by Dr. Frank Carver and Dr. Herb Prince for Sunday, 25 May 2014 from San Diego First Church of the Nazarene

Come and Go Sunday School Lesson by Dr. Frank Carver and Dr. Herb Prince for Sunday, 25 May 2014 from San Diego First Church of the Nazarene

GOD HAS SPOKEN

“mercy and . . .grace to help”

(Hebrews Fifteen)[The following outline is that of Kevin L. Anderson, Hebrews: A Commentary In The Wesleyan Tradition, 

New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2013), 5-6. 

 I. Hearing the Apostle and High Priest of Our Confession: Hebrews 1:1—4:13

II. Jesus’ Superior High Priesthood: Hebrews 4:14—10:18

A. The Qualifications of the Great High Priest (4:14—5:10).

1. The Great High Priest (4:14-16).

2. Qualifications of Ordinary High Priests (5:1-4)

3. Qualifications of the High Priest like Melchizedek (5:5-10)

B. Preparing for Advanced Teaching on Christ’s High Priesthood (5:11—6:20)

C. The High Priest like Melchizedek: The Son Perfected Forever (7:1-28).

D. The Superior Ministry of the Son’s High Priethood (8:1—10:18)

III. Call to Persevering Faith and Acceptable Worship: (Hebrews 10:19--13:25)]

Hebrews 4:14 Having then a great high priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold tightly to our confession. 15 For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace for help in time of need.(World English Bible)
Hebrews 4:14, 16: “Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, . . . let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
The Bible is the greatest sermon in the world.[P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980 [reprint from1907 edition by A. C. Armstrong and Son]), 10.]
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.[Luke 24:27.]

Meet us here, Jesus, Lord;

Walk with us, we urge You.

Oh how slow we are to see;

Open up your Scriptures.[Chorus of the Hymn “Emmaus Road” by Brenton Prigge.(2005) sung in the Classic service May 4, 2014.]

Introduction

“Mercy and . . .grace to help”--great words! “Grace” and “mercy” remind us of the petitions Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer: “give us each day our daily bread” fills out “grace to help” and “forgive us our sins” speaks to us of “mercy.”[We are quoting from Luke’s version (11:2-4) of the Lord’s Prayer.] up these petitions we have a Father whose name is holy and whose kingdom is ever and unexpectedly breaking in: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” 
The words of our text, “mercy and . . .grace to help,” also have a backup, one powerfully measningful; the theological parallels between the Lord’s Prayer and the exhortation before us are obvious. We read the scripture passage for today:
14Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every 
respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.16Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
First question: What is such a succinct passage doing at this place in Hebrews?
Verses 14-16 are a compact combination of exposition and exhortation with a twofold “we have . . .” followed by a twofold “let us . . . ”. Such is in harmony with the rhetorical character of the sermonic document we call Hebrews as it consistently alternates between exposition and exhortation. At first glance these three verses appear primarily to look back on what has already been said, to what we already know—“the Son” and “a high 
priest” who can “sympathize with our weaknesses.” 
This was apparently the approach of Howard T. Kuist who, in his class in 1956-57, placed 4:14-16 as the conclusion of 1:1—4:16 and viewed it the author’s thesis:
The sufficiency and finality of the work of Jesus, the Son of God, as our Heavenly High Priest allows us confident access to the presence of God for our every need.
Another question: To what extent do our minds, and especially, our hearts penetrate the meaning for our faith of what has been set forth so far in Hebrews? As we shall see the author does not yet leave us—he takes nine more chapters to get across to his readers what he desires that they hear.
In contrast to Kuist Anderson places 4:14-16 at the very beginning of the section 4:14—10:18 (“Jesus’ Superior High Priesthood” in his outline) and sees it as forming an inclusio with 10:19-23 that sounds the same notes, seeing them as parallel transitional passages.[Anderson, Hebrews, 153. Hebrews 10:19-23 reads, “Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”] Thus we can view 4:14-16 as also looking forward to the further development of the high priesthood of Jesus that has been in essence present from 1:3 when “a Son . . . made purification for sins” and “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Our verses look both backwards and forward, they conclude and they introduce, they are “betwixt and between”; place them where you please, their transitional function in the rhetoric of Hebrews is clear! They are full of so much!
Before we unpack these three verses we note that they inescapably teach that we Christians by biblical definition are a “because . . . therefore” people! We are not an “if . . . then” folk! Our writer stresses this twice: 

Since, then, we have a great high priest, . . . let us hold fast. . . . [since] we have one who, . . . let us therefore approach the throne of grace.

The truth of the Gospel is not “if we hold fast, we have,” but “because we have, we approach”! We are a “grace” people from start to finish! Grace defines us in “thought,word, and deed”! 
Now what do...

I.

“we have”

4:14

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.

Above all, in the witness of the writer to the Hebrews, “we have a great high priest.” As the author’s exposition begins to probe more deeply into “Jesus, the Son of God” as the “great high priest” of the Christian, verses 4:14 through 5:10 introduce this high-priestly ministry of Christ. Hebrews presents this priesthood as a new kind of priesthood; Jesus is our “high priest according to the order of Mechchizedek” (5:10) which the author develops in contrast to the Levitical priesthood. This we will explore in later lessons.
The high-priesthood of Jesus furnishes the “why” we are to--and can--“hold fast to our confession.” We have already seen this priesthood assumed in 1:3, “purification for sins,” declared boldly in 2:17, “a merciful and faithful high priest,” and used to call for the Christian’s faithfulness in 3:1, “consider . . . Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.”
And now in our text “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.” The new ascription is that this priest “has passed through the heavens” indicating the heavenly character of Jesus’s high-priestly ministry. 
Yet, it is not new; 1:3 has already informed us that after he made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”—the Son’s royal installation at God’s right hand (8:1, 10:12; 12:2). The writer to the Hebrews will later more fully develop the significance of this spatial imagery for Christ’s heavenly ministry in terms of Christ “entering the inner shrine behind the curtain.”[See 6:19-20; 8:1-2; 9:8, 11, 24; 10:20.] 
The heavenly character of Christ’s high-priestly ministry is essential for Hebrews. If Jesus were still on earth, he would not even be a priest (8:4). His cultic and moral perfection is heightened by the fact that he is “exalted above the heavens”(7:26; . . .).[Anderson, Hebrews, 157.] 
Anderson’s final statement as he speaks of Christ’s “cultic and moral perfection” awaits further interpretation as this fascinating sermonic missile proceeds.

“Since, then, we have” all this in Jesus “the high priest of our confession” (3:1), “we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belongs to hope” (3:6). So in the first of the two summary exhortations to this point the invitation is clear: “let us hold fast to our confession” in “Jesus, the Son of God.” We hold on to our faith in act and in substance.[Besides in 3:1 and 4:14 the noun homologia, “confession,” appears in 10:23 and in 2 Corinthians 9:13 and 1 Timothy 6:12 and 13. The verb homologein “to confess,” appears in Hebrews 11:13 and 13:15, and is frequent in the New Testament.]

Again, what do ....

I

“we have”

4:15-16

15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.16Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

The author concludes 4:14-16, or all of 1:1—4:16 for that matter, with an exhortation stuffed with a most encouraging invitation: Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness.” What is his reason, his ground, for extending such an amazing appeal? The first basis is obvious: “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens.” Jesus is qualified as our great high priest as one who sits “at the right hand of the Majesty on high”--indeed in the holy place as the writer will elaborate down the road. So much for Jesus’ relationship to God. But how about his relation to us human creatures? How can such an exalted-to-the-heavens high priest relate to us who are weak and sin-prone creatures?

1.

4:15

Lest the Hebrew writer’s readers get the wrong idea, he expresses in negative or denial terms the second qualification of Jesus as our “high priest”: “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” The author has compactly restated what he has already proclaimed in fuller detail back in 2:14-18.[2:14-18 reads: “14Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.16For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. 17Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.18Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”] has both the power and the passion (dunamenon sympathēsai) to fully identify with our human plight—sin and weakness. Jesus, in his incarnate life has been put to the test,[The verb form for “tested” (pepeirasmenon) is perfect tense indicating the continuing result of a past action.] test which the author describes in “three crisp phrases”--“in every respect . . . as we are, yet without sin.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 159. He notes that these “three crisp phrases” are “welded together by Greek prepositions beginning with hard, guttural cosonants”—kata . . . kath . . . choris.]
As we have seen, the earthly Jesus did not waver in his faithfulness “in all of” and “over God’s house as a son” (3:2, 6). He was both without sin and without sinning. Brook Foss Westcott would interpret our writer to say that “there was no sin in Him to become the spring of trial. . . . . Christ assumed humanity under the conditions of life belonging to men fallen, though not with sinful promptings from within.”[Brook Foss Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1952 [1st ed., 1889]), 107.]  Writing over one hundred and twenty years ago, the good bishop and famed New Testament scholar, wrote of our text:

Sympathy with the sinner in his trial does not depend on the experience of sin but on the experience of the strength of temptation to sin which only the sinless can know its full intensity, He who falls yields before the last strain.[Westcott, Hebrews, 59.]

To the author’s readers who had experienced suffering (10:32-34), these were encouraging words. As Anderson ends his exposition of verse 15, Jesus as our “high priest” 
is fully equipped to assist us in combatting “a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (3:12) or with casting off “the sin that so easily entangles (12:1), so that we can persevere in faith (10:19-25, 36-39).[Anderson, Hebrews, 160.]

2.

4:16

Back to the concluding exhortation: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” With a huge “therefore” corresponding to the opening exhortation[The same Greek word is used in both instances: “Since (oun) . . . therefore (oun).”]—“Since . . . . Let us,”-- this second invitation speaks of an unbroken access to God gained for us by the Jesus who is able “to sympathize with our weaknesses.” The verb “let us therefore approach” is present tense indicating continual action: we are privileged to keep on, daily, approaching “the throne of grace.”
Furthermore, we can do this “with boldness” (parrēsias). The term speaks of open, unhindered, access—any time! Parrēsias “was the civic privilege of all freeborn citizens to speak their minds openly in public assembly.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 161. In 3:6, NRSV translates parrēsian as “confidence”: “we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.” See also 10:19, 35,] Here, as in Hellenistic Judaism the term indicates “a confident self-expression before God, above all in prayer.”[Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989). 142.] Most thrilling to our ears is the designation “throne of grace” that we are boldly invited to approach. “Throne of grace” brings to where we also are at “the right hand of the Majesty on high” 1:3). It designates what “the Holy Place” (9:12) that we 
now enter because of the sacrificial death of Christ is truly for. We are entering “the holy of holies” in Old Testament imagery!
And it is before this “rainbow-circled throne of grace”[W. T Purkiser, Hebrews, James, Peter, Beacon Bible Expositions, volume 11 (Kansas City, Missouri: Beacon Hill Press, 1974), 47. “The throne to which we are invited now is not the great white throne of judgment and condemnation. It is the rainbow-circled throne of grace.”] that we “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Note that “mercy” needs only to be "received,” but “grace to help in time of need” has to be “found”: the first takes simple faith, the second involves a life of prayer. 
To interpret further: basic and above all else the Christian receives “forgiveness,” but the disciple finds a “forgiving life”: “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”[Luke 11:4.] Neither one is always easy! This is who we are as followers of Christ; this is bottom line that defines us as Christians. Christians are those who live a forgiven and a forgiving life. Both “mercy” and “grace to help in time of need” are as open to us as are the skies, expanded to include all the blessings, all the challenges, and all battles of life on this earth—with men and before God.

Conclusion

These three great verses, full of huge words—boldness, grace, help[All three words were previously employed by the author. See 3:6; 2:9; 2:18.]—function where the lines of the X nature of Hebrews document cross. It gathers up what has been proclaimed by the author (1:1—4:13), and gives us an open invitation to all he wants further to say about what he has already said, and to his desire to bring it all the way home to the understanding of our faith-hearts.
Lines from Thomas Merton as he reflects on his own spiritual journey as he is on the way from a very worldly university student to a Trappest monk form an apt conclusion:

In one sense we are always travelling, and travelling as if we did not know where we are going.

In another sense we have already arrived. . . .

But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived![Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1948), 459. Between these two quotations Merton wrote, “We cannot arrive at the perfect 

possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess 

Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.”]

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First Church of the Nazarene

3901 Lomaland Drive

San Diego, CA 92106

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