Well, Christian brothers and sisters, you come this morning on the Lord's Day, not to earn your salvation before God, not to prove to God that you are worth it, but because His grace and mercy is already upon you. And because God is abundantly kind to you, because you were chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world, and then in time the Spirit of God applied Christ's work of atonement to you on your behalf and united you to Christ. And because the Lord Jesus is your Great High Priest, as we have been seeing here over these last three times in Hebrews 4, you can be sure then that salvation is yours. You see friends, the reality is that you need a priest. I need a priest, not some Roman Catholic minister, but we need the mediator between God and man. The only mediator between God and man, as the Apostle puts it in 1 Timothy 2, the man Christ Jesus. He is the only high priest available to humanity now, and he lives forever to make intercession for us, Hebrews 7 tells us. And we need him, friends. because our sin problem is so great. It is so vast. Further, we had sin from Adam, and so we need a priest to come and make atonement for us and to continue to intercede for us. But the good news is, the great news about the Lord Jesus Christ in light of this, is that he is both God and man, and He mediates in that regard for us. He's a divine person, and yet He is very much acquainted with the things that we go through every day. Because He was not only very God, but very man as well. And in that, He becomes such a glorious Savior to us. And so let's hear from God and His Word. We'll begin reading from verse 11, just to remember some of the context more closely once again, and then we'll pray after we read. God's Word says... Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. That's the reading of God's holy, inspired, and sufficient word. Let's pray. Mighty and glorious God, we thank you for the offices that Christ holds in his role as our mediator, that he is prophet, priest, and king, and we know so greatly that we need all of these things, and we're so thankful that he alone is the one who not only lived for us, but died for us, and then represents us to you. And so we ask that you would give us understanding this morning, that you would encourage our hearts with the good news of the gospel, that you would help us to cherish these wonderful promises that we have in Christ. And may you be exalted and glorified always. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well friends, this paragraph is just so very rich. And we get to come back to it now for a third time as we consider what it means for us to have the Lord Jesus be our Great High Priest. Hebrews 4.14 to 4.16 are like what the Proverbs call gracious words. They're like honeycomb that is sweet to the soul and healing for the body. And we've seen thus far in this passage, verse 14 in particular presents to us Jesus and what we would call the doctrine of the hypostatic union. That is, that in this one divine person, there are two natures. Humanity and Son of God, deity. And in fact, the picture that we get of Jesus in verse 14 is so absolutely glorious, and that first song that we sang really captures this and our need for Him as our High Priest, which is based on the Heidelberg Catechism. So we sang, what is our hope in life and death? Christ alone, Christ alone. What is our only confidence? that our soul belongs to Him. And so, we see that He is one with the Father, seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. He is the Son of God, and then we belong to Him, and He is our hope. And remember last time, we talked about the Bible's purpose, the intention that we see in God's Word, to have us glorify God through our understanding of the truth. But then also, more than that, more than just simply understanding, It's even better when we are then delighting in that truth that we understand. Because in a way, God is more glorified, so to speak, when we do more than just simply understand the truth, but when we are cherishing that truth and we're holding on to it and it gives us joy and peace and purpose and we find our life's meaning in that and knowing God and glorifying Him. And so, God is, as it were, more glorified when we're understanding who God is in light of experiencing his saving purposes and intentions. And so here's Jesus, the glorious, majestic, Christ, the Son of God, and he's identified as our high priest. The idea of a priest, of course, contains with it mediation, it contains with it an advocate, but notice it's a great high priest that he is. It's a redundancy, remember, but it's an intentional redundancy because high priest means great priest, and Jesus here is identified as our great high priest. In other words, he is the high priest The true High Priest that was intended by all those High Priests of God's people in the Old Covenant. He's the one that all of those in the Aaronic Priesthood pointed to. That is, He's the one who is transcendent. He is the one who is exalted. He is the one who is majestic. John Owen, in his commentary, says, And that's the picture that we have here of Jesus, a high priest like that. And this great high priest, this excellent, majestic, glorious, great high priest has passed through the heavens. That is, there's an interesting parallel, I think, to what we would see in the Old Testament. When we learn about the ministry and the work of the high priest there in Leviticus especially, that the people of God would gather around the tabernacle and the priest would then perform those rites of sanctification necessary to enter into the Holy of Holies and then he would go in by himself. And then when he's in, he actually would disappear from their sight. They couldn't see what was going on in there, what was transpiring in there. And as he entered into the tabernacle, nobody could follow them in and see what he was doing. That place was off limits for everyone else. And he went into that tabernacle and he disappeared from their sight, but he was representing them while he went there. And so for us, just as the high priest of old passed from the people's sight as he went into the holy place as the people's representative. So our great high priest Jesus has ascended into heaven out of our sight into the heavenly sanctuary as our representative where he is representing us there now. And that is 414. It's just absolutely packed. So the idea of 414 is that all of that is our possession with Jesus. That we get all of that. It was our great High Priest who is in the heavenly sanctuary right now where we one day will be. And He has gone on ahead of us to prepare a place for us and to bring us there. Remember, He is leading many sons to glory, we read. And so because of that, because of this glorious truth, because that is our only hope and because of that magnificent reality, our duty, our response to these truths as believers as those who have been born again is to hold fast, we read. because of the glorious and wonderful truth about Jesus, the great high priest, our response and faith is to strive and to hold fast our confession and confidence alone in Christ Jesus. That's verse 11 and 14. It's verse chapter 3, 14 as well. Because the reality exists with our Lord Jesus and his role of mediator in the immediate presence of the Father. Our duty and response is to endure in this present wilderness down here by an obedient and preserving, persevering faith. And so consider just how good you have it, saints. Consider how good you have it this morning. The Lord Jesus is your great high priest. He is sinless. He is the Son of God. He is greater, we've seen already, than Joshua, than Moses, than angels. And he has passed through the heavens so that he can bring us through to the promised land. You see, He's the one that we need there, and He's the one that we want there. This great, glorious, and high, exalted, high priest, Jesus. And so we need that kind of high priest, and the high priest that we need is, in fact, the very high priest that we have. And in 414, that's a comfort to us. It is true that he is right now in heaven. The high priest that we desperately need is the high priest that we really and truly have. But this doesn't mean, of course, that the Christian life that we live here and now in this wilderness is all roses and rainbows. This place where we live, I mean, the recent news cycle obviously reminds us of that. But this place where we live, what the apostle has been describing as a wilderness, is one where it's oppressive, It is harsh, it's hostile, so our great high priest is in heaven. And he's ruling, and he's reigning, but there's something inside of us that just says, well, how am I helped now? How do I deal with these present trials now? My great high priest is in heaven, but how do I deal with these things that I endure here and now? How do I deal with my remaining sin? and my sinful desires now. And you see, we're often, as creatures, just short-sighted and foolishly wrong and think that we need something more than the promise of God. And that is exactly what the Apostle has been warning us of previous to these texts in chapter 3 and early on in 4. And it seems clear that the Apostle in Hebrews is on track with that very thinking because he says in verse 14 that we have a great high priest. And then in 15 he says, For we do not have a high priest, And then he's like this, and he goes on to describe what Jesus is not like. Now, just track with me here for a moment. Our faith, it is always serious, right? Our faith is always serious, and persevering, and mighty, and overcoming, and perfect, right? Mine's not, you know? Mine is not like that, it's not me. Our faith is sometimes strong by the grace of God, but usually our faith is weak. Not exemplary. Our obedience. What about that? I mean, our obedience is just always stellar, right? Our obedience is always on point. I mean, it's always complete and not lacking, right? No, that's not what our life is like either. It's just like how our faith is sometimes stronger than it's usually weak, sometimes our obedience is a little more than when it's usually less. And just in case we're tempted to put too much confidence in our own faith and our own obedience and in our own ability, There stands Hebrews 4.12, and the Word of God reminds us that it is God's sort of judgment that keeps us humble. It keeps us split open, naked and exposed, and it keeps us from trusting in ourselves and our own abilities. And the minute you start to think, well my faith is good, my obedience is strong, it's fantastic, I got this, well then God's Word cuts you open from head to toe and it reminds you that really it's nothing. Just as soon as we start to think, wow, I was so obedient today, the Word of God cuts us open from top to bottom and says your obedience is not good enough. And so the Word of God is a means to keep believers humble, to keep believers looking to Jesus and distrusting of the self. So here's the picture. This is what we're like. This is what the congregation that the apostle was writing to was like. Here we are with an exercising of faith that is almost always way, way less impressive than we know it should be. And an obedience that is seemingly just barely existing sometimes. And here's the word of God, sharper than a two-edged sword, cutting us open from top to bottom, reminding us that really we are worse than we think. And if it wasn't for our great high priest, then what hope would we have? But the good news, you have a great high priest. And so we should be glad, so grateful that we possess Christ who is in the heavens. And we should remember that always, but especially it is great, it helps us when we need to cry out to God, We need to cry out to God because we feel so weak, we feel so weary, we feel so tired, we feel so worn out. We feel oppressed from within and from without. A Puritan pastor, David Clarkson, he says this, this is really good. He says, we need not to be discouraged that we have a high priest that is so transcendently excellent who is so great. Which, think about what he's saying, right? So, Jesus is transcendent, he's so excellent, so great. Are we like that? We're not like that, right? So he says, we need not be discouraged that we have a high priest who is like that. And there was none in the world ever like him who was so far beyond us, so remote from us, passed into the heavens, a higher than the heavens, who was infinitely above us, And that's what we're seeing here in verse 15. So we cherish our possession of Jesus, our great high priest who is in heaven. And while we're going through this wilderness, our heart cries out in this wilderness for incredible help. And the apostle knows that's how we feel. And I have no doubt that that's how he himself also felt. Remember, Pastor Nick just preached through Romans 7, which highlights that struggle that the apostle himself had. And he knows that he's speaking to a congregation who experiences that same trouble. And so therefore he says, we have a great high priest, and let me tell you about this high priest. Interestingly... He tells us about him by telling us what he's not like. And, you know, in a way that is through a negative lens. And so the great, glorious, majestic, transcendent Jesus, the Son of God, who is in heaven, passed through the heavens and is in the very presence of God, the Apostle says we have him. But notice how he's described in verse 15. You gotta read the Bible slowly. Listen to the way this works again. The Apostle is telling us what Jesus can do by telling us what he cannot do, right? That's the point there. The Apostle says, we do not have a high priest who is not able. Now, of course, you understand the point of a double negative. He's emphasizing this thing and the double negation cancels itself out. So, we do not have a high priest who is unable, and then those double negatives cancel out, and John Owen in his commentary is absolutely right when he says the double negation does strongly and vehemently affirm the point that is being made here. And so the idea behind what he's saying here is that we do not have a high priest that is, or what he's saying here is that we do not have a high priest who is unable to emphatically and in fact say that he is in fact able. When he's using the double negative, he's wanting to, with emphasis, say that he is able. It's a literary technique and the apostle does this to capture your attention. And so it stands out to us. And by the way, this little phrase of he is able is one of the apostles' favorites. Speaking of ability, he's saying he is able. That's the one that he's quite fond of. In Hebrews 2.18, we read that Jesus, he is able to help those who are being tempted. In 7.25, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him. And for the apostle here in the letter to the Hebrews, one of the most glorious expressions he could ever say about Jesus is that he is able, Jesus is able, Jesus is more than able. And it's so great that the apostle is emphasizing this point because notice what he's saying here, that Christ is able, fully able, completely able, more than able to do what? to sympathize with our weaknesses. He's able to sympathize with our weaknesses. The Greek word here is actually just a word that is basically translated into English and the idea here with sympathize means to suffer with. It's to feel compassion. It's to enter into this weakness fully. It's to make something of somebody else's your own. And to get so close to someone that you share feelings with them. The Apostle is saying, in essence, that Jesus is more than able to sympathize and enter into and share into with us and to feel what it is that we feel when it comes to notice what? Our weaknesses. We have weaknesses. Many commentators will say here that the concept of weakness, that it's in the plurals, is evidence that it's a broad concept of what he's speaking of here when he mentions weaknesses. Everything on the one hand from our helplessness to save ourselves, just the weakness of being human beings, down to our moral weaknesses as well. The idea is that we are weak people. We are people who, when it comes right down to it, no matter how much money we make, no matter how popular we are, no matter how big our house is, no matter what kind of car we drive, no matter what of those things that people see and just go, wow, the fact of the matter is that we are weak. And if we are raw and honest with ourselves, we should acknowledge that we are utterly helpless before the Lord. No matter how physically strong we are, no matter how many things we've done right, we are in fact weak. And by the way, the gospel is for people who have come to see that they are utterly helpless. Not for people who can do pretty much everything and just need a little help on the way, but utterly helpless. completely thoroughly down to the core, so weak that they cannot help themselves. And it's not to say that we shouldn't strive to do good and to seek to honor God, to glorify Him in all things, or even a rejection that in Christ we are overcomers and that in Christ we are victorious and in our weakness, in a sense, strong then. That's like we sang even. That's all true, of course. But it's just to make the point that no matter how good we might understand that we are doing things that's in Christ and is by grace, we must remember that no matter what else, we are never in a position to not need the help of our great High Priest. There's never a time in your life or an area in which you might even be succeeding in, in which you might say, I got this, Jesus, go ahead and sit down now, because I've got this. No, you're weak, and He's able to help you in your weakness. Never think that. You see what the Apostle is working at here. What he's driving home here in this capstone to the section is this condition that we are in and why it is that we desperately need Jesus. He's saying that we are so weak that you can't do what's within. We are utterly and completely helpless. We are altogether undone. And so helplessness is just part of our weakness as being a human being, fallen human beings, even redeemed ones who still must contend with sin and the flesh and the devil. We have moral weaknesses. We all have moral weaknesses. Of course, right, there's not one of us here in this room or in the fellowship hall or listening online who doesn't still have to battle against sin, right? Yes, there are. Different sanctification levels among us, that is true, but we are all still in the process of being sanctified and being conformed to Christ. And that entails dealing with our sin, that entails dealing with moral weaknesses. 1 John 1.8, if anyone says we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. That is the reality. And why is it that we're so constantly weak in our fight against sin? And I'm not talking about the sins that you already hate, and you would never think of committing, because those are easy, and any Pharisee could just avoid those sins. But what we find is that there is a fundamental weakness in just fighting against the things that we know are wrong, and yet, in our heart, There's part of us that wants to do it. There's a profound moral weakness in us. Again, remember Romans 7. We just went over that. What about what we've already been studying? Like in the context of Hebrews 3 and 4, the idea of these weaknesses that we have as people that are exemplified in the wilderness that we are in. Are not the weaknesses that are peculiar to living in this wilderness, the wandering on our way to that eternal Sabbath rest that has been promised to us such things as unbelief, such things as failing to take God at His word, struggling with faith. grumbling, not being thankful for what God is already presently doing, complaining, testing God, all those things that Israel was guilty of in numbers. We struggle the same way. And these are weaknesses within us that are just part of being a people who are not yet where Jesus is taking us to, ultimately. What about the fundamental weakness, not just in the fighting of sin, but the fundamental weakness of being seriously deficient in our obedience to the Word of God. Again, not to our favorite commands. We could all keep our favorite commands. Any Pharisee could do that, but the ones that get under our skin, the ones that are close to our heart, down where we live day in and day out, and those weaknesses are exposed by God's Word and we hate it and we run from it. We do what we're not supposed to do. There's the weakness of our own humanity. We know that we aren't what we should be, and we don't do what we should do, and so what do we do then? We not only live in a frail and broken world, but we ourselves are fragile and broken people. We're profoundly weak. We suffer from things like grief. We suffer from things like anguish and trouble and worry. We suffer from things like being perplexed and fear and terror and anxiety. We face day in and day out almost every hour by hour the temptations of our flesh and those suggestions of the enemy of our souls from Satan. Disgrace, shame, Loneliness, contempt, rejection, betrayal, the list goes on and on and all those things make up a world in which we can say things are not the way they're supposed to be. It's simply part of being a weak human being and being a human being that has weaknesses because of the fall. Regardless of what we may think of when we look at others and we can't see into their hearts and to their minds, we can't see past the display that they put on. But there are no supermen in this world. There's no people that this verse doesn't apply to that is especially a Christian, not one. Everyone deals with weaknesses. When the apostle says, When he says that we do not have a high priest who is unable, not able to sympathize with our weaknesses, what he is saying positively is we most certainly do have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. He's able to help us with all of those things that I just mentioned and all of those things that I left unsaid. And hopefully what I want us to realize is that is exactly what we need day in and day out. That's exactly what we need day in and day out. That Jesus is our Great High Priest. We are absolutely overjoyed that we have a Great High Priest who's before the throne of grace, whose name is love, and our names are graven on His hands and written on His heart. We glory in that. We sing about that. That's our security. That's why we hold fast as His people who bear His name. And when it comes down to it, as well, the day-to-day drudgery of living this life that we live, we need to know something else about that great High Priest. And that is, in addition to the fact that He's glorious, majestic and transcended. You know, when you say, When you say that God is glorious and Jesus is glorious, transcendent, and majestic, what that has a tendency to do is it makes us feel distant. We're not like that, you see? And so you don't run up to a person like that. And the apostle, he knows his weaknesses and he knows our weaknesses when he says, let me tell you something else about that great high priest. He sympathizes with us and our weaknesses. He sees it. He knows it all. And He's not keeping you at arm's length because of it. Well, we'll talk about that next time, about the access that we have to the throne of grace. But there's not one element, there's not one aspect, one dimension, one iota of human weakness that you go through that our Lord Jesus does not see, that He is not aware of. Nothing, absolutely nothing escapes our Lord Jesus' notice. He sees us struggling. He sees us weary. He sees us sad. He sees us oppressed. He sees us helpless. He sees us tired. He sees us tested. And he sees us tried. He sees us burdened and heavy laden. He sees us even on the verge of giving up day after day. And hear me friends, please, child of God, hear me. There is not one tear, not one sigh, not one groan that you do that escapes the notice of your great high priest. He's there. He's helping you, even if you don't realize it or feel it. That's what the promise of God's Word says. But it's more. It's more than just simply knowing what's being communicated here. It's that He sympathizes. He identifies with our weaknesses. He enters into them, as it were, so that our battles are, in a way, being fought by him. Again, David Clarkson says he is affected with our infirmities. He feels them. He's touched with the feeling of them. He has a sense thereof which touches his soul and makes some impression on it as one who not only has suffered what others feel, but suffers what they feel. Well, thanks be to God that Jesus is not like Job's counselors. We have so many of Job's counselors in this world with us, then they'll last us the rest of our lives. But Jesus is not like Job's counselors. And some people, you know, they have such a terrible picture of Jesus. It's really... It's confusing to me. It's sad to me. I want it to change. You know, they picture Jesus as if He's, you know, some sort of heavenly cop just waiting to bust you for doing something bad. And He's always watching you and He's got this big nightstick. It's really, really big and really, really heavy and He's gonna He's gonna hurt you with it when you mess up and He's just waiting for you to mess up so that He can smack you down. Well, that's not the image of Jesus that we see here in this picture, is it? He's one who is sympathizing with us in our weaknesses. Jesus is not like that. He doesn't sit there and then nitpick about the way that you are, telling you, well, you know, if you had just done this or if you had just done that, well, then you would be my people. It's nothing like that. You know who does that to you? It's you. You do that to yourself. That's who does that to you. You see, Jesus sympathizes with us. And not like we're just His servants, although, I mean, it's right to think of us as His servants. Even, you know, we could rightly think of that, but He does it as our friend, John 15, 14 says. He sympathizes with us. with a sympathy that is like the friend of Proverbs 18.24, one who sticks closer than a brother. Or Hebrews 2.11 and 17, what does it call Jesus? There, he calls him our brother. He's not ashamed to call us brothers. And as our brother, he's able to be our faithful high priest. Jesus sympathizes with us, actually. as one who is even rightly to be called our husband. And remember, us married men here, us husbands, are not the image of what husbandry is and so all the wives can say amen then. Because we're talking about the perfect husband here. We're talking about Jesus. to a very imperfect bride, the church. A husband who actually perfectly fulfills what Ephesians 5 says, That's the kind of sympathy that we have with Jesus. We have the sympathy of a husband who gave himself up for us. Jesus Christ, he's touched with our weaknesses. Not as if we are strangers that he pities from a distance. but as those who are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and closest to his heart. And the Apostle says, By the way, this is the second time the Apostle has kind of floated out this idea. He's made this point, remember, if you turn back to Hebrews 2, or you might have to turn back, it's on the same page for me, verse 18 in chapter 2. So we see this idea back in 217 as well. He had to be made like his brothers in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God. So the Apostle tells us again, he says, Now right away when we hear that, we're thinking, we might actually push back against what the Apostle is saying, the validity of it. I mean, You know, Jesus was never tempted to commit wire fraud online, right? He was never tempted to look at pornography on a cell phone. Jesus was never tempted to do this or that. We could fill in the blank and then we try to put it in some sort of cultural context. But that's not the point here. What's being said, what's relevant really for us to understand, is that Jesus, in every respect, that is, he was met with every category of temptation that we might experience as human beings. Not every specific thing that a person can be faced with, but categorically, every kind. And the Lord Jesus Christ encountered the full reality and full extent of every outward temptation that could come upon humanity. There's not any temptation from without that you can say to our Lord Jesus, or that Jesus would say, I'm absolutely thoroughly and completely unfamiliar with how to deal with this. The text tells us there's a fullness to the span and the scope of what Jesus was confronted with. But it turns around and it says, and this is the great and glorious thing, this is the most important thing to understand, it says that yet he was without sin in all of it. Much different than us. Now this, sometimes what we think, we sometimes think, first of all, We regulate Jesus' temptation to that very well-known, that very famous scenario in Matthew 4, right? Where he's being tempted by the devil. He's led by the Spirit, even, to the wilderness to face his temptation. And that would be fundamentally wrong to think that is the only temptation that Jesus endured. That was a very important matter. We're seeing in that temptation the superiority of Jesus over Adam, how the Lord would, with strength, resist the devil, unlike Adam did in the garden, as well as how he would be faithful to the Father in the wilderness, why we need him in the wilderness, because we're not faithful like that. But what we should also know is that Jesus was tempted and tried and tested throughout the entirety of the Incarnation. And as the Apostle reminds us here, that in the whole period of that Incarnation, he was without sin. He was completely sinless. His whole life. And sometimes we just think that Jesus walked through this world and because He's the Son of God, He was untouched by this fallen world around Him and He never actually knew what it was like to be a person who struggles with sin all around Him. He didn't struggle with sin in Him, but He did with sin all around Him. And it's as if because Jesus is God, sometimes we think that He walked around with this holy bubble around Him so that nothing ever got close to Him, nothing ever could bother Him. And that's not the picture that we have of our Lord Jesus here in Scripture. The picture is that we have of Jesus Christ, that He had to use all of His resources in order to resist and repel every temptation. And I'll tell you, it's profoundly wrong for us to think that somehow He overcame them, that He didn't suffer under the full extent of them as well. Just the opposite is true. Remember, 2.18 says that He Himself suffered when tempted and He's therefore able to help those who are being tempted. Able to suffer. That's because He's a true man. and he suffered against these temptations, but never once did he sin in that. One commentator puts it like this, You understand that, right? It's much more difficult to resist temptation than it is to just give in to it. You've probably been there before. You're dealing with temptation and you just give in to it just to get rid of it. Jesus never gave in to it. He always withstood. When you don't resist, when you give in, no matter at what point you give in, you're not feeling it to its fullest extent. Jesus alone could say that he took all the devil through at him. All of it. And certainly there's not a single solitary soul in here that could say that we have taken all the devil has thrown at us. Only Jesus could say that. He could say he resisted it all. Because after all, Jesus is very God as well. He is very God and very man, truly God and true man. And Jesus resisted all those temptations as a man by the power of the Spirit, relying on the resources that were available to you and me every single day. The Bible teaches us that Jesus had a fully human but unfallen and uncorrupted nature. When the Apostle Paul in Romans 8 is talking about what the law could not do, God did by sending his own Son. And the Apostle says that he sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And the reason, God bless you, the reason the Apostle Paul says the likeness of sinful flesh is because Jesus was sent in the full reality of humanity apart from, just simply lacking any fallenness and corruption in that human nature. But the Lord, Jesus Christ, although unfallen in his human nature, he was nevertheless, as living in this fallen world, still really truly tempted. And he was tempted and tested in ways and depths that go beyond any singular one of us can even come close to knowing. He's truly human, but what he was doing as our great high priest was living and experiencing for every one of the elect. when discussing Jesus' humanity and his, quote, temptations, it's natural to ask at that point, you know, could Jesus have sinned in his earthly ministry? Could he have done it? You know, he's a true man. Could he have gave in to temptation? In fact, you know, if he was truly human and like us in every way, as the Apostle in Hebrews says more than once, and He was tempted in every respect, then perhaps it's the case that He experienced temptations to sin just like every human from within. So the question becomes then, in light of 2.18 of 4.15, is could Jesus then have sinned? Did He, being who He was, have the potential to sin? And some would answer this question, yes. Some believing people would answer, yes. But I don't think that Jesus could have sinned. And to say that he could have, possibly, I think doesn't do justice to the biblical narrative. What the Word teaches us, in fact, is what we would call the doctrine of impeccability. That Jesus is impeccable. That is, he's unable to sin. And we should affirm his impeccability, his inability to sin, in light of him being truly tempted. And so four reasons for this. Number one, Jesus is never shown in Scripture to struggle with whether or not to sin. He never has to struggle like that. When he's tempted in Matthew 4 by Satan, you get no hint that he is wrestling with how to respond. Rather, he quotes Scripture, he refutes Satan, and then he tells Satan to go on your way. Go kick rocks. And yes, Of course, Jesus feels hunger. He feels fatigue. He experiences grief and joy. Yes, you know, for example, in the Garden of Gethsemane, we even sang about that in one of our songs today. He feels the weight of preparing to bear God's wrath on the cross. Yes. Satan brought external temptations to him, so he experiences temptation, but he does not appear to wrestle with fallen desires like we do. In other words, because his nature is not fallen, he doesn't have disordered inward desires for things that are sinful. So again, never once does the Bible indicate that Jesus has any other desire or any other purpose in his life but to do the Father's will and therefore go steadfastly to the cross. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, where some have said he must be experiencing doubt or resignation, he immediately submits to the Father's will, Matthew 26, verse 39. Hebrews 12, we'll see, he says, for the joy set before me. I endure the cross. In John 10, He says, He knows His purpose and He has joy in it, even though His suffering. There is no wavering, there is no inward struggle to sin, but He overcomes all temptation without sinning by the power of the Spirit in Him. Secondly, the promise of God will always come to pass. That affects how we think of Jesus being able to sin. You must remember that massive promise from Genesis 3.15 on that God would send a deliverer. God who keeps his promises and knows the beginning from the end, who created time and space itself, already knows the future. He knows the future because he's decreed the future. And nothing happens apart from his counsel. We never get any sense in that that we're going to be crossing our fingers whether or not the coming Messiah would save us. Scriptures must be fulfilled, Jesus says in Matthew 26. So for the father to send his son and then to have to play like some game of chicken, will he withhold? Will he not withhold? Can he hold off his temptation to sin long enough to save us? Well, that just doesn't fit with the biblical storyline. We don't need or even expect a good moralist. What we needed was a deliverer from God who would be the God-man and therefore unable to sin because even though he was true man, he was already and rightly affirmed as a divine person and true God. That brings us to number three. Jesus has both divine knowledge and unparalleled prophetic human knowledge. The biblical testimony, friends, tells us that Jesus knows our thoughts. He reads minds on a couple of occasions in the gospel accounts. He searches hearts. He knows the genuineness of people's faith. So many examples of that. This means at the very least, the Lord Jesus was more acquainted with the depth of human sin and the corruption and the deceitfulness of it than any of us ever will be. And if you or I are aware of and repulsed even by the depths of sin within ourselves and others, well then how much more then would the Son of God be? He knows better than anyone who's ever lived the extensive depravity. And because that is true, one, Or two, any temptation he theoretically would have faced would have been immediately out of the question. There wouldn't have been an attractiveness for it to him because he was pure, unlike us. And third, because any temptation to Jesus would have come to him from outside him, he would have already have been far ahead in anything that might come to tempt him. So just think that is true in all of his interactions in the Gospels, right? He's never caught off guard. Nobody ever is able to catch him unprepared. Never once does that happen. He's always aware of what is going on. So there's therefore no way that some temptation could come to him and could have actually stumbled him because he's aware of what's going on at all times, even though he suffered under the weight of them. And then fourth, Jesus is, in fact, still God in the incarnation. If all else fails, remember this. In fact, this is probably what we should start with even, but Jesus is the Divine Son. He is morally then perfect and unable to sin. Yes, the Bible says there are some things that God cannot do. We are okay with that, right? For example, the Bible says God cannot be tempted. James 1.13. God cannot lie, Titus 1.2. So Jesus is God and truly obedient then. He has two natures caught up in the one divine person, which means he doesn't have misguided and disordered fallen desires like you or I do. His humanity doesn't weaken his divinity. Rather, Professor Brandon Smith says that it might be better to say that his divinity sanctifies or strengthens his humanity. And so when Jesus takes on flesh in the incarnation, which was necessary for him to do for his work of atonement in being our great high priest, he is still that same divine person that he was before the Incarnation and therefore unable to sin. Impeccable. When the eternal Son of God took on flesh and dwelt among us so that he could undo everything that Adam did, everything that we have done, there was never any doubt that he would fail. There was never like a plan B in the works. This was the plan of God, to be fulfilled through and in Jesus. The idea that Jesus desired to sin or struggled with sin or whether or not he should do it, it's just simply, it's just not a biblical idea. It's importing our own ideas and our own logic back onto Christ. You see, it's not true to say that Jesus' temptations, for them to be real, He had to desire sin. Because doing that is to import our own ideas onto the biblical text. We should instead recognize that Jesus endured all the frailty of humanity, every weakness of humanity, and died for our sins, and bore the wrath of God, and did it all with joy and without sin, as Hebrews 4.15 tells us. Yet without sin is a half sentence that carries so much weight. And since He suffered to the point of death and never broke under that, we should be trying to suffer faithfully like Him, not thinking that He has to suffer like we do. You see, we suffer under temptation because there's part of us, in each and every one of us, that desires that sinful thing. But the Lord Jesus, He suffered only because of the offense of the sin was before Him in a way that we just barely understand. He had no inward desire to sin. You see, Jesus is truly human, but He's not merely human. He is the God-Man, the one who is truly human and what humanity was created to be. Faithful, obedient, and in alignment with God's will to be truly human, church. is to be like Jesus was in his humanity. Not like ourselves right now. We are internally divided, we are fickle, we are even wicked. But the good news is that God came and became man to do everything that we could not. And he is the pioneer then of our faith as we read earlier in Hebrews 3. The true faithful human. What his obedience and faithfulness was like in this age even, that's what ours will be like in the age to come. And so in other words, as Jesus Christ moved throughout this world, no, He did not have temptations that came from within him. He did not have disordered desires. He did not have a fallen or corrupt nature. But he was completely impacted by the sin that was just ever all around him. Impacted by it in ways and depths that we just can't understand because we never resist to the level that he resists. As holy, the holy, spotless, sinless Son of God moved among the people, who used God's name in vain, who used vulgar and filthy language and talked about things and did things, it affected him in ways that I can guarantee have never, ever, ever affected any one of us. We are so low on the holiness scale that often we are under-responding to the wickedness that exists in this world, to the wickedness that sometimes we even just joke about. But the Lord Jesus, He's tempted, He's tested in all ways, and yet was without sin never once. Without sin in thought or emotion, word or deed. And so the question is, in the situation that our Lord Jesus found Himself in, did He ever cross the line in sin? And the reverberating testimony of all of Scripture is that in totally every single way He was innocent, undefiled, and therefore in a position to mediate for us as sinners. He committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. Jesus did that which you and I could never have even dreamed of. He perfectly resisted every temptation. And so we have a great high priest who is fully able to sympathize with our weaknesses. He can do so. He's able to do so because he withstood the full brunt of every category of temptation and he stood it in the fullest ferocity of the devil's best against him. And so we have a great high priest, friends, and he is ours. His office, his functions, his ministry, they weren't for him. They're for us. They're for His church, His people. God didn't need a priest. We needed a priest. What He is, He is for us. The Father appointed Him as Great High Priest for our benefit and He is ours. And so the question then is, is He yours? Is He your Great High Priest? Here's the glorious news of the Gospel, friends. He's yours for the taking. Will you take him? Will you receive him? Whether you're 10 or you're 20 or you're 85 years old, he is yours for the taking. Do you want him? Well then receive him. And furthermore, he is able to fully and completely sympathize with our weaknesses. You know what that means? This means that you or I, that we could never ever, when you are his his brother, his sister, his bride as the church. And we understand that he's our great high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. It means that we can never, ever, ever, ever say without any integrity, that is, well, why does God let me suffer? We can never, ever say with one ounce of righteousness, Well, if God loved me, he would never let, you know, fill in the blank, me suffer, so-and-so die, struggle with sin, feel these feelings, be in this condition, battle this disease. Why? Because God turns around in that time. and he sympathizes with us and our weaknesses and he says, he says, look, look to my son. Look at him suffering. Look at him not only suffering what you suffer, but suffering with your sufferings. And He's not sinful and stained like us. He's an innocent and righteous person, perfect in every way, and He is all of that. And what does He do? He enters into our suffering. He enters into our weaknesses, sympathizing with us, and He does it for us. And so the Father says, look at my son. Look at my son being tempted. Look at my son being tried. Look at my son being beaten. Look at my son being assaulted. Look at my son, abandoned by his friends. Look at my son, rejected. Look at my son, despised, forsaken. Look at my son, and it was all for you. Look at my son being beaten. Look at him being abandoned and rejected. Look at him. And we try to say, God, where are you as I suffer? God says, you turn around and you look at the cross. I'm not removed from your sufferings. I know them intimately. I've entered into your sufferings through my Son and your experience isn't cut off for me and my purposes. Christ is not such a high priest, such a great high priest, that he is removed from our sufferings and struggles and our trials and temptations. He's not so transcendent and so glorious and so majestic that he has no idea what it is that we're going through. He never sits in the heavens and he scoffs at us and says, oh you're such a loser. You're a failure and you should just give up. He knows the weariness of the wilderness that we're in and he's fully and completely able to sympathize with us. He knows, he understands, he cares. And best of all, his hands aren't tied. He's able to do something about it and he has done something about it. The Lord Jesus Christ is our all-sufficient Savior, friends. What in the world do you truly need that he cannot supply? What is it? What can you possibly be feeling or going through that somehow he's not able to understand? It's no wonder then that Jesus is identified as the friend of sinners. He's our sympathetic high priest. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we're so grateful for Christ's work of mediation for us. That in our great high priest, that he's not only transcendent and glorious and majestic and so much greater and better than us. Yes, of course, we confess that in every possible way. But also, Lord, we're so thankful to know that he sympathizes with us in our weaknesses. And that there's never a thing that we go through whatever it may be that He is unaware of or that He is not able to help us in. And so we ask, Lord, that You would encourage us in these truths, that You would reorientate our hearts to Your Gospel and to Your Word, that You would help us to be thankful that we have a great High Priest who loves us so greatly and is, at the same time, at Your right hand, living to make intercession for us. May You be forever exalted, and we pray that You would Always help us to see our present need for You, Lord. We know that there's not a single moment that goes by that we don't need You, yet we go by, in many single moments, not thinking that we need You. So help us to not do that, Lord. Help us to be fully satisfied in You and to grow in conformity to Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.