Part 9 “A Life That Points to Jesus”
Hebrews 6:20-7:28
Intro – the song we just sang was written by Michael W. Smith, a name familiar to many…he’s been a Christian singer/song-writer for many years now…has sold over 18 million albums, is a three time Grammy Award winner, has earned 40 Dove Awards, has had 14 gold albums, 5 platinum albums…just to mention some of his accomplishments… …suffice it to say in the Christian music world this guy is huge…
I want you to hear his testimony as he told it on the I Am Second website…video testimony…
The I Am Second movement was started by a Dallas-based Christian businessman for the purpose of reaching people for Christ through the honest stories of individuals who have discovered the joy and freedom of making Jesus Christ their number one, the Savior and Lord of their life…often through great suffering and challenges…
You can visit their website, iamsecond.com, to learn more about it and to hear dozens of inspiring testimonies of changed lives. Each testimony ends with the person giving their name and saying the phrase, “I am second.”
Is that something you could honestly say today? “My name is…and I am second…” Am I really? Am I willing to take myself off the throne of my life so the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords can take His rightful place as number one?
What all these “I Am Second” people are doing is using their lives to point to Jesus. By making Jesus Christ number one and placing themselves under His Lordship and rule, they are saying, “There is Someone Who is so important and valuable that He is worth surrendering to… He is worth following no matter what…
…He is so great that He deserves the number one spot in my heart and life…look at Jesus…look what He can do…He is better than anything else…He is Number One…”
And that captures the theme of Hebrews ch. 7, the next chapter in our series. Please open your Bibles there…
In ch.7, the writer of Hebrews tells an “I Am Second” story by introducing us to a person named Melchizedek… a relatively unknown but very important person in Biblical history…
And through Melchizedek’s “I Am Second” story, we will learn that even someone as important as he is, his life is meant to point people to Jesus…the writer of Heb. will use the Melchizedek story to show us that even though he was a great high priest and an important king, he is second and Jesus is first: Jesus is the number one High Priest and King…
…prayer…read…6:20-7:4…
Getting to Know Melchizedek
-name means “king of righteousness”
-lived during the time of Abraham
-was a priest of God and King of Salem (Jerusalem)
-no record of his genealogy, birth or death (which has led some to mistakenly conclude that he was an angel or an preincarnate appearance of Christ)
…but it simply means his genealogy wasn’t recorded, so it appears that he has no beginning or end…but in that way he is a picture of Christ’s eternal priesthood…
-blessed Abraham after a military victory
-received a tithe from Abraham’s plunder
Gen. 14:18-20
…this was the battle recorded in Gen 14:18-20 in which Abraham and only 318 trained men went against an army of 4 kings who had plundered Sodom and Gomorrah and taken Abraham’s nephew Lot captive along with all his possessions…
-upon his victorious return, Melchizedek comes out to meet Abraham, blesses him and receives from Abraham a tenth of all the plunder as a tithe…
…clearly showing that Melchizedek is greater than Abraham, which is saying a lot!
-only mentioned three times in the Bible
(Heb. 5,7; Gen 14; Ps 110:4)
Might think it strange that someone this important in Biblical history would be so obscure and unknown. But that’s the point. It’s not Melchizedek we want to be enamored with; we want his life to point us to Jesus so we become enamored with Him…
Melchizedek Points to Jesus
Now the reason the writer of Heb. brings up the person Melchizedek is because he is a symbol and picture of Christ…he is someone who points to Jesus, the better and final and permanent High Priest who is yet to come…
…while Melchizedek was an important high priest and king, he wasn’t number one; his life points to the true number one, the Lord Jesus Christ…
And that is what the writer is doing in this whole chapter.
He makes the point that Jesus is better than the priesthood of Melchizedek…and Jesus is also better than the Levitical priesthood. The big picture the writer is trying to give us is that Jesus Christ has come to fulfill and put an end to the OT priestly system and to orient all attention on Himself while He ministers to us in heaven.
We have a great High Priest, Jesus Christ, who came into the world as the Son of God, lived a sinless life, offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin, rose to everlasting life at the right hand of the majesty of God, and there loves us and prays for us and invites us to draw near to God through Him. He did not come to fit into the old system of priestly sacrifices. He came to fulfill them and end them.
Jesus Christ is number one; the best and final High Priest. And if we drop down to v.23, we see where the writer is going with this whole contrast of Jesus and the OT priesthood…
…read 23-28…
Once again, the writer is driving home his purpose in writing this letter: He wants us to marvel at the superiority of the priesthood of Jesus over the Old Testament priesthood that He came to replace. And by so doing, he is urging his readers to stick with Jesus; don’t give up on this superior High Priest by going back to a system that is merely a shadow of the real thing…
Look again at the Jesus to whom Melchizedek’s life points and our life can point to if we make Him number one…
Jesus, our Great High Priest Is:
1) eternal, a permanent priesthood v.24
-“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” 13:8
2) able to save completely v.25
-Jesus offers a compete salvation…nothing more needs to be added to it, it’s not Jesus and, Jesus plus…it’s Jesus alone
…no good works, no effort to prove ourselves…no self-righteousness…no need to clean up our act before we come to God…
-also no matter what a person has done, no matter how horrible their sin is…no sin is too great for Jesus’ salvation…no sinner is beyond the reach of God’s saving grace…
3) praying for us v.25
-He always lives to intercede for you and I…for anyone who comes to God through Him…
-we’ve been learning this throughout the book of Heb…how kind and compassionate our Great High Priest is…
…how He invites us to “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need…” 4:16
-have you got things in your life that need prayer? Who doesn’t! Jesus is praying for you right now! join Him!
Just like the OT priests did, but in a far superior way, Jesus represents us before God the Father, interceding for us, advocating for us, looking after our interests and needs, presenting our requests to the Father…and since God the Father is pleased with Jesus, the Father is pleased with us…and the Father is pleased to answer Jesus’ requests on our behalf…
Jesus is talking to the Father right now about you…
4) holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens v.26
-no wonder Jesus is the perfect, final, great High Priest…no wonder He’s Number One…there’s no one else like Him…
5) He made the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for sins v.27
-on the cross of Calvary…
A Life That Points to Jesus
This is the Jesus to whom our life can point…So let’s get as practical as we possibly can and ask ourselves, “What would it look like for my life to point to Jesus?”
It would look like a life, which, through actions and words, reflects Jesus to the people around us…
So, since Jesus is:
a. eternal – we focus less on temporal things (possessions, money, human accomplishments, etc.) and focus more on eternal things (getting to know Jesus, living out kingdom values: serving, loving, praying, mercy, generosity, justice…)
** reaching out to the lost…eg leadership retreat…
Since Jesus is:
b. able to save completely – we gain the assurance that comes from knowing Jesus has done it all for our salvation…and out of that security, gratitude, we tell that message to the people in our lives who have not yet found Christ’s complete salvation…
Since Jesus is:
c. praying for us – we talk to Him about our needs…every single one of them…as our first response and not a last minute help if all our other sources of help fall through…
…and we do that for all the people’s needs that we know about…intercede on behalf of others along with Jesus…
-we pray for others, with others…
Since Jesus is:
d. holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners – we strive to live a holy life that reflects who Jesus is to this dark and evil world…more than ever, these are the days where simple obedience and walking in the light of God’s truth shouts to a world that celebrates sin and mocks righteousness…
eg. War Room review in paper…
…but deep down when people see you and I taking a stand for truth and not giving in to sin and compromise, they respect that and want to know why we’re not like everyone else…
-you point to Jesus when you’re not afraid to speak about your convictions and stand up for them publicly…
Since Jesus is:
e. the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for sins – we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice…holy and acceptable to Him…we willingly lay down our lives in order to sacrifice for others, serve and love others…be a living demonstration of a Savior who sacrificed Himself so others could live…
eg. with the poor, needy, foreigner, new-comer to Canada, refugees, homeless, outcast, those hard to love…
That’s only part of what it could look like to for our lives to point to Jesus…in our actions and words…
John The Baptist’s I Am Second Story
One other person in the Bible that I’ll quickly mention who’s I Am Second Story resonates with so many of us is John the Baptist, when he said in…
Jn 3:30 He must become greater; I must become less.”
If you want to make Jesus number one and take yourself off the throne of your life, then this is the verse you need to constantly pray…
Repentance Prepares the Way
If we’re really going to live a life that points to Jesus, we will have to look at the ways our life points to ourselves as number one… the ways our life points away from Jesus…
-and we’re going to need to repent of those things that have obscured Jesus in our life…have hidden Him…pushed Jesus way down the list of priorities in our lives…
-and choose once again to give Him top spot; make Him Lord and King of our lives…number one…
-perhaps today you need to do an honest evaluation of where your life is at…and a re-ordering of your values and priorities…
…so you too can have an “I Am Second” story…a life that points people to Jesus…
-take some time right now to talk to Jesus about Him becoming greater and you becoming less…
Response…Prayer…Worship…