Hebrews: The New Covenant Administration of Christ Max A Forsythe (c) Anno Domini 2002

From the Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Presbyterian Church in America

“Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him.”

Introduction:  In this, our fourth division in the text of the book of Hebrews  we begin a new theme and that is the superiority of Jesus Christ to both Moses and Aaron.  Now let us sympathize with the Jewish people of that day and time, because this idea is just as radical for the Old Covenant believers as some who presume today, on less godly, less scholarly and less orthodox themes  that Paul especially as well as the other Apostles missed every truth about Christ and went on to fabricate a “new” religion upon the fantasy of their fictional delusions!

I am not making this up  since I have had to contend with such progressive radicalism early in my career, and ever and anew there are spurious theologians whose very inventiveness in religious themes seems to assemble greater and greater audiences for the consumption of those whose religious palette is so easily tickled in every time and place.

And the tragedy of contemporary heresies in this matter is that they would argue against the very spiritual themes used by the Apostle here to demonstrate the biblical and doctrinal evidence for the Godhead’s presence in and through the very person of our Lord Christ Jesus!

If the contemporary liberalism in this matter be believed  than Jesus of Nazareth is nothing more than just another teacher who realized some minimal immortality because of the mere wisdom of his words.  Even a majority of the Jewish community today would be content with such a minimal assessment.  So too would the Mohammedan cultists agree  and in that unwholesome theology  the three great world religions could eventually agree and reach some consensual syncretism.

But that is not our purpose here this morning to compromise every distinctive doctrine that sets the Church of Christ apart!  We are convinced that the Apostles spoke the very truth of God when they shocked and swayed the world of their day with the revelations given to them by and through Jesus Christ!  And one of the revelations given in this impressive survey of the New Testament doctrine is the fact that:  here, in the person of Christ is “One greater than Moses!”

John Brown begins his chapter on this subject in these solemn words:  “In that illustrious assemblage of great and good men with whom the Old Testament Scriptures make us acquainted, there is none who has higher claims on our attentive consideration than Moses, the legislator of Israel.”

Nevertheless, Moses was only a man among men!  But what a man of greatness he was in all that he accomplished within the kind providential purposes of the One Creator God!  And given the theme of Hebrews to this point that Christ is more than the angelic messengers, we should not be surprised to continue in that vein to learn that He is superior to every messenger  human as well as those who were other worldly!

Development:  “Therefore, holy brothers,” our Apostle begins, and then he immediately qualifies just who those brethren are: “you who share in a heavenly calling” The appellation here demonstrates the limited audience to whom the Apostle is writing.  It is to the Church of the living God that the Apostle is writing  the very ones who know and appreciate the truths and doctrines being revealed for the spiritual benefit of Christ’s Church.  This is not a letter to every Thomas, Richard and Harold in every clime and place, but only to those who have been empowered to believe. 

“Holy brothers” implicitly limits the audience to those as F.F. Bruce describes as having “the dignity with which God has invested them, a dignity which it would be insulting to God for them to treat lightly.  Two common New Testament designations of Christians are joined together in the phrase “holy brethren, while the insistence on the heavenly character of their calling marks them out as citizens of a realm not circumscribed by the conditions of earthly life.  They are set apart by God for Himself, made members of His family, and called to share in His eternal rest.”

During most of the nineties two-thirds of our Social Studies Department refused to acknowledge the then president as our very own!  Many arguments we had with our colleague who insisted that the position of the president imposed a loyalty beyond reasonable doubts.  Suddenly, after the election in 2000, the situation was reversed and she was wrestling with the implications that had driven her to support the very man the rest of us despised.  Graciously, we allowed that the current man in the White House didn’t have to be her president if she couldn’t in good conscience give him her affectionate allegiance. It remained an intolerable situation for her and she chose to ignore the implications of her political position.  Her political allegiance was sincere  but she couldn’t muster any affection for the momentary personage in the position of political power.

In a similar sense, not everyone is a citizen of the Kingdom of God because they will not give their affections over and beyond a generic allegiance to the concept of a God.  Certainly the conceptional God whom 90% of the public believes in is very different from the Lord and Savior we adore and worship.  And why is that?  Isn’t it because we all share “in a heavenly calling?” 

This is why the worldly cut and paste their favorite moral tales and passages encouraging implicit goodness into their mental scrapbooks, there to mix the scriptures with every odd assortment of emotional truth that can be found.

The very deity of Christ that gives us pause is totally absent from the modern “canon” and it is therefore less likely for those apart from the kingdom to stumble into it on their own recognizance, because the person of Christ is not to them whom He is to us!

Therefore, the next phrase in out text must be taken personally by those who have stood up in public and pledged their faith in the Son of God:”consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.” 

Did you notice an unusual phrase in that text concerning the person and position of our Lord?  The words I mean are these”  “apostle and high priest.”  I don’t hear those words in ongoing conversations, even within the church, do you?  “High Priest” of course is somewhat common when we talk of the mediator’s roll with Christ as our “Prophet  Priest  King,” but “apostle”; this is a strange description not common to our favorite texts.

F.F. Bruce explains this well:  “When Jesus is designated as ‘the apostle and high priest of our confession’, He is marked out as being both God’s representative among men and men’s representative in the presence of God.  The Old Testament writings tell the story of God’s self-revelation to man and man’s response to that revelation; in both respects these writings find their fulfillment in Jesus.”

The Apostles of Christ’s Church, as we know them  were only considered as such on the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Before the crucifixion and in his presence  they were simply disciples who were learning about the Lord and all His works and ways.  To them, on His ascension they were charged to speak prophetically all that they had learned.  And from that time until their death  they were known as Apostles.  And yet, because they were the only generation of church leaders to be called and taught by God Himself, none that have followed after them in the same calling have appropriated the self-same title, even though the ongoing office of elder dates from the Old Covenant and extends into the New Covenant Church.

But, I digress from the impact of the terminology here in the text, and must return to the self same theme of the original address just as the Apostle Peter outlines it in another place: “but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2: 9)

Application:  In returning back to the beginning of our second phrase, we are struck with the admonition to “consider Jesus.”  I am inclined to think that the commentator John Brown was a Sovereign Grace type of Baptist, since at this point in his commentary he gives an invitation to the reader to do just that:  “consider Jesus” who by our own confessions was “apostle and high priest!”

Well, why should we consider Him?  Let us consider the third and last point in our text for today, a phrase that describes the work of our Lord Jesus:  “who was faithful to him who appointed him.”

This means that Jesus was an honorable messenger who fulfilled exactly the high calling of His earthly ministry.  I am reminded of the American constitutional practice of the granting of commissions to officers in our various branches of the military.  Since the time of the revolution  they have received from Congress a granted commission as officers and gentlemen to prove their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America.  This week as I watched the news  I read that several of those men gave the full price of their devotion to our Constitution and American way of life.  They voluntarily gave up their lives for the cause, along with a handful of soldiers, sailors and marines under their care and guidance.  Our Republic still honors those who have given the full measure of devotion. 

But, in a much higher sense, Jesus Christ did exactly fulfill the commission given to Him by the Father and in the intense spiritual warfare of that time  He too gave up His life for all of those who are being called into His own Church!  That is why we should consider Him superior not only to the angels but even to the person of Moses and superior to our own Confessions and Creeds which exist merely to point to the far greater glory of Him  who died on the cross that we might live with Him forever.  So to each of you as this text is directly addressed, I would ask you personally: please, consider Him: this morning and every day you draw breath as your very own “apostle and high priest, who was faithful to him who appointed him.”  Amen.