Hebrews Chapter 5
By
Jim Bomkamp
1. VS 5:1 - “5:1 For every high priest taken
from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in
order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins;” - Men are appointed as high priests in things
pertaining to God
1.1.
This verse shows us what the
Aaronic or Levitical priesthood existed for:
"in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and
sacrifices for sin."
1.2.
God is displeased with men
on account of their sin and cannot have fellowship with men until the sin issue
is dealt with vicariously, by someone else on their behalf.
1.3.
The ministry of the high
priest is to mediate between God and man the application of a vicarious
sacrifice.
1.4.
It has been pointed out that
in the garden of Eden that the Lord began immediately to require sacrifice for
sins, in fact He (God) Himself sacrificed an animal and clothed Adam and Eve
who suddenly found themselves to be naked.
This “blood sacrifice” was later initiated by Abel. However, Cain slew Abel in jealousy because
his grain offering was not acceptable to God.
1.5.
The scripture says,
"without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."
1.6.
These sacrifices for sin
were temporary coverings for sin which looked forward to that point in time
when the lamb of God should once and for all take away all of the sins of the
world.
2. VS 5:2 - “2 he can
deal gently with the ignorant and misguided, since he himself also is beset
with weakness;” - High priests have the ability to deal gently
with ignorant and misguided people because they themselves have the same
weaknesses
2.1.
In the Bible all sin is
represented as the result of "ignorance," albeit blamable
ignorance. Every sin shows a lack of the
knowledge of the truth, as well as the lack of true wisdom.
2.2.
Every sinner is a fool. Every sinner is a "misguided"
person as well.
2.3.
A faithful high priest must
be able to deal gently with men who are ignorant and misguided.
2.4.
The word
"infirmity" or "weakness" which speaks of sinful weakness
of the flesh, is used here to describe the Jewish high priests, and, is what
enables them to be gentle with other sinners.
2.5.
God has indeed done
everything to assure us that, with such a High Priest as Jesus, no sin of
ignorance or of error need make us afraid of not finding the way to Him and His
love.
2.6.
We shouldn’t ever hesitate
to come to Jesus our High Priest because Jesus will care for us - He bears
gently with the ignorant and erring."
In reference to this verse, one has written, "Have we not, in
our faith in the priesthood of Christ, been too much in the habit of looking
more at His work than at His heart?"
2.7.
What do you imagine that
God’s heart for you is like? In Matt.
11:28-30, Jesus revealed His heart for you when He said, “28 “Come to Me, all
who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “Take My yoke upon
you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find
rest for your souls. 30 “For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.”
3. VS 5:3 - “3 and because
of it he is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins, as for the people, so also
for himself.” - Because of his own weaknesses high priests
offer sacrifices not only for the people but also for themselves
3.1.
The Jewish high priest as a
fellow sinner must also offer sacrifices for his sins in the same way he offers
sacrifices for the sins of others.
3.2.
The Jewish high priests had
to be cleansed from their own uncleanness and brought into proper relation to
God, and thus thus they could relate in a most personal way with sinners and
their plight.
3.3.
Jesus is never hindered from
being able to mediate for men to God because of blockage caused by His own sin,
for He is and has always been sinless.
4. VS 5:4 - “4 And no one
takes the honor to himself, but receives it when he is called by God, even as
Aaron was.” - High priests are called by God just as Aaron
was called by God as high priest
4.1.
Aaron had a divine call (see
Exod. 28) and so also his sons. The high-priesthood was by a divine
appointment fixed in his family.
4.2.
Not only were Aaron and his
sons "called of God" to the office of the high-priesthood, but all
others, even of the tribe of Levi, were debarred from interfering or sharing
with them the priesthood’s peculiar functions and honors.
4.3.
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,
with two hundred and fifty of their associates were miraculously destroyed for
presumptuously attempting to intrude into high priesthood; and, fourteen thousand seven hundred of the
children of
4.4.
There are also several other
Old Testament examples of men and women who took authority not given to them by
God, who were punished for their actions, including even Miriam and Aaron.
4.5.
The principle on which the
necessity of a divine call to the legitimate exercise of the priesthood rests
is an obvious one. It depends entirely
on the will of God whether He will accept their services and pardon the sins of
men. Supposing that it is His will to do
so, it belongs to the Lord to appoint everything in reference to the manner in
which this is to be accomplished.
4.6.
Man cannot forge a path to
God and find Him. The only path to God
is through His Son. We can and must come
to God through Jesus Christ.
4.7.
If we are people are to
minister we should be sure that we are called, otherwise Satan will eat us and
our ministries alive.
5. VS 5:5 - “5 So also
Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said
to Him, “Thou art My Son, Today I have
begotten Thee”” - Jesus Christ did not make Himself a high
priest on behalf of men, God the Father testified such of Him
5.1.
(QUOTE: “Psalm
2:7, “7 “I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.””).
5.2.
This verse teaches that
Christ took not this honor of being made our high-priest upon Himself, of His
own will, but God acknowledged Him as His Son in a sense which raises Him far
above all creatures, and thus God has constituted Him a high priest.
5.3.
It was God who gave Christ
this glory.
5.4.
Just think what this means
for us as people:
5.4.1. God counts it an honor for His Son to be the Priest of poor
sinners.
5.4.2. Jesus gave up His everlasting glory for the sake of this role, which He
now counts His highest glory - the honor of leading guilty men to God.
5.4.3. Every penitent cry for mercy, every prayer for more grace and nearer
access to God, He counts these His highest honor, the proofs of a glory He has
received from His Father, above the glory of sonship, or rather the opening up
of the fullness of glory which His sonship contained.
5.5.
If God gave Jesus glory in
order for Him to be our High Priest, since He thinks this is such an important
and worthy task for Him, will He not also hear us if we will cry out to Him for
help and mercy?
6. VS 5:6 - “6 just as He
says also in another passage, “Thou art a priest forever according to the order
of Melchizedek.”” - The scripture teaches that Jesus is a priest
forever according to the order of Melchizedek
6.1.
Jews surely wondered where
Jesus’ priesthood, that which we know surpassed their own, originated? Where came His authority?
6.2.
(QUOTE: Psalm 110:4, “4 The Lord has sworn and will not change His
mind, “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.””).
6.3.
This Psalm, considered by
Jew and Christian alike as Messianic, is given to us by inspiration of God and
declares that the Messiah shall be a priest forever, according to the order or
type of Melchizedek. Thus, Christ was
not appointed by man but by God as were the Aaronic priests. However, Christ was appointed in a special
superior manner than were the Aaronic priests, since He was God's only unique
Son of God.
6.4.
See verse 10 for discussion
on the meaning of this priesthood according to Melchizidek.
7. VS 5:7 - “7 In the
days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud
crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard
because of His piety.” - Jesus prior to His death upon the cross
offered up prayers with loud crying and tears, and the Lord heard Him because
of His piety
7.1.
This verse refers to the
7.1.1. One author has suggested that in the
7.1.2. Others have said that Jesus was pleading that He would not have to be
crucified on the cross.
7.1.3. One has said that the horror of the Cross to Christ was not in the
physical pain, as difficult as that suffering must have been, but in that He
who was holy, who hated sin, seeing all of its ugliness, who had known no sin,
was made to be sin on our behalf.
7.1.4. Some have said that this verse refers to the prayers offered upon the
Cross itself, as when Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me?”
7.1.5. However, the phrase "in the days of his flesh" seems to imply
that this verse refers to the entire length of His humiliation on earth.
7.2.
The phrase "He was
heard because of His piety" shows that God always heard Christ's prayers
(even those in the garden of
7.2.1. For as Christians it is also the fact that the Lord only promises to
answer our prayers when we are walking in obedience to His word, as 1 John 3:22
tells us, “22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him,
because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His
sight.”
7.3.
Since we can see from this
verse more of why Jesus is able to sympathize with us in our trials and
temptations, we should come to Him in our times of spiritual need because He
knows what we’re going through and He can and will sympathize with us.
8. VS 5:8 - “8 Although
He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” - Jesus learned obedience from
the things that He suffered
8.1.
When it is said of a person
that, "he learned obedience by the things which he suffered," the
idea naturally suggested is that of a person previously rebellious toward
obedience, but disciplined into it by sufferings to which he is exposed in
consequence of disobedience.
8.2.
It is our depravity, our
pride, and our desire of independence, which makes obedience a painful
thing.
8.3.
However, these principles
did not exist in the mind of our Lord. When
it says of Him that He learned obedience, the meaning is, He became
experimentally acquainted with obedience - He obeyed.
8.3.1. Jesus’ obedience then is the obedience in the character of a high
priest - the doing of all God required of Him in order to gain the atonement of
our guilt, and the salvation of man.
8.3.2. The commandment to Him from God was that He was to lay down His life
for us, and for this He became obedient unto death, even death upon a cross.
8.4.
We need to realize that if
we are Christians that we have entered into a walk of obedience and we must
walk obedient to all He wants us to do.
If we are not willing to walk in obedience to Christ, then we probably
haven’t yet come to a salvation experience with Christ as of yet...
9. VS 5:9 - “9 And having
been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal
salvation,” - Jesus, being made perfect, became to all who
would obey Him the source of eternal salvation
9.1.
During the whole of Jesus’
humbled state, from His cradle to His tomb, from
9.2.
Jesus’ "being made
perfect" though refers to His having obtained every necessary
qualification to become the source of eternal life through death on the
cross. His obedience unto death secured
every qualification for this, and so he was made perfect.
9.3.
Salvation is given as it
says here to those who obey God, as Jesus said "those who do My will,
the same will be saved" (Matt. 7:21-23).
9.4.
Christ came to be a High
Priest, to bring men to God to walk in that very same way of obedience and
self-sacrifice in which He drew near to God.
God justifies the ungodly, those who are willing to repent, but
repentance is a return to obedience. And
without repentance there can be no true faith.
9.5.
Justification, and the faith
by which it comes, are for the sake of obedience, as means to an end. They point men to Christ, and the salvation
which is to be found in union with Him.
He has no salvation but for them that obey Him.
9.6.
Jesus Himself said that the
Father would give the Holy Spirit, that is salvation as it is perfected in
Christ in heaven, to them that obey Him.
To such would He manifest Himself;
with such would the Father and He dwell.
9.7.
Are you saved? Then, you will obey God...
10.
VS 5:10 - “10 being designated by God as a
high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” - Jesus was designated by God to be a high
priest according to the order of Melchizedek
10.1.
It was certainly in the mind
of a Jew to question where Christ might have gained His high-priestly
authority, and to this end the author must have sought to establish the
validity of Christ's priesthood.
10.2.
Likewise, in the church
there has been much controversy about what the scripture’s prophetic word of Christ
having been designated a high priest according to the order or type of
Melchizedek signifies:
10.2.1.
The most prominent view has
been that Christ was like Melchizedek in that he was a man who came out of no
where, of whom nothing is really known except for a couple of verses in chapter
14 of Genesis, however, he was obviously sent from Heaven since Abraham
immediately recognized Him as a high priest and gave him 1/10th of all his
spoils. Heb. 7:3 says, “7:1 For this
Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham as he
was returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, 2 to whom also
Abraham apportioned a tenth part of all the spoils, was first of all, by the
translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem,
which is king of peace. 3 Without father, without mother, without genealogy,
having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God,
he abides a priest perpetually.”
10.2.2.
Some have said that the
significance is that Melchizedek was another manifestation of Christ in the
flesh like the appearances to Abraham and Lot in
10.2.3.
Others have said that the
significance consists in the fact that Christ's priesthood is superior to the
Aaronic priesthood, being according to the order of Melchizedek, because it
existed before the Aaronic priesthood.
10.3.
In any case, whichever view
one is to take concerning Christ’s priesthood being according to the order of
Melchizedek, God has established the validity of Christ's high-priesthood by
the prophetic word stating that He would exist forever as a high priest
according to the order of Melchizedek.
11.
VS 5:11-14 - “11 Concerning him we have much
to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for
someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you
have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of
milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But
solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained
to discern good and evil.” - The author has much more that he would like
to say about Jesus and His priesthood, however because of the readers dull
hearing all the reader is able to understand is the very A,B,Cs of the faith
11.1.
As the author is wishing to
continue on and explain much more of the redeeming aspects of Christ's superior
high-priesthood, being according to the order of Melchizedek, he is frustrated
because he knows that the Jewish brethren he is writing to are dull of hearing
and what he would share simply would not penetrate their hearts, and thus
produce any change in their lives.
11.2.
This is yet another warning
of the author in this epistle: that of
sloth or standing still, which prevents all progress in the Christian life, and
can lead to an entire falling away.
11.3.
The difficulty of
interpretation by the Jews described here, arose entirely out of the state of
the minds of the persons to whom the explanation was to be given. They were deficient both in the habit of
attention and in the degree of information which they were able to comprehend
and apply on this subject.
11.4.
What was even more
frustrating to the author was that they once had been attentive, but had
"become dull."
11.5.
The habit of spiritual
dullness of hearing not only prevents progress, but it absolutely produces
retrogression. The stagnant professing
Christian not only does not improve, but he "loses the things which had
been already wrought in him.”
11.6.
These Jewish Christians
should have been ready for meat of the Word, in fact given the amount of time
that they had been Christians, as well as their opportunities for learning the
word, they should have been teachers of God’s word. However, instead were now lacking in the
elementary principles of the Christian life.
They needed to be taught the spirituality of the religion of Christ, the
guilt and depravity of man, pardon through the atonement, sanctification by the
Spirit, etc.
11.7.
Spiritual things must be
spiritually discerned. Spiritual truth
can only be received by the spiritual mind, by a heart that thirsts for God and
sacrifices this world for the knowledge and enjoyment of the unseen world.
11.8.
These recipients are
compared to children who require milk for their food because their digestive
system has not been developed in such a way as to receive nourishment from
solid food. It is a healthy man who
though he likes the taste of milk, requires "meat" which is more
substantial in order to be properly nourished.
11.9.
One has written, "truth
is to the mind what food is to the body;
and, as the body, in different states, requires different kinds of
nourishment, so the mind, according to its capacities and attainments, requires
different modes of instruction."
11.10.
In verse 14, the mature
Christian is described as one who has his senses trained to discern good and
evil. A child would just as soon drink a
poison as water, but as a person grows from childhood into mature adulthood, he
can more easily discern that which is spoiled, rotten, poisonous, or of no
substance, from that which will fill him and stick to his ribs throughout his
whole day.
11.11.
There are stages of growth
in the Christian life, we all of every age begin as babes and cannot even at
first because of lack of skill feed ourselves.
Then, at some point through practice of what God teaches us, we proceed
into adolescence where we now can take care of our needs most of the time, but
need lots of supervision and guidance.
Then, finally we enter into mature adulthood, not in years but in
whole-heartedness of yielding all for God, where not only can we take care of
ourselves, but we are now able to start a family ourselves and meet the needs
of our own children, bringing them up in all the ways in which we have learned.
11.12.
The saying ‘Use it or lose
it” ought to be meditated upon by us Christians. If we aren’t growing and moving forward in
our Christian walk, then we are backsliding and in need of repentance, and, we
will lose what God has already shown us from His word.
11.12.1.
We must learn to “do” what
God’s word tells us to do when we hear it, be doers of God’s word not merely
hearers of it, just as we are commanded in James 1:23-25, “23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man
who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has
looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of
person he was. 25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the
law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer
but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.”
11.13.
Our capacity for entering
into the deeper truths to be unfolded does not depend on talent or study, or
natural genius of intellect, but on the tenderness with which our soul has
exercised itself in daily life in discerning good and evil. What we need is a holy sensitivity to the
Lord as well as a sensitivity to the least sin.
This will come about from the faithful use and exercise of the senses as
far as there was light, that is the spiritual sense or organ for spiritual
truth.
11.14.
Sadly, there are numbers of
Christians whose Christian life consists in always needing to learn the basic
truths central to the Christian walk.
11.15.
I received a newsletter a
few months back that greatly humbled me and helped me to gain a better
perspective on what it means to truly love God and His word.
This
newsletter was from a missions group who does missionary outreach to assist the
underground house churches in
The Chinese
brothers and sisters in these churches love God’s word and they can’t get
enough of it. They are so poor that they
have none of the things that we have as distractions in their lives and thus
they are constantly reading God’s word.
Few have their own Bibles so many people will share one Bible or parts
of a Bible.
In this one
house church a man traveled to them to preach God’s word to the people, however
the cave that they were meeting in only held 50 people and at least 300 showed
up to attend. They decided to have a
test to see who should be allowed to come in.
They decided that everyone who could quote the entire book of
Philippians by memory with less than 10 errors would be let in. The problem was that there were 68 of the 300
who passed this test.
There was also
one woman there outside of the cave who was about the age of 50 and she just
kept crying out, “Help me, help me!”
What she was crying out for help for was because she had failed the test
and she still wanted so badly to be able to be let in to hear the preaching of
the word.
11.16.
We need to apply effort not
only to know God’s Word for ourselves, but also to be able to teach it to
others.
11.17.
With some believers there is
no real longing for deliverance from the power of sin, and the great incentive
to the fuller knowledge of Jesus and His heavenly power is lacking.
11.18.
We Christians must first
learn to feed ourselves spiritually upon God’s Word each day. Then, we must begin to study God’s Word so
that we can skillfully use it in other people’s lives.
11.19.
Questions:
11.19.1.
Are you thinking always
about how you can help someone else in their walk with God, or are you only
consumed with your own needs and desires?
11.19.2.
Do you feel you need to come
to church or Bible study because God can use you to help someone else? Or, do you come or not based upon whether you
feel like coming?
11.19.3.
Given the amount of time
that you have been a Christian, as well as the resources that have been
available to you for studying and learning God’s word, where should you be at
this point in your walk with Christ and ministry with the church? What have you done with what you have as a
Christian?