Hebrews 5-6 (Melchizedek) | Reading the OT in the NT

Well, good morning everybody.
How are we doing?
I’m good.
I was doing better before I looked
at the forecast that said snow later this week.
That pulled my mood down a little bit, but I’m surviving.
It’s good.
Marsh just has a way of wanting to remind us winter’s not over yet.
Someday, somehow, it will end.
Well, okay.
Today,
we’re going to pivot.
I told you it was going to be more fun,
so I’m trying to keep my promise to you.
I’m curious,
how many of you all have heard the name Melchizedek before?
Oh, wow.
You’re all Melchizedek experts.
So what do we know about Melchizedek?
He’s kind of a high priest, right?
Right?
Does
anyone know how many stories in the Bible he appears in?
One.
Totaling about three verses.
So it won’t be hard for us to get through it.
What’s fascinating is,
I’m not going to tell you
what’s fascinating.
We’re going to discover what’s fascinating together.
Let’s do it.
Let’s jump into Melchizedek.
Genesis chapter 14 is where we find the great Melchizedek,
and this is fun.
It’s a fun story.
We’re going to back up just in context.
I’m not going to read this to you,
but what precedes this story, you might remember Lot is Abram’s nephew,
and they have this on-again-off-again
relationship kind of thing,
but Lot gets kidnapped by a band of marathas.
Another king
is trying to get some property and possessions,
and so he gets kidnapped.
Abram comes to his nephew’s rescue,
and immediately following that,
he’s successful.
He returns Lot and his possessions.
That’s in verse 16,
and so at the end of this military defeat,
Abram rescuing his nephew.
We begin here,
verse 17.
“After Abram returned from defeating Kettlemoor,
and the kings allied with
him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shavah.” That is the king’s valley.
“Then Melchizedek,
king of Salem,
brought out bread and wine.
He was priest of God Most High.”
Sorry, I have to turn my page.
“And he blessed Abram, saying,
‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
creator of heaven and earth,
and praise be to God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into
your hand.’ Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
The king of Sodom said to Abram,
‘Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.’ But Abram said to the king of Sodom,
with raised hand, ‘I have sworn an oath to the Lord God Most High,
creator of heaven and earth,
that I will accept nothing belonging to you,
not even a thread or the strap of a sandal,
so that you will never be able to say,
‘I made Abram rich.’ I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten,
and share what belongs to the men who went with me,
to Anna,
Eschyl, and Mamre.
Let them have their share.” Now what follows this is the very important part of this text,
where the Lord comes in and makes this eternal covenant with Abram,
which of course you know
extends throughout the rest of the story,
throughout into the New Testament,
the promise of God’s faithfulness to that covenant.
But we are focused here on Melchizedek, which
is fascinating because for the length of the story itself,
it gets a very disproportionate
level of interest in the history of Israel.
And part of that is because of how strange this story
is, because Melchizedek is both called a priest and a king.
And that may not seem that strange to
you, but in the culture and religion of Judaism throughout its entirety,
to this day,
the idea of someone being priest and king is not thought.
That’s not a thing that’s shared.
You have the Davidic-Kingly line.
Those two things are both important,
but they’re never combined.
And so the fact that Melchizedek is described as the king,
and that he’s also described as an eternal priest,
that is just odd.
And so if you look at Jewish literature,
if you look at the Jewish conversations around Melchizedek,
there’s always some version of trying to reconcile why would these two things be put together?
These are two things that do not go together.
So that’s interesting.
But then there’s also the modifier of the term priest,
which is how long you see the priest for?
Eternally.
What?
Who’s eternally a priest?
Because once you die,
you’re not priest anymore.
You’re not a bad person,
but you’re not functioning as priests.
Because remember,
a priest is by
definition the person in the middle.
The priest stands in between the people and their God.
That’s the role of the priest is standing in the middle of those two parties.
And so when you are no longer
living, you are no longer in between.
Someone else will serve that role and that function.
So how is Melchizedek an eternal priest?
Odd. Makes no sense.
So we see the plot thickened.
Let’s turn to Psalm 110.
Gotta love David.
David makes everything more interesting.
Psalm 110.
And we’re going to see a reflection.
This is hundreds, if not
a thousand years after the Genesis text.
We turn here to verse four.
“The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.
You are a priest forever in the order
of Melchizedek.” Weird and random.
David doesn’t mention Melchizedek anywhere else.
This is not just a common biblical trope.
This just literally gets dropped into Psalms.
And what is
innovative about this is the idea that someone could be in the order of priesthood of Melchizedek.
And you’ve got to remember, we as Americans,
pretty much our culture is dead set against this.
But you have to remember,
in Judaism there are 12 tribes.
And your tribe matters.
It says something about you, specifically the Levitical tribe,
which is the priestly tribe.
So if you’re going to be a priest,
you’re not from Dan.
You’re not from Asher.
You’re not from Judah.
You’re a Levite.
That’s your family’s rule,
right?
But here,
the psalmist David says,
“A priest in the order of
Melchizedek.” Not the Levitical rule.
“In the order of Melchizedek.” What are you doing?
You’re making another brand of priests,
David?
This is just almost nonsensical.
But it’s a way that you see
the Jewish readers reading that story of Melchizedek.
How are you an eternal priest?
What does it mean
to be a king and a priest at the same time?
How is it you only appear in one passage and then you disappear?
This is just another Old Testament example of looking back to Genesis and seeing
this.
As far as I’m aware,
these are the only two direct references to Melchizedek in the entire
Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament,
what we would call the Old Testament.
So you think,
“Whatever, Michael.
Way to find the obscure.
How are we going to make this interesting?” Now we get to go to the
New Testament.
So let’s go to Hebrews.
Hebrews chapter 5.
This is where this just gets super interesting.
If we weren’t such avid readers of the Bible,
we might be surprised by the Bible
more often than we are.
There’s a ton here and unfortunately we don’t have time.
We’re not going to read through all of it.
But let’s look at a chapter.
Let’s start in verse 1 of 5.
It gives us some context.
So every high priest is selected from,
we’re remembering we’re in the New Testament now.
“Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the
people and matters related to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” This is a restatement of
what I just said.
Remember a priest stands in between.
That’s what this is saying.
That they are appointed between God and the people to do these functions.
“The priest is able to deal gently
with those who are ignorant,
who are going astray,
since he himself is subject to weakness.” This is
why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as for the sins of the people.
“And no one takes this honor on himself,
but he receives it when called by God just as Aaron was.” Okay,
we’ll make this very clear.
Priests are human, which is why they make sacrifices not just for
the people they represent,
but for themselves because they’re weak.
“And they stand in the
tradition of who?” Aaron,
which is the Levitical role,
right?
So human priests,
Levitical role.
“In the same way,
Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest,
but God said to him, ‘You are my son.
Today I have become your father.’ And he says in another place,
‘You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.'” Okay,
now this is where it starts to get interesting.
So does anyone know,
extra credit points are available,
what tribe is Jesus born into?
You can answer the question if you know what tribe David was born into.
Don’t feel bad.
Actually, I had to look it up to confirm myself.
Jesus was of the tribe of Judah.
Judah. So Jesus is not born into the correct tribe to be a priest.
That’s interesting.
So the author of Hebrews points over to the Levitical tribe.
He says, “Isn’t it interesting
that they have to make sacrifices for themselves because of their own brokenness,
and they have to make sacrifices for the people?” So that is the human priesthood.
But he says,
“Jesus is not like them,
but he is of the eternal order,
a priest in the order of Melchizedek.”
Let’s keep going.
“During the days of Jesus’s life on earth,
he offered up prayers and petitions
with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death,
and he was heard
because of his reverent submission.
Son though he was,
he learned obedience from what he suffered
and once made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him,
and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” Oh,
it changed.
Did you see what just changed there?
We began in verse 6,
“You are a priest forever in the order of
Melchizedek.” But by the end of verse 10,
he is the high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
You see what’s happening here?
We have three layers.
Let’s just build it together
with a marker I lost.
Here we go.
We’ve got three layers.
You’ve got the earthly priest,
which I’m for sake of simplicity,
we’re going to call the Levitical priest.
Then we have the Melchizedek,
which I’m going to summarize with milk because I’m not going to
spell his name right.
And then you have the high priest of Melchizedek.
Fascinating.
You start with the humans.
You then go to this odd,
obscure text in Genesis about this
priest who has no beginning and no end.
There’s no line.
And then suddenly you have Jesus Christ,
who’s called the high priest of Melchizedek.
So essentially what the author of Hebrews is doing,
this is where we turn back,
is he’s reading the Old Testament and sees what we would consider
this very odd sort of off the beaten path text.
And he says Jesus is king and Jesus is high priest.
Jesus is the one who is above the Levitical priests.
He ascends beyond them because he’s
not of their line.
He’s not of the tribe of Levi.
He’s not even Melchizedek himself.
He is Melchizedek’s
high priest.
He is the eternal priest on behalf of all of us.
All right.
Well, we’ll see that flushed out here.
It would be really interesting and we would all love to read chapter six and go
through that with a fine tooth comb,
but we don’t have time.
So let’s jump right to chapter seven.
This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High.
He met Abraham returning from the everything.
First, the name Melchizedek means king of righteousness.
Then also king of Salem
means king of peace.
Without father or mother,
without genealogy, without beginning of days or
end of life, resembling the son of God,
he remains a priest forever.
So fascinating.
Of all of the
Old Testament, we’ve already talked together about the fact that in the Old Testament,
the idea of a
soul living on is not a concept that is really applied.
It’s fascinating that the writer of
Hebrews makes it very clear that he believes that Melchizedek has been living eternally,
that he’s a priest who had no beginning and no end.
Verse four, just think how great he was.
Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder,
which isn’t as big of a deal for us.
That doesn’t make a huge impact,
but whoever your greatest hero is in life,
it’d be like saying your greatest hero showed deference to this person, right?
This is to give for Abraham
to do something is a huge deal.
Now the law requires the descendants of Levi who became
priests to collect a tenth from the people,
that is from their fellow Israelites,
even though they are descended from Abraham.
This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi,
yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.
And without doubt, the lesser is blessed by the greater.
In other words,
who is blessing who in this story?
Who is giving what to who?
Abraham was being blessed by Melchizedek,
and Abraham was giving Melchizedek a tenth.
So who’s greater in the story?
Melchizedek.
Melchizedek is greater than Abraham.
And if Abraham is the top top,
if he’s the one who God made the covenant with,
and everybody has been looking
to Abraham for that promise throughout all time,
Melchizedek is above Abraham.
That’s the point
simplified.
Verse 8, “In the one case,
the tenth is collected by people who die,
but in the other
case by him who is declared to be living.” One might even say that Levi,
who collects the tenth,
paid the tenth through Abraham,
because when Melchizedek met Abraham,
Levi was still in the
body of his ancestor.
By the way, that should strike you as a very odd comment.
May I remind you that the idea of that birth of the child is the idea of that forebearer living on.
So the idea that Levi had not yet born because he comes way down the story through many generations,
right?
But the idea is that everyone comes from Abraham.
So somewhere down the line,
Levi will exist because he’s Abraham’s descendant.
So that’s the idea that Levi is even represented in Abraham
because he’s not born yet.
All right, we’re getting to the interesting stuff.
Verse 11,
“If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood and indeed the law given
to the people established that priesthood,
why was there still need for another priest to come?
One in the order of Melchizedek,
not in the order of Aaron.” I love it when the text asks questions.
It’s telling you what it’s about to answer.
So why is the question?
“For when the priesthood is
changed, the law must be changed also.
He of whom these things are said belong to a different tribe
and no one from that tribe has ever served at the altar.
For it is clear that our Lord descended
from Judah.” There you go,
Jesus descended from Judah.
“And in regard to that tribe,
Moses said nothing about priests.” Judah’s not supposed to have priests.
“And what we have said is even more
clear.
If another priest like Melchizedek appears,
one who has become a priest on the basis of a
regulation as to his ancestry,
on the basis of the power of an indestructible life, or is declared
again.” Was this the second time?
Third time we’ve quoted this,
“You are a priest forever
in the order of Melchizedek.” “The former regulation has set aside because it was weak
and useless, for the law made nothing perfect and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God.
And it was not without an oath.
Others became priests without an oath,
but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him,
‘The Lord has sworn and not changed his mind.
You are a priest forever.'” All right,
verse 22, “Because of this oath,
Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant.
Now there have been many of those priests since death prevented them from
continuing in office.
But because Jesus lives forever,
he is a permanent priesthood.
Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them.
Such a high priest truly meets our need,
one who is holy,
blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.
Unlike the other high priests,
he does not need to offer
sacrifices day after day,
first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people.
He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints his high priest’s
men and all their weakness,
but the oath, which came after the law,
appointed the son who has
been made perfect forever.” Love this,
chapter 8, verse 1.
Now the main point of what we’re saying is this.
Okay, if you tuned out,
here’s the main point.
“We do not have such a high priest who sat
down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven and who serves in the sanctuary
the true tabernacle said of the Lord,
not by a mere human being.” Boom, there we go.
All right.
So,
what just happened here?
Obscure text in the Old Testament about this king priest that no one really understands.
Here the writer of Hebrews wants to make the case that Jesus Christ is the ultimate high priest.
And so he doesn’t do that by pointing to Jesus’s heritage or genealogy.
In fact, he says if Jesus was a Levitical priest,
then it would be useless because the Levitical priests,
their time and rule ends when they die.
They’re priests with a weakness.
But Jesus is a
priest without a weakness because he’s not a priest in the order of the Levites.
He’s a priest of the eternal order of Melchizedek.
And if he’s a priest of the eternal order of Melchizedek,
Jesus can be king and priest at the same time,
and he is the one, therefore,
who no longer needs to
make a sacrifice for you.
It’s been done eternally.
And this was maybe the craziest
statement of all of them.
Not only is he the high priest of Melchizedek,
but did you know this?
He offered himself as the sacrifice.
Pause on that for a second.
The priest offered himself as the sacrifice.
So,
you may not know this.
And this may not seem to be as radical as I am thrilled to think that it is.
But you have to realize in a world in which everybody believes,
here’s you,
here’s God,
there’s this inescapable chasm between you and God,
right?
That’s taken for granted.
You don’t get to God by yourself.
How do you get to God?
You get to God by building a bridge through someone else.
And that someone else in the Old Testament conception is the priest.
And what does the priest offer?
What is this bridge that gets made for you?
It’s the lamb.
It’s the sacrifice.
It’s the innocent thing that dies for you.
Without the lamb, you don’t get to God.
And without the priest offering the lamb,
you don’t get to God.
That’s the arrangement.
That’s the deal.
Imperfect people can’t get to God without this accommodation made by the law.
We’re on the same page.
So, this is the framework.
What the author of Hebrews just wrote is,
this priest is not a
Jesus as the sacrifice.
So, the priest is the sacrifice.
And the priest is eternal.
And the sacrifice is eternal.
So, therefore,
because Jesus stands in the middle,
there is now no one
between you and God himself because Jesus is God.
The author of Hebrews just made the argument
that we look to the Old Testament to see how we were separated from God and how we now come to
understand that because Jesus is God,
no one stands between you and the Savior of the world.
The only thing in between you and God is the sin that separates you from God,
which is solved eternally by you receiving the grace of Jesus Christ.
So,
you all have believed,
if you’ve been in the Reformed Church at all for any amount of time,
you believe this idea that
Jesus Christ is the Savior.
You believe this idea that the pastor is not in between you and God,
that there’s not a church body or elder.
You believe that it’s between you and Jesus.
But here,
this really odd, off-the-wall Old Testament story is laid out as the example par
excellence to define and make the case why that is true,
which I think is awesome.
All right, thoughts, questions, feedback?
Who builds a bridge?
Who builds the bridge between
me and God?
Does Jesus build a bridge or do I build a bridge?
I can’t build a bridge.
What do you think?
Jesus built a bridge.
Right.
Not?
No, I’m just, I’m asking.
Yeah, I mean,
I think the case,
the case I think the writer of Hebrews is making
is that there was all that God’s accommodation for our sinfulness in the Old Testament was all of
these formulas and agreements about how things would go,
that the sinners had to do all of this
stuff if we were going to get to have access to a righteous God.
Right.
And I think what the
writer of Hebrews is making the case for is that if you look at all of that stuff that they were doing,
all of that actually is fulfilled in Jesus,
that it did it at this level and Jesus did it at this level.
And if that’s the case,
then ultimately,
Jesus is the answer to all of the questions of the order.
It no longer has anything to do with what you do.
It’s about what he did.
It no longer has
to do with about how well you enact the practices of the law.
It’s about the one who kept the law for you.
It’s not about you sacrificing the lamb,
it’s that the lamb sacrificed himself because
he’s the ultimate eternal high priest.
This is the thing maybe,
I’m trying to make a case you should
be more excited about the high priest.
That’s what I’m trying to do.
I’m trying to get you on the team here.
No,
because we don’t we don’t grow up with that framework.
Right.
You don’t you don’t
believe in the high priest.
There’s not some high priest Presbyterian in Louisville who like we all
hope goes in and shakes some incense over an altar.
I mean,
that’s not we are beyond that.
Right.
We’re on we’re on this side of the historical equation.
But you’ve got to think
of the early church trying to put yourself in their sandals or no shoes,
whatever you want and their footwear.
Just try to for a moment figure that you grew up believing in the priesthood.
These are your pastors.
They if they go sacrifice and they do it right,
they let you be okay with God.
There’s no sinners prayer.
There’s no you having a conversion.
They believe somebody else
needed to do the thing if you got to make it to the other side of God.
And now here the writer of
Hebrews comes to that and says,
you’ve always believed this priesthood stuff.
Let me introduce you to the priest who offered himself as the sacrifice,
who is eternally your priest.
And you never have to have someone in between you and God ever again.
Now you’d be like the Pentecostals
and dancing down the center aisle.
It changes everything.
It absolutely changes the entire equation.
And we learn it in Sunday school,
right, that we’ve learned if we had if our Sunday school
teacher was, you know, worth half a penny,
they told us that there’s nothing in between you and God,
thanks be to God.
But the earliest church was looking in their scriptures to understand who Jesus was.
And when they turn to their scriptures,
they turn to this weird story of Melchizedek,
and they found that weird story to be the example to give them an understanding of who Jesus was eternally.
And that became for them what they taught in their Sunday school,
so that the previous order might understood to be wiped out by Jesus’s work.
There we go.
I raised my voice.
I got passionate.
Are you excited about it now?
Other thoughts, questions?
I didn’t even answer your question.
No, no, no.
You said we build a bridge.
Jesus is a bridge.
Jesus is a bridge to God.
Right.
Without without Jesus, I couldn’t get to God.
I mean, I know that.
So can I build a bridge to God?
No, I can’t.
But Jesus gets me there.
But they 100% believe you did.
Yeah.
Like, I mean,
that that was what the sacrifices were about.
I mean, that that was how you got there.
Yeah, I mean, the law represented the human.
We forget this, that this idea of Abraham and the covenant.
Covenants are by definition by transactional agreements.
The irony of the covenant with
Abraham is God has always been faithful to God’s side.
But Abraham and his people have always screwed it up.
But that we know that we not our head to that because we’re Presbyterians,
we like to revel in the sinfulness and brokenness of humanity.
But the reality is the Israelites
took that covenant seriously.
I mean, they would be humble enough to admit,
yeah, we mess up sometimes.
But they they tried to keep the law.
I mean, they believed it was their job to build the bridge.
They really believe that.
And so the Christians who believed that Jesus Christ made
the bridge for you,
and he’s invited you to walk it was a brand new idea.
They simply had never
thought that before, which is, by the way,
I’m preaching next Sunday,
next Sunday’s poem Sunday.
So, you know, just beware if that changes your attendance, I understand.
But I would say, like,
think about that for just a moment,
the one who’s coming,
the one who’s coming to to change
everything is going to be received as the high priest,
and he’s going to be received with all this acclaim,
and all this joy,
and the people,
they’re going to kill him a few days later.
When Jesus says he offers himself for us,
he doesn’t mean he’s going to kill himself.
He means the people he came to build the bridge for are going to kill him.
And I think that’s that’s the
really interesting turn here is if Jesus Christ is the high priest of Melchizedek,
not only does he do a thing for us that we can’t do by ourselves,
but he actually in doing that
shows us how deep our brokenness goes,
because we’re the one who ultimately kill him.
The people he comes to save are the very people who kill him.
And that that’s,
if you think that our job is,
if you think of it from the ancient Hebrew perspective,
our job is to keep our part of
the covenant with God.
We killed God’s covenant.
Literally, the covenant is Jesus,
and we killed him.
And so ultimately, we all stand that this is part of that idea of original sin,
we all stand guilty of killing the one who came for us.
And since we’re guilty of that,
it’s only him who
has the power to forgive us.
And the great news of the gospel is he’s chosen to do so.
The fascinating is just to say that we hung on to that idea,
that the vehicle idea,
right?
For 1500 years, we did that after Jesus.
I mean, we, we said there has to be somebody in
between can’t be just me go to God.
Wasn’t that what Luther was all about?
Yeah, you don’t have to do that anymore.
Hey, guys, a long time ago,
this guy came into the world here to save us.
We don’t need that anymore.
We don’t need somebody in between us and Jesus,
right?
Well, I mean, we held on to that thing for a long,
long time.
Yeah, I may be more pessimistic than you
might.
I mean, I think we continue to do that.
I mean,
I think the one of the greatest,
I think one of the most excuse my use of this word,
but I mean, this is a technical use of this word.
One of the most damning parables that Jesus offers is the parable of the vineyard and the workers.
Do you remember that parable?
The idea that some people show up at 6am,
they work all day long,
some people show up at nine,
some show up at 12,
some show up with an hour left to work.
And at the end of the day,
they show up and the owner of the vineyard has the gall to pay them all the same amount,
not the same rate,
the same amount.
That is offensive.
It is.
That’s an offensive economic transaction.
And I’ll be honest with you, Mike,
every Christian is tempted to think,
I’ve been doing it longer.
I’ve been doing it better than you,
or you,
or you.
And we like to
think about putting more jewels in that crown.
And when we do that,
I think we may not be doing
it on purpose, Mike, but we’re trying to build our own bridge.
I’m going to make God happier with me.
I’m going to do the right thing.
And the crazy part of the gospel is that person who lived a wild,
crazy, not church life,
approved life can get the same rate, the same wage.
That’s how crazy grace is.
And to somebody who grew up in the church and is a perfectionist and cares a lot about the faith,
I think that’s flat wrong.
And Jesus confronts me over and over and over again,
because he says, hey, I’m the bridge, I get to do what I want.
He’s Lord and I’m not.
And he and I,
he’s patient with my arguments about that.
Right?
But I really mean that we should,
we should be convicted when we come to a story like this, because,
you know, I grew up in a
holiness tradition in the church where people believed,
you know,
if you go to bowling alley
and you drink a beer and you swear when you miss,
you’re,
you better make sure you say some prayers
tonight or you’re going the opposite direction.
And that gets really close to that mind.
Right?
If I, if I miss,
I have a bad bowling night and I said some words,
I get hit by the
snowplow on the way home.
There’s real questions in those communities of faith about
are you saved or not?
I don’t want to,
I’m not trying to dismiss them and make it sound as if
that’s not important.
Please don’t hear me in that tone.
What I’m saying though is
I think we operatively do question this all the time because we,
we as humans want to take credit
for what we do for salvation.
And if you hear Jesus rightly,
I think if you hear the author of Hebrews rightly,
you don’t build the bridge.
He did.
So at the end of the day,
if you and I show
up to Peter’s gate,
by the way, all of my hope and faith is built on this.
I’ll be completely honest
with you.
I hope that there’s not a register of how Michael Guwahy did in life.
I hope that’s not
it because if that’s the account,
I’ll be seeing you on the other side.
I hope that at the gate,
I hope that in that judgment day is another image that the scripture uses.
I hope they judge me by
Jesus’s account because he is the one who consistently had forgiveness for those who didn’t deserve it.
And that’s, that’s the hope of the gospel.
But I think it’s worth remembering
that maybe our basic human temptation is to think they need Jesus’s grace, but I have
a lifelong faith behind me.
So I’m probably good.
And that needs corrected.
Whenever we slip into that,
we need reminded Jesus is the sacrifice.
He is the priest
and he’s your access to God.
Thanks be to God.
Thanks for being here, friends.