Sympathy and Empathy

So let's turn to Hebrews chapter 4 and verse number 14. Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Now that is our text, that is our section, and we trust that God will bless the scriptures to us. Now there are two words that I want you to think about as we go through the ministry this afternoon.

These words are very close, but they are not the same. The words are sympathy and empathy. Now there is a distinction between both of these words.

The word sympathy, and I'm reading a definition, is to acknowledge another person's hardship and provide comfort and assurance. Sympathy. But the word empathy is different.

It is to understand what others are going through because you have experienced it yourself, and you are therefore able to provide to that person sympathy, yes, but empathy, because you have shared experience. Now when you think about the high priestly work of the Lord Jesus, his is an empathetic work. It is not so much a sympathetic high priest that we have, but it is an empathetic high priest.

Now that is not just splitting hairs. We're going to see that there is a world of difference between these two words when applied to the Lord Jesus. So I've read in Hebrews chapter 4. When you come to the book of Hebrews, there is one verse in the book of Hebrews that gives us the two great offices of Christ that the book presents.

Chapter 3 verse 1. Wherefore holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our profession Christ Jesus. The apostle, that is someone that is sent. He is sent from God to us.

He represents God to men. He is the apostle. But he is also the high priest and he represents men before God.

So one who is sent to men from God and one who is now with God on the behalf of us. The apostle and high priest of our profession. Now we want to go down these verses and look at them in some detail to see what the writer to the Hebrews is teaching us and the practical import of what he says.

So if you, as Jack Hunter used to say, if you just keep your eye or drop your eye and keep your eye on the scriptures, as we go down we want to look at some of the detail of the text. So chapter 4 and verse 14 starts with these words. Seeing then that we have a great high priest.

Now we just want to stop there. That little expression we have is in the present tense, which means that we continually possess. We have continually, presently a great high priest.

Now that means this is true today and it is true tomorrow and it is true the day after and it will continue to be true. It is our present possession. It's a wonderful blessing and we want to think about that this afternoon, but we want to kind of unpack that in kind of more detail.

What does it mean when it says a great high priest? Well, let's take the word priest first of all. When you go back into the Old Testament, you discover that some of the prophetic scriptures that pointed forward to and anticipated the coming of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, spoke of that coming Messiah in priestly terms. Now remember what I said about a priest.

Someone who represents men before God. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ, before he ever came, was spoken of in priestly terminology. For example, Psalm 110 verse 4, The Lord hath sworn and will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Now that appeared in the Old Testament before it appeared in the New Testament. Isaiah chapter 53 and verse 12, He hath poured out his soul unto death, he was numbered with the transgressors, he bare the sin of many, and then it says this, and he made intercession for the transgressors. That's priestly terminology.

Zechariah chapter 6 and verse 13, Anticipating the Lord Jesus Christ and the Messianic glory of Christ, it says this, that he shall build the temple of the Lord, he shall bear the glory, he shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a priest upon his throne, and the council of peace shall be between them both. So the first building block, if you like, is that the Old Testament anticipated that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Messiah, would be a priest as well as a king. But not just in the Old Testament, when you come into the New Testament, and in particular the book of Hebrews, the priestly character of the Lord Jesus is presented from the very beginning of the book.

Chapter 1 and verse 3 of Hebrews says this, the sevenfold glories of Christ presented in that first section of the book of Hebrews, part of them is this, who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. That is one of the seven glories of Christ presented at the beginning of the book of Hebrews. Now that word purged is the word from which we get cathartic or catharsis.

It is the idea of cleansing or making purification. And that purification that the Lord Jesus made when he purged our sins brought about our spiritual renewal and release from the consequences of our sin. And it removed the stain of sin from us and has a reference back to that typical day in the nation of Israel, that annual event of the Day of Atonement, when purification for sins was made for the whole nation of Israel on that annual basis.

Leviticus chapter 16 and verse 30 references that and says on that day shall the priests make an atonement for you to cleanse you that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. So there was an annual cleansing, purification of that nation which has its echo in the scriptures of the book of Hebrews. Now when you come to the Lord Jesus in particular as a priest, Hebrews chapter 5 is a very important chapter.

For in Hebrews chapter 5 the writer to the Hebrews is establishing that the Lord Jesus met the Old Testament qualifications for priesthood. So his priesthood is being demonstrated to those who were Jews but were now Christians that his priesthood was legitimate. It was authentic and remained so.

Now if you go down that chapter you'll discover this, that the basic qualifications for priesthood in the Old Testament were number one, a priest must be a man in order to represent men. Every priest, every high priest must be taken from among men. A man must represent men.

An angel could not do this. Secondly, he must be able to have compassion on men because of his experience as a man. So he can have compassion according to Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 2 on the ignorant and on them who are out of the way for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.

That was in relation to a priest and the Lord Jesus was able to have compassion. He understood what it was to live as a man amongst men. But he also must not promote himself as high priest for no man takes this honor unto himself.

And he that is called of God has a qualification for priesthood. Go down the chapter and you'll discover this. So you have the qualifications for priesthood in chapter 5 and they are all met by the Lord Jesus.

But then in chapter 7 of the book of Hebrews, you have the unique priesthood of the Lord Jesus presented. So in the Old Testament, he is spoken of in priestly terms. In the book of Hebrews, we are introduced to the book and his work is spoken of in priestly terms.

Then we're notified in Hebrews chapter 5 that he meets the basic qualifications of Old Testament priesthood. But then we are advanced in chapter 7 of Hebrews where his unique priesthood is presented. He is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Now, I don't have time to go through it, but it's a very interesting study. The Lord Jesus Christ priesthood was a priesthood after the order of a man who seems so very obscure in the Old Testament. Melchizedek was his name.

You read about him in the book of Genesis. It's worth taking time to study this. You'll discover that the order of Melchizedek, the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek was a universal priesthood.

Which means this. Melchizedek was not just priest for Israel. He was priest of the Most High.

That means it was not a national priesthood for Aaron's priesthood was a priesthood of Jehovah and that's the covenant name of God in his relationship particularly with the nation of Israel. But Melchizedek is the priest of the Most High God. That's the Hebrew El Elyon and it's the universal name of God which includes Jew and Gentile.

So the Lord Jesus Christ priesthood is not restricted to the Jewish people. It spills over to us who are Gentiles. Who have come into the blessing of the family of God.

It's also a royal priesthood. We get that in Hebrews 7 verse 2. Now that was a difference because Israel's priests could not be king and priest but as already quoted in Zechariah chapter 6, the Lord Jesus Christ will sit as a priest upon his throne. He is both king and priest and that was modeled by the man Melchizedek who is described as the king of righteousness, the king of Salem.

He was a king and a priest. It's also a perpetual priesthood. Melchizedek is described in Hebrews chapter 7 and verse 3 as being without father and without mother.

Now he had a father and he had a mother. But as he is presented in Scripture, you do not read of his parents and it's a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ who had neither beginning of days nor end of life. His priesthood would go on because he was never subject to that priesthood ending through death.

His is an eternal priesthood. It's a perpetual priesthood. He abides a priest continually.

So we're building the idea, hopefully. I'm building it because you've just had your lunch and I'm gonna have to keep going back and back. So the Old Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ, you remember he's anticipated in priestly language.

You remember Hebrews starts and his work is of a priestly character. Hebrews chapter 5, he meets the basic qualifications of priesthood. Hebrews chapter 7, he is a unique priest.

He is a royal priest. He is a perpetual priest. But that's not what we read in Hebrews chapter 4. We read that he is a high priest.

A high priest. Now a high priest is the normal designation of the Lord's priesthood in the book of Hebrews and that refers back to that office of the high priest in the Old Testament. He was the kind of chief over all the other priests and Aaron was the first high priest and he had that special office of being a mediator between Jehovah and his people.

You remember in the day of atonement, he was the one who would go into the holiest of all on behalf and as a representative of the nation. You remember that he was bound to a higher degree of ritual purity than the ordinary Levitical priest. You get that in Leviticus chapter 21.

He had greater responsibility, greater accountability and he there was only one high priest who can live at any one time. He's a high priest. That's not what we read in Hebrews chapter 4. We read in Hebrews chapter 4 that we have a great high priest.

So he not only is priestly, he not only is a priest, he not only is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, he is a great high priest. Now we're getting closer to Hebrews chapter 4. In what way is the Lord Jesus our great high priest? Well, I thought about it in this way and again, I don't have time to develop it, but it's a great little sermon in itself, I have to say. The greatness of Christ as our great high priest.

The greatness of his person. Hebrews 7 verse 26 and verse 27. We have such a high priest became us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, then for the people's, for this he did once when he offered up himself.

He is our great high priest because of the greatness of his person. He is our great high priest because the greatness of his office after the order of Melchizedek. Because of the greatness of his sacrifice, Hebrews 9 verse 26.

Once in the end of the age, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And he is a great high priest because of the greatness of his entrance. Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

And now we're at Hebrews chapter 4. Catch it. We have a great high priest. The Lord Jesus himself, who has offered that great sacrifice, who has entered in to that great office, who has that eternal, never-ending, perpetual role and function, and who has entered in and sat down.

He is right there at the very right hand of the throne of the majesty and high. So the writer to the Hebrews says this, seeing then, seeing then, now we haven't had time to see very much, but that's the idea, seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into, that is passed through, is the idea, that has pierced through the heavens in his ascension, and his entrance, and his reception, whom the heavens must receive, the Bible says, and did receive. Once a year, it was a very nervous experience for the great, for the high priest of Israel.

He had to go into the holiest of all, and he had to go in with sacrifice. And if that sacrifice was not accepted, he would not have walked out of that tent. The Lord Jesus Christ has passed through the holy place, that's the picture, passed into the holiest of all, where the Shekinah glory sat upon the Ark of the Covenant, and the mercy seat symbolizes the very presence of the living God of heaven, and the picture is the Lord Jesus has passed right through the heavens, into the very presence of God, with all the virtue and value of his finished work upon the cross.

And he has been accepted, and because he has been accepted, we have been accepted. Because he has entered in, we shall enter in. He is the forerunner, he is the captain of our salvation, he has gone on before.

That's what John 14 means. If I go and prepare a place for you, now that's not a construction work, he has prepared heaven for us, by entering in with the value and worth of his finished sacrificial work, and been accepted, and heaven is now prepared for us. The gospel is God preparing us for heaven.

I go to prepare a place for you, he's done it, and he's there, and heaven is ready, because he is there. Because we have that high priest, great high priest, who is entered in, according to verse 14, passing through the heavens, Jesus, a man in the glory, the one who is the very Son of God, the one who has been here, and lived here, but the one who is divine, the one who was at home here, and is at home there. Jesus, the Son of God.

Now here is the command, here is the practical application. Let us hold fast our profession. Now that idea of holding fast means clinging on to, keeping hold of, not letting go.

Now there are certain things that we like to cling on to as believers. Not many of them are in the Bible, but this is something in the Bible that we must not let go, that we must hold fast to. Because we have a great high priest, we should cling tightly to our profession.

Listen, these believers were having their faith assaulted, their lives disrupted. They were being tempted to go back to Judaism and to all the formality and comfortable circumstances of their previous life, and the writer to the Hebrews is saying, hang on, cling on tightly to your profession of faith in Christ. Don't go back.

Don't go back because God has provided us with the resource of his Son to be our great high priest, in order that we can go on for him and live for him in a world that is in opposition to us. Cling on tightly, he says. Christ has been accepted, his work has been accepted.

He's the Son of God, he's the Son of Man, his priesthood and his ministry on our behalf is perpetual, is royal, is personal, is effective and is compelling. Do not slip back. That's what the writer is saying.

Now he's going to expand it, verse 15. The word for is an explanatory expansion of the previous expression in verse 14. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

How is it that having a great high priest in heaven helps us endure on earth? The word for is the connector. The reason that we should be encouraged by the presence of Christ in the glory is that we have an empathetic great high priest. That's what the verse is teaching.

He is the Son of God, but he is able and willing to be involved in the smallest and most detailed aspect of our life here upon earth. He can be touched, that's a double negative for emphasis. He understands what it's like to be here.

He lived here and for the most of his life he lived an ordinary life. Sometimes we forget that. He ran a business.

He had a family context in which he lived. He had neighbors. He had to get up in the morning and go to work and come back at night and have his meals and have family interaction with his half-brothers and sisters and he was responsible, it would seem, as the eldest for the family.

He was interacting in the town of Nazareth where I think it wouldn't have been easy to do business righteously. And he did that until he was the age of 30. Most of his life.

Not one miracle done. No one recognizing him to be who he actually essentially is. An ordinary man.

A perfect man, but a man nonetheless. And as some writers put it, a man who swung a hammer for a living. Probably more a stonemason than a carpenter.

Stone was what they used much more than wood in that area of the world at that time. One writer put it this way, the compound word means to suffer with another person. To be touched by the feeling of his infirmities.

To be touched with the feeling means that you can suffer with another person because you have entered into that experience and feeling of heartache yourself. The use of the word here means more than a knowledge of human infirmity, it points to a knowledge that has within it common experience with that person. True empathy, could I suggest, is often a fairly quiet, time intensive, presence intensive relationship.

You see there are some people that I have relationship with back home in my assembly and no matter how much I want to, I cannot empathize with them because I've never been through what they are going through. So there is a limit. In fact, it's interesting when you think about the work of, we call him Job, simply because that's how you pronounce it, but sometimes people call him Job.

But whether he's Job or Job, a Job is something we go to kind of during the week, anyway, when you think about him and his comforters, their most effective ministry to him was when they never said a word. They sat down beside him for seven days and didn't say a thing. Their quiet presence was more an encouragement than when they opened their mouth.

Because when they opened their mouth, things began to go wrong. Sometimes I feel like that. I don't know what to say, so I just say nothing.

And sometimes people just want you to sit beside them, or to be there, or to show interest, but really empty words sometimes are not helpful. Sometimes even when you're visiting in a hospital and people who are in pretty desperate circumstances and they don't even want the Scriptures quoted to them. Can't handle that.

And they simply want to sit quietly with you. Just quietness. The Lord Jesus Christ is able to draw alongside us because he has been here before.

That word infirmities means weaknesses. It means to be without strength. It means a state of incapacity or something like that.

It speaks to the frailty of manhood. It speaks to the difficulties of employment, business, family, relationships, physical exhaustion. It speaks to bereavement, disappointment, hunger, satanic assault, jealousy, envy, lies.

It speaks to those things. And it speaks about those things that are the common experience of men upon earth that we all experience. Every one of us.

The writer says we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, the effect of our infirmity as experienced by us. The Lord Jesus understands how we feel. He stood at a grave and saw the evidence of death amongst his friends.

The death of a young man. He knew what it was like for tears to course down his cheek when he saw the consequence of sin in the lives of those he loved. He knew what it was like for a man who said he was his friend to sell him out for 30 pieces of silver.

He knew what it was like for lies to be told about him. He knew what it was like to do a hard day's graft and then come home and be exhausted. He knew what it was like for people to clamor for his attention and for all the complexities of human relationships.

He knew all of that stuff. He was in all points tempted like as we are, apart from sin. Apart from sin.

He did not experience every temptation, every test. But he was tested in every area. Every area.

And that testing was real and those temptations were real. And as a result of that I want to encourage you that the Lord Jesus Christ is presently in heaven and he gets it, he understands not just what is happening to you but he understands how you feel about it. So verse 16, on that basis with the character of Christ established his presence in heaven established his office established now he comes to the exhortation let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.

Why would you come boldly to the throne of grace? Because that's where Christ is who is our great high priest who knows what it is to experience what you're experiencing and he knows how you feel. So come boldly. Approach, draw near.

It's a present tense, it's continual. It's different from the Old Testament. Exodus chapter 19 and verse 12 when the Lord descended onto Mount Sinai the instruction was set bounds for the people all around.

Keep the people away because if anyone touches this mountain they're going to perish. The reality is that the Lord Jesus Christ is commanding us to come close really close as close so that it is just a whisper away a whisper away that close so that he can hear and feel and know your presence and your heartbeat and your anxiety and the breathings of your frustration and that you might be as close as that to him. He says draw near right close right next to where he is.

The Bible says that he is there and it is a throne of grace. There is authority and sovereign power but it is a throne of grace. It is where the unmerited kindness of God is displayed and dispensed.

With all the authority of heaven there's a beautiful blend of power and empathy at the throne of grace. Now what do you get when you go there? You get something there that you do not get anywhere else. I'm not talking about the world.

I'm talking about you as a Christian and me as a Christian in the places and people we go to in time of need we cannot get what we get here. You can open your hymn book and you can get some joy or some help or whatever. That's good.

You can speak to your friends or those that you trust and you will get counsel and you may even get tears and you may get empathy you can go anywhere on earth to anyone on earth and you cannot get what you get here. And could I say to you kindly you will not be able to keep on going for God in a way that brings pleasure to his heart and fruitfulness in your life if you never get here. When I was down at Hampton there when we were out sitting having our lunch or breakfast I can't remember there was a pickup truck going by and it sounded like an aeroplane taking off it probably was just running in two cylinders it was battering away right down the road and then we heard it come battering all the way back up the road.

You see it was moving but it wasn't moving as it was intended to move. The sound was terrible and I can only think that that thing's not going to go the distance. That's like us as Christians we're moving but we're not moving the way we ought to move and we're not getting to the places we ought to be because we've not been at the throne of grace.

Well what do you get at the throne of grace that you cannot get elsewhere? Two things number one it is there that we, according to verse 16 obtain mercy mercy secondly we find grace there mercy and grace Now what is mercy? The essential thought about mercy is the attention of God to those who are in misery. It is active compassion for those who are in distress. Heibert in his commentary wrote this It is the self-moved spontaneous loving kindness of God which causes him to deal in compassion and tender affection with the miserable and distressed.

Now I don't know if you are miserable generally as a person maybe you are, I don't know but there are circumstances in our life that make us feel miserable genuinely miserable that when we think about them our whole life just feels heavy and dark and difficult These are the circumstances that cause us to be immobile they debilitate us they grieve us they cause us to be bitter they put us in distress the answer to distress is mercy the mercy of God but also the grace of God Now if mercy is God ministering to our distress grace is God's answer to our issue It's his solution Mercy may be God's answer to our misery Grace covers the problem Grace if you like deals with the sin perhaps mercy removes the pain and grace gives us what we do not deserve while mercy withholds what we evidently do Grace and mercy Who gives us that? The one who has been here who stood at the grave who walked the roads who dealt with the business customers who was in a family the one who had friends and those who betrayed him the one who wept the one who bled and the one who died Grace and mercy These are things that you cannot buy or receive from anyone else and I'll tell you what they do but it tells us in the last section of the little verse It says, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find here it is grace and this is the expression to help to help Now what does that word mean? Well I don't know much about boats but I live a bit nearer the sea than you do and we have a national history that goes back a bit further than yours in fact we actually kind of started your place but never mind so when we were sending all the folks over to start your place we sent them over in ships that were very antiquated these old, you can picture these old wooden ships well it was no different in the times of the Lord Jesus in that their ships were also wooden and if you think of the construction of these wooden ships then they would be made out of these huge big planks of wood and they would be in whatever way they did cocked and they would be tarred and so on with whatever they did to do that process the problem was that if a storm got up these ships were in danger and if the storm was fierce enough there was the possibility that the material that was binding the planks together would begin to release and the ship would begin to take in water through the seams so the answer to that during the days of sailing ships was they would seek to plug the holes but when you couldn't plug them then they would try to seal them and they would seal them by doing what the nautical people call frapping F-R-A-P to frap which meant you took the sail and you would get it over the bow of your ship and you would run it along the full body of the ship and it would be like putting the ship within a glove the sail would be the glove and the glove would act as a protective layer for the bottom of the ship and it would then be bound and you would seal the ship that way with ropes frapping it's called now I didn't just make that up that's actually in the bible Acts chapter 27 and verse 17 the apostle Paul is in a storm and you remember he's on his way to Rome and the sailors when the storm was at its peak it says this when they had taken up they used and here's the word helps helps undergirding the ship fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands they straked sail and so we were driven you get the picture they're in a storm the apostle Paul's in the ship they get their ropes and they bind the ship frapping the word for the ropes that they use to bind the ship is the word help that's the word and it's the same word that's used here in Hebrews chapter 4 take the picture of Acts chapter 27 and apply it to the imagery of Hebrews chapter 4 what does grace do and what does mercy do when you're just about to fall apart when your life is beginning to go we've got an expression in Scotland when you're at your wits end when you don't have an answer when things are beginning to separate out and beginning to fall to bits when you get to the throne of grace the Lord Jesus will minister to you so that you can hold it together in times of terrible pressure so that your life will not fall apart and you will not fall apart in the midst of trial can I tell you this sometimes you can look back and you can say that was of the mercy of God that was of the grace of God that I managed to get through that it was Him that held us together as a family it was Him that held me together as a Christian it was Him that stopped it falling apart and all it took was for me to stop trying to provide solutions and analysis and workarounds and all the rest of it and I just get on my knees and I get into the presence of God and before the throne of grace and I ask for what alone He could give His mercy, His grace and He gave it to me and He held me together He bound me He bound my family He bound our assembly that's what the throne of grace provides that you cannot get anywhere else so as we finish this little section listen again to what it says I'm just going to read it to you Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our profession for we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but he was in all points tempted like as we are without sin let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need May God bless His work to us