Our Personal Guide Into God’s Presence
So also Christ glorified not himself to be made a high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.
Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.
And was heard in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect.
He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; and called of God a high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
Hebrews 5:5-10
Read and Learn More Bible Verses about the Presence of God
Delighting in God’s presence is not a do-it-yourself project. The very delicate nature of it requires an experienced guide, someone who can maneuver us around obstacles and bring us into the sunlight of God’s wonderful presence.
This ‘brings us to the idea of the priesthood, which is ordained by God and fulfills an important spiritual function.
One of the major doctrines outlined in the book of Hebrews is the high priesthood of the eternal Son.
Introduced in Hebrews 2:17, and Hebrews 3:1, we are told to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession.” Again, it is mentioned in Hebrews 4:14 and chapters 5, 6 and 7.
The meaning is the high priesthood as God ordained it, and the fulfillment of that priesthood is by our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Idea Of Priesthood
Few things in religious circles are the source of more abuse than the priesthood. Every base, unworthy religion found throughout the world has the idea of a priesthood attached to it.
The priestly rites throughout the various religions of the world have offended and shocked humanity, and the priests themselves have often been corrupt, cruel, and hypocritical.
If you want to get the shock of your life, read the story of the religions of Mexico practiced by the Aztecs and the Toltecs.
Twenty thousand human beings, for instance, were offered in sacrifice at the dedication of one temple.
Twenty thousand human beings were stretched out on a slab alive and their hearts were cut out with stone axes as sacrifices to the deaf and dumb god of the Toltecs and the Aztecs in the olden days in Mexico. The evil they did is unspeakable.
You do not have to go back far to find priests habitually lying around drunk. Numerous abuses have attached themselves to the idea of the priesthood.
Some have been self-righteous and arrogant and many intimidate and exploit their poor people. And yet the idea of a priesthood was not thought of first by man, but by God.
It is dimly seen in the praying father who assumes responsibility for his family, who teaches them by example and precept, and who prays for them.
Job, in the Old Testament, was a good example of this. After his children had enjoyed a night of celebration, Job went before God and offered a sacrifice.
He prayed and asked God to forgive them and cleanse them because he feared they might have sinned. He was a priest to his family.
But it is more clearly outlined in the Levitical priesthood as shown in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers in the Old Testament, and is outlined in perfection in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The Need for a Priesthood Because of Maris’s Alienation from God.
God ordains the idea of the priesthood, and therefore, it must be a need. The need for priesthood arises from man’s alienation from God.
This is an integral part of biblical truth, just as hydrogen is a part of water, and you cannot have water without hydrogen.
Therefore, you cannot have Bible truth without the doctrine that man has broken with God in what the Bible calls “alienation” in the great Fall that took place in the Garden of Eden.
Any religion that ignores the truth that man has fallen and separated from God is a sham religion.
Fallen man has morally pulled away from God and separated himself from God’s fellowship so that he is said to be without hope and God in the world.
This being the condition of man, somebody has to make a reconciliation between God and man to bring them back together again. This is where the idea of the priesthood lies.
Granted that man desired to return to God, he could not return because sin was in the way. A moral breach has occurred a violation of the laws of God. Man is a moral criminal before the bar of God.
Until satisfaction is made, until this breach is healed, until justice is satisfied, man cannot return to God even if he wants to. This is what the Bible teaches, and anything else is less than Bible doctrine.
If I did not believe this, I would close my Bible and lecture on Wordsworth or Shakespeare I have noticed that in recent years a serious error has developed among religious people in general.
I fear that its focus is on what I will call a Christ-less nature mysticism. This is even invading what is termed as the evangelical church.
When the fall of the year comes around, these nature mystics imagine a little man with a paintbrush painting the leaves, and some get very watery-eyed about this.
Again, in the spring, when the frogs begin to make their music in the little ponds, man’s thoughts turn to love and the kind of things the poets write about.
That is very dangerous, because if it is cross-less —without redemption, without Christ, and a proper reconciliation—it can be deadly.
Yet, there are churches spending millions of dollars on fabulous buildings, but the congregation never hears a thing, year in and year out, about reconciliation.
Today’s church faces the danger of a cross-less Christianity. A preacher will get up in front of the congregation and talk so piously about the “Great All-Father.”
Or he might say, “This we ask in the spirit of Jesus.” He did not ask it in the name of Jesus but in the spirit of Jesus. He was a nice fellow, not wanting to offend anybody, and surely too nice to embrace the cross.
This does not represent the biblical focus of Christianity. We must get back to the idea of priesthood.
We must get back to the idea of God on one side and man on the other, and the two of them alienated from each other. This alienation is not by the fault of God but by the fault of man.
We must get back to a sacrifice and a priest who can come between God, who is holy, and man, who is unholy, and bring the two of them together. That is priesthood.
Priestly Qualifications
The Scripture tells us that a priest had to have several qualifications. First, the priest had to be ordained of God. “And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron” (Heb. 5:4).
Nobody could come out of the bush and say, “I’m a priest.” God had to ordain the man or else he was a false priest. All the false priests around the world are self-ordained men. But there had to be a priest in Old Testament times that God ordained.
Then he had to be ordained “for men.” God appointed the priest to help men. God needs no help, and no priest can give God any help. It is man that needs help, and the work of the priest was to atone for man’s sins.
The formula was given in the book of Leviticus, the fifth chapter, where it says: “And he shall sprinkle of the blood of the sin offering upon the side of the altar, and the rest of the blood shah be wrung out at the bottom of the altar.
It is a sin offering. And he shall offer the second for a burnt offering, according to the manner: and the priest shall make an atonement for him for his sin which he hath sinned, and it shall be forgiven him” (Lev. 5:9-10).
There is the idea of the priesthood. It was an offering made for man to God by the priest. The priest was to represent God to man and man to God.
Before God, he pleads for the man he represents. He instructs. He exhorts. With complete sympathy and understanding, he goes to God for man. This he can do because he is a man.
But the breakdown in the Old Testament was that the priest, when he went before God, to stand between a holy God and a fallen man, was embarrassed because he had to atone not only for the sins of the people he was reconciling.
But he had to atone for his sins as well. This was where the breakdown was. This was why Isaac Watts could write in his hymn “Not All the Blood of Beasts”:
Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace
Or wash away the stain.
But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of a nobler name
And richer blood than they.
The priest could not, by the blood of the sacrifice he made, take sin away completely, but only partly. God forgave sin and covered it until the time when Christ, the Great High Priest, came.
When Christ came, He qualified completely as the one who could reconcile God and man. He was ordained of God. That was qualification number one. “Thou art my son.
Thou art a priest forever.” He wanted reconciliation for the people. He had compassion. Christ qualified as the priest, and He became the author, the source, and the giver of eternal salvation.
Trust And Obey
There is a simple song in our hymnal called “Trust and Obey,” by John Henry Sammis, that expresses something very fundamental:
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. I believe that “trust” and “obey” are two wings of a bird. A wise old writer once wrote, “Two wings of a dove don’t weigh her down.”
She rises using them. “Trust” and “obey” are the two wings of the Christian. We trust and we obey. We obey because we trust.
We trust so that we might obey. If we try to obey without faith, we get nowhere. If we try to have faith without obedience, it ends in nothing.
Christ has given eternal salvation to those who obey Him and to those who believe Him, for obviously, the two are synonymous, if not identical.
They are like two sides of a coin. I cannot split that coin edgewise with a fine saw and then try to buy anything with it.
The salesperson would see one side of it and think it was all right, but when he took it in his hand, he would say, “What did you do? What’s the matter here? That’s only half a coin.”
And he would toss it back to me. You cannot pass one side of a coin. It takes two sides. Trust is on one side of the coin, and obey is on the other.
But the Church has taken a fine saw and split them, saying, ‘You don’t have to obey. Just believe.” Everything is “believe.”
You cannot divide that coin. You cannot separate it; if you do, it is no good. It is not just trust; it is not just obey. It is trust and obedience.
Believe God and then go get obedience. You will find that it will become in your heart eternal salvation. Jesus Christ will become your all in all.
Some try to find their way or perhaps a shortcut. But there are no shortcuts on the pathway to God’s presence. Moses spent 40 years on the backside of the desert before he came to the burning bush.
I am quite sure that for Moses, who had grown up in Pharaoh’s court, those 40 years were anything but convenient.
God’s timing, however, is always perfect; therefore, only He can be our guide. Only He can direct us on this path into the presence of God. The pathway into God’s presence has nothing to do with convenience or shortcuts.
We have a Great High Priest who did not take a shortcut but rather went all the way to the cross, and now He is seated on the right hand of God the Father. He went the full distance to become our Mediator and High Priest.
What if Christ would have taken a shortcut to the cross? Remember that night, that very dark night in Gethsemane, when Jesus prayed.
“O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). Jesus took no road of convenience, nor did He seek a shortcut.
He is our guide because He prayed, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.” He earned our trust and our obedience because He did not take the path of convenience but went the way of the cross and died for us and became Our Great High Priest.
Jesus Christ, the great High Priest ordained of God and ordained for man, is the only guide to usher us into the presence of God. This may be the reason the enemy of man’s soul strives to come between God and us.
But those who have found Christ have found the perfect Guide, and in following Him have found that rest and peace are in God’s presence.
That I might Know Him by max I. Reich (1863-1945)
That I might know Him!
Let this be life’s aim,
Still to explore the wealth stored in His Name.
With heaven-bought intelligence to trace
The glories that light up His sinless face:
That I might know His power day by day,
Protecting, guiding in the upward way:
That I might know His Presence, calm and pure,
Changeless midst changes, and midst losses sure:
To dwell with Him, in spirit, day and night;
To walk with Him by faith, if not by sight;
To work with Him, as He shall plan, not I:
To cleave to Him, and let the world go by:
To live on earth a life of selfless love;
To set the mind and heart on things above:
Till I shall see Him without vision dim,
And know Him as I know I’m known of Him.