Good Shepherd Lutheran – Yucaipa, California
February 24, 2021 – Midweek – Lent I
✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝

Whoever said God was watching us from a distance, didn’t appreciate or take too seriously the fact that the very Son of God came down to earth and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit. God became one of us, one with us, one who went through trials, struggles, disappointments, fears right alongside us. Watching us from a distance was the last thing God wanted to do. So He sent us Jesus, who is our Great High Priest.

What is a Great High Priest? Let’s go through that in reverse order.

First, a priest. God spoke to us in our fallen, sinful world right from the very beginning. He also right from the start selected certain go-betweens to serve as His representatives to all. Adam was the selected priest for Eve and their children. Moses was the designated representative for the wandering Israelites until his brother Aaron became a priest. Pastors are ordained to speak God’s Words and apply them in ongoing pastoral care. You have been consecrated as a priest, too; only your priestly work is specialized in your own vocation with your own set of neighbors that you serve.

God uses His priests to speak His words of Law and Gospel, warning and comforting, discipline and love to all who would hear it. His priests also offer their lives up in service as a sacrifice of sorts that serves to the benefit of those to whom God has given them. You are doing a priestly work when you pray for those who are sick, or for those who need God’s special touch of forgiveness and life in their souls. Jesus is a priest for a very important reason. A human being can only be a representative or substitute for another human being. Jesus has our same flesh and blood as we do, yet He is without sin. That too is a necessity of being a priest—purity. Either the priest has to be cleansed and made pure (that’s true for you or for me), or in the case of Jesus, the priest already is completely pure.

Second, He’s a High Priest. Jesus is not specialized, in a manner of speaking. His priestly work extends generally to all people everywhere. He is above all other representatives that God has selected because He is God Himself. There is not one human being who has ever existed that Jesus has not known their struggles or their cares. Not one person is outside of the love of God extended to mankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. As High Priest, true God and true Man, Jesus alone has the right to forgive us and claim us as His very own, because He did all the work to make that forgiveness and redemption happen. Not just made it possible, Jesus accomplished it perfectly for our sake.

And that brings up the Third part, the Great High Priest. Jesus as High Priest accomplished our salvation and on the third day He rose from the dead. He ascended in full divine glory to heaven to announce our heavenly destiny is assured. Our place in the Father’s house is being prepared as we speak. No other high priest will do. Jesus is our Great High Priest. Because of Him we have two huge, monstrous results of sin removed and done away with. Those two obstacles are fear of the devil and shame before God—they’re gone!

Fear is the devil’s only weapon that can attempt to gain traction on us. Our sinful, self-centered human nature fears that God might be hiding something from us. “Did God really say?” was the devil’s attempt to plant fear and doubt in Eve’s and Adam’s mind, as we read this week from Genesis 3. We can easily fear that God doesn’t have a good outcome in mind for us. The suffering we must endure seems like God has turned against us. The devil preys on those fears and we take our sights off of Jesus. But when we turn to Jesus and trust in His work for us as our Great High Priest, that removes our fear of the devil, or the fear that the devil uses to keep us separated from God. He says, “Love casts out fear.” Love is God’s own assurance that He will always be with us. In Christ we have God’s assurance of our forgiveness, renewal of our heart and our certainty renewed in the life of the world to come. With the fear of the devil removed, we have renewed confidence as we trust in God no matter what fearful events may occur in our lives.

Our renewed confidence testifies to another obstacle that has been removed, and that is shame before God’s almighty judgment. We deserve to be shamed with everlasting punishment and separation from God. But Jesus Christ stepped in and endured the entirety of that punishment and that shame. Jesus knew no sin, He was sinless, but He who knew no sin, became sin for us, so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God. The Father actually punished Jesus as though He were a sinner, in fact, since the sin of the whole world was laid on Jesus’ shoulders, He was punished as though He were THE Sinner. So great was the payment, the atonement, that Jesus offered to the Father as the price for the removal of our shame, that there remains nothing left for us to do in order to be able to stand without that shame or stain of sin clinging to us anymore.

We may feel that shame or iniquity in certain moments of our lives. The devil will try to remind us of sins of our past and attempt to convince us that those sins are too great, or that there’s some catch to the free offer of God’s grace. There’s somehow no way for you to be forgiven, so you may be led to believe. But none of that is true. Jesus is your great high priest. He was the great high priest when He fought the devil’s temptations in the wilderness for you. He is your priest now as you eat and drink the sacrifice of His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. He will remain your priest as He intercedes for you to the Father, bringing to His loving ears your every prayer in His name. Rejoice in Jesus, your great high priest. Because of Him, you have your forgiveness guaranteed. You have no more need to fear the devil. Your shame of sin before God has been removed and you are in His eternal good graces. God does not watch you from a distance. He is right here with you now and always!

In the name of the Father, and of ✝ the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant