All right, let's begin with a word of prayer. Gracious Heavenly Father, we again just come before you this morning as we seek to delve deeper into your word and specifically your catechism today. Help us to grasp your office of priest that we might grow in our understanding and knowledge of you, Lord, and instruct our hearts as we seek to do your will. this day and every day forth. We just give you the praise and the glory for this time. And we just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so as we read this morning with our question 25, the catechism question, how doth Christ executeth the office of priest? Christ executeth the office of priest in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God and in making continual intercession for us. So we need to understand a little bit what a priest is or what a priest does. From the beginning when the priests were commissioned by Moses, through the Levitical law, the Levites were the ones that were priests. They were there to offer sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people of Israel, God's people. The priests were guys that were oftentimes covered in blood. They were there in the morning. They were offering sacrifices for themselves, offering sacrifices for God's people, morning and evening cleansing. It was a lot of work. There was a lot that went into being a priest when it was first set up. And the priests are there to take that sacrifice and atone for the sins of the people. So as we look to Christ, fast forwarding that time, we see that Christ was that one sacrifice. They took all those other things, all the animals. If we didn't have Christ, every day would look like a barnyard. We would have a lot of animals here, a lot of things going on. placing their hands on the head of the animal, the bull, the goat, the sheep, whatever the case may be, slaughtering it, putting that blood, because blood is the only thing that was able to atone for sin. And because of Christ, We don't need to do that anymore. He annulled that written code to a once and for all sacrifice. The proof texts are found in Hebrews, which Hebrews has a lot to say about priests. If you want to delve a little bit deeper, Hebrews 8 through about 10, there's a great deal on that, just the understanding of how Christ is the one sacrifice now. Hebrews 8.1 says, now this is the main point of the things we are saying. We have such a high priest. He is seated at the right hand of the throne, the majesty in the heavens. And also Hebrews 9.28, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many to those who eagerly wait for him to appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. So that's, we're looking at that first, there's three sections of the answer. First is that he himself was the sacrifice for divine justice. Then we're looking at reconciling us to God and making continual intercession. So first is that divine justice. Sin, the wages of sin is death. Those wages must be paid. When we look to this, someone has to die. requires that payment. And we live in the new covenant where we have Christ has given himself for that one sacrifice, so that we don't have to make those other sacrifices. And He has a continual intercession for us for all of our sins. We weren't even, obviously didn't exist when this began. But He is making sacrifices even now. He is the sacrifice even now as we go forth. Something that this question actually brings up and it ties in with what was just spoken of. Something along the lines of the reconciling us to God. Reconcile means to make atonement, to atone for our sins. How do we, we cannot atone for our sins. Christ took our place, took our sins upon himself. Something that, which, this is actually one of the more trickier doctrines as Sasha had previously pointed out. The doctrine of atonement. Is it universal? Did Christ come and die for every man's sins everywhere? Or simply, his chosen elect people? And as a, As we saw in this passage here where Hebrews says, Christ, O Christ, was offered once to bear the sins of many. That's not all. That's an inconvenient doctrine as the doctrine of election. We talked about that a little earlier. But to what extent did Christ's payment make? Did he make it for everyone or just his elect people? As growing up in an Arminian church all my life, the first 20 years, this was a problem for me. This was an issue where I looked at this doctrine and thought, you know, that's unfair. I don't want to worship a God that's choosing people. I don't want to worship a God that only has certain people that he's atoning for their sins. But as we see, as I started reading scripture, As we look through scripture, obviously God is a very choosy God. The priests of old, they were atoning for the people of God. They were not sacrificing for the whole world. Jesus, same thing. He is paid for all of their sins, but it's not a universalism. That road goes down to the universal that everyone will be saved. That's obviously not true. I didn't believe that when I was younger, that not all people are going to be saved. Rather, I, yeah, is that basically with what I believed when I was growing up is that, yeah, clearly not everyone's gonna be in heaven. God is chosen, he is selected. I kept running into the scriptures. As you read through the Bible, you can't get away from it. It's there. having grown up in that environment, people, I was routinely preached. it was routinely preached against that this doctrine is false. I was quite literally heard messages against reform doctrine all the time. And that was, but then when I actually get into the word of God and we see he paid for the sins of many, not all. There are other passages in scripture that deal with he's paid for all of our sins. We need to look at those individually. Most of the time it says all, and that means all kinds. He's universal in that his call to the gospel is to all people, all tribes, all tongues across the whole globe. It's not specifically to either just Israel or to specifically one nation. It is to all people. He's extended that call. But as we know, this is a matter where God has changed our hearts and drawn our hearts to him, and he has elected us, and thereby we are coming to him because he's called us. I struggled with that word, called. I kept running into it, even though it was preached against for most of my life. I couldn't get past the fact that God has chosen his people We are a chosen people of God, and that is an amazing thing. The atonement that we see in this section, we're reconciled to God. Atonement is to say, we are deserving of wrath. Our sins deserve wrath. that so therefore it must be paid. The cost of our sins is separation from God if we didn't have Christ. That's an amazing thing. The whole time that I, as I was growing up and I wanted to kind of help you guys understand the, when you run into people that do not ascribe to this doctrine, how best can we help them, how best can we help them understand the idea of atonement and how to recognize Christ as the priest in their life, that once and for all sacrifice. I believe Christ died for my sins, but I also felt that I had to take the leap of faith to jump into salvation. The choosing, the decisionism, that's the part that I always struggled with, as through most of my early years, I was afraid that I was losing my salvation. That my choosing God, I also unchose him as I sinned. That atonement wasn't enough, that I needed to keep essentially regaining my salvation. It wasn't until I understood this idea of reformed, basically it's the tulip, if you've heard the doctrine or the five points of Calvinism, it's the L, limited atonement. that limited atonement, that doesn't mean that God's limiting it just to a certain number of people, but it's limited in the fact that not all men are saved. We can all see that. We can look at the world and there's a lot of people that are clearly rejecting God. But there's a lot of people between the hyper-Calvinism side and the Arminian side of things that there's a whole degree of differentiations and designations in between that. And we need to find what scripture says. And that's something that I would just caution you as you run into people who are maybe not even, they don't even acknowledge that they're Arminians. As I grew up, I didn't even know what that term meant. I'd never even heard of that term. They don't have any idea what this means. And that was something that I had to learn. I had to identify why what I read in scripture was different than what I was being taught. And that's something that we all have to test. We have to test what we believe in our hearts according to God's word. And that's what I would highly recommend is maybe you interact with people at work or school. school or wherever you meet people, you're going to run into this doctrine and it's, they don't like this. I didn't like it. It's like, that's unfair. Why didn't God save everybody? So that's the way it is. That's the way he's chosen his people. He's always chosen his people. Why did he choose Israel out of all the nations, the smallest little nation? And if we look at the broader context of history, we can see he's a choosy God. He's chosen his people and he atones for their sins. Atonement is, Basically, another word for reconciliation, but another synonymous word is propitiation. Propitiation is the word that helps us understand that God's wrath has been satisfied, that the object of the wrath has been, that propitiation is averting of God's wrath, and that enmity between He and us has been satisfied. That's an amazing thing. That is something that, as I come to understand the idea of God's chosen me, and he saves me, he's the author and perfecter of my faith, he does it all. With the Arminian doctrine, it's, well, the idea is basically what's called conditional universalism. Basically, he saved everybody, but it takes the human effort to get to the boat, essentially, to get to that point of salvation, to get to the point where you've made the choice, you've decided for Christ. He didn't choose you, except, I mean, again, we see that passage where it talks about, I've chosen you, that no man can boast. The sad thing that I find in my own upbringing and a lot of other people that are not of the Reformed doctrines is that they lack assurance. I lacked assurance. Assurance that my soul is forever with the Lord and nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. I would keep trying harder. I would keep doing more, saying more, being more, looking for a new way to preach. I was very dedicated to spreading the gospel. I still am. I remember doing ministry under the Armenian thing. I just had to come up with a better way of saying it. Then more people would be saved. It was all on me. That was really miserable. And then as I came to understand this doctrine of that God has atoned for the sin of his people, he saves, he begins, he's the author and perfecter. He completes the whole process for his elect chosen people. And all those words, elect chosen, those are naughty words to a lot of people. They don't like them. We don't like the idea that God is limiting it, the limited atonement, which is a little bit rough. I don't know if it's the best word, limited atonement. I think they mostly did that for the, so that the TULIP acronym would make sense. It didn't make sense to be TUPIP, but it would be, a better word would be particular. God is particular. He's particular about whose sin is atoned for. And that's something that as we go through this life, and we see our sin, and it'll crush us if we are not continually confessing it. But we have that high priest that is continually making intercession for us. And that's something that many people lack. The understanding of this doctrine is tricky. If you run into these people, and you will because they outnumber us considerably, a large part of the majority of the churches in even this area are Arminian in understanding. They don't ascribe to reform doctrines. I'd probably advise even to not even use the word Calvinism, because they know Calvinism, and it's essentially a bad word. I grew up believing that all Calvinists were basically just chosen, and then they could live like hell. That was what I was taught, that they don't have to do anything. They're chosen, and then they can do whatever they want. No, no, that's not accurate, as I came to understand. And it's actually oftentimes the opposite case, where we fall onto the side of all grace. Well, that was what I grew up understanding, is that, well, I've sinned, but there's more grace. I've sinned, but I have some more grace. Keep applying more grace. Loads of grace. And he does give that. But it was a means for what they're accusing the Calvinists of is, well, I can sin and get away with it, because there's more grace. Well, both sides, there's two ditches. Don't fall into either ditch. We are to follow that narrow path in the middle, and it is a narrow path. And that's something that, as we look at this question and understanding who Christ truly is, and following that narrow path, we can come to a measure of assurance that few people have. When we looked at this part here, the second part here, it talks about reconciliation. Hebrews 2.17 says, therefore, in all things, he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of his people. And then also in Hebrews 7.25. Therefore he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. So those are the, how does he operate, how does he execute the office of priest? These are the passages that helped drive this answer. He's able to say them to the uttermost. That's the idea that oftentimes we'll get caught up even in ourselves, is that we like to work out, we like to work our own salvation. We want to do it. Our natural tendency is we want to do something, but we have to recognize that God is doing it through us. He is coming alongside. He is girding. He is driving you. In Him, to grow in your knowledge of the Lord, in your salvation, in your understanding of it. That divine justice that only God, only Christ can fulfill, we are in desperate need of it. An interesting kind of point to make is that also within Hebrews, in talking about priests, we can see that Jesus is described as a priest in the order of Melchizedek. There's a whole quite large section in that in Hebrews. We look back, obviously, to Melchizedek, who was not of the Jewish nation, who was not Israel. Same with Christ. Well, the priests had to be Levites. Jesus was not of that line. He was of Judah. How can he be a priest? This was a big stumbling block for the Jews in the early church. They did not recognize him as priest, because he was not a Levite. But he's a priest in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was outside of that line as well. So that is why it's there in scripture, why he's a priest in that order, because he didn't fit that Levitical line. That's a large part why a lot of the Israelites and Jews in the early church, and even now, they don't recognize him. He wasn't it. Nothing from another tribe is accepted as a priest. As we don't have that particular hangup in our own faith in this country, we can recognize Christ as simply priest. And as he has the threefold offices, prophet, priest, and king, he is all of those things together as one. And as we pull apart that, that is, and gain an understanding of how each of those offices applies to Christ in our lives, we can have that assurance that, like I said, I so many years struggled with that assurance. I was doing my own salvation. I was choosing God. It was my decision, and I kept failing. But we can, when we put our lives at the sovereignty of God, into his sovereign plan, in his sovereign hand, and we can recognize that we do have a high priest. A high priest is over all other priests. No further priests are needed. He was the one that we needed, that one sacrifice. who poured out all of his blood for us. And so that's essentially the main thrust of this question. And again, it's not a matter of limited atonement, as we kind of talked a little bit about, is that it's not a matter of value. It's not a limited value. It's just limited by design. God's design for atonement was that it is limited to his people. He has not paid for everyone's sins, if only they would accept him. He's the author perfecter. He begins it, he creates it, and he fulfills it. We are, to understand that is something that took me many, many years to ponder as I tried to grasp it and wrestled with that doctrine. But yeah, it's basically that we can't really doubt that the Lord intended that the benefits of his death should be limited, but that he limits it for his people. Again, this is just the teaching hours is meant to also have questions. If you guys have any questions, please, by all means, raise your hand. But I wanted to obviously also talk a little bit further about the the idea that we need to contribute something. We still try to contribute something to our salvation. It took me a long time to get away from that, and I still find myself wanting to contribute and just work harder. The bootstrap theory, I'm gonna pick myself up by my bootstraps and be better. Again, this is where we have to fall upon Christ in saying, Lord, you are my all and all. You've begun a good work in me. You will complete it. And trusting ourselves to that is such a freeing thing. I don't know if today you're struggling with that. When we look into the catechisms and understanding these things, I find strength in gaining that knowledge and applying what these catechism questions are speaking to us. We don't need to contribute. That atonement is for us. That atonement is for His people. It helps to give us that assurance that we need.